Led Zeppelin: iTunes versus Bittorrent

Like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin was one of the last great holdout bands refusing to release its catalog online — until now. <cite>The Complete Led Zeppelin </cite>, a digital box set of the band’s entire studio discography, is available for pre-order on iTunes: 165 tracks for $99, including a new greatest-hits anthology <cite>Mothership</cite>. (The entire package is being promoted with a reunion performance at London’s O2 Arena on November 26.)

Meanwhile, if you do a quick search over on Bittorrent, the band’s entire discography is available as a 2.25-Gbyte download. It includes:

Studio Albums:
Led Zeppelin I
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin IV
House Of The Holy
Physical Graffiti (Discs 1 & 2)
Presence
In Through The Out Door
Coda
Live albums:
The Song Remains The Same (Discs 1 & 2)
BBC Sessions (Discs 1 & 2)
How The West Was Won (Discs 1, 2 & 3)
Video:
Led Zeppelin With Keith Moon – Forum Los Angeles 77-06-23 (Rare)
Led Zeppelin – Royal Albert Hall 1970 Concert

DJ / Rupture, a New York “turntable soloist,” has an interesting rumination on this situation following a raid on Tuesday by British coppers of the huge music-sharing tracker, OiNK.

DJ / Rupture found his entire discography traded through the site, but concluded file-sharing is a positive: “The overall movement is towards more ways to share music & ideas with like-minded individuals on the internet,” he writes. “The way I see it, this can only be a good thing for music fans. And what musician is not first a music fan?”