The Crimea give away their record for free

The Crimea are distributing their new record Secrets of the Witching Hour for free in a .zip file on their website:

To be super quick, we're pushing the free on-line release to... now!!! 'Secrets Of The Witching Hour' is ready to go, and awaiting your MP3 player of choice everywhere as of NOW.
Just head towards www.thecrimea.net
and let your mouse do the work. Nice and simple.

Originally the plan had been to release the record free later this month, but when a few media outlets picked up on the story the band decided (smartly) to take advantage of the attention while they had it and pushed the date up.

What's interesting about this is that Tragedy Rocks, their awesome debut, was released on a major and yielded a single ("Lottery Winners on Acid") that performed very well in the UK. Not well enough, because they got dropped. But this is a band that has been through the major label meatgrinder and have decided to take distribution into their own hands, to theoretically reap the benefits of increased awareness in live revenue.

Expect to see more and more bands trying this.

Previously: Socratic did the same thing.