Costello "official" website

[pophead2k]

Excellent! They are streaming the entire album on 'S,P & SC' page.

[mood swung]

thanks for that!

back porch music. yes. liking.

[Miclewis]

At first listen, I have to say the album is pretty great. I think I am most impressed with "I Felt the Chill" (co-written with Loretta Lynn) and "She Handed Me a Mirror".

It is amazing how flexible the ensemble is. Country, Bluegrass, Irish Folk, and even Classical on the Secret Song Tracks.

I was easily able to download the streamed tracks. I don't feel too guilty because I already have pre-ordered the LP and the iTunes exclusive version.

I think I already found the best spot for "Dirty Rotten Shame". Track 9, between "How Deep is the Red" and "She Was No Good".

[MOJO]

I think Red Cotton is my favorite. Cool site... love the design. fun.

[Ypsilanti]

Love, Love, LOVE "The Crooked Line".

Have to listen to the whole thing a few more time for full absorption, but MAN! It sounds really good!

[Lester Burnham]

Love, Love, LOVE "The Crooked Line".

Have to listen to the whole thing a few more time for full absorption, but MAN! It sounds really good!

Agreed, but I was prejudiced already, having heard a version from July '05 and deciding it was a gorgeous song. Next favorite is 'Sulphur to Sugarcane'.

[always dancing]

The site is totally different although it makes me a little dizzy when it switches pages. I like this
"Here's a page of two to invite you to our new adventure
No payment due
None is required"

No payment due!!!!

[the_platypus]

"Think everything is free?
Don't ask me
How should I know?
Why should it be?
Why should it be so?"

Wow, Elvis is real bitter about this whole music piracy thing

[cwr]

To be honest, I'm never quite certain what Costello's position is on this. On the one hand, he clearly has no love for the Internet. He appeared to be taking a crack at Steve Jobs and the iPod in a recent interview, and blames mp3 for breaking the album as an artistic format, yet we've read about him giving pre-loaded iPods to friends as gifts. And while he clearly has never been part of the "music is free" crowd, he was proud to add his commentary against the anti-piracy FBI warning on the Delivery Man CD ("This artist does not endorse the following warning. The FBI doesn't have his home phone number, and he hopes that they don't have yours.") Now he's streaming his album for free on his website!!

My hope is that SP&SC does really well, because it will show Costello that he doesn't need to fear the 'net. Momofuku thwarted early online leaks be going to vinyl before showing up on CD, but it really ended up contributing to that album barely getting noticed. (It barely even got reviewed in the UK.) Obviously a free album stream is a completely new approach for EC, but I think that for every album sale that might be lost because he's "giving it away" he'll gain five more sales from people just by getting the music out there for more ears to hear it.

[MOJO]

I tried to stream a few tracks from this site (after the release) and now it's only streaming 30 seconds? What's the deal and who is in favor? Come on, man! Let the tracks be free for one week after the release date! Tell your marketing dept. to collect info. on the listener, if you want something back... Now, I have to resort to outtakes of S2S, etc.

[MOJO]

sorry, let me clarify... I have no outtakes. I have what you have... live recordings of some of the SP&S tracks. later.

[mood swung]

EC's myspace page has been taken over by some girl named Selena Gomez. is it just me?

weird.

[woz]

EC's myspace page has been taken over by some girl named Selena Gomez. is it just me?

weird.

Not sure what you're looking at but http://www.elviscostello.com is working fine now.

Good luck.

[And No Coffee Table]

The problem was with http://www.myspace.com/elviscostello .

It's mostly fixed now, but as of this writing it still lists selenagomez.com as the band website.

[johnfoyle]

Earlier in this thread you can read about the fun 'n games some of us had with a 'Elvis Costello Premium Web site' - some Paul McCartney fans have just had a taste of something similar -

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/ ... embership/

News
Hello Goodbye: McCartney cancels website premium membership

November 1, 2012

by Paul Sinclair



Paul McCartney fans, who less than a year ago paid close to £40 for premium membership of his website, have today been emailed and told that changes have been made to paulmccartney.com and that “Premium Membership, will not feature in the new site”.

To thank the people who signed up for premium membership, the PM.com team are putting together a “package of goodies” that will include a free download of Paul’s forthcoming film, Live Kisses.

This is rather bizarre, and seems to bring to an end a premium membership scheme that promised much at the beginning, but actually delivered very little. People who signed up, late last year, originally received a membership card, a lithograph, a T-shirt, some small badges, a plectrum and a free download of an Paul McCartney album that, by definition, virtually every fan wanting premium membership would already have owned.

The card carrying members were then disappointed when the RAM reissue happened in May (amazingly, the one and only archive collection reissue in the 11 months the membership has been active) when nothing exclusive was offered to them. However, if you weren’t a premium member you did get a nice bonus – a free ’digital’ version of the membership given away with the deluxe ‘book’ version of RAM. You are reading that correctly. Paying members got nothing extra, and non-members got free membership.

Given the depth of Paul’s archive – McCartney’s manager Scott Rodger refers to it in this interview – it seems ridiculous that not one single audio track from the archive was ever offered to paying premium members. Especially when you consider the slow rate of progress with the archive reissues.

Even when it’s time to say goodbye, Paul McCartney’s team are seemingly completely oblivious to what the hardcore fans really want. Rather than promoting the latest project – Live Kisses? no thanks! – why not give us premium members what we were expecting during the last year in the first place – high quality downloads (FLAC) of unreleased outtakes from his classic albums, such as RAM, Band On The Run, or McCartney?

Now that would be something.

[HopeYou'reHappyNow]

I have to admit that I was never a fan of the idea of "premium membership", but was a premium member thanks to my purchase of the deluxe Ram box. I was happy about the idea of real fans getting their hands on pre-sale codes, but didn't agree with the £40/$60 payment. It's not as if McCartney is short of a few bob, is it? Still, other artists do it, such as Clapton, so he wasn't exactly alone in having this idea. I didn't have a problem with premium membership coming free with a McCartney purchase - to separate the real fans who buy McCartney albums from the touts who snap up the tickets in order to attempt to extort fans. I say "attempt", because I've never bought from a tout and never would - but I know there are plenty of people who do pay hundreds of pounds to touts in order to get decent seats. Of course, if there wasn't the demand, there wouldn't be the supply, but that's a separate issue.

I do think they've screwed over the fans a bit, but it's difficult to feel too aggrieved about seeing the end of a two-tier membership which arguably made "ordinary" members feel like second class citizens and that I never really agreed with in the first place. I shan't be taking up the offer of a free download from "Live Kisses" as I can't stand the studio album. One of the worst - possibly the worst - things Paul has ever done.