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WMG Launches Digital-Only Music Label

Major record label Warner Music Group announced the launch of "Cordless Recordings," a new digital-only label imprint headed by Jac Holzman, the founder and former CEO of Elektra and Nonesuch Records. In an unorthodox move for a major label venture, Cordless will allow bands to retain rights to their master recordings, which will be distributed in clusters of three or more songs on digital services, rather than as full albums.

Cordless will initially sell clusters from signed artists Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers, Breakup Breakdown, Dangerous Muse, Nozzle, Koishii & Hush and Humanwine, on iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster and new, legal peer-to-peer services like iMesh and the forthcoming Mashboxx.

"When we started to think about Cordless, certain lessons from the past kept returning to me," said Holzman. "The close, creative relationship with artists and their fan base by frequent release of records, keeping costs low and having a methodology that would let us use our medium to introduce our material to more fans. Cordless is a community intended to give new artists their chance, and a process that connects an audience to our artists' creativity. This is who we are and that is what we have pledged to do."

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