Quote:
This is how I see it going. The Type O record comes out. 62,580 people have already download it.
Now this may seem innocent under the guise that everyone will buy it anyway. But here's the deal. Without much anticipation, there's no big rush to get an album, everyone's been hearing for two months already. I'm talking about an average fan who figures "well next time I'm in the store or on a p2p I'll get the real thing".
The effect is then a lower first week chart number (estimated to drop at 10- 20% by the corp. world due to downloads) which in turn puts less pressure on the large institutions to play Type O on the radio, or give any type of video support. Then it's time for us to move on and get another record deal. Mr.(or Mrs. or Ms.) A&R Scumbag says "look........... they're last album only entered the charts at #49. This will of course generate a smaller offer because industry scum's rarely see anything but statistics (though there are exceptions and very few). This is not purely about money (though I wouldn't mind some) but about keeping a band going strong after 13 years.
Without the outward appearance of a big first week push there's no snowball effect, which causes interest in the album to fizzle out, which otherwise may have been a surprisingly strong showing. Now artistically I don't give two shits what's out there.
[Josh Silver]