Last.fm Shoots Down Rumors Over U2 Album Leak 93
nandemoari writes "Internet radio site Last.fm has denied reports that it told the record industry which of its members had listened to a leaked U2 album. The site claims the entire story, published by Techcrunch, was made up.
Last week the record industry became extremely concerned after U2's forthcoming album appeared on several torrent file sharing sites. While there is no way any users could have acquired the album through Last.fm, the site's statistics suggest that more than 8,000 users have played the unreleased album on their machines."
Looks like the privacy paranoiacs win this round.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Very often I see comments dismissing any reasons for not freely giving out any and all seemingly-trivial personal information...
Well, this is the perfect situation for justifying the desire for what is now often considered excessive privacy. While some information alone may not seem sensitive, the conclusions others' might draw about you from it, combined with other info (like your profile data), may indeed be worth protecting.
Of course, if no one gave out any information, the internet would be very blank... So clearly a balance between giving out personal info and linking that personal info together is necessary. For example, the only way I'd submit my playlists to Last.FM is if it were done in an anonymous fashion, such that my user account doesn't link back to me, my IP, or any other personally-identifying info. Otherwise, I'd be happy to include some profile info, but don't count on getting my playlist too!
Re:Looks like the privacy paranoiacs win this roun (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig joke (Score:5, Funny)
After a short period Bono spoke, saying that everytime he clapped his hands a child in Africa died...
Suddenly, from the front row of the venue a voice broke out in thick Scottish brogue, ending the silence as it echoed across the crowd, the voice cried out to Bono "Well stop ****ing doing it then!!"
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Then again, using a service such as this implies a central server with all the information and that is scary just by itself.
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Paypal introduces secure cards [geek.com]
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Or encrypted and signed, then spread in the cloud, and you'd just hand out private keys that'd able to decrypt parts of the information, to trusted parties.
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http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit [blog.last.fm]
these guys are from England and who gives a shit (Score:2)
See also: Negativland Interviews U2's The Edge [negativland.com]
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Top Tracks
1. Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence
2. Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
3. Yasunori Mitsuda - Another Telmina
4. Joe Hisaishi - River Side
5. Air - Alpha Beta Gaga
6. Led Zeppelin - Going to California
6. Jeff Wahl - Linus and Lucy
8. Joe Hisaishi - Summer
9. djpretzel - Zelda 64 Pachelbel's Ganon OC ReMix
10. Berlin Chamber Orchestra, Peter Wohlert - Brandenburg Concerto No.6 in B flat major
Oh the embarrassment.
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Replying here so that it's at the top, rather than it being lost in the deluge.
My local alt rock station played the album, in full, every track, the day before the leak hit everywhere. Not only were they broadcasting it over the air, they have a 192kbit live stream out over the Internet that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. (http://www.livelifelive.fm ... sadly, it's blocked by my work filters.)
Something tells me the leak has nothing to do with Last.FM.... nasty rumours about them sharing info, e
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That solution may be fine for you, and that's all and good, but what about the exhibitionists among us? After all, it's the exhibitionists who are affected by this, not you.
Personally, I'
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even if they were reporting it, the moment they started acting on the fact the ID3 tags showed leaked albums, people would change all their ID3 tags to leaked albums in protest.
Probably not such a good idea since the Supreme Court struck down the Fourth Amendment [freep.com].
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Re:Nice Relationship (Score:4, Insightful)
30 years and counting
Re:Nice Relationship (Score:4, Interesting)
The beginnings of a shining revolution in media are here and have been growing. Of course that doesn't stop such travesties as DMCA, DRM, erosion of fair use, etc.
P.S. Has the ASCAP been fucking around in anyone else's hometown lately? In my hometown in Columbia, Missouri, we have had the ASCAP basically shut down our "open mic nights" for anyone who doesn't pay some rediculous ($thousands) protection money. The one business owner I talked to couldn't afford that, and the ASCAP goon had scared her good *even though typically no commercial content is sampled or covered at these events!* Result: local venues catering to independent music have been nearly completely shutdown.
The album is on Spotify (Score:5, Informative)
The album is available for preview on Spotify and Spotify is integrated with last.fm, so is it possible the 8000 last.fm users who listened to the tracks are perfectly legal Spotify users?
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Quite. Scrobbling is an open protocol. There are so many ways to submit scrobbles. There is no way at Last.fm's end to differentiate between a legitimate scrobble and an illegitimate one.
Re:The album is on Spotify (Score:5, Informative)
The Last.fm "Techcrunch are full of shit" blog entry links to a little bit of digging done by Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] showing that the leak originally came from a totally legit online MP3 store that started selling the album early.
So yes, some or many of those could have actually paid money for a legal copy of the album.
last.fm data isn't really evidence of anything (Score:5, Informative)
Or, given the way last.fm works, 8,000 people submitted the names of the album tracks to the site. Which you could just do by re-tagging other files, or just submitting whatever you felt like to the web service.
