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Hey, DJ, don't play that song!
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Saturday, February 08 @ 14:27:12 EST Copyright
The White Stripes are releasing a new album, Elephant, in a few months. As part of their marketing strategy -- clothes make the man, marketing strategies make the band -- they're sending out advance copies to critics. In an apparently futile attempt to keep the album off of p2p networks, the advance copies were recorded on vinyl.

But the global marketing strategy doesn't stop there. BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, having gotten ahold of the record, played a few songs for his listeners. Whoops. The Whites' record company cease-and-desisted him. Oh the irony. Now the general listening public can only hear Elephant on the file-trading networks.

Peel's rant, in MP3 format, can be heard here (with a nicely bitter coda here).

 
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Re: Hey, DJ, don't play that song! (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, February 10 @ 19:01:39 EST
It seems everytime a musician tries to limit exposure of
promotional material, one of two things happen: nothing
because no one cares about the artist, or the limits get
violated because people do care.

I think part of it is over-emphasis on first week sales.
Labels (?) want a lot of hype so the first week sales will
look good, rather than caring about overall sales. So they
do things to promote the album for a long time before it
gets sold. Sometimes it backfires, like the latest 50 Cent
release or the last Eminem release, and bootlegs hit the
market -- hard -- before the album release date, so
the label has to release early.


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