Interesting article about Atmosphere and their new tactic to defend against advanced album leaks. Instead of sending out advanced promotional copies to journalists and critics for review, Slug and company have put together listening sessions, which means exactly the way it sounds. No advances sent out, no leaks prior to a release date.
I’ve noticed more of these sessions popping up over the past few months but I’m not sure how effective this strategy will be against online piracy because it just delays the inevitable. People are going to download music, whether that is four months in advance or a day after release. The real problem isn’t with bootlegging but with putting out quality music. I would like to believe that if an album is solid, people are going to buy it no matter how early it’s available for download. Personally, I have no problem buying new music as long as it’s dope. But how many of those have come out in recent years? Most of my purchases lately have been albums from the 80s and 90s. To sum it all up, most new music albums have sucked. Link (via)
“Do you actually feel like this is going to stop people from bootlegging?” one writer asks with a hint of disapproval. “Are you expecting it to help you sell more albums?”
“This is our way of gauging how much we would lose,” Slug responds. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel like I’m in a position amongst my contemporaries to try something like this to see how it works. If it’s not as successful as we want it to be, and we can say that it’s definitely because of this, then we’ll have learned a lesson and all of my friends can look at it and say, ‘I’m not doing what those idiots did.’ “But if this does work,” he adds, “then everybody can use the model. It’s not the most creative approach, but it’s a step toward coming up with something.”
