2007 is turning out to be a hell of an eventful year for the record industry. In April, EMI announced a deal with Apple to sell music without copy protection software, otherwise known as DRM, allowing iTunes users to port their purchases to other players. In August, another major record label, Universal, announced its own plans to sell music without the constraints of copy protection, with the help of Google. Finally, last month, Amazon announced a public beta of its Amazonmp3.com store, which sells 2 million songs, from 180,000 artists, all without copy protection as well.

It seemed like the record industry was finally hearing the message that placing restrictive software on purchased music does little or nothing to hinder piracy, while it goes a long way to alienate and otherwise annoy the people who are still happy to pay for music. But with Radiohead’s announcement last week that the band would release their next album digitally,without a record label or a fixed price, threw established notions about music distribution and sales right out the window, garnering the band a hell of a lot of press in the process.

As long as Radiohead’s In Rainbows isn’t completely awful, it’ll likely be a huge success as a marketing tool for their next tour, which is where all the money is really made these days anyway. And for fans who really want to hold music product in their hands, the band promises a deluxe box set of In Rainbows, early next year, for a whopping $82. Clearly the band is still interested in pushing product. But they do deserve credit for trying something new in an industry that’s been in sore need of innovation since well before the days of Napster.

But the smaller labels that have been doing smart things with the Internet and music for years deserve an equal amount of credit, if not more, for putting fresh ideas in the minds of both corporate-types and consumers, years before any band the size of Radiohead thought to take the plunge and try something “new.” Oregon-based Positron! Records is one such label, which years ago devised a simple and smart way to sell both downloads and traditional CDs. And by releasing all its music under Creative Commons, and embracing file sharing, Positron! has opened its arms to the traditional enemies of the music biz.

Founded in 1998 by musician Chris Randall of the band Sister Machine Gun and his wife Lisa,Positron! Records sells music on traditional CD, and
electronically through online stores such as iTunes, as well as directly from the label’s web site. The novelty? When a customer purchases a CD from positronrectords.com for $15, they can instantly download a copy of the album –DRM-free– to listen to while their CD is shipped to them.

“You have the instant gratification of actually having the album and not having to rip it,” says Randall. “All you have to do is download it, and then a few days later you get your backup copy with the cover art and the liner notes and all that.”

Sounds simple and smart, right, so why isn’t every other label on the planet doing the same thing? After all, the common lament in the record biz is that CD sales are falling, while download sales are selling well, but not enough to make up for slipping sales of the CD. The Positron! method would be a great stopgap, enticing more people to purchase a physical CD, while digital sales (hopefully) catch up. And labels (justifiably) worried about young music fans increasing finding physical media (like a CD) irrelevant would do well to adopt a method like this. The more discs they can sell now, the more likely physical media will survive into the future. Because if an entire generation of fans grow up without the CD, its likely any form of physical media, and therefore any label’s ability to sell it, will go the way of the dinosaur.

Positron! may not have size and strength of the larger labels. But its quickness and intelligence allows it to adapt to the changing music industry faster than the lumbering industry giants. And those predatory music pirates lurking on the wilds of the Internet? You know, the big, mean, nasty song stealers that the RIAA is constantly going after? Randall isn’t too worried about them.

“There are people in this world that pay for things and people that try to get over. And the people of this world that try to get over are gonna get over no matter what you do,” said Randall. “So why fight it, you know?”