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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?"
If it's available for free on P2P networks, we'll make it available for people to buy online?
Just don't get that.........
I think this just promotes a P2P release. Post it and we'll release it, almost a reward to the fans...
Seriously, what's wrong with iTunes? Just wondering.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
... and in a related article containing an even worse threat, "U2 Threatens To Release Another Album".
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!! THE CRAPPY MUSIC COMETH!
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Smashing Pumpkins did not rush to release their last album on P2P before it hit the stores, rather, they used P2P as the *only* way to release the album. They sent out 25 vinyl sets of the album to various community members to get a P2P release going.
Who would want to steal a U2 album? Now I'd steal a Jessica Simpson or Nick Lachey. Maybe a Brittney album. Yah! Like totally.
Losers whine about doing their best
Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen!
Ok, now someone please steal the next Tool record so we can all get it a couple months early.
As someone who would like to hear the music soon, I'll be at home recording tracks of me singing 'yay, can't wait for itunes. C'mon bono, release it to itunes. La la la la!' for 4 and 5 minutes each, then name them after the album and use the songlist from Amazon.com.
Stage 2, post them to P2P programs but prevent anyone from succesfully downloading them.
Stage 3, wait until someone hired by the record agency finds them listed and assumes the worst. Presto! The songs are released to iTunes weeks early.
Mission accomplished.
I think the idea is that once it's out, it's out - in its present, incomplete form. Which must be really sad for the band.
On the other hand, bands like the Beatles used to *thrive* on bootlegs - session tapes would get stolen and circulated, and peoeple would STILL pay to see how the final copy came out.
if it's a rough cut, then it won't be as good as the one you can buy.
if it's a practically perfect copy, then why haven't they released it already? (hint: outdated distributed method defended by useless middlemen unwilling to die gracefully)
maybe they're scared that p2p will allow people to "try before you buy", and just want people to be able to pay for it before they've heard it, cf MPAA wanting mobiles banned because people can talk to friends about crap movies as soon as they've seen it.
It's the greater of two evils. Either wait a few months and have finished crappy music or have unfinished crappy music right now.
What are you expecting to find here?
Publicity. Stunt.
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You'd figure that it's all in the title of the Pumpkin's last album. The truth is that, though Billy Corgan loved the idea of free music, the band was only allowed to release it on-line after Virgin decided that they wouldn't make any money on it.
As it is, though the album has some great music on it, it is rough... very rough. Given the sales of Machina, which didn't exactly reach the figures that they wanted, F&E was released for free as high quality mp3's.
So, is U2 the friend, or the enemy of modern music? Is "modern" music that which is envisioned by the likes of Corgan, where expression is free in it's entirety, or is it that which rakes in the cash? I'd say that it's the former, since that's where the real expression comes out. U2's last album was somewhat of a whore for sales... it sounded nice and poppy, none of it was objectionable or edgy... and it sold a lot of copies. U2 is showing their true colors, now, by fleecing us with their name. Their music isn't special anymore, it doesn't have the content anymore, it's just meaningless pandering to the "modern music" crowds.
I'll stick with my Pumpkins for now.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
A rough cut of the disk disappeared from a recording studio in Nice during a photo shoot .
It's clear that a photo shoot in Nice has proved itself to be a device that could be used to illegaly copy music. I propose an immediate Senate bill to ban such technology.
The band was putting together the finishing touches. Most of the album had previously been recorded in Dublin.
It's clear that being present in Dublin has proved itself to be a device that could be used to illegaly copy music. I propose an immediate Senate bill to ban such technology.
Am I the only one who read this headline "U2 Threatens to Relase (a new) Album"?
I suppose I just need to skim less...
Why would U2 take the actual CD of their incomplete album to a photo shoot? And since it was a rough cut, it almost certainly was a CD-R, so you would think that any old blank CD disc would photograph just as well. U2 has been out of the spotlight for several years, and somewhat forgotten. Then all of a sudden, their CD is "stolen" and they are back in the news. And to top it off, they "threaten" to release their album early to foil those dastardly P2P pirates.
Bono's going to war against copyright infringement. Literally. Financed by Orrin Hatch. Somebody make it stop!
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
One time in Reno, I downloaded a U2 album just to watch it be removed from my hard drive.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
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 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.
"French police have launched a major operation to find the disc."
I just realized how screwed up this world really is. A major police operation has been launch to find a CD. Aparantly all other crimes have been defeated.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
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
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
...which is forced to ALWAYS work pro bono...
knee-jerk? check. post? check. okay, time to read the article.
