U2′s No Line On The Horizon leaked early Wednesday morning, a week and a half before it was supposed to be available in Irish record shops and nearly two weeks before its Stateside release. Horizon, being one of the few albums on the docket that is seen as something of a commercial lock, was under heavy lock and key before its release. So what happened? Was Bono blaring his own tunes at home again? Did some enterprising warehouse worker sneak a copy to his laptop? The answer is a lot more surprising—and much more embarrassing for Universal Music Group, which is counting on this album’s sales to beef up its bottom line.

The album – U2′s 12th – goes on sale on March 3 but it was available to download for a brief period this week on getmusic.com.au, run by Universal Music Australia.

The U2 fan blog, U2log.com, published a screenshot showing it had bought the album for $19.80.

Now, No Line On The Horizon is widely available on BitTorrent and other file sharing websites.

Universal Music Australia did not respond to calls asking how the track went up for sale early.

It is not clear if the leak to illegal download sites was a result of this error, however, it is the likely explanation as U2 has kept the album under wraps and reportedly sent no preview copies to the press, instead organising private hearings.

Scores of fans – both in Australia and overseas – have posted on unofficial U2 message boards saying they bought the album from getmusic.com.au during the period it was available.

And from there, the MP3s did flow. Anyway, condolences in advance (or not, since it’s already Friday night Down Under) to the person who is probably getting fired over this glitch. And those of you who don’t want to engage in shady downloading might be happy to know that the album is streaming from U2′s MySpace page, although it’s not immediately apparent (you have to click on the No Line album cover on the left-hand side of the player to get to its 12 tracks).

Look Who Leaked U2′s New Album [Sydney Morning Herald]
U2 [MySpace]

If an album leaks, and its inevitable pre-release stream on MySpace takes place two days after the Rapidshare feeding frenzy, is that stream truly a “premiere”? [Eric 2.0]

It might be my own issues since I was passed over for the position or the slightly context-needy nature of the article, but if you can figure out what on earth Courtney Holt has planned for MySpace Music based on Digital Music News’ recap of his keynote at a conference yesterday, you’re a better interpreter of corporate speak than I. At least Holt has some understanding of the site’s limitations, saying that the artist pages are “…somewhat of a cul-de-sac, you [follow] what you’re looking for and then you’re stuck.” Apparently, the future of Myspace Music involves some sort of playlist creator that users can use to create their own pages, but in the meantime, Holt is going to spend time “with the product guys” and engaging in “lots of evangelism” both “inside and outside the building.” What would help me accept the “evangelism” would be fixing the fact that the site is nearly unusable in structure, but that sort of thinking is what probably eliminated me from the candidate pool. [Digital Music News]

It might be my own issues since I was passed over for the position or the slightly context-needy nature of the article, but if you can figure out what on earth Courtney Holt has planned for MySpace Music based on Digital Music News’ recap of his keynote at a conference yesterday, you’re a better interpreter of corporate speak than I. At least Holt has some understanding of the site’s limitations, saying that the artist pages are “…somewhat of a cul-de-sac, you [follow] what you’re looking for and then you’re stuck.” Apparently, the future of Myspace Music involves some sort of playlist creator that users can use to create their own pages, but in the meantime, Holt is going to spend time “with the product guys” and engaging in “lots of evangelism” both “inside and outside the building.” What would help me accept the “evangelism” would be fixing the fact that the site is nearly unusable in structure, but that sort of thinking is what probably eliminated me from the candidate pool. [Digital Music News]

After weeks of speculation that he had the job in hand, MySpace has finally announced that former MTV Networks bigwig Courtney Holt has been named CEO of its music service. Holt was an early adopter to the service, using it to market music from the Black Eyed Peas, Audioslave, and Weezer when he was a digital honcho at Interscope Geffen A & M. (So much to answer for, and he hasn’t even started yet!) [LAT]

Tucson electropoppers …Music Video? recently had their MySpace URL recalled by the service–not because it was overly raunchy, but because the site wanted it for itself. See, when the band snagged myspace.com/musicvideo the site didn’t foresee a future in which it would want that bit of easy branding for its own music-video ventures–but it came to that realization recently, and as a result “requested” that the band go hunting for a new shortened link to its music. Of course, the allegedly music-forward MySpace didn’t take into consideration that its URLs are a crucial part of many bands’ marketing strategies, and that this land grab would result in the URL that …Music Video? had been giving out to fans and members of the press (including NPR) redirecting to MySpace’s own video hub. (Which, it should be noted, has a “sexy bikini hottie” as its main attraction.) You’d think that MySpace’s pitch to be the ultimate site for music info on the web wouldn’t result in flare-ups like this one, but given MySpace Music’s clumsy launch and overall crappiness, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. [...Music Video?'s new MySpace page]

There was some controversy around the role of indie labels in MySpace Music (the digital distribution center that was going to change the music world as we know it!); those labels wouldn’t receive the same equity in the site’s profits as the majors, essentially bringing the same stratification that exists in the old-time music business to the new music economy. MySpace still isn’t offering equity to those labels, but it did manage to sign an indie collective featuring such high-profile names as Animal Collective and… Chairlift?

