Promo Napster Horror: “when records begin to show up a month ahead of their release dates, entire marketing campaigns can be thrown off track”. Gasp! Sob! The article (found via Josh Blog) also suggests that the Radiohead album has found a way of being Napster-proof. Alas no: Fred has already reviewed it, and the Freaky Trigger verdict will be up by the weekend.
Do I feel any moral pangs over this piracy? No. There was not a chance in hell of me spending money on a copy of Kid A, so I’m not costing the band anything. I didn’t get my MP3s of Napster and I don’t use file sharing programs, so nobody else is getting the tracks from me who might have bought the record. I think it’s also a good idea for there to be reviews of the album around (even if only on the 1,000-readers-max scale that we have) which aren’t part of an enormous and carefully-controlled marketing push. Radiohead, no fans of branding and marketing, would surely agree…and you can discuss it in the forum (see link at top of page).