Just a couple of weeks after Ozzy Osbourne negotiated his way out of his deal with Sony label Epic, Pearl Jam have announced they will split from the major - though they were at the end of their contract anyway. After the news broke a spokesman for the band told Billboard that they plan to weigh up all of their options and then look for a new label deal after their current tour ends in July.
The news follows an recent interview on launch.com with Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament who said: "Our record company's in shambles right now, so we're gonna wait for the label to get their shit together before we put anything else out. It might be the sort of thing where, 10 years or 12 years, it's kind of run its course a little bit. We want to be somewhere where people are really excited about us being at their label, and we have tons of ideas about how we want to do things, but we also want to hear somebody who has equally as many ideas about how we can do things."