"Our Entire Album Is Now Streaming For Free" --- Why??

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal

April 17th 2011, Los Angeles CA: Why do bands release their entire new albums for free online streaming BEFORE the actual release date, way before the release date in most cases? This is something that has been bothering me for quite a while now, so I figured I should express myself properly by way of an article.

It baffles the fuck out of me when I read news updates and press releases with the headline "X band's upcoming album is now available for streaming", and I don't quite understand why it's done. It's fine releasing one, or at the most two songs from the album just to try building hype around the album before the actual release. But how does one build hype when the whole damn thing is out for streaming? It only succeeds in killing the hype, and is counterproductive in my opinion. There are a few reasons why I think it should not be done:

A. It kills the excitement for anyone who might have been waiting to buy the album as soon as it hits the stores. Nothing can quite compare to the feeling one gets after buying his or her favorite band's new album, having not heard even a single song off of it in advance, and having followed the band members as they talked about it in interviews. But I guess things can't be that 'old school' in this day and age because of the extent to which the business is suffering. Even then, no band should be releasing more than two songs for pre-release streaming.

B. It ruins the fun for people who pre-order these albums and wait to get the copy in their hands before listening to it for the first time. As a fan I'd feel slightly ripped off if I ordered an album a month before release and wait for it to get to me, then two weeks later everyone who didn't order the album still gets to listen to the album for free before I do, having paid for it.

C. It kills the enthusiasm of writers like myself as we write reviews of these albums and interview the respective bands to hype up their release. In most cases, the album is already streaming by the time we get access to these review copies and phone interviews, thus defeating our purpose to a large extent. I bet the number of people reading our reviews and checking out our interviews would have been higher if not for this pre-release streaming. But since we love writing about these albums, we still carry on with what we're doing, blissfully ignoring all these hinderances.

D. It encourages piracy. It's not that hard to figure out a way to download songs from these streams and upload them onto torrent websites. All bands complain about piracy but then they themselves fuel the fire and intice those that indulge in piracy. This leads to a vicious circle wherein almost everyone has the option of freely downloading the album onto their computer or ipod before it's even released.

Websites that host pre-release album streams: Now, it's at least OK if the band is releasing these streams on their own facebook pages or other such social networks because after all it's up to them in terms of whatever they want to do with their music, but I don't respect metal websites that host it for them. In my opinion, these websites are doing a disservice to the metal scene. They don't give a fuck about the metal scene. All they care about is getting a sizable number of hits and earning money through advertisements by exclusively hosting unreleased albums. If they really cared about these albums, they would do reviews and interviews instead, and I don't see much of that on these websites. My website will never host a full album stream before its release date. I do stream songs on my SoundCloud player myself, but not before release date, and definitely not the entire album.

I would simply sum up by saying this: Album sales will pick up if buying albums becomes the only way of listening to them in their entirety. Thank you very much.

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