When Chairlift–better known as “oh, another act that’s trying to ride the iPod ad train?”–is one of the “bigger” indie acts touted in a press release announcing a contract-signing, the breakthrough quotient of said deal might be called into question. Indeed, the signing of IODA seems to be more about quantity than quality.

On Thursday, however, MySpace unveiled a deal that should begin to quiet the critics. The News Corp. division announced it had licensed over one million tracks from IODA, a San Francisco-based digital distributor of independent music. IODA’s artist roster includes indie faves such as Paw Tracks’s Animal Collective and Kanine Records’ Chairlift.

“The independent music community has been a cornerstone of MySpace Music,” said Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of MySpace in a statement. We’re thrilled to welcome IODA and its more than 50,000 artists to MySpace Music.”

MySpace’s critics said the social network was now turning its backs on the same artists who had been instrumental in its growth.

Frank Hajdu, executive director of MySpace Music, says nothing could be further from the truth. “There has been a lot of public misconception about MySpace and its involvement with the independents with the launch,” he said. “We’ve always been committed to the independents from the outset.”

He declined to discuss the terms of the IODA deal. Kevin Arnold, CEO of IODA, was more forthcoming. He said it had taken a while for IODA to strike a deal with MySpace because the social network had initially offered no guarantees, only a share of the music service’s ad revenues.

IODA won’t get equity in MySpace Music. But Arnold said MySpace had sweetened its offer in recent weeks. “We made significant improvements over the previous proposal,” he said. “There are a number of things that are important to us-some guarantees and assurances that there will be revenue for streaming our music.”

IODA does have some important imprints in its catalog (Arts & Crafts, Fat Cat, Relapse, Rounder), but for each of those labels, there’s Kanine Records (home of Chairlift), Rave Police Records, and Geykido Comet Records. MySpace announced they were still in negotiations with Merlin–which is possibly the biggest fish in the indie pond (it has distributors like Domino, Koch and Beggars under their umbrella) and one of the most outspoken opponents to the existing payment structure for indies.

The question unlikely to be answered by the people at IODA is: Why sign on with Myspace Music? The deals being signed are unlikely to adquately serve as payback for the eyeballs indie labels have brought to MySpace in the past and (likely) the future, especially since the majors are getting partial ownership in the venture while indies are left to fight over the scraps. Are smaller labels just making sure they get something from the site, even if said wrangling results in setting a bad precedent for their music’s value?

After uproar, MySpace signs indie music deal [CNN Money]
IODA Partners with MySpace Music [Marketwatch]

After my fourth stream of the new Lily Allen single, an ad for a certain fast-food company that offers its wares to aspiring “Dollar Menunaires” popped up over the player, and I had to click it–and, you know, read it–in order to get things going again. Of course, I didn’t realize what was gumming up the works until I clicked over to the tab, curious as far as why the music I was listening to had suddenly stopped. Ah, it’s nice to see that MySpace Music is still reaching new heights in the battle to figure out a way to make music on the Internet even less convenient to legally consume than it already is!

Google has made the 2001 version of its search index available to celebrate its 10th birthday (it’s the oldest version the site had available–see, people, everyone needs to remember to back up their hard drives now and again!), and I figured it would be fun to plug in a few music-related terms and see what pages came up as the top results, and whether or not those pages were housed in the Internet archive known as the Wayback Machine. The results after the jump.

“music”: The No. 1 result in 2001 was music.com, the flagship site of “the music.com network.” (That domain name now houses some sort of “work in progress” music-video repository that takes way too long to load.) No. 2? This repository of music sites that is still functioning as a Web site, if a little stale-seeming. Whatever, I’ll add it to my bookmarks!

Other sites of note that were near the top of the “music” search results:
• MTV.com;
• All Music Guide;
• The Internet Underground Music Archive, or IUMA (hey, whatever happened to those people who named their kids after the indie-label music repository for $5,000–a promotion that took place only five months before the site shut down for good?);
• the late online CD store CDNow; and
• Madonna’s official site, where you could stream the “Don’t Tell Me” video at speeds optimized for either a 56k modem or a T1 line

NB: The No. 1 result for “music” now is the aggregator-of-aggregates music site operated by Yahoo! Music.com is No. 2, even though today is the first day that I’d ever heard of it. (Never underestimate the power of the five-letter domain name.)

