Blacksmoke on eBay Three days ago, an eBay member from London sold a copy of the Blacksmoke promo EP on eBay for £63 - quite a huge amount for some material that was intended to be free for everybody, being available for download on the Blacksmoke homepage. "That CD contains material that was available from our website completely free of charge," says Keir Jens-Smith, manager of Blacksmoke. "That was an industry demo showreel and really should be given away (certainly not sold). The person selling it should be quite ashamed as they're probably an industry executive that's now guilty of copyright infringement. One has to ask why anyone should subsequently feel guilty of downloading music gratis if label exec's are selling other artists music that was supposed to be free? That's just bad karma!" This sure is a good point here, but it gets even better - the seller is indeed a record label executive who received the promo directly from Blacksmoke. "Music exec's lament the industry collapse but refuse to accept any responsibility," Jens-Smith continues, "look at iTunes download chart. The public love music, they love good music, they have diverse taste and they are free to download the music they really want. Look at the charts... is it the same as the download charts? Nope. The fact is, this guy kind of reflects the common industry attitude. Anything challenging and fresh is just too "dangerous" for them, but he's happy to sell it on eBay and people are willing to pay decent money for it? How very ironic." Well, discuss. I will put the most interesting answers online. ..::// Thomas