Lots of artists are going the way I'd like them to by the look of it. Preventing "bootlegging" by making the material people want to hear available. Radiohead recently said they support Napster and loved the fact their first gig of their latest tour was available online that night, and that fans new the words to songs not officially released yet by the end of the tour.
Apparently radio stations have been playing the new Pumpkins tracks on the radio (JJJ). This is going to shake a lot of legs.
Smashing Pumpkins print their own bootlegs
The Smashing Pumkpins, angry at the lack support their record company has given them, has printing a set of 3x10", 2xLP vinyl records of their left over material entiled 'Machina II/ The Friends & Enemies Of Modern Music'. They made 25 copies of the set and send it out into the fan world to be bootlegged.
The album can be downloaded here.
If the band really wanted to shake things up they could have put this material on mp3.com, signed up for payolla and put the money into paying the record company to get their songs back. Heck, put everything up online, why not. As far as I'm concerned, it's yours.
Well done SP.
Clarification
My previous message about Pearl Jam releasing 12 bootlegs of their European tour... it was 25 CDs. Oops. I've thought about this and I would have prefered the band made all the songs available and also made a system where fans could choose songs from all the gigs and have a CD made up, much like the Beastie Boys did for their recent "Best Of" deal. But still, they rule for doing it.
Pre_Shrunk soon
I'm writing a review. Up soon.