Pearl Jam’s “World Wide Suicide” to be free

According to their official site, the first single from Pearl Jam’s eigth studio album will be a free MP3 available for download on March 8th. This is a pretty incredible news for fans of the band, but also a boon for the future of online music promotion. When Tom Petty released a single to mp3.com several years ago, his record company freaked out and it had to be removed. Its not uncommon for an up and coming band to slap some tracks on a myspace account to get some buzz, but Pearl Jam is a band that could easily sell the song on iTunes and keep the money. Here’s hoping its a success and more follow suit.