Posted on 09/16/2002 10:49:29 PM PDT by Timesink
he Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Music, is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music's being traded online with an even stickier solution.
Writers receiving review copies of two soon-to-be-released albums — Tori Amos's "Scarlet's Walk" and Pearl Jam's "Riot Act" — are finding the CD's already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut. Headphones are also glued into the players, to prevent connecting the Walkman to a recording device.
By locking up the discs, Epic hopes to keep writers from converting the music to MP3's that can then be traded over the Net. But even a "glueman" player is unlikely to deter a diehard critic.
 Epic used glue to protect Tori Amos's new CD. |
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Mr. Blasengame said he had no intention of making MP3's . "At the same time, if I want to give it a proper review, I'm going to listen to it how I want to listen to it — and in my stereo is where it sounds best," he said.
For several years, prerelease music has turned up online before it reaches stores, distributed without permission by journalists, radio employees, record company employees or other sources. This July, for example, a six-song sampler from Ms. Amos's upcoming album was shipped to writers the old-fashioned way. The songs soon appeared on file-sharing services like WinMX.
The Recording Industry Association of America blames Internet music-sharing for declines in CD sales, though proponents of MP3 trading dispute the group's arguments.
A Sony spokeswoman confirmed that the glued players were being used to combat piracy, but would not talk about their effectiveness or responses from writers.
This is not the first time prerelease music has received the glue treatment. Gil Kaufman, a freelance journalist in Cincinnati, said he owns a prerelease copy of Radiohead's 1997 album "OK Computer" that is glued into an Aiwa player — an Aiwa analog cassette deck. That makes MP3 conversions a bit more difficult.
I just made two CD's of music for local club DJ's. Both contain music from a distant relative of mine in Texas - Mean Gene Kelton and the Diehards. Texas blues kinda sound. He posts them on MP3.com and sells his own CDs there.
After only 1 night ( 2 gigs) of playing "My Baby Don't Wear No Panties, Ask Me How I Know", "Blow Up Lover", and "Big Legged Mama Satisfy My Soul" the DJ's had over two dozen people ask how they could buy the CDs. ANd these were at smallish bar-dance floor venues.
The Genie is out of the bottle, and the establishment music industry can't do anything about it.
GOOD, sez I.
prisoner6
Why don't they arrange an invite only listening party (or maybe even a meet and greet with the artist or producer)?
If so, try WinMX
prisoner6
Of course, this could be defeated by passing the song through an analog system and re-digitizing it, but that requires effort. If it still turns out to be a problem, encode a serial number on each pre-release copy as a random analog overlay. To find the overlay, you subtract the original song and the information is left behind. There's no way to filter it out without compromising the music.
Once a system like that is set up, it's bound to be cheaper than throwing a truckload of disposable CD players per song.
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