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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."
Very often I see comments dismissing any reasons for not freely giving out any and all seemingly-trivial personal information...
Well, this is the perfect situation for justifying the desire for what is now often considered excessive privacy. While some information alone may not seem sensitive, the conclusions others' might draw about you from it, combined with other info (like your profile data), may indeed be worth protecting.
Of course, if no one gave out any information, the internet would be very blank... So clearly a balance between giving out personal info and linking that personal info together is necessary. For example, the only way I'd submit my playlists to Last.FM is if it were done in an anonymous fashion, such that my user account doesn't link back to me, my IP, or any other personally-identifying info. Otherwise, I'd be happy to include some profile info, but don't count on getting my playlist too!
Even if they were reporting it, the moment they started acting on the fact the ID3 tags showed leaked albums, people would change all their ID3 tags to leaked albums in protest.
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?
Don't be crazy anymore!
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.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I think the bigger problem we have is that people are still listening to U2!
The poor music industry, I feel so sorry for it. For years and years they have driven the marketing machine so that everyone absolutely must get the album on the day it's out, or as soon as possible. Mostly due to the way the charts are calculated by sales peaks, but also because everyone wants money now.
And now people can't wait for the release day anymore. Geez. Who would have guessed?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's an interesting premise.
There's a school of thought that says the pirated music encourages more people to buy through album sales based on 'previews'. And yet the RIAA claim this sort of piracy decreases sales.
Perhaps it's just that people hearing the full album realise it's shit. I wonder if albums sales would decrease even further if radio stations played the full track-listing before the CD was available to buy.
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.
Advertising based on word of mouth is fickle for advertisers. If you have something good, then it works better than anything else. People trust friends. If your product sucks, then people still trust their friends, and won't touch your product.
Internet P2P programs like BitTorrent amplify this effect. Now, you can listen to something yourself, and figure out for yourself how much you like it. Thus P2P results in a dramatic decrease in control for advertisers. It is even more fickle than word of mouth.
If you have a poor product, but from a band with a good reputation, then you want to blitz market the product. Let no one listen to it in advance. Have it show up at stores in massive quantities the day of launch, and sell as much as you can on the first day. This way you can scam as many people as possible for first day sales. With some luck, this first day blitz will cover your costs, and everything will turn out OK. The movie industry specializes in this tactic.
P2P threatens to completely destabilize this advertising tactic. The record companies, which are really big advertisers, will not be happy about this loss of control. Even if P2P ultimately makes them more money, the record companies still won't be happy about the loss of control.
Please see the official response from last.fm on our blog: http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
Bono, whilst playing a gig in Glasgow, got the whole crowd to be silent and then began slowly clapping his hands. He got the crowd to clap along for a while, the stadium quiet except for the rhythmic clapping...
After a short period Bono spoke, saying that everytime he clapped his hands a child in Africa died...
Suddenly, from the front row of the venue a voice broke out in thick Scottish brogue, ending the silence as it echoed across the crowd, the voice cried out to Bono "Well stop ****ing doing it then!!"