How David Bowie Helped Pave the Way For the Download Age

On a purely musical level, David Bowie’s 22nd studio effort Hours is one of his least adventurous: Perhaps burned by the divisive response to the drum ’n’ bass of predecessor Earthling, the Thin White Duke appeared to deliberately throw things back to the classic art rock of the early ’70s. But in terms of how it was distributed to his adoring public, the turn-of-the-century affair genuinely changed the game. 

Indeed, on September 21, 1999—two weeks before it hit shelves in record stores—Bowie became the first major label act to legally sell a full album as an internet download, a forward-thinking move that was just the latest example of the icon’s uncanny ability to stay ahead of the technological curve. 

Three years earlier, Bowie had disrupted the music industry with the first downloadable single, a brand new song called “Telling Lies.” In 1998, he launched his very own internet service provider, BowieNet, which gave his army of acolytes access to exclusive music, videos, and even direct communication with the man himself. And then there was the viral BBC Newsnight interview in which he correctly predicted the future of the world wide web, saying “The interplay between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.” 

Hours’ creative process was also steeped in the digital world. The majority of the album’s 10 numbers were written for Omikron: The Nomad Soul, the adventure game in which Bowie also popped up in two different roles. And “What’s Really Happening”—described as “the first true cyber song”—was co-penned with longtime fan Alex Grant, the winner of a web songwriting competition run through BowieNet that was designed to further bridge the gap between artist and audience. 

Bowie first teased the record seven weeks before release by uploading 45-second clips of each track to BowieNet before making the whole thing available as a paid download through his own platform and various online stores. “I am hopeful that this small step will lead to greater steps by myself and others, ultimately giving consumers greater choices and easier access to the music they enjoy,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, however, more traditional retailers weren’t as excited.

HMV, Britain’s biggest music outlet at the time, was one of the more vocal detractors, arguing that Bowie was essentially playing favorites with those who shared his passion for tech: “Records should be available to everyone at the same time, and not everyone has access to the internet, the company said. The Netherlands’ Free Record Shop chain, meanwhile, threatened to pull the entirety of his vast discography from their stores. 

Even Bowie’s label, Virgin, had its reservations, with CEO Glen Ward telling The Guardian, “I could see why he was doing it—just pushing the boundaries, [taking] the opportunity to raise awareness. But from a business perspective, it was irksome to say the least.”

Admittedly, Bowie wasn’t the only artist who tested such waters back in the ’90s. Aerosmith had made history five years previously when Get a Grip outtake “Head First” became the first ever downloadable song—yet that was entirely for free. The albums from Red Hot Chili Peppers (Californication) and Def Leppard (Euphoria) were also made available to stream several days before their physical release in the summer of 1999. And while the likes of Frank Black and Public Enemy had exchanged material online for cold hard cash, they’d done so as indie label artists. The fact that Bowie was signed to a major label, coupled with the fact he was cutting out the middle man, meant Hours was viewed as a far bigger threat to the status quo. 

An unrepentant Bowie had little sympathy for the retailers who at the time were charging on average $20 for a single album. “Mark my words … we are not going back to record companies and through shops,” he insisted. “Within five years it will have moved so spectacularly that no one will recognize the music business.”

Hours didn’t immediately create a monumental shift; in fact, the number of fans who chose to download the album from the comfort of their own home rather than trek to their nearest record store a fortnight later didn’t even reach four figures. In the two weeks Hours was available digitally, only 989 people, to be precise, had the bandwidth, patience, and trust in online security to access songs such as “Thursday’s Child,” “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell,” and “Something in the Air” in the age of the dial-up modem. (Further proving the music scene’s digital revolution was still in its infancy, a remarkable 23.9 percent needed technical assistance, too.) But it all went down as Bowie had predicted: “We are all aware that broadband opportunities are not yet available to the overwhelming majority of people,” he said when announcing the download, “and therefore expect the success of this experiment to be measured in hundreds and not thousands of downloads.”

The publicity surrounding the unorthodox release strategy also didn’t exactly translate to chart success. Hours became Bowie’s first studio effort since 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to miss the U.S. Top 40, with only 29,000 fans making the effort to pick it up physically in its first week.  

However, as Bowie also acknowledged, the general public took a while to adapt to the introduction of color television and home video tapes, too. And with Hours showing it was indeed possible to bypass traditional brick-and-mortar, it created a ripple effect that fostered significant change once the technology had caught up with the concept. Indeed, within just two years of Bowie’s pioneering sales tactics, Apple launched iTunes. 

“There was a great foresight on his part in knowing where the internet strength was,” Virgin vice president of promotion Michael Plen later said. “Even though it hadn’t reached any critical mass for quantity, he certainly knew its qualitative reach and its power.” Indeed, Hours might not have always been the best showcase for Bowie’s musical genius, but it proved no other artist had their fingers pressed more firmly on the pulse of Silicon Valley.

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