Ben Folds has said that the recent downturn in the music industry is allowing him to release three five-song EPs on Epic this year.
Folds said: "I'm going to do things that are really more about the music for me and less about the hype. Because I'm on a major label, there is no escaping the way that we have to do business when I release an album - everybody wants the 'Album of the Year' Rolling Stone bullshit where you get two-stars in the review and your face is all over the front. The way to bypass that for me is just to not go through the normal channels. And if I put out an EP, nobody can take it seriously."
Folds plans to sell the releases at concert dates on his Lottapianos Tour with Tori Amos later this year, on his official website and at Apple's iTunes Music Store. Vinyl copies will be available in stores and the discs will not go to radio for promotion.
Folds said: "This way, I don't have to kowtow to the big-ass record chains and then in order to get a certain number of records shipped, I don't have to kiss radio people's asses. And in turn, I don't have to do TV in order to get the radio slots and do certain kinds of press that I don't want to do. It's all kind of nice and the record business right now is going, 'Okay, any way you want to do it is totally fine because we're just barely getting by.' So, they are not arguing about that. [Epic] is pretty well aware that I'm not going to be competing with Shakira. It's a really nice musical way for me to do it. I just go into the studio, there is no 'How does this fit in with anything?' I just do five songs. It's music. People who know my music and know who I am can find it, and that's great."
"When it comes time to fulfill my contractual obligation, and put things into an album and put them out, then what the record company does for me is makes me look important. Probably get on MTV a couple of times, [in a] couple of major publications and people who come to the show will think I'm famous. And it works. But I think the institution of the album may be going away. That's my gut feeling. I feel that it is more about songs and the album is a formality that packages things so that you can hype them real big and I'm just not very hype-able. We've tried that a couple of times and it is just not very effective."