No Rock And Roll Fun

BLIMEY, THAT WAS FAST: In what some people are seeing as a "bold move", maverick are offering a 99c download of a track from the new Meshell Ndegeocello record. Talking to ZDNetPhil Benyola, a digital media research associate for investment company Raymond James Financial, called the MP3 sale an "innovative" marketing maneuver. But he warned it might not be a successful one.
"It's very significant that they would endorse the MP3 format since MP3 has always been a dirty word to the labels. Up until now, everything they have offered has been a secure format," Benyola said.
But "I think you'll be able to count the number of sales on one hand," he added. "As soon as one person gets it, it's all over the (peer-to-peer) networks for free."
Well, duh. Dunno what a Digital Media Research Associate makes in the US, but clearly its too much. They want the track to be swapped, you fool. If you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed that the interweb has been swamped with spam for Ndgecello over the last couple of weeks, and this is obviously just the next step. Sure, they might not make very much in actual cash terms (although a single track for a dollar will give them considerably more than they'd get in profits on a single track on a CD), but Madonna's label is obviously seeing this as a write-off freebie, and if people don't start flinging the track round the interweb, they'll be sorely disappointed. It's a marketing campaign, not a shift in policy. Can we have your job?