1. If you want to find out who was selling the CD, e-bay have to reveal the details of the account – the feedback on the account shows the person behind it is a serial seller of promos
2. Ms Heap (or her company) sent out a free copy (probably one of many) to encourage a review. The only way to stop promos from being sold on is not to issue them. Then you’re relying on journalists actually going out and buying an album and reviewing it after it’s been released.
3. Promos (other than those by “major” artists) are, in the main, worthless items by the very fact they are issued for free to journaloists and radio stations – I was in Manchester recently and at Vinyl exchange they have entire sections of 100s of promo CD albums on slae for just 50p each – obviously local DJs, radio stations and journos are offloading piles of unwanted unsolicited CDs for pennies.

Botom line, get over it…

james car booter

I really hope The Daily Star fully engage with the relevant authorities and injured parties in the matter to help identify the true guilty parties.

1) The naming of a guilty party when, to be fair, ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

It didn’t help that the seal on the promotional CD was unbroken and part of the recipient’s name is shown quite clearly on the images on the ebay listing. I know this is not in the same league as Matthew Wright and John Leslie saga a few years ago but once a name is disclosed, full public scrutiny follows; when the named party has not right of reply and because of the uproar, what they do say in defence is lost in the roar of the mob.

2) Why the outrage?

This one I had to think about. Internet piracy is as prevalent as it ever has been and this is how it happens, promotional copies go wandering and appear online within a heartbeat. It’s almost as if the old music world is clashing with the new one, where the battleground is the internet and the blood being spilt is effectively people’s careers. By that, I mean – and this is why I understand the outrage – people such as Imogen Heap, Thomas Dolby… who do run their careers on their own. It is the livelihood of the artists that is at stake. The fact that two years has gone into this moment, I can understand why Imogen would be a little pissed right now – just to let that momentum go away in the blink of an eye because a promotional CD ended up online.

I’m been amazed by the outpour of support by Imogen’s fans over the last 48 hours, to which I actually feel proud to be one. However, as Neil before stated, there are no laws banning the sale of promotional items. I’ve bought them before myself. But I also understand the frustration, from a creative point of view, when all the hard work has gone into making something fuelled by an emotional investment and it potentially gets taken away by someone. I suppose, for want of a trite metaphor, it’s like spending two years training for the marathon at the olympics and when it comes to the day of the race, you’re the one winning and you can see the finishing line… only to be shot at point blank range by the guy holding the finishing tape.

Maybe this is another area that needs to change within the music industry. Old school methods of promotion that mix with a high-tech world. How else are you going to get people to review your new albums? I’ve mentioned it to one or two bands over the past few years – is it possible to use the same encryption software that comes with programmes you find on Computer Magazine CDs? So that if the internet is flooded by MP3s of album that has yet to be released, they can only be opened for 30 days? I’d hate for artists to go down the Marillion route of handing their albums out free of charge.

Actually, what’s intrigued me is the number of fans of artists who do want proper hard copies of the albums. I can and know how to find albums online (ahem) free of charge, which is good given that I have a very wide taste in of music; however (your Honour), I do pride myself on the fact that I do buy them when I see them. Which is a pain when record companies do not keep backfilling the catalogue of every artist they’ve ever signed. And when an artist I like is about to release a new album, I do cringe over the possibility that that album could be online way before it ever gets released. The new Simple Minds (sorry, I’m the 34! But that opening track Moscow Underground is superb!), Prefab Sprout’s new one in September… it’s the emotional investment in the providing from the artist’s point of view and that child-like Christmas expectation that the fan has that’s at stake.

I used to know someone who worked in local radio and it was a regular occurrence that there would be piles of promotional cds (mainly for competitions) lying about or sat in people’s desk drawers, only for other presenters, station staff, friends of employees of the station who would be visiting to go “thank you very much”. Admittedly, we’re not talking the big artists here. The point being, it is so easily done. And these promotional items are given away free (at the artist’s expense, need we forget). It’s that hinterland between breach of trust, that the recipient will be kind enough to use the gift with the intent it was given, and to avert the potention (legal) breach of copyright. It’s not necessarily the journalist’s fault, or the ebay seller’s fault, but the person who rips it onto their computer for their own needs. Music is easily shared these days – either by illicit or complicit means.