It doesn't matter if the Gama Bomb was free or not that is the only thing that has been proved here. You cannot fight file sharing. Phil is right there, but you don't have to go "Oh well here's the album for free" as all they have shown is that the people who were going to buy it, would buy it and the people who wouldn't... well yeah. FACT is it hardly did anything and maybe brought a bit more of a loss than usual because they had the free CDs in Metal Hammer or Terrorizer (I forget).
Another thing it proves is that the quality of music still sells albums in my opinion. The 35K Dig was referring to on his label has to be Evile, especially if Gama Bomb are what the second biggest on their label? Evile wrote a quality first album and that shot them right up. People will still download it though so there's no point in making it free like that. What you could do is just ignore the fact people are illegally downloading it and just market the CD to get that sold.
Also I believe the music industry needs to move on with the times. You can't constantly find new ways and take people to court over downloading. It's impossible to stop. You have to move forwards with the time. Say with things like Spotify. Free STREAMING music but you can still gain money from it. So people won't download an album they'll listen to it on Spotify because that's easier to do. And even though there's only a small profit from it... There's still a profit.
Another way I've discussed in the past is like your TV license. You have to pay for a TV license which pays the wages of everybody involved in the media there. AND music videos too... It's PRS money that's gained but that money is coming from the viewers.
SO when you pay your monthly internet bill or whatever. If you have downloaded... There could EASILY be an automatic fee there. And that fee can go to the labels and the bands. It would be automatic payment, just like when you pay your TV License. BUT the music industry is taking ages to move on. I sent this idea out in an open letter to our old government, obviously got no reply. But the fact is it makes sense.
ANOTHER way of regulating torrents. A more trust-able way of no viruses and what not. Why can't there be an official torrent website? Sorta like they have iTunes. Where you pay to download a torrent.
There are soooo many ways the music industry CAN move forwards. So why the fuck aren't they? Don't sit back and let it slip away. DO something about it.
