Also, think about all the promotions they have to line up on various TV shows, news articles, magazines, etc. Getting pres releases to people and scheduling a media push takes time. Releasing the music early on iTunes before the scheduled release date could misalign awareness of their product and reduce initial SoundScan numbers which would further promote the album in a crucial fourth quarter selling period when people buy the most.

On the other hand, the tracks suprisingly haven't appeared online yet, so with all the press they are getting and U2 jumping from "it's lost or stolen" to "we're posting on iTunes", this could be their media push. Cleverly orchestrated to get free press and thus more public awareness.

I don't know. I just want to get the music.

I think the months of planning has to do with the Marketing campaign, just like with Movies. You wait to release until the buying season...I don't know maybe they were waiting to release until nearer to Christmas time...maybe they wanted to shoot their videos to coincide with the release, that would take months...I don't think the CD format has anything to do with it. Also note, they said they could get CD's out to the stores righ away as well.

So, yeah iTunes is nice, because it is simpler, but the marketing might be the bigger time investment. So what will happen if they now won't have the video, or won't have the Christmas time push, or the big hoopla of going to the stores for the CD release? Who knows interesting to see.

However, the one opportunity for Apple is...what if the iTunes release allows more people the chance to purchase on the release day than stores would? There is logistics involved in getting CD's to every store, so that kid from Kansas who bought the millionth song might not have the cd's in his store right away. Release day sales might be bigger via iTunes than store cd's given the same marketing/publicity effort. Interesting.

Maybe never, ever before the internet, but the only thing iTMS makes possible is making the downloadable music easier to find and pay for. As just one previous example, Wilco put its Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album online for free downloading when they were having a label spat. And haven't artists like David Bowie and Todd Rundgren had downloadable songs for years?

Apple deserves a lot of credit for popularizing legal downloads, but the concept itself wasn't revolutionary in 2003.

A CD is a digital media format. Perhaps it meant to say "It doesn't take months of planning to release anything over the internet".

So basically, if the stolen tracks turn up on the internet, then U2 will put the tracks on iTunes. Otherwise they won't.

>It doesn't take months of planning to release anything digitally,

I disagree. There are websites to design, domain names to get in order, hosting sites to set up (and determine where they will be -- hosted by you, your label, some ther outfit?), encoding decisions to make (do we put samples online in Real, WM, Quicktime, all three? Do we stream the album for a time? What streaming protocol?) and much more. With the number of people involved, it could easily take months of work just for the digital side of things, and that's before all the other promotional planning ranging from booking concert avenues, advertising in trade and news papers, actual pressing and distribution costs of a physical product and more. And you WILL need a physical product since many will come to the site, try the samples, and still wish to buy an actual CD with better quality sound than downloaded compressed files as well as a real liner notes booklet and such. (Which means developing/setting up a shopping cart system.)

Another thing not taken into account by folks here is the fact that U2 may be now forced to release the album before they feel it is ready. That they had a CD at the photo shoot does not mean it was entirely finalized. Bono or The Edge or anyone might have had a brainstorm between now and November -- laid down another riff or remixed a song into a better version just before the final pressing for distribution. Now? Well, who knows what might have been?

I'm not knocking digital distribution; I love it and have bought many many iTunes tracks. However, it is NOT the be all end all of music distribution by any stretch yet, and trying to twist a tale of piracy and theft -- this time of an actual in-production CD - into something supporting digital publishing is a stretch as well. Digital publishing can actually stand on its own. That U2 may be forced to release the album sooner via digital before the honest among us are tempted to just grab it for free is not a good thing.

(U2 isn't alone here. Pre-production work is stolen quite often, really. Pretty sad, really. Lots of half-finished and demo work ends up where artists didn't intend for it to be. Many go ahead and release their demo and pre-production work themselves in bonus discs or on their sites so people can get tastes of their forthcoming work and not be tempted to steal entire songs and release them before they're even finished... Ugh.)

Wow and I thought releasing a CD was just printing it and putting it on a shelf in a store! Who knew?!?

