The source of the leak has been traced to a French journalist. The person in question has been caught, but the damage has already been done.
‘It will surely affect record sales,’ according to Nelli Ahvenlahti , International Exploitation Manager at Spinefarm Records in a reaction to Iltalehti, the daily paper that first reported the story in Finland. ‘It has been made very easy [to download a pirate copy, D.B.] and the threshold is low.’
Large numbers of pirate copies of Dark Passion Play have by now been downloaded, many thousands via one single Finnish web service alone.