Scrape TV Humour Scrape TV News Scrape TV On the Air

Politics
U.S.A.
Everyone Else
Health
Science
Business
Technology
Sports
Video Games
Entertainment
Future
Retractions
News Home
News Archive
Other

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEWS > ENTERTAINMENT > U2 LATE SHOW APPEARANCES YIELD MASSIVE DOWNLOAD NUMBERS

U2 LATE SHOW APPEARANCES YIELD MASSIVE DOWNLOAD NUMBERS

March 7 2009

New York, NY – U2 is one of the biggest bands ever. With over 145 million albums sold, 22 Grammy Awards, and some of the most successful live shows ever there’s little doubt that the little band from Dublin has done well by the homeland. The last ten years though have represented some of the most challenging times in their more than three decade career. The burdens of age and family, seeing the bottom of the creative well, and the massive global brand that is U2 have all contributed to a band far from producing its best music.

One other factor that has inhibited the U2 brand is a problem not unique to the boys from Ireland. The rise in downloading has been a struggle for musicians and record labels for more than a decade and the power that unpaid for music listening has is only increasing. Luckily U2, being U2, are in a better position than most and their recent 5 straight days of performing on ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ have confirmed that with a new record for number of downloads now being attributed to the band.

“This has been one of the most successful download campaigns in history. We saw a great deal of interest when the album leaked a few weeks back but since the week long performances on the ‘Late Show’ began we have seen a massive uptick in activity,” said Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay, who is currently on trial in Sweden. “Aside from this trial, U2’s latest album has been one of our biggest hits this year.

Music generally is very boring but bands like U2 make it exciting. We are so glad they are out there, supporting what we do and keeping the downloading vital.”
Bands and record labels do not generate any revenue from downloading through sites like The Pirate Bay but that has not ceased their support for the distribution medium. To date the only people who have generated from enabling peer-to-peer downloading like bit torrents are the tracker hosts themselves.

“Obviously if a band can consume so much of Letterman’s air time and even have a New York City street named after them the last thing they need is money. By conducting this little stunt they have exposed themselves to a whole new audience, well really the same audience over and over again five days in a row, and that has done wonders for their tracker counts,” said Scrape TV Entertainment analyst Tracey Temple. “It shows that older bands do get younger audiences at least in the abstract. I sincerely doubt they are sitting at home in their off hours on their computers searching for torrents, but at least they support the young kids in their downloading efforts.”

Many are also applauding the effort by the band to promote the free sharing of music and applaud the band’s dedication to the art rather than the business of music, something they have been accused of avoiding in the past.

“One would be forgiven if they assumed that the band was primarily interested in money. What with exorbitant stage shows pulling record high ticket prices, buying and selling of properties, and of course manipulating the U2 brand wherever possible but that belies their real intents,”
continued Temple. “They have struggled over and over again with trying to stay musically relevant and even though those days are long behind them they continue to show up and that can only be for the real reason anyone gets into music, the glory. With the way Bono in particular has made himself a spectacle over the last few years that is the one thing they have mastered and that is as much about rock art as playing the guitar or drums. Even though they did make these appearances on the Late Show they still show that they are making a concerted effort to keep themselves n the spotlight regardless of the quality of their music and that has to be applauded, and downloaded I suppose.”

Sales for ‘No Line on the Horizon’ are expected to be good but unspectacular given the record level of free distribution the band has promoted. It is not expected that any of the members will be applying for government financial aid anytime soon.    

Samantha Dryden, Entertainment Correspondent

NEWS > ENTERTAINMENT > U2 LATE SHOW APPEARANCES YIELD MASSIVE DOWNLOAD NUMBERS

Scrape TV Home Scrapeipedia The Town of LaRue Scrape Store (coming soon)

Contact Editorial editor (at) scrapetv.com Website admin (at) scrapetv.com Jobs jobs (at) scrapetv.com Advertise advertising (at) thevirtualunion.com

This work by The Virtual Union is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License Based on a work at scrapetv.com

All original content and scenarios Copyright ©2008-2010 The Virtual Union. All Rights Reserved. All images Copyright © original owners. All content herein should be considered rumour or truth based solely on your perspective. Privacy Policy