Some of you may have heard that U2's latest album was accidentally released online (by its label, no less) ahead of the launch date, and that one fan immediately posted it on a torrent for download. Some of you may have already downloaded the album! But when this type of leak occurs, artists are left wondering what the best course of action should be so as not to sacrifice the marketing plan for the album. TwentyFourBit reports that U2's plan so far has been to stick with their launch date but allow streaming from MySpace. This creates an interesting issue for any band. Do they try to sew up the leak as quickly as possible to stick with the original date, or do they toss the date aside and call Apple to get the album on iTunes ASAP? A similar leak happened to Taylor Swift's album Fearless, and sales have not appeared to suffer (3MM copies and counting). Regardless of the answer to the question, this issue sheds more light onto the fact that traditional music labels have still not determined a way to manage content distribution online - even for its biggest bands. PC World suggests U2 follow the Radiohead model by asking fans to pay whatever they choose to purchase the album. I'll let you decide...
-Jennifer Rogers
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