There's a clear trend in music right now that makes the oncoming disappearance of LaLa -- which has been absorbed by Apple and is subsequently going the way of beepers by the end of the month -- all the more unsettling: Music fans, it seems, prefer to preview an entire album before purchasing it.
With LaLa disappeared, band and labels are soon going to have to turn to places like Soundcloud in order to offer full album previews. And that's too bad, really. Nothing against Soundcloud, we were rather fond of LaLa. The service introduced us to a lot of music we likely would have skipped over simply because a thirty-second sample wasn't enough to catch our ears.
Sub Pop, it seems, is ahead of the curve, and has already moved over to Soundcloud, in fact, where it's offering a preview of the new CoCoRosie album. The new record, Grey Oceans, features some absolutely garish artwork, which seems to be the trend these days with any type of quirky indie-rock project. The music itself is just as garish/awesome as we've all come to expect from CocoRosie -- love it or hate it, it is what it is. It's a non-abrasive but hard to listen to record, nonetheless.