Kaiser Cheats

"Kaiser Chiefs Revolutionise the Music Industry," yells the cover of this week's NME. If you're not clear on what's going here, or how a band best know for going "WOOOOOH!" on every other song have achieved a monumental shake-up on a scale the combined might of Napster, Steve Jobs and Alan McGee's id could only dream of, well it's like this: the Kaiser lads released their new album, The Future is Medieval, with little build-up last week via their website. It's been hailed as the first 'custom-made' album, because fans can choose 10 tracks from a selection of 20 and create their own bespoke artwork to go with it. Pretty ground-breaking stuff, right?

But hang on, haven't we seen something very like this before? At the back end of 2007, those dons of gloom-glitch, Radiohead, released their In Rainbows album on their site, letting fans individually name a price for it. This move was also hailed as an epoch-making, moulding-breaking step forward for the music industry. But then what happened? The band later released the album in the usual way - on CD - and their management admitted the online release had been done to boost retail sales. Which it no doubt did.

There's a real sense of history repeating here. The Future is Medieval will be getting a CD release on July 1, less than a month after the online release. The track-listing for the physical release runs to 14 songs, probably just to encourage those who shelled out early to buy the CD as well for the tracks they didn't choose online. In effect, some fans will be buying this album twice.

But what really sticks in the craw is the notion that somehow this has 'revolutionised' the music industry, an industry which has repeatedly kicked, screamed and buried its head in the sandpit any time anyone has even mentioned that it should consider catching up with the digital revolution. Recently, Spotify, a site which might actually have had genuine capabilities to revolutionise the industry, has had to limit the number of songs non-paying users can listen to because the stubbon old US music industry just cannot get its head around the idea that people might listen to music for free and still be faithful little consumers. Add to this the fact The Kaiser Chiefs are signed to Universal, not some little indie upstart. You can't revolutionise the beast from inside its belly.

It's also another example of silly hyperbole on the part of NME. If or when the music industry revolution comes, NME, you can bet your back pages it won't come from a band whose popularity has waned substantially in the last few years. It'll come from Lady Gaga, or Take That, or Madonna, or some other zillion-selling act. Possibly, just possibly, it'll come from some coffee-wired nerd typing away day and night in his dorm-room but this is increasingly unlikely. The music industry is getting very good at scuppering any unsanctioned attempts to revolutionise it.

The saddest thing, though, is that we were promised a revolution. And, years after that promise, it still hasn't materialised. Instead, the 'indie' bands who are meant to represent us are using the net as a tool to wrangle some extra cash out of their loyal fans while the industry and the media are colluding in convincing us this constitutes the modern-day equivalent of Elvis' hip thrusts. To paraphrase Gil Scott-Heron RIP: the revolution will not be downloaded.