Groove Armada's Andy Cato has inked a deal with phone firm O2 which will see him making brand new music available via the phone network's music platform. He plans to provide two new tracks a week exclusively to the phone company, which will then sell them on to its customers for a pound a time. Profits will be split down the middle.
Cato says he likes the idea of making music available in this way and on this kind of timescale. He told reporters: "What appeals in terms of dance music is the speed of the turnaround. Working on a new track on a Monday and releasing it on a Friday is an adrenaline-fuelled way of working."
The tracks will be made available in MP3 format, ignoring the DRM systems unusually used by the phone network. On that decision Cato said that while he was "initially not amused" to see Groove Armada songs being swapped on P2P networks, Cato feels that attempting to stem illegal file sharing is "like trying to hold back the tide".
The music available via O2 will be solo work, though Cato will continue to work on Groove Armada projects with Tom Findlay who, of course, is also involved in the digital music revolution as one of the founders of independent download platform TuneTribe.