5, 2007, Walmart proudly announced that Long Road Out of Eden had sold more than 700,000 copies in its first week of release. Around the time of Long Road Out of Eden, Radiohead asked fans to “pay what they want” for In Rainbows, Madonna inked a record deal with concert promoter Live Nation and both Prince and Ray Davies gave away CDs in a London newspaper. While the Walmart deal was one of the first of its kind, it was part of a series of unorthodox releases that took place during the late '00s. They can’t be any more evil than a major record label, that's the way I look at it.” “Walmart is getting their environmental and labor act together. “You would have thought we made a deal with the devil,” he told Billboard around the release. After announcing the Walmart deal, Henley changed his opinion of the store. The Eagles also thought the deal as its best alternative in a landscape where millions of fans were getting their music free from the internet and brick-and-mortar stores were shuttering by the score. Listen to the Eagles Perform 'No More Cloudy Days' If the Eagles put out a record at Warner or any other major record label, part of the reason they can't pay up is we've got to pay for all of the bad acts they sign and release.” But that's because we are not a loss leader at Walmart. “It's also nice that Walmart pays us a very lucrative royalty, a royalty that no record company could come close to matching. “I am in the business of selling records, and I want to be in a place where we have the opportunity to sell the most records,” Frey told Billboard in 2007.

Schmit, orchestrated a crafty contract: They would receive a larger portion of the profits than one offered by a standard record deal, basically cutting out the record-company middle man. But Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. In those stores, shelf space is limited, making it harder for new artists to emerge.”īesides the obvious conflict between the band's values and the box-store behemoth, people wondered if the exclusive deal would hurt sales. “Today, the three largest music retailers are Best Buy, Walmart and Target. “Independent music stores are closing at an unprecedented pace,” he wrote in the Washington Post.

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