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CAPITOL'S "KID AIMSTER" PROMOTION: HUH?

File-Sharing Campaign
Almost As Enigmatic As Radiohead
It's an unusual record promotion, as record promotions go.

First of all, it's really, really hard to find. Second of all, nobody appears to want to go on the record about it. And, perhaps most interestingly, it might not even exist.

So although Capitol Records has scored some headlines for "breaking with the pack" by doing a promotion for Radiohead's new album, "Kid A," via file-sharing application AIMster(which piggybacks on AOL Instant Messenger), they probably haven't risked excommunication from the secret major-label cabal.

While an invitation to a short-term promotion (including a custom Radiohead "skin" for the AIMster interface and some video clips) was supposed to greet users who downloaded the software, as was reported on CNET, this didn't happen for us. Ostensibly, though, users could also share music files with "buddies" on AOL and Net-based instant-messenger system ICQ.

When we downloaded the software, after seeing nothing Radiohead-related, we realized that we had no "buddies" online, or anywhere else. We did find, however, that by selecting the "Universe" button, we could search for Radiohead tracks on Scour quite easily. Dang, you can find the whole new album that way!

Of course, downloading all of "Kid A" would be wrong. We firmly believe that artists and labels should be paid for their music, so we'll be calling Capitol and asking for a free copy of the CD instead.

But wait, at Capitol's site, you're invited to hear the entire album as a stream on Heavy.com, as well as download a previously unreleased track and see other neat stuff. The pop-up menu for Heavy.com says "here it now," though we think they mean "hear."

We're still not sure how AIMster fits into this, but well let you know if we ever get to the bottom of it.

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