Hey kids, not to be outdone by Radiohead, MySpace and Pennywise announced today that they’re going to team up and offer the Cali punk outfit’s next record–in its entirety–as a free download for two weeks upon its release next March.

It could be a crazy gambit, this giving away music stuff. It also could be a shrewd marketing move by a band that realizes that it makes its money by getting butts in seats (or Converse in the pit, whatever) and their album sales are kinda icing on the cake. More records out there, more fans to like ya. More fans to like ya, more ticket sales/cover charges coming into the group’s till. It’s not like Mariah Carey or (insert chart-topping annoyance here), whose albums have so much marketing overhead–including big-budget videos–that giving away an album would bankrupt the label.

Pennywise’s Jim Lindberg is suddenly the most popular punk online.

Either way, keep the group’s MySpace bookmarked and keep tabs on this saga. You never know if some record-industry force will block this, or if the band will get cold feet. Or it turns out the free MP3s are sampled at crackly AM-radio quality. Or if some other legal snafu comes up to make this bold step a non-starter. Three months is a long time for hitches not to develop.

But in typical punk style, the band’s not afraid to go toe-to-toe with the old guard, the keepers of the purse strings–and this quote from the above-linked Pollstar piece sums it up perfectly:

“We know that this will piss off a lot of people in the music industry,” said Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge. “And what do we say to that? ‘Who cares?’ We’ve been pissing people off for 18 years. Why stop now?”