Napster: Had stopped functioning in its old-school form by this point; a snapshot of the site from sometime in 2001 was apparently taken exactly when the company was in transition:

As you know, file sharing at Napster has been suspended for several months. During that time, we’ve been blown away by the number of Napster users who’ve continued to download the software and use it to organize and play their music. These dedicated users keep us inspired as we work on our new membership service. We’re in the home stretch, with all of our critical technology complete and in testing.

We’re also working hard to resolve our legal issues. We’re moving toward a settlement with the major labels that we feel will work for rights holders and allow us to bring you the music you want. The music and the technology are coming together for launch. We can’t wait to share it all with you.

Well, we all know how that worked out.

Audiogalaxy: Didn’t allow the contents of its now-long-dormant site to be indexed, but, guys, remember Audiogalaxy? That was how I got the whole Scritti Politti discography before the reissues came out, as well as… so much other stuff. Sigh.

MySpace: Was “a service owned by YourZ.com, Inc.” that apparently specialized in third-party file hosting.

Chinese Democracy: Most of the search results are actually about democracy in China, which is like, bo-ring! Although a few search results in, there’s a page–unarchived by the Wayback Machine and on a now-defunct server, alas–that has this little snippet:

According to GNR´s Manager Doug Goldstein Chinese Democracy is 99% musically
done and 80% … The official release date of Chinese Democracy is June 2001

Or was. Ahem.

2001 Search [Google]

The just-launched MySpace Music is all about making money for the labels, right? So it would behoove them to have songs that the people want to buy available for purchase on the service, no? Come with me as I try to buy the top 10 songs on this week’s Hot Digital Tracks chart by using MySpace’s widgetry:

1. Pink, “So What”
Streamable from Pink’s MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

2. Kanye West, “Love Lockdown”
First 1:30 streamable from West’s MySpace page; not available for purchase via MySpace Music widget, despite presence on Amazon.

3. T.I., “Whatever You Like”
Streamable from T.I.’s MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon.

4. Taylor Swift, “Love Story”
Seems to be bypassing MySpace Music’s official player/commerce widget, opting instead to pre-sell her forthcoming album on MySpace (with the option to buy a $75 box set!) and give people the download for “Love Story” instantly.

5. Rihanna, “Disturbia”
Streamable from Rihanna’s site; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects Good Girl Gone Bad.

6. M.I.A., “Paper Planes”
Streamable from M.I.A.’s MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects either Kala or the “Planes” remix EP.

7. Katy Perry, “Hot N Cold”
Streamable from Perry’s MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (On the bright side, the awfulness of having to visit Perry’s page was mitigated slightly by a pop-up ad for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Teach the children, Ted!)

8. Jason Mraz, “I’m Yours”
Streamable from Mraz’s MySpace page; official version available for purchase if the user uses the album pull-down menu and selects the right version of the “I’m Yours” digital single.

9. Estelle feat. Kanye West, “American Boy”
Streamable from Estelle’s MySpace page; not available for purchase via widget, despite presence on Amazon. (It would appear that the Estelle insta-tribute band the Studio All-Stars don’t have a MySpace page.)

10. David Archuleta, “Crush”
Streamable from Archuleta’s MySpace page; available for purchase if you select “Crush” from the pull-down menu in the widget.

So, out of the ten most saleable songs in the U.S. right now, MySpace Music is letting its users purchase four of them–and all four have to be navigated to, instead of them being presented to the user straight off. Can someone tell me why Tom & Co. felt like they had to launch this thing today, before it was ready for prime-time at all? I know that the site’s supposed to be “iterative,” but not having six of the top ten singles for purchase on what is being pitched as a track-by-track marketplace is not unlike trying to open an outlet of The Gap that’s missing jeans.

Earlier: MySpace Music Gets Ready For A Big Amazon Affiliate Check

Oh, and one other thing: note this slice from the MySpace page of the Arcade Fire, who, because they’re on an indie, can’t use the embedded Amazon MP3 widget and are stuck with Snocap for commerce purposes. Did you guys know that Stephen Pearcy was a member of the Arcade Fire? I mean, I know they have a lot of members, but… [MySpace]

A week and change after schedule, the much-ballyhooed MySpace Music–in which the fading social-networking service and the major labels come together in hopes of making at least some money off their technology–has launched. Some clicking around reveals that it’s not really that much of a great leap forward as far as the consumer experience goes; the number of streamable songs from artists on participating labels (Universal, Sony, and Warner; EMI has signed on, too) is way up in some cases, thanks to the new site’s desire to be the biggest Amazon affiliate ever. But the big innovation–aside from an upgraded music player that also has links to Amazon’s MP3 store embedded within–being the ability to create playlists from songs that are streaming on the service. Streaming playlists with Amazon affiliate links attached? It’s like 2005 all over again!

