bleep · 2005-07-09 23:42

I have to give a quick shout out to bleep. It’s the digital distribution arm of Warp Records, which in itself would be a wonderful thing – Warp have consistently bled me of money since their start – LFO, Sweet Exorcist, Nightmares on Wax and the monumental Artificial Intelligence compilation. They’ve been through a few moments of less interest (I’m not completely into faceless microglitch music that you can’t dance to, and there’s some Shoreditch nerdrock recently), but I still regularly buy Warp records, and because of bleep, I buy even more.

bleep has become a behemoth of alternative music, with over 100 labels distributing some or all of their catalogue. You can get all of Warp (obviously), Ninja Tune, Skint, Wall of Sound, Accidental, plus Bjork’s entire back catalogue, Franz Ferdinand, Roots Manuva, Röyksopp...

And it’s all in MP3, with no DRM. Good quality, sometimes created by the artist themselves. Well, there’s also a most of Autechre’s output as FLAC, too, for those fan-nerds that have to hear every single digital glitch.

Not only that, but bleep really understands the web. There’s an RSS feed of new releases, plus individual ones for each label, and every recording has a ‘web tools’ link, letting you get direct links and Flash players, previewing the whole album, to embed in your website.

Look, here’s one for Jamie Lidell’s most excellent new album, Multiply:

Btw, this is a really cracking album. I’ve seen Jamie Lidell live several times, and always been impressed, even if his last album was a bit random for my taste. This album is completely different from the live shows – it’s the very very best of Motown, performed on a Sunday morning just for you. The title track is really wonderful, and I hope it gets airplay on Radio 2 (a first for Warp?), even if it gets a bit frenetic in the middle.

bleep also tell you how big a download it’s going to be, how long it’s going to take, and lets you download a zip file of your order, or individual tracks. They even let you choose how the files should be named, for the obsessive music librarians.

It’s crazy to download anything on bleep from anywhere else, really.

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