Musicians accuse other musicians of stealing their work all the time and I have no idea if this case has more or less merit than any other one. But I couldn’t resist relaying this story: Guns N’ Roses, which made a point of stringing up people who pirated the band’s last album, is now being accused of pirating songs on its last album.
No one wants to buy, or listen to, the supposedly long-awaited Guns N’ Roses album. Before anyone gets tempted to put two and two together here and blame the Internet for poor music sales, be warned: The music that is most popular among file sharers is the music that is most popular among buyers.
Americans spent billions on CDs last year. But big-box retailers are increasingly uninterested in selling the discs in their stores. Newest data point: Borders Group, which has cut its music inventory by 30 percent in the last year.
Give the music industry credit–a decade after the original Napster, it’s now standard practice to let fans listen to an entire disc worth of new music, for free, before it ever gets to stores. The latest example: Britney Spears’s new album, “Circus,” which you can listen to at iMeem.com. Or at the bottom of this post, via a groovy embeddable player.
Next week’s release of “Chinese Democracy”–Guns N’ Roses’ first new album in a gazillion years–is supposed to be a very big deal. But listening data from MySpace, where the album is being previewed, indicate that fans may be disappointed. So may execs at Best Buy, which has an exclusive on the new disc.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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