1. war is bad
2. the common man is good
3. we'd like another stadium tour now, please
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
That story is wrong! The truth is that U2 has delayed their album a year because they have to change the security measures on the album so that hackers won't be able to use the stolen version to write quick cheats.
The cake is a pie
How about a simple "said"?
There is no justification for the emotive terms "threatened" or "vowed".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
iPoon?
I'm racing to trademark the name...
"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."
.mp3 wired, deny ourselves a huge revenue stream and put it strait to digital format so the pirates don't have to work too hard to get it.
...Yeah, and????
I mean, is that a threat? Because I truely am baffled. "By golly, since somebody stole our copy, we'll release the entire damn thing on iTunes!" Ok, so we're going to punish the large majority of our innocent fanbase who still easily outnumber the
Aside from the potential bonus of making iTunes more popular, there's no freakin' logic to this action. Millions of people who have never downloaded a song in their lives are being cut out of the loop for.... Uh, what was that reasoning again???
Yeah... You go U2. Show em who's boss. ^_^
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+1, Insightful
Huzzah for major bands being more important than violent criminals.
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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.
The Beatles were also head and shoulders a better band than U2. Personally, I can't stand them. Joshua Tree, great... since then it's just been ass.
To my knowledge, one of the biggest bands to rely on bootlegs and such are the Grateful Dead. They weren't big on studio work and there are shitloads of bootlegs available. A buddy of mine in high school was a huge Dead fan and had 4 shoeboxes full of bootleg tapes.
Metallica once thrived on bootlegs to get recognition. Then they got it and decided that it was a bad thing. That is a band that has lost a lot of respect from a large portion of long-time fans and they're not likely to win many back.
You are, as you said, a solitary representative. Do you think every person who downloaded those files went out and bought the album the first week it came out? Probably not. Probably quite a few of them intended to buy the album, but they didn't quite have the money, or they saw something in the store they liked better, or they decided that the songs really weren't that great after all... for whatever reason, because they were able to download the songs before they were able to buy them, Rush lost a sale. Why didn't Rush complain? They probably didn't want to let everyone know that the songs were available on P2P.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
[...] they used P2P as the *only* way to release the album.
Correct. Billy Corgan stated it was a personal "fuck you" to Virgin Records for preventing them in releasing the album. It was then they stopped as the band Smashing Pumpkins, to which BC said it wasn't because of issues within the band internally, but that they were tired of competing with "all the Britney Spearses out there" (something like that).
All this makes the album title quite interesting: "Machina II - Friends and Enemies of Modern Music".
IMO, what they did was very commendable given the circumstances. Thanks Billy and friends for releasing the album!
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
... A French police spokesman talking about the stolen U2 album confirmed that "We still haven't found what we're looking for."
"Joy is not in things; it is in us." Richard Wagner
of all the bands to bash, you're going after u2?
;)
a band that has said it doesn't care about people downloading their albums, as long as they don't make a profit on it... they've actually released concert bootlegs for people to download - legally!
they do understand that the more people listening to their music the better - they are one of the bands that "gets it". the big issue here is they're worried about unfinished demos hitting the internet and people getting a wrong taste of their new album. this isn't a band that is worthy of slashdot bashing.
but then, my handle tends to give away my bias
However, if it's available only illegally, then a fan who wants to hear the album has no choice but to break the law.
[...]the logic becomes quite simple.
Speaking of logic, you committed the fallacy of the false dichotomy. A fan who wants to hear the album DOES have a choice: wait. Or download illegally.
Downloading is never the ONLY option.
Sony ha
I will admit that this mentality has cut into some record sales, as I have bought far fewer albums that are complete--listen to it once and throw it away--crap. On the other hand, when an album comes out that's actually good I always buy it, after all, I want to support the artists (which is really what the whole thing is about in the first place), so they can continue to make more.
What we really need is a better way to preview music that is not:
- Illegal
- Lame -- Like only giving you the first 15 seconds at 20kbps of a song
- Firmly in the grasp of large record companies that concerned only with their top-40 performers. It's a shame that most internet radio has been a huge letdown in this regard.
- Impractical -- If you charge $100 a month, or have horrible DRM, or only work on windows with special software the screws everything else up, etc....
- Obscure -- There needs to be a way to find stuff. There are some great radio stations out there that nobody knows about (and aren't available in your area).
You know what the worst part is? Most P2P applications only fail on #1, while most legal stuff fails on at least half of these bullets.I read the internet for the articles.
when the smashing pumpkins released machina 2: the friends and enemies of modern music on the internet, it was partly because virgin records wasn't interested in the album (especially not a double album) after the lackluster sales of their previous album, machina: the machines of god. there is a link explaining all about it here, and you can download machina 2 here.