“Where are you, Yeeeezy?!”  The next person to ask that would be in good shape if they mozied on over to MySpace Music to check out Kanye West’s new album, 808s & Heartbreak, which premiered on MySpace Music.  Since Friday, fans have been able to stream the entire album for free.  It goes on sale today.  Listeners can buy tracks from AmazonMP3 using links next to each track in the Myspace Music player.  As in the case of any other MySpace Music track, the album’s tracks can be added to personal and public playlists.

Indeed, Kanye’s not the first artist to voluntarily debut an entire album online, but this all reflects the increasing importance of social media and social networking on the music industry.  Normally, on the web, it’s about eyeballs, but it’s all about headphones and eardrums here.  Smart artists who are really interested in promoting their music know they can’t just continue to let their careers be subject to the whims of old-head record executives who still fight the disruptions the music industry has undergone since people first began digging through the crates in a new way on Napster.  Record labels failed to understand that P2P services like Napster, Gnutella, LimeWire and others weren’t all for naught and social networks are no different.  Everybody knows the story of Soulja Boy and how his use of social media demonstrated what any successful artist may have to do in the future.  The crowd found him before the record labels did, though.  So, it’s important to get tracks out in front of this crowd–even if it means posting tracks in front of the legions of MySpace users.

Kanye would do well, too, to give away a track or two even for virality’s sake (even though he’s already exceptionally popular).  Even with offering the whole album to stream freely from MySpace, at the end of the day, we’re still tethered to MySpace.  Break free–offering a free track is nothing to fret about.  People still pay for great music even if it is available with the QWERTY discount.  Other artists take full advantage of that.  Phonte Coleman of Little Brother and Foreign Exchange fame leaked Little Brother’s “Getback” and requested that if listeners liked what they heard, they should go out and buy it or come see them on tour.  Q-Tip is offering the video for the single “Gettin’ Up” free on iTunes right now.  Eardrums and headphones, folks.

The record labels in some instances are making baby steps toward recognizing that they can’t afford to alienate fans by suing them, continuing to peddle crappy music, and displaying a poor understanding of the role the web now plays in building mass appeal (see the fate of Muxtape for an example of RIAA tomfoolery).  The majority usually wins, even in the face of a slew of wasteful lawsuits since the number of streams of Kanye’s work on MySpace alone reflect where things have already gone.  The recording industry should delight in putting music through the wire…