Yet another way that musicians are using the Internet to offer products they previously couldn’t:

SEATTLE – Beginning with Pearl Jam’s sold out concert at the Gorge in George, Washington on September 1, the band will begin releasing high quality digital downloads of their live shows exclusively at www.pearljam.com. The digital downloads will be available for most of the band’s 2005 Canadian and US dates just hours after each show has ended; they will include special downloadable artwork and a slideshow specific to each night’s show.

Pearl Jam’s “digital bootlegs” will be professionally mixed in real-time at each show by Pearl Jam’s longtime studio and live engineer, Brett Eliason. Eliason’s company, Basecamp Productions, developed the software application that delivers and manages digital downloads. Pearl Jam has opted to encode the digital files at a higher than standard bit rate (192k) in an effort to balance manageable file sizes with very good sound quality. The cost is $9.99 per show.

More music to lovers of music everywhere. Positive trends for all, and definitely an inspiration for our Paperback Series.