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Guest wrote:
On the other hand, the tracks suprisingly haven't appeared online yet, so with all the press they are getting and U2 jumping from "it's lost or stolen" to "we're posting on iTunes", this could be their media push. Cleverly orchestrated to get free press and thus more public awareness.

Now there's a tricky thought! LOL! Whether the CD was stolen, lost, or whatever, I agree U2 is right in trying to make as much as possible out of it, precisely because it does screw up schedules for other promotion. Like that tired old saying about life gving one lemons...

If there is already an illegal download out there, then giving people the option to download it legally seems like a good idea to me.

"Pre-production work is stolen quite often, really."

I've often wondered where those "lost" demo tapes of long-dead artists come from and now I suspect the thieves just hung on to them until they could 'legally' profit from them. Sad indeed.

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xenafu wrote:
"Pre-production work is stolen quite often, really."

I've often wondered where those "lost" demo tapes of long-dead artists come from and now I suspect the thieves just hung on to them until they could 'legally' profit from them. Sad indeed.

Definitely. Let me qualify that not all "lost" demos are stolen. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding. Sometimes they really are just lost.

I think there was a story recently about a suitcase someone bought in Australia for AU$30. He opened it to find a ton of Beatles mastertapes and some other stuff. It's beleived the suitcase once belonged to one of their production crew. I can't remember if they say he "stole" them or just took them as memorabilia froma good working relationship or whatever. Whatever the case, the guy who bought the suitcase might not get anything from the mastertapes at least because Apple Corps claims they are still their property, and they likely have that legal claim. Hopefully whatever is on them, if decent or even new, will make it onto collector CDs some day...

Ah, yes, here's the story...http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=495&ncid=495&e=1&u=/ap/20040713/ap_en_mu/britain_beatles_suitcase

Throwing out a few points & opinions....

I've had two CDs vanish into thin air, but I don't think they were stolen -- the CDs in question were with a case of other CDs; surely it would have been easier to snag the whole case instead of one disc. I have no clue what happened to them... and naturally, they were two of the few CDs I hadn't ripped.

So Bono could be jumping to conclusions, or (it wouldn't be the first time) it could be part of a publicity stunt. As Bryan points out, the music hasn't appeared online yet, and unless it's being hushed up, no ransom note has appeared. Look at all the noise this is making in the press, and U2 didn't have to spend a dime for it.

Nevertheless, I know what it's like to have something partially finished "get out" -- at several points in my 20-year tech writing career, I've let co-workers have a look at a draft of a manual, they pass it on to another co-worker, who gives it to a customer. ARGH! If I were a musician, and I had a CD of a half-finished project go missing, I'd probably be dumping a load & tearing my hair out right now too. People who take pride in their work don't like to have incomplete works seen/heard by people they don't know or trust. (I'm still leaning toward publicity stunt, but U2's public reaction so far looks convincing otherwise.)

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xenafu wrote:
I've often wondered where those "lost" demo tapes of long-dead artists come from and now I suspect the thieves just hung on to them until they could 'legally' profit from them.

A lot of those demo tapes are found in studio vaults and similar archives. Yeah, someone is hanging on to them until they don't have to share revenue with the artist, but that doesn't mean they were stolen.

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Anonymous wrote:
I think the months of planning has to do with the Marketing campaign, just like with Movies.

Thanks for the post, Guest. I had actually meant the things mentioned, but unfortunately chose the word "produce," which of course has multiple meanings in this context. I edited the piece to read "physically manufacturing" to make it more clear.

Thanks again!

Bryan
Editor
TMO

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Bryan wrote:
Thanks for the post, Guest. I had actually meant the things mentioned, but unfortunately chose the word "produce," which of course has multiple meanings in this context. I edited the piece to read "physically manufacturing" to make it more clear.

Thanks again!

Bryan
Editor
TMO

Still wrong IMHO, "physically manufacturing" doesn't take months. Marketing takes months. iTunes doesn't change that as almost everyone else also states. But we agree with you that iTunes does protect against piracy in a unique way, and has other advantages.

Ciao,
Guest

Bono SuckS!!