I'll never open up a watermarked CD you morons

I've avoided writing about this for at least a year, and was very close to posting about it when I got the new 30 Seconds To Mars album sent to me from Virgin a few weeks ago. But with heavyweights like New Yorker music critic S/FJ and Seattle Weekly music editor
Michaelangelo Matos weighing in, I guess it's time to open fire.

30 Seconds To Mars is a barely known, average band fronted by actor Jared Leto. I am not interested in this band at all, yet for some reason Virgin has sent me the advance album without my requesting it. Time and time again I have implored labels to not send me crap like this: the major acts with major publicity dollars behind, I am always at least slightly interested in and expect to receive advance copies.

And yet you would be surprised how often I have to ask for the big releases--the releases like Coldplay with HUGE promo budgets. I've pimped Coldplay for years, interviewing the band multiple times and have been among their earliest supporters. But while the label will send me every Tom, Dick, and Harry release on the roster that is begging for attention, I have to pick up the phone and beg for the Coldplay advance so that I can run a review in time for the album's release.

All that comes with the game, it's all part of doing business. I accept that I'm not Rolling Stone and thereby getting the major releases 3 months out.

But when a label like Virgin sends me the new 30 Seconds To Mars album with a threatening memo and sealed, watermarked promo CD I have to laugh aloud.

The memo contains a bunch of corporate-lawyer bullshit, telling me how if I upload it to a P2P network I will get my knees smashed in and thrown into jail blah blah blah. I get that--I don't use the P2P networks and never have. All that's common sense.

But it's this line that makes me pissed: "In fact, these CDs are supplied on the condition that they not be sold, altered, transferred or copied in any way (including, by CD burning, loading them onto a computer or uploading to the Internet."

How stupid are these people?

Very few music people I know listen to their music only on their stereo anymore. In order of usage for me: computer, iPod, car (via iPod), home stereo. This factoid is probably true for 80% of the writers I know, and probably true for 50% of the people I know who aren't writers. iPods are everywhere, and some of the earliest adopters were people in the music industry.

GET A CLUE VIRGIN: PEOPLE HAVE TO LOAD CDs ONTO THEIR COMPUTERS TO GET THE MUSIC TO IPODs.

Laughably, this isn't the new Radiohead album, an album I'd probably be tempted to break the seal and load onto my computer despite the threats. It's from an average band with a vital need for people to actually listen to it.

Writers and other connected music people get sent dozens of CDs every week. We're simply not going to put up with this kind of bullshit.

A tangible point is that the need for "pre-release" albums is barely justifiable in the first place. If the label is worried about leaking advances, all they have to do is not issue advance music. Old habits die hard, but the labels need to wake up and notice the change in culture.