XRT Debuts New U2 Album This Morning
By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 11, 2004 3:01PM
According to Robert Feder in this morning's Sun-Times, WXRT (93.1) will air the new U2 album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb repeatedly for 12 hours starting at 9:45 AM this morning. Woah. Talk about an easy day at work for Terri Hemmert and Co. It's all part of a day-long celebration on XRT called U2'sDay. Um, they do know it's THURSday today, right? And wouldn't this have been a better feature in ROCKtober? Anyway, if you're looking for a full track listing so you can follow along today, check out U2's official site under News and look for the post from October 24th (don't get confused; those crazy Europeans list the date at 24.10.2004). Feder credits this coup to Winer's acquisition of a legal advanced copy of the album.
At least that's his story. Back in July, a test pressing of the album went missing during a photo shoot in France. U2 swore they would move up the release date and dump the whole thing onto iTunes if it showed up on the ‘Net. Now someone has called Bono’s bluff (which would be an excellent name for a band) as tracks from the album have appeared on various file-sharing services. Chicagoist has long held the theory that The Edge accidentally lost the disc somewhere on the Riviera and that the copies on Kazaa et. al. are due to advanced copies of the album shipping to radio stations and reviewers. XRT’s got one so it’s entirely possible that others less concerned about darkening their good name with the band do too. No word on any shift in the release date (November 23rd), to iTunes or otherwise.
The release date shuffle for artists like Eminem and Snoop Dogg gives lie to the notion perpetuated by RIAA that lawsuits are stemming P2P use. Even as movie studios are now following in the litigious footsteps of their music brethren, programs like BitTorrent are allowing users to download more content than before. In fact, a study by the Cooperative Association for Data Analysis shows that P2P file-sharing has not “has not diminished” and will continue to rise. This gives us hope that someday soon we’ll be able to find that Lynyrd Skynyrd bootleg of their 1976 show at Winterland.