While the RIAA continues to treat it’s customers like criminals, Toronto based record label Arts & Crafts is taking a more positive and fan-focused route to combat piracy. While Stars’ new CD won’t be officially released until September 25, they are making it available for digital download right now for those fans who might normally be tempted to download the leaked album from file sharing services.

The honesty of the label and the band in their announcement feels genuine:

Friends, fans and supporters of Stars… - July 10th, 2007

On September 25th, We will release Stars’ fourth studio album, In Our Bedroom After War.

We love it and are excited and proud to be bringing it to the world.

We enlisted Joe Chiccarelli to mix the album. He finished in early June, passing the tapes along to Emily Lazar at the Lodge for mastering. Last Friday, July 6th, a final master was delivered to us.

Traditional music business practice says we are to begin sending out copies of this album now. We give advance copies to print publications in hopes of securing features that coincide with our September date. We meet with radio stations in hopes of securing airplay. etc, etc.

Inevitably someone will leak the album.

Throughout this process, the most important people in this value chain, the fans, are given only two options - wait until September 25th to legally purchase the new album or choose from a variety of sources and download the album for free, at any time.

We hope you’ll choose to support the band, and choose to pay for their album. However we don’t think it’s fair you should have to wait until September 25th to do so.

We believe that the line between the media and the public is now completely grey.
What is the difference between a writer for a big glossy music magazine and a student writing about their favourite bands on their blog? What differentiates a commercial radio station from someone adding a song to their lastfm channel? or their myspace page?

As such, we are making the new Stars album available for legal download today, four days after it’s completion. The CD and double vinyl versions of the album will still be released on our official release date, September 25th. We hope you will continue to support music retailers should a physical album in all it’s packaged glory be your choice of format.

It’s our hope that given a clear, legal alternative to downloading music for free, you will choose to support the creators.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Sincerely,
Stars and Arts & Crafts

It’s a remarkable acknowledgment of the significant changes and challenges created by the new conversational media.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 11:16 am and is filed under Mike's Rants, New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.