Coldplay and Radiohead have made music news by distributing their music thru new means and giving fans their music for free, but don't expect the same from rock legends U2. Their new album scheduled for this year and U2's manager Paul McGuinness discussed with the BBC why they don't plan to follow in Radiohead's footsteps.
Mr McGuinness: "There will be events around the release of the album but for U2 physical sales are still an enormous part of our business and we still sell a lot of actual CDs. "We will obviously work with whatever technology is available to make the release of the new record as interesting as possible."
McGuinness feels Radiohead's free giveaway and pay-what-you-like arrangement was not a very business-savvy move. Speaking to 6 Music/BBC, he said: "We should all be aware that Radiohead's honesty box release of their album to some extent backfired. Even though it was available on their own website for no money at all, if that was what you preferred to pay - 60 to 70 per cent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway even though it was available for free."
As for the new U2 cd, "The exact date is not clear yet but I would think towards the end of October," McGuinness said.
MNN can't wait.
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