U2: The Unforgettable Embarrassment
by John Paczkowski
Posted on February 20, 2009 at 7:35 AM PT
U2 manager Paul McGuinness must be beside himself. Despite the band’s best efforts to prevent its new album, “No Line on the Horizon,” from appearing prematurely on the Internet, copies are being distributed there a week prior to its scheduled release.
It’s not the fault of the ISPs, never mind that they are, according to McGuinness, “destroying the recorded music industry” by failing to tackle piracy. Nor is it the fault of Apple (AAPL) and the makers of other digital media players who are wrongly profiting from their “burglary kits.” Nor can it be blamed solely on Silicon Valley and its “entrepreneurial, hippie values,” which in McGuinness’s opinion have bred a deep disregard for the true value of music.
No, it appears there’s no one to blame for this particular cock-up but Universal Music, which mistakenly put the album up for sale earlier this week at getmusic.com.au. It was only available there for a brief period, but there was time enough for fans to buy it legally. Not surprisingly, copies of the record began showing up on torrent indexes a short while later.
An embarrassing turn of events for a band that had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent exactly this situation from happening. Still, as TechDirt’s Mike Masnick notes, there’s a lesson to be learned here. “At some point, folks in the music industry are going to (finally) recognize a rather simple fact: it just takes one digital copy of a song/movie/whatever to get out there, and it’s everywhere. You can’t stop it. No matter how annoying it is. No matter what laws it violates. It will happen.”
Comments
This is so lame of them. One step forward (DRM-free, if you don’t count the multi-tier part), two steps back (whinging, bitterness, inability to understand humans who listen to music). It’s very tempting to lump everyone with this kind of reaction in together. That would include the NYTimes and their atrocious editorial applauding iTunes’ DRM-free move. “People want to buy digital music!”
Define “people.”
Posted by Liz Colville at February 20th, 2009 at 8:03 amHey, U2. Check the new business model of The Presidents of the United States of America. The band that created an app for the iPhone for $3 that lets fans stream their whole catalog via the iPhone (coming for Android and others when they have app stores I’m guessing). If you like a song, click and it’s yours for a price.
Bypass music labels, middle men, Ticketmaster, et. al. Money goes directly into band’s bank account.
Forget the labels, and their plans for the future. Where will that get you?
Meet new boss, same as the old boss…
Posted by Eric Welch at February 20th, 2009 at 8:25 ami doubt the australian release was an ‘accident’ … i think it was actually u2 marketing that pulled the stunt to generate some hype for an out of date band
u2 hasn’t done a great album since joshua tree
they’ve lost the fire… too many wine and cheese parties in paul hewson (bono is his stage name) castle in ireland
Posted by Sam Harrison at February 20th, 2009 at 1:43 pm