Hits In The Car

I downloaded the brilliant new (and very Kraftwerk "inspired") song Talk by Coldplay Friday evening. I then started searching for the lyrics, which I DID find, but I also found the following message on coldplaying.com:

'Talk' is the first track to be heard from Coldplay's X&Y era - it was leaked via Peer 2 Peer filesharing in March 2005, before Coldplay had the chance to mix it fully. Subsequently, it won't be on Coldplay's 3rd album and is likely to be a B-side to the single 'Speed Of Sound'.

Just like everyone else I'm very eager to hear any new material from my favourite bands as quickly as possible. And normally I don't have any guilty conscience about downloading the songs prior to their releases, because I will buy the albums as soon as they hit the shops anyway. I know the artists don't agree on this, because they want to be the ones who decide when their songs become public. This is obviously not that difficult to understand, but I think they have themselves (or the record companies) to blame.

In the case of Coldplay the talk about the new album X&Y has already begun, even though it won't be released until 6th June 2005! Two weeks before that the new single Speed of Sound is released, which by then probably has been played for a month or even more on various radio stations.

Sorry guys. When I hear a song on the radio I want to be able to buy it - NOW. I'm not satisfied knowing that it can be mine maybe 5 weeks from now.
I fully understand the mechanisms in work here, where the record companies are trying to create a demand for the single and the album. But for hardcore fans of the band and music in general it's just an unnecessary and pointless period of wasted time they (we!) have to go through. So if anyone is prepared to share or (even better) leak the single/album, don't expect that anyone of us will try to stop it, because we really want to hear it!

So I think the artists should stop fooling around making tons of interviews months before an album is released, claiming that "this is a groundbreaking album" or "this is our best album yet!" etc. Just get the damn thing released, so we can buy it and hear for ourselves.

However this time I think it's a great shame that a song was leaked, because apparently it happened prematurely (the song wasn't fully mixed) thus (unfortunately) forcing Coldplay to exclude it from X&Y.
Without knowing a single other song from that album I find it hard to believe that they have written 10-12 songs better than this. If (and this is a very big IF) they have, X&Y is definitely going to be a fantastic album!