Independent labels are still absent from the “streaming for dollars” portion of the service, as is the catalog of EMI. (Update: EMI’s catalog will apparently trickle in soon.) This results in a few browsing hiccups; when you visit Coldplay’s profile, for example, and select Parachutes from the pull-down menu, you are greeted with one streamable song: “Trouble,” which was uploaded to the band’s page long enough ago for it to have received some 3.8 million plays. The same hiccupy browsing goes for indie bands like Ponytail. Why the discography feature was turned on for artists whose labels aren’t participating in the revenue-sharing program is beyond me; it creates something of a dead-end for users, who can browse the songs the bands have uploaded by album, which is semi-pointless and usually results in users heading back to the “Featured Playlist” (which is code for “songs that were streaming from the site before today’s changeover”).

There are a few other quirks. Some new releases, which one would think would be high-priority for a venture that’s expressly designed for making bank, are missing: Fall Out Boy’s new single is streamable, but not available for purchase, and I couldn’t find Ne-Yo’s Year Of The Gentleman for streaming or purchasing, despite him being the No. 10 major-label artist on the site. The merging of Amazon’s data with the streaming player also results in a few glitches in the discographies, although I suppose merge failures like that are to be expected with large-scale launches such as this. (And I seriously doubt anyone is looking at MySpace Music as a possible All Music Guide alternative.)

It’s details and flaws like these that make the MySpace Music that launched today look like a rushed, desperate attempt to just get something to market, despite the amount of energy and press-gladhanding that was poured into it in the run-up to its launch. Will it result in a slight uptick for Amazon MP3′s music revenues in the short term? Perhaps. But I suspect that a year or so from now, we’ll be looking back on today much as we did on the day that Snocap first introduced its “buy this MP3″ widgetry to the site–as a bump in the road, but nothing all that special in the long run.

MySpace Music [MySpace]

MySpace Music–the joint venture between the social-networking site and the major labels that is apparently going to revolutionize digital music by putting opportunities to actually buy songs and other music-related widgetry right into artists’ profile pages on the site–is still trudging toward its now-one-week-late launch, and I guess to remind people that we’re supposed to be excited about the whole thing, someone leaked a few blurry screenshots of the project. (Kind of odd that the screenshots of a site that’s all about making money for Big Music were leaked to the nerd-insider site TechCrunch, which is firmly in the “music should be free at all times” camp, but I’m sure the fine people at MySpace know exactly what they’re doing in the PR department. Cough.) What new, exciting changes will you see the next time you visit your favorite band’s MySpace page? Let’s do a side-by-side comparison of these alleged prototypes and what they’re replacing.

The current versions of these pages are on top; the “new” versions are on bottom.

SCREENSHOT 1: THE MAIN PAGE

I guess it looks slightly cleaner. Although one has to wonder, with all the service’s indie label-related issues, whether or not the removal of the Top Artists section was an easy way to de-emphasize artists whose albums aren’t distributed by one of the site’s major-label revenue-sharers. Especially since the always-sketchy “top artists” list, which currently features a bunch of artists whose material is pushed by Atlantic Records in its “indie” list, remains. Although I guess that could also be looked at as a strategic move.

SCREENSHOT 2: THE PROFILE PAGE

Well, I’ll give them this: That commerce interface is sure more elegant than the old Snocap widgets. I eagerly await half of the musicians on the site having their 1,945 embedded Flash widgets curl up and stop working as a result of mysterious incompatibilities with it.

There’s a third screenshot that TechCrunch is saying is a “user admin panel,” although it looks like it may be cleaned-up version of Song History to me:

Much like the future of MySpace Music, however, it’s way too blurry to make out.

Leaked MySpace Music Screenshots [TechCrunch]

The probably delayed launch of MySpace Music has coincided with the social-networking service buying ad space in New York’s Times Square and on Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard–because when an online service pours a lot of money into ads, it’s always a good sign about the viability of its business, right? But what’s more notable about the Times Square ad (pic above, via Songs For Soap) isn’t the fact that one of the Jonas Brothers looks like he’s hoisting an Urban Sombrero above his head. It’s what’s in the immediate vicinity of the ads, and how they represent big music’s accelerated decline in the new millennium.