The fact that 8,000 have apparently listened to the album, based on their last.fm submissions, doesn't mean any of them actually have. Of course it doesn't mean they haven't either; it's just that last.fm data is hardly authoritative.
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Re:last.fm data isn't really evidence of anything (Score:5, Informative)
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While there is no way any users could have acquired the album through Last.fm, the site's statistics suggest that more than 8,000 users have played the unreleased album on their machines."
Sure, nobody could recorded it, ***Cough**Analog*Hole*Cough*** but 8.000 listened to it.
Having heard it, I promise you (Score:5, Informative)
that 8000 people hearing it, have guaranteed 8000 no-sales.
It's terrible.
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How will Bono put food on his plate?
Re:Having heard it, I promise you (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't he die in a skiing accident?
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No, he's just a piece of shit [wikipedia.org]
Re:Having heard it, I promise you (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an interesting premise.
There's a school of thought that says the pirated music encourages more people to buy through album sales based on 'previews'. And yet the RIAA claim this sort of piracy decreases sales.
Perhaps it's just that people hearing the full album realise it's shit. I wonder if albums sales would decrease even further if radio stations played the full track-listing before the CD was available to buy.
Re:Having heard it, I promise you (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertising based on word of mouth is fickle for advertisers. If you have something good, then it works better than anything else. People trust friends. If your product sucks, then people still trust their friends, and won't touch your product.
Internet P2P programs like BitTorrent amplify this effect. Now, you can listen to something yourself, and figure out for yourself how much you like it. Thus P2P results in a dramatic decrease in control for advertisers. It is even more fickle than word of mouth.
If you have a poor product, but from a band with a good reputation, then you want to blitz market the product. Let no one listen to it in advance. Have it show up at stores in massive quantities the day of launch, and sell as much as you can on the first day. This way you can scam as many people as possible for first day sales. With some luck, this first day blitz will cover your costs, and everything will turn out OK. The movie industry specializes in this tactic.
P2P threatens to completely destabilize this advertising tactic. The record companies, which are really big advertisers, will not be happy about this loss of control. Even if P2P ultimately makes them more money, the record companies still won't be happy about the loss of control.
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P2P threatens to completely destabilize this advertising tactic. The record companies, which are really big advertisers, will not be happy about this loss of control.
Record companies have been dealing with this loss of control for almost a decade and are continuing to adapt. It's physical product retailers who have more of an issue as they are the ones dependent upon the street date to make their money, which is why so many have gone out of business.
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It's not fickle, it just can't be quantified. If it can't be quantified, it can't be monitized, if it can't be monitized, you'll have everyone who makes even a penny off of advertising sales paying for studies that show that word of mouth is just like stealing.
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Perhaps it's just that people hearing the full album realise it's shit. I wonder if albums sales would decrease even further if radio stations played the full track-listing before the CD was available to buy.
I'm not much on psych (I think it is clear from my posting history that I am not a people person) but the news articles which might seem contradictory have already told this tale. People who download mp3s do buy more music than people who don't. They don't buy the same music. At the same time, it's clear that many people both a) don't want to have to worry about music expiring and yet b) are tired of buying CDs. I just had to explain this whole WMA DRM thing to my lady over the issue of some library audiobo
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...Oscars Recap on the front page...
Certainly is lowbrow stuff. Definitely belongs in idle. What's happening to Slashdot front page today is very comparable to the commercialization and degradation of FM radio in the early/middle seventies. Thank goodness the comments and journals make up for it.
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Thank goodness the comments and journals make up for it.
</sarcasm>?
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Perhaps it's just that people hearing the full album realise it's shit. I wonder if albums sales would decrease even further if radio stations played the full track-listing before the CD was available to buy.
There have been "Hear it before you can buy it" and "Win it before you can buy it" campaigns on radio for many years. This has extended to full album previews through Last.FM, imeem, MySpaceMusic, iLike, etc. Even when the music isn't great, some fans are still going to buy it because they are just that, fanatics.
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that 8000 people hearing it, have guaranteed 8000 no-sales.
It's terrible.
Well kudos to U2 for consistency then.
poor victims of their own creation (Score:5, Interesting)
The poor music industry, I feel so sorry for it. For years and years they have driven the marketing machine so that everyone absolutely must get the album on the day it's out, or as soon as possible. Mostly due to the way the charts are calculated by sales peaks, but also because everyone wants money now.
And now people can't wait for the release day anymore. Geez. Who would have guessed?
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anymore? I can assure that before the Internet, the music industry had the same "leaked albums" problem. Only they were combating street vendors in NYC, not some random torrent seeders.
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Magic the Gathering expansion sets have the same situation...a fixed release date, the manufacturer hypes the product to high heaven, and are surprised when people rush.
Trading cards are a physical-only product that can be controlled better than music products, but the concepts seems similar.
Though, although the physical cards don't end up freely distributed until it's "time", MTG forums are filled with photo & text spoilers in the weeks leading up to release...
