Rural Rhythm Records has just announced the signing of a digital distribution agreement with existing physical distributor RYKO. RYKO has been handling physical “brick & mortar” distribution for Rural Rhythm for over ten years.

Our goal is to provide our artists and catalog the most comprehensive availability to the consumer which includes these very important channels of distribution. We are very excited to be able to offer our catalog for digital download on I-Tunes, Rhapsody, Walmart.com and many others. ~Sam Passamano, President – Rural Rhythm

Rural Rhythm plans to launch with just four titles available via these new delivery avenues. The titles are Mountain Tradition (Clay Jones), Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain, No Apologies (Jim VanCleve), and the soon to be released Old Photograph (Randy Kohrs).

Randy Kohrs shared his excitment at having his music available digitally.

I’m excited to see Rural Rhythm join the digital download world and further promote bluegrass music to new audiences, as much of the younger generations rely solely on it to buy their music.  Hopefully, it will help discourage illegal downloading and copying, as well.

All future releases, including the April release of Dwight McCall’s new CD will be distributed according to this new agreement. Over the next six months, the label plans to begin adding older titles from their catalog as well.

I think this is a great step into the future of the music industry for this label. Let’s hope more bluegrass labels follow suit.