So weird. I heard from both Songs:Illinois and Said The Gramophone that they had been contacted by Herman Dune’s record company, Source Etc (EMI), and asked to take down their posted tracks from the upcoming Herman Dune record, Giant. And that wouldn’t be weird, except those mp3s came straight from the Herman Dune site! Even those are gone now, though– I suppose HD had posted them without getting the label’s blessing first.

But anyway, whatever. I believe that labels are fully entitled to do whatever they like, it *is* their time and money that goes into getting the discs out there into the world and everything. But man, that whole scenario there just seems like all kinds of ridiculous, from the bloggers getting in trouble for posting the mp3s to the band getting in trouble for posting the mp3s to the label being so deathly afraid of having the (2) mp3s out there.

But I’m gonna catch myself right here, because it would be very easy for me to get wrapped in some long screed, but I’m not gonna bother, because you can just go read Bob Lefsetz regularly and get the same effect.

(*Though I must point out that the irony here is that I know for a fact that my posting of those tracks led to *at least* one sale of back-catalog Herman Dune, because I spoke with a guy about it directly.)