U2 Threatens to Release Album Early on iTunes

Uninvited Guest writes "After a rough cut of U2's latest unfinished album was stolen earlier this week, the band has vowed to release the entire album on iTunes if the music appears on P2P networks. Bono told the London Daily Telegraph, 'If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month.' Is this the exact opposite of the Smashing Pumpkins' last album, which the band rushed to release on P2P networks, before it could hit the stores?"

Comments

It's a hoax.

[sakusha]

This story doesn't pass the smell test. Nobody brings a live CD to a photo shoot, where this CD was supposedly stolen. The usual industry practice is to shoot a photo of the packaging, which is provided without the actual CD, which may not even be complete at the time of the photo shoot.
I used to work in product packaging, and many many times I produced package comps (full quality mockups) for CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes that would not be finished for many weeks or months. The advertising production usually precedes the finished product. Anyone who would take the final unreleased product to a photo shoot, where there are a whole lot of bozos floating around just waiting to steal anything that's not nailed down, well, they're just asking for trouble. That's the whole reason to send faked comps instead of live product to shoots.

Pink Floyd

[Mattwolf7]

U2 is just being babies....

Pink Floyd had Dark Side of the Moon bootlegs in stores....

"Pink Floyd played a concert version of Dark Side at London's Rainbow Theatre in February 1972. To their dismay, a bootleg recording of the concert sold 100,000 copies about a year before the official release." Article

And look what it became...

"In the USA, DSotM is the 18th best-selling album of all time and has spent a total of over 740 weeks on the Billboard magazine music charts with the longest continuous period lasting 591 consecutive weeks. It reached the #1 chart position in the US, Belgium and France; even in 2002, thirty years after the album's release, over 400,000 copies were sold in the United States, making the record the 200th bestselling album that year. "Time", "Money" and "Us and Them" have become radio call-in favourites (with "Money" having also been a bestselling single in the USA)." Wikipedia

If it is good enough people will still buy it. So if this record is phenomenal U2 should just finish it.

IP is a wasting asset

[siriuskase]

The faster you get it out, the more it's worth, but the minute it's out, it will start losing value almost immediately due to the ease of duplication. It would be a shame for them to lose out by not being first to market with their own album. By recognizing the way the music market works, they will give fans who prefer a nice clean "legit" version the option of being able to buy it.

IP of all sorts will get copied in spite of all the DRM and other crippling technology people can devise. It's not just music, if we can't prevent kids from downloading in rich countries, how can we expect to prevent motivated adults in countries without a history of IP protection from duplicating. In China, they clone cars , that's surely not frictionless. Someday, IP of all sorts will be marketed like other perishables with a finite shelf life. Copyright and trademark laws will need to adapt to this reality.

Musicians and Authors will be like Engineers and Programmers and Farmers, if they want to live off their IP, they will need to keep producing more of it. Which was kinda the whole point of IP laws in the first place

What Is The Worry?

[superpulpsicle]

I don't know if anyone attempted to use Kazaa lately. But 98% of anything I download off Kazaa has been decrypted with an annoying buzz noise. You can't even get songs off Kazaa P2P anymore.

And sharezilla sucks, everyone I know who installed it has gotten blue screens of death. Is there a linux P2P alternative? There, U2 shouldn't worry.