Using Net before it uses them

All the major record companies seem to be spending considerable time, energy and portions of their dwindling cash on keeping new music off the Internet before it gets into the stores.

Warner Bros. Records, though, is giving the Internet a several-months head start on one new album. “Now Here Is Nowhere,” the major-label debut by the young band the Secret Machines, will be available for digital download sales starting Tuesday, though it won’t be in stores before spring. The idea is that when it is fully released, it won’t be such a, well, secret.

“Word of mouth from people who buy the album early will help build bigger awareness and help sell copies of the physical album when it comes in the spring,” says Robin Bechtel, Warner Bros. vice president of new media.

Bechtel says the idea came from the fact that Internet marketing campaigns routinely begin well before an album is released but that interested consumers generally had nowhere to go to get the music -- except unauthorized leaks on file-trading services.

“So many times when we’re executing a new media campaign, we’re going for grass-roots marketing, getting reviews, and in those months the record is already on file-trading,” Bechtel says. “This campaign will drive them to legally purchase the record, and it’s going to increase the word of mouth.”

She dismisses the risk that it will increase unauthorized file-sharing as a moot point.

“It would be there anyway,” Bechtel says.

The band seems perfect for this kind of experiment. The New York-based trio with Dallas origins built strong underground buzz with a sound that is more or less to Pink Floyd what the White Stripes’ sound is to Led Zeppelin. The group released a mini-album on its own in 2002 before Warner Bros. beat out several other interested labels to sign it last year.

As strategies for launching the band were planned, much attention was paid to a successful Internet campaign last year to introduce the band Trapt.

“We found the Internet has played into our hands very well -- short of the stealing issue,” says Warner Bros. chairman Tom Whalley. “We launched several acts that way. Trapt was one of them. So let’s take it up a notch. Let’s sell the music early and get a read on the market. Look how expensive it is to put a record in the marketplace. When you’ve got this, it costs you less to get a read. Let’s go find out.”

Warner Bros. is offering several elements to direct fans to the authorized sales. The album, which will be available via such digital services as Apple’s iTunes and the resurrected Napster, will come with a bonus sampler of other new Warner Bros. acts. Titled “Sympathy for the Download,” the bonus will feature tracks by the Von Bondies, the Walkmen, the Sun, Head Automatica and Jonathan Rice, plus an otherwise unavailable extra Secret Machines song.

The official digital retailers will also be able to provide downloadable art for the album, and fans who purchase the album will be able to get a free blank CD-R on which they can burn the Machines album -- available through the band’s website, www.thesecretmachines.com.

Bechtel says that all the feedback has been positive, including from retailers.

Farrell, Harry are up to kids’ stuff

The world has pretty much been Perry Farrell’s playground, but the singer will be romping on a real playground for a new project. Farrell and Blondie’s Deborah Harry will be at a Griffith Park kiddie facility Feb. 11 and 12 shooting a video for a duet they’ve done for a new children’s album.

The song, “Patience Bossa,” will be the first single from “A World of Happiness,” a collection of new kids’ songs that also includes performances by Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Magic Johnson, Rosanna Arquette, Lou Rawls, Illeana Douglas and other singers and actors. The album is due from Disney’s Buena Vista Records on March 9.

The project was initiated by composer Tor Hyams, who after the birth of his daughter four years ago bought copies of his own favorite childhood albums -- Carole King’s “Really Rosie” and Marlo Thomas’ “Free to Be (You and Me)” -- and found himself wishing there were more of that nature. Hyams had recently become friends with Oldman, who quickly signed up to participate. After four months of phone work, Hyams had his impressive roster set.

The video, which will be directed by Oldman, has Harry chastising a hyperkinetic Farrell to slow down and enjoy life.

“They’re grown-up kids,” Hyams says. “He cannot calm down. And we have their doppelgangers, a 5-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl who look like them.... The little version of Perry is going to be played by his own son. But by the end of the song, Perry gets it.”

Liking the voice, not the cause

It might be hard to find many people further apart on the political spectrum than archconservative Charlton Heston and ACLU activist Danny Goldberg. But the two are now linked in an odd twist of commerce.

Goldberg is chairman of Artemis Records, which recently acquired the Vanguard Classics catalog, which in addition to Beethoven and Brahms has on its roster recordings of Bible excerpts read by Moses himself.

The irony is not lost on Goldberg, but he has no qualms whatsoever about this alliance.

“Well, I don’t like his work for the NRA,” the music executive says. “But I think he’s a good actor, and I like what he did on these albums. I’ve never expected artists to necessarily share my politics. In this case the albums are part of a catalog we bought. But I chose to re-release the recordings because I think they’re terrific. And I like the Bible.”