Rock Band Becomes First To Release CD On Flash Drive November, 2005 - The popular Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies recently came to CustomUSB.com looking to make history. They have now become the first mainstream band in the world to release material on USB Flash Drives. "Barenaked on a Stick," the 128MB USB Flash Drive (right) contains 29 songs, including "Barenaked for the Holidays," a few live versions of fan favorites, as well as photos, chat-buddy icons and a video.
http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/367106p-312501c.html'Naked Ladies' on a stick Band strips away CD, goes straight to download
By MICHELLE MEGNA and JIM FARBER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The Barenaked Ladies are sticking it to their fans.
On Tuesday, the group will become the first band in this country to release material on a USB flash-memory drive instead of on compact disk. Called "Barenaked on a Stick," the 128MB removable-memory drive contains 29 songs, including "Barenaked for the Holidays 2004," a few live versions of fan favorites, as well as photos, chat-buddy icons and a video.
"We found that CDs made terrible stocking stuffers," says Steven Page, the band's lead singer. "They just don't fit quite right."
Invented in 1998 and commonly used since 2000, USB drives are removable-memory cards about the size of a stick of gum that plug into the USB port of your computer. Also called thumb drives, key-chain drives and flash drives, they're used to transfer digital files of all sorts, including music, video, photos and text documents. Once plugged into your computer, the drive automatically shows up as an icon on your desktop that you simply click on to open.
"Barenaked Ladies on a Stick" also features exclusive material from the quirky Canadian act, such as a demo version of the song "Aluminum" from the "Everything to Everyone" recording session, ad libs from the "Everywhere for Everyone" tour and video snippets from the "Barenaked for the Holidays" recording sessions.
The drive is PC- and Mac-compatible and will go on sale Tuesday at Amazon.com and Werkshop.com for $29.98. That's how much a blank 128MB drive would generally cost. Once you transfer the content, you can use the stick to store other digital files, says James Kim, senior editor of MP3 and digital music for the technology site
www.Cnet.com.
Another benefit of the music-on-a-stick approach is that fans can simply load songs on their computer rather than converting them to digital format from a CD.
"Flash drives are pretty common, so putting content on one isn't new," Kim says. "But from a promotional perspective, it's very futuristic. Eventually, who knows, maybe the next generation might forget what CDs are and this will be how music is distributed." (For trivia buffs, the first musicians to issue a USB drive were the German punk band WIZO, which released "WIZO Stick-EP" last year, according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.)