Californian rockers Alien Ant Farm have uploaded their entire new album “Always & Forever” on YouTube before it’s official release on February 24th. The band got together a PledgeMusic project to fund the album and at this point have reached 159% of their original target with 1617 pledgers. We spoke about the rise in this concept with Deadly Circus Fire last summer in our interview with them, talking about the rise in fan funded projects and the help it gives the musicians and cutting out the ‘middle man’ of the record label. This year marks the 9th year since the last AAF full length release and the band will be hitting the UK roads again in May with P.O.D and Hoobastank to support the album.
The YouTube stream takes advantage of YouTube’s annotation feature and you can virtually click buttons to select tracks and visit outside links such as the album on iTunes. It seems this may arguably be the way forward for bands and the record industry. With more bands streaming songs and entire albums before the official release in good faith that they will gain fans of the work that will then purchase it on release.
We are looking forward to seeing Alien Ant Farm hit these shores with their live shows in May, check out the poster for the confirmed dates.
The entire album can be streamed below;
[youtube id=”ND3kBhyKNm4″ width=”600″ height=”350″]
Our interview with discussion about fan funded projects is below;
[youtube id=”rxtUpO1AX8w” width=”600″ height=”350″]