Take your field of vision past the Planet Hollywood banners, and what do you see? On one side, you have the Virgin Megastore, which was once a monument to the power of music retail and is now waiting to be brought to its knees by commercial real estate developers. (That is, of course, if the whole market for retail floor space doesn’t crater sometime in the next six months.) On the other, you have banners for albums like Christina Aguilera’s Stripped and Elvis Presley’s #1s, both of which came out in the comparatively SoundScan-soaked days of 2002, and both of which come as a result of said building serving as the headquarters of the German conglomerate Bertelsmann–a company which, of course, is trying to extricate itself from its music-business ties as I type this.

Nice positioning, guys. You couldn’t have angled for a spot near, say, the Hard Rock Cafe?

MySpace Music Becomes Physical, Not Virtual, Reality [Songs For Soap]

The launch of MySpace Music–you know, the joint venture between MySpace and the major labels that’s going to change everything, or at least get the biz some semi-positive press for a couple of days after it launches–is rumored to be delayed until at least next week. Or maybe later. Where can I place a bet on this thing actually launching before the end of the quarter? I’m feeling lucky! [Silicon Alley Insider]

MySpace Music, the ass-saving joint venture between the major labels and the buggy place for friends that was supposed to launch today but will instead bow sometime this week, is apparently hoping to raise “well over $100 million” in anticipation of it being worth–hold on to your hats–some $2 billion. (Or more!) Can someone please explain to me how this might work, what with investment banks being kind of in a bad place right now and the concept of people paying for music being in an even worse spot? Sure, the service is locking up a ton of advertisers (can’t wait for “Toyota Tuesdays,” dude!), but $2 billion for what’s essentially a social-networking gloss on an Amazon affiliate program? How does that work–I really need to know. [Techcrunch]

Dear MySpace HR department: I know you guys are having a hard time finding a CEO for your big joint venture with the music business, having asked a ton of people, all of whom have turned you guys down. Sure, the whole structure over there is a mess, with people from Universal Music and News Corp. making demands, and there’s no particular structure through which to make money. But if Andy Schuon, formerly of CBS Radio, doesn’t take the gig, I’m probably still available. CNet mentions that your company should consider someone from iTunes, and I’ve compiled quite a few Essentials for the site on a freelance basis. That sort of counts, I think. I don’t have all that pride baggage of needing to make the site successful to feed my own ego, so that should help when the whole thing ends up shuttering in a year or two. Give me a call and we can talk benefits. [CNet]

Cheeky piano-heavy trio Ben Folds Five have announced that they’re reuniting for a show where they play their 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner in its entirety. The concert–which takes place in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Sept. 18–is the first installment in the “let’s have bands play the albums you love so they can keep raking in the nostalgia cash” series Front To Back, which is sponsored in part by nowwhat.com. (As Al Shipley put it, the site’s “named after the phrase bands utter after they stop making good albums and have to just play the old ones.” Ha ha! OK, it’s actually an ethics-lite site sponsored by the insurance giants at State Farm. Same diff?) Anyway, as with so many music-publicity claims these days, there’s something a little strange about the video announcement of the show, which I’ve embedded after the jump.

See that “For the first time in 10 years” claim? It’s a bit odd, given that Messner came out in 1999–you know, nine years ago. And the band broke up in 2000. And if anyone thinks that said “first time” clause is in reference to a band reforming just to play its “most critically acclaimed album,” well, you might want to get the organizers of All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Don’t Look Back series on the horn. Come to think of it, I wonder what they think of all this, what with the concepts being so similar and the names rhyming and even having the same cadence, if your accented syllables fall a certain way…

Front To Back [MySpace]
[HT: Grayson Currin, Al Shipley]

The latest problems plaguing MySpace Music, the fading social-networking service’s joint venture with the majors that is allegedly going to launch in September: A slew of candidates for the CEO position have flat-out turned down the gig; finding a CEO now, if it happens, would be dicey, since any new bigwigs would likely have enough opinions on how things are going to warrant sweeping changes; and the technology team is getting “all-consuming and desperate” in its attempts to hook the service into MySpace’s toothpicks-and-glue infrastructure, because they’re sure that any further delays will alienate partners. On the bright side, this will probably make the service’s Snocap experiment seem like a resounding success in hindsight. [The Deal via Hypebot]

MySpace music: It’s about as well-thought-out as you would expect, i.e. it still doesn’t have a CEO or a launch date even though it was announced to much fanfare back in April. Anyone want to offer up odds on this thing actually launching by the end of 2008? [Silicon Alley Insider]