Also, how come every article about this has at least one person sounding like a complete arse? The IFPI guy says,
This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure
which is only technically right insofar as I'm not actually friends with the people that downloaded the music. Well, most of them anyhow. I guess it's technically wrong if you count the invites I gave to two of my friends.
A Cleveland police officer, quoted in a BBC article:
This extremely lucrative and creative scheme
And the article Lise linked? The guy from Sub Pop comes across as a huge jackass. Look at this:
Sub Pop A&R rep Stuart Meyer concurs. "The Shins album sold 118,000 copies its first week, which was beyond our expectations," he says. "Would it have sold more than that five or ten years ago? Probably -- but 118,000 for a band like that is pretty amazing."
Emphasis mine. Mr. Meyer, while I'm sure your intentions regarding your artists are all well and good, you're on a label with literally three gold records to its name. Over a hundred thousand copies in the first week for a band on your label, and you think that ten years ago without the filesharing and pre-release buzz you would have actually sold
more?Honestly why do labels let their reps drop turds like this out of their mouths?