Counting Crows Release
BitTorrent Music Bundle and Announces New Tour
‘Underwater Sunshine’ BitTorrent Bundle goes global to over 150 million BitTorrent users, inviting fans to sample new music in anticipation of the band’s upcoming North American indie rock showcase tour The Outlaw Roadshow
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - (May 14, 2012)— Three weeks ago, Counting Crows debuted Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation) to the delight of fans and critics. To support the new album, the band is releasing a BitTorrent Bundle of new tracks, liner notes, and artwork from the album directly to the 150 million users of BitTorrent, as well as announcing the dates for their highly anticipated North American indie rock showcase tour The Outlaw Roadshow.
In partnership with San Francisco’s BitTorrent Inc., Counting Crows is offering four tracks, Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz's liner notes, and high-resolution album artwork as a BitTorrent Bundle directly to the young, digitally savvy users of the BitTorrent and µTorrent software. The tracks in the bundle include: “Untitled (Love Song)”, “Like Teenage Gravity”, “Hospital”, and “Meet on the Ledge”, and all are available for immediate download here.
Regarding this initiative Duritz says, "It’s a way to connect with anyone anywhere anytime. It's the cure for Babel. These are our new radio stations. Nobody's carrying a boombox on their shoulder waiting for you to tell them what they can listen to anymore. But everyone has an iPod in their pocket and a choice. Everyone. So we're going to give 150 million people some songs they can fit in their pocket and then let them choose for themselves. Listen once, twice, a thousand times, or not at all. It's up to you."
“Counting Crows is an enduring musical phenomenon, and a perfect example of a band embracing cutting-edge technology and networks for promotion and distribution,” says Matt Mason, executive director of marketing at BitTorrent. “Our unique BitTorrent Bundle option offers creators of all stripes the flexibility to distribute multimedia experiences directly to their fans at scale. Our commitment is to create powerful technology to connect cutting edge artists with new fans, enhance concert attendance and drive revenue. We’re incredibly honored for Counting Crows to embrace this vision.”
Counting Crows New Tour Dates:
Counting Crows recently completed a sold-out tour in support of their new release, Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation). The album features infectious interpretations of some of the band’s favorite songs, written by mostly underground artists, from Big Star to Teenage Fanclub to Dawes to Kasey Anderson. In the spirit of the new album, the Crows will be introducing some of their favorite artists on their summer tour, The Outlaw Roadshow, which takes its name from the indie rock showcases Duritz and Ryan Spaulding of Ryan's Smashing Life (www.RSLBlog.com) have been staging at CMJ and SXSW in recent years.
The Outlaw Roadshow featuring Counting Crows:
Leg #1 also features: Good Old War, Foreign Fields, and Filligar
June 9 Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony Summerstage
June 12 Danbury, CT - Ives Concert Park
June 13 Utica, NY - Saranac Brewery
June 15 Toronto, ON - Echo Beach
June 16 Sylvania (Toledo) OH - Centennial Terrace
June 18 Cleveland, OH - Cain Park
June 20 Vienna, VA - The Filene Center at Wolftrap
June 22 Rochester Hills, MI - Meadow Brook
June 23 Columbus, OH - LC Pavilion
June 25 Louisville, KY - Iroquois Amphitheater
June 26 Simpsonville, SC - Charter Amphitheater
June 28 Tuscaloosa, AL - Tuscaloosa Amphitheater
June 29 Snowden Grove, MS - Snowden Grove Amphitheater
July 1 Indianapolis, IN - The Lawn at White River State Park
Leg #2 also features: We Are Augustines, Kasey Anderson and The Honkies, and Field Report
July 17 Brooklyn, NY - Williamsburg Waterfront Park
July 19 Hyannis, MA - Cape Cod Melody Tent
July 20 Cohasset, MA - South Shore Music Circus
July 22 Camden, NJ - WXPN Fest at the Susquehanna Bank Center
July 23 Pittsburgh, PA - Stage AE
July 26 Cedar Rapids, IA - Ragbrai 40th Anniversary
July 28 Lincoln, NE - Pinewood Bowl Theater
July 31 Kansas City, MO - Starlight Theater
Aug 2 Denver, CO - Red Rocks
Aug 4 Salt Lake City, UT - Rail Event Center
Aug 6 Boise, ID - Idaho Botanical Gardens
Aug 7 Bend, OR - Les Schwab Amphitheater
Aug 11 Billings, MT - Magic City Blues Festival
Additional BitTorrent Promotion Details
BitTorrent will promote the Bundle on the company’s two main Web properties (www.bittorrent.com and www.utorrent.com), via advertising to new users, and by offering the bundle directly in the two software clients. Fans will be able to download the sample tracks and easily purchase the entire Underwater Sunshine album.
BitTorrent and Duritz will also be hosting an exclusive Twitter interview tomorrow, May 15 at 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST, UTC -8). Fans are encouraged to follow both Counting Crows (@CountingCrows) and BitTorrent (@BitTorrent) or track the designated hashtag #crowchat and submit questions via Twitter to the lead singer. Details on how to participate may be found here.
The promotion is part of BitTorrent’s ongoing Artist Spotlight program, first launched in August 2010. Most recently, BitTorrent premiered an exclusive video and music bundle with Death Grips, an Epic Records-backed noise-rap trio whose breakout album, The Money Store, was described as “…a 40-minute straitjacket tantrum of vein-popping, slow-flow barks closer to Helmet's Page Hamilton than Harlem's Charles Hamilton,” by Spin Magazine. Over the past year, BitTorrent has experimented with various ways to help artists build an audience and connect with the company’s 150 million fans around the world. Today, those experiments have matured into full-fledged promotions and successful case studies for bands like Pretty Lights, Sick of Sarah, and Gods Robots; films such as The Tunnel, Pioneer One, Lonely Place for Dying, and Zenith, plus other content partnerships with TED, Khan Academy and many others.
About BitTorrent
BitTorrent is one of the world's leading peer-based technology companies. We maintain a globally recognized ecosystem of technology protocols, consumer software, and consumer electronics devices that help people find, share and move digital media. We are the creators of the BitTorrent protocol and proponents of an open Internet. Our technologies are used by hundreds of millions of people around the world and currently drive between 20% and 40% of global Internet traffic. BitTorrent is based in San Francisco and has offices in Tokyo, Seoul, Krakow and Minsk. Please visit www.bittorrent.com for more information.
