Love the Grateful Dead? Now you can get any of the recordings in their live Dick’s Picks series over the Internet. Single songs (up to 10 minutes long, which cuts out most of the extended jams the band is famous for) are available at the iTunes store. Full tracks are available at the Grateful Dead store in 128K and 256K MP3 and lossless (FLAC) formats. The lower-quality MP3 formats cost less than the higher-quality MP3s, and the lossless files cost a few bucks more. But the prices are still not bad – $23.50 for a 4–CD set, with no shipping or handling.
I thought this explanation from the band’s production company was pretty classy:
We’ve been on the cutting edge of music distribution for more than 30 years, and the evolution to digital sharing is not surprising. Dead Heads have always honored ethical standards in their sharing, and we think this offering represents a great combination — it’s easy to use and it’s legal.
Digital sharing. Ethical standards. Legal. What a refreshing bunch of words to see in the same paragraph. Too bad the rest of the music industry can’t get on board.
Ed Bott 