[chefws]

White Stripes Battle Piracy With Vinyl

The White Stripes have sent out copies of their new album to a select few on vinyl, but fret not, come tax day, you'll have your Elephant spinning in your CD player.

While other bands have toyed with everything from watermarked CDs to hermetically sealed CD players to keep their music from leaking to the Internet, the White Stripes took a decidedly more retro approach when sending out advance albums to critics, the logic being that any music journalist worth their weight in free CDs owns a record player.

"[Frontman] Jack [White] wanted people to hear the music the way it was meant to be heard, which is on vinyl. [He wanted them] to listen to it as [we] used to listen to records," V2 Records president Andy Gershon said. "In addition, it just creates one extra step before someone can put it up on Limewire or KaZaa."

What can I say?