Led Zeppelin Goes Terrifyingly Digital
Like most people, you've probably spent the last few years in a state of insomniac anxiety over the fact that you haven't been able to buy an officially-sanctioned ringtone of The Crunge by Led Zeppelin.
Well all that changes now, buddy. Since next-month's one-off reunion concert by all the non-dead members of Led Zeppelin attracted millions of ticket applications, Led Zeppelin has decided to give the fans what they really want – Led Zeppelin is finally allowing its loyal supporters to pay for legal downloads of its music instead of just stealing it off Kazaa like they had been doing, plus a new range of Led Zeppelin ringtones has also been announced. You know what this means? It means it can't be too long before we get to see Robert Plant, all grizzled and topless, awkwardly prancing down a cutely-animated street and whistling like some sort of adorable pixie in his very own version of the Paul McCartney iTunes advert.
We've long been under the assumption that, as popular as Led Zeppelin is, the band has always been about four months behind Ringo Starr in terms of musical innovation. And we'll be buggered if our theory hasn't come true yet again. Almost exactly four months after Ringo Starr agreed to sell his songs digitally, Led Zeppelin has decided to do the very same thing.
Next month Led Zeppelin is going to reform in order to a) pay tribute to a man who founded a record label and b) take a wrecking ball to everyone's lovingly-kept memories about why they liked Led Zeppelin in the first place. But don't say that Led Zeppelin isn't aware of what it's doing; using the same uncanny business sense that allowed them to scream at a merchandise website until it stopped selling their stuff, the members of Led Zeppelin know that following their reunion concert, the world will want two things.
Firstly, the part of the world that applied for Led Zeppelin tickets but didn't get them will be so overcome by unstoppable nostalgia that they'll want to buy all the Led Zeppelin songs ever recorded in a format they don't own it on yet, and the 10,000 lucky Led Zeppelin audience members will also want to get their hands on old Led Zeppelin music – although that's mainly because they'll want to wash away the nightmarish memories of seeing an old man squawking about goblins like a sunburnt witch in the few gaps between nine-hour, brain-numbing guitar solos played by a man who's increasingly starting to resemble Michael Winner. Anyway, long story short – this means that Led Zeppelin is going to start digitally selling its songs as downloads. Reuters reports:
British rockers Led Zeppelin will offer their music online for the first time next month, they said on Monday. The band, whose reunion gig in London in November prompted more than a million fans to apply for 10,000 available tickets, is one of the last major pop music acts to offer their catalogue digitally. From November 13, Led Zeppelin… will make its albums available for download from all online music retailers. "We are pleased that the complete Led Zeppelin catalogue will now be available digitally," said guitarist Jimmy Page. "The addition of the digital option will better enable fans to obtain their music in whichever manner they prefer," he said in a statement.
And to think, only several years after Led Zeppelin fans all imported their Led Zeppelin CDs into iTunes or pinched them from file-sharing websites for nothing, too. And, anyway, Jimmy Page is wrong – we can't obtain Led Zeppelin's music in whichever manner we prefer, and that's the way it'll stay until Led Zeppelin finally gets it together enough to make its songs available to own on hecklerspray's current musical format of choice, the banjo-playing monkey.
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