By Yuki Noguchi

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 26, 2005; Page D01

When Ohio-based rock band the Sun releases its first full-length album next month, it will be available on DVD, online and on vinyl record. But not on the medium that`s still the biggest seller in the music industry today: the compact disc.

``It`s a tip of the hat to the past and the tip of the hat to the future,`` said Perry Watts-Russell, a senior vice president at Warner Bros. Records Inc., which signed the band.

The label expects the Sun to be the first of many artists to embrace a no-CD, video-only strategy. And that is part of a larger move away from the traditional album concept that some experts say is steering the CD the way of the hand-cranked gramophone.

The full-length CD format, which debuted in 1981, last year sold 766.9 million copies, down from a high of 942.5 million in 2000, according to statistics from the Recording Industry Association of America. At the same time, online sales -- championed by the popular Apple Computer Inc. iTunes Web site -- is picking up part of the slack: 139.4 million tracks were sold online in 2004.

The digitization of music has created a shift in how tunes are shared and consumed. Because it`s faster to copy and transmit digital music, more people are copying and sharing tracks -- prompting copyright concerns from the entertainment industry. On the other hand, the cheapness of Internet distribution allows many no-names to release music that otherwise might never be seen or heard outside a garage.

The Sun`s 14-song album, ``Blame It on the Youth,`` will be released Sept. 27 and will come with one disc option -- a DVD of music videos that can be manipulated through a computer to download the songs onto an MP3 player or burn them onto a CD. Actually, there is a second disc, but it`s made of vinyl -- a nod to a burgeoning subculture that is reviving the old long-play format.

Having a new generation of listeners who may be building libraries of songs by piggy-backing off their friends` collections doesn`t bother Sam Brown, drummer and songwriter for the Sun, which had a $50,000 budget to produce the videos for the album. ``As more people find out about our band, more people will turn out when we play,`` he said. And for smaller acts like his, live performance is where the money is.

Members of the Sun, which is a garage pop band with a slightly retro aura and a sound one critic called ``slick and gritty,`` knew that its demographic reflected its own persona: younger, digital and alternative.

``I haven`t bought a new CD in a very long time,`` Brown said. Instead, he searches for vinyl versions, or rips songs to his iPod, or gets music from friends, he said.

The five-member band produced its own videos, and the record label was sold on the digital-video-only option, he said. ``It is sort of a leap of faith to the future,`` Brown said, but ``it feels good to be in the company of forward-thinking people.``

Watts-Russell of Warner Bros. acknowledges that all-video and all-Internet distribution changes the definition of the word ``album`` -- a sequenced body of songs with heavy emphasis on the all-important cover art.

``I think the gestalt of having an album has been changing on its own, with or without this change,`` he said. ``A few years from now, this is going to be exceedingly common,`` Watts-Russell said. ``You can avoid the CD. It`s on its way out. It`s in no way out now, but the writing is on the wall.``

Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report