We’ve had several excitable emails about this today: several albums by legendary band The KLF have popped up on digital music services including iTunes and Spotify.
iTunes has albums Chill Out; Space; The Lost Sounds of Mu, Vol. 1; The Lost Sounds of Mu Vol. 2; and The White Room: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for £7.99 a pop.
Meanwhile, Spotify also has… Chill Out; Space; The Lost Sounds of Mu, Vol. 1; The Lost Sounds of Mu Vol. 2; and The White Room: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. On both services, the rightsholder is listed simply as The KLF.
Why is this a big deal? Because The KLF deleted their back catalogue when they split up in 1992. There hasn’t been an official announcement about the albums being made available digitally – and there’s a big chance that they’ve been added to iTunes and Spotify by someone who doesn’t own the rights – but if this is kosher, it would be pretty big news.
(If it’s not kosher, it’s also pretty big news, of course: how can someone make it onto iTunes and Spotify with unauthorised KLF bootlegs without raising a red flag?)
We’ll update this story as and when there are further developments or an official statement. Update: No statements yet, but knowledgeable KLF blog The Fuckers Burned The Lot is sure that these are bootlegs: “Which is unexpected, and presumably they wont be there for long…”
Another update: The albums are also available on Rdio and New Myspace. Oh, and there’s talk of them having been added on 12 December 2012 (12/12/12), if you like your conspiracy theories.
For now, if you’re on Spotify, feast your ears on the KLF back catalogue:
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Also worth adding of the 5 albums on iTunes/Spotify, only Chill Out and Space were ever officially released in the first place.