Nickelback frontman praises initiative to curb illegal music downloading
TORONTO (CP) – Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger showed up for a fast-food promotion Thursday, hoping to raise awareness about illegal music downloading.
Kroeger spoke at Toronto’s Eaton Centre as McDonald’s and Sony Music launched a joint worldwide campaign to give out free music downloads through Puretracks with every Big Mac sold.
“I’m the co-owner of a label, and illegal downloading is hurting us there and I’m a producer trying to get new music out there … it’s hurting every single facet of the music industry,” Kroeger said in an interview.
Due to confidentiality agreements, officials refused to say how the costs of the promotion are being borne by the parties involved.
Kroeger says he didn’t show up at the news conference to sell hamburgers. “I’m here to promote awareness and try to get people to change their mindset. Instead of stealing music, hopefully, they’re going to go to more sites like this (Puretracks) and download it.”
According to an Ipsos-Reid poll released last month, Canadians appear to be downloading songs less than they have in past years over fears of being slammed by a lawsuit, like those in the United States.
Kroeger says while it’s wonderful that people are thinking twice about downloading, their attack of conscience is for the wrong reason.
“Somebody’s saying ‘geez, I shouldn’t go do this because I might get caught’ instead of saying ‘geez, I shouldn’t do this because it’s the wrong thing to do.”‘
But Larry LeBlanc, Canadian bureau chief of Billboard Magazine, says he doesn’t believe a promotion like the Big Mac Meal Tracks will have much of an impact on illegal downloading activity because he thinks many people will simply do both. LeBlanc points out not every song in the world is available through Puretracks.
“How many people are going to download just one track? They’re going to download more tracks,” LeBlanc said Thursday. “So how many hamburgers can these people eat? They’re not going to eat 40 hamburgers to get 40 tracks downloaded.”
Overall, LeBlanc says a promotion like this is a win-win situation for everybody involved and it will benefit the music industry, the artists and the fast-food chain because it will help bring legal downloading into mainstream culture.
“Eventually what you’re going to see is … probably within a three- to five-year period of time every music retailer will have this kind of service where you walk into stores and have a legal download of some sort. We’re moving toward that kind of model,” he said.
The McDonald’s campaign will be up and running in Canada, the U.S. and Puerto Rico as of June 8 and is expected to run until the end of July. The same campaign will be launched in Britain, Germany and France next month.
Categories