Last.fm Shoots Down Rumors Over U2 Album Leak

nandemoari writes "Internet radio site Last.fm has denied reports that it told the record industry which of its members had listened to a leaked U2 album. The site claims the entire story, published by Techcrunch, was made up. Last week the record industry became extremely concerned after U2's forthcoming album appeared on several torrent file sharing sites. While there is no way any users could have acquired the album through Last.fm, the site's statistics suggest that more than 8,000 users have played the unreleased album on their machines."

Comments

The album is on Spotify

[catxk]

The album is available for preview on Spotify and Spotify is integrated with last.fm, so is it possible the 8000 last.fm users who listened to the tracks are perfectly legal Spotify users?

Re:The album is on Spotify

[mmkkbb]

The Last.fm "Techcrunch are full of shit" blog entry links to a little bit of digging done by Ars Technica showing that the leak originally came from a totally legit online MP3 store that started selling the album early.

So yes, some or many of those could have actually paid money for a legal copy of the album.

last.fm data isn't really evidence of anything

[_Shad0w_]

Or, given the way last.fm works, 8,000 people submitted the names of the album tracks to the site. Which you could just do by re-tagging other files, or just submitting whatever you felt like to the web service.

The fact that 8,000 have apparently listened to the album, based on their last.fm submissions, doesn't mean any of them actually have. Of course it doesn't mean they haven't either; it's just that last.fm data is hardly authoritative.

Re:last.fm data isn't really evidence of anything

[Coopjust]

The fact that many customers bought the album from legally Universal Australia, which was the source of the leak, means that trying to seek out the cause or find who downloaded the album vs. who bought it from Universal Australia means that any data collection from Last.FM would be useless- no way to determine who paid vs. who didn't.

Having heard it, I promise you

[VShael]

that 8000 people hearing it, have guaranteed 8000 no-sales.

It's terrible.

Re:poor victims of their own creation

[LordKaT]

anymore? I can assure that before the Internet, the music industry had the same "leaked albums" problem. Only they were combating street vendors in NYC, not some random torrent seeders.

Legal way to get the album source of leak!

[Anonymous Coward]

Universal Australia accidentally released the album for sale for a period of two hours, 2 weeks before the planned release date. That is how the album was leaked in the first place

Many fans, including U2 Blogs, made accounts with Universal Australia and bought the tracks within that two hours for about $20. UMG can't just sell people MP3s for $20 and ask for them back- sale done, game over.

Last.fm Official Response

[captainclever]

Please see the official response from last.fm on our blog: http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit

Re:Having heard the album...

[cayenne8]

"This album to music is what Velveeta cheese is to cheeses - it is pasteurized and devoid of flavor and texture."

Yeah, but, what else are you supposed to make cheese dip out of???