But the main question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Has the record industry found what it's looking for?
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This reads like someone copy-pasted text from an infamous website and replaced "Time Cube" with "U2".
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Sadly SST Records had to pay for it too.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2_(EP) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use:_The_Story_of_the_Letter_U_and_the_Numeral_2 [wikipedia.org]
Legal way to get the album source of leak! (Score:5, Informative)
Many fans, including U2 Blogs, made accounts with Universal Australia and bought the tracks within that two hours for about $20. UMG can't just sell people MP3s for $20 and ask for them back- sale done, game over.
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UMG can't just sell people MP3s for $20 and ask for them back- sale done, game over.
Don't be too sure about that [slashdot.org].
Bah - just canceled my last.fm account... (Score:1, Troll)
... should have done it at the CBS buy-out but I got lazy.
Last.fm has denied the rumour, but really, reality check time... a pig in a skirt is still a pig, even if you f**k it some of the time...
How I will miss recommending totally inappropriate drum and bass tracks to my French classical music loving friend ("you have the music tastes of a 15 year old") and weird novelty songs to my sensible sister ("my brother is an idiot") and recording all the crap I play in Amarok on the last.fm playlist
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like wind = act of god? / act of nature?
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In that case, you're still the douchebag that built said device and pointed a loaded gun at someone's head. Good luck in THAT trial.
Last.fm Official Response (Score:5, Informative)
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I hate the fact that your post has been up for an hour and is only at +3 instead of +5. What is wrong with slashdot mods? I guess they prefer conspiracy theories to fact as long as those theories validate their biases, namely that the RIAA has infiltrated all these music sites and that everyone is giving away their names and IP addresses. The conspiratorial anti-corporatism here is worse than usual.
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I hate the fact that your post has been up for an hour and is only at +3 instead of +5. What is wrong with slashdot mods? I guess they prefer conspiracy theories
Yeah, right. We all know that The Man is paying you to say that. Bad karma, dude!
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As an independent artist I was considering joining your service until I read this (from the lastfm.com Terms of Use):
When you upload Your Upload Information via the Website, you irrevocably grant to Last.fm, its parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, and partners, without any credit or compensation to you, a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, unrestricted, irrevocable, royalty-free and fully transferable, assignable and sub-licensable right and licence to use, reuse, modify, adapt, alter, display, archive, pu
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From time to time, the Properties may contain functionality through which you can upload or submit information, data, software, messages, photographs, audio, video, text and other materials to, through or on the Website ("Your Upload Information")
Most of the content uploaded to last.fm beyond your playlists is stuff that becomes part of artist bios. These are a wiki. You agree to similar when you submit information to Wikipedia. ("Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duratio
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Yeah, and let the artists decide when and how long people listen to their songs? I love last.fm because I can listen to my own radio stations without someone cramming their idea of what "good" music is down my throat like FM radio or how many times a day I can listen to a song before having to buy it. If last.fm didn't require you to give up control of that copy of your song, artists would be suing last.fm for content control and play list pushing. If you don't like your songs being listened to, then don
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Julian Cope said it best (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently he once said:
"I've just written a 17-verse poem entitled, "U2 - Four Heads Up One Arse".
RIAA versus "the record industry" (Score:1)
You mean this album? (Score:4, Interesting)
linking is the new terrorism :)
Having heard the album... (Score:1)
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Yeah, but, what else are you supposed to make cheese dip out of???
Simple fix for that. (Score:2, Funny)
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And manwhile... (Score:3, Interesting)
Trent Reznor is giving away NIN's new album for free, and still making a load of money on the album through online, CD, vinyl and DVD sales. (see [1] and [2])
I say kudos to this man, and his slightly innovative, yet very successful method of distributing music. I have not yet paid for the album, but already downloaded the mp3 and flac version, and I like it! I guess I will try to buy the vinyl, if I can get it in any of the record stores here.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_inch_nails#Ghosts_I.E2.80.93IV_and_The_Slip_.282008.E2.80.93present.29 [wikipedia.org]
[2] http://www.nin.com/ [nin.com]
U2? the noise polluters? (Score:1)
Again... (Score:2)
Please...everyone knows their plow, say that an album was stolen , the tracks are missing, or that someone has caught some download of preview snips of a song, and presto, free advertising for their new album. They have done this so many times, I am ashamed to say that U2 used to be a band I respected because they actually tried to give messages to people about what was going on in other places then our own, but I guess this economic crunch has everyone in a bind!
When will the record industry learn? (Score:2)
The "hype through radio" days are over.
Earlier, it was common practice to hand out a few promo-CDs to DJs (and stuff their pockets to play it) to get listeners interested, though you could buy the disc nowhere. Then after weeks or even months of anxious waiting you could FINALLY get it, and lo and behold, no matter how crappy, it went from zero to top instantly because the hype around it was all it took for everyone to JUST WANT IT.
Now guess how well this kind of hype works in a world where it is trivial to