No Sales Depression

“After more than a year’s delay, (Wilco)’s fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, will be released April 23. But impatient fans have not had to wait: Wilco offered the album for free on the Web six months ago, and it has since been vigorously traded on peer-to-peer networks, making it the best test to date of the Internet’s culpability in the current record-industry slump. If the album sells despite having been released online, the industry could lose its favorite scapegoat–and have to focus attention on other explanations for the current listless state of CD sales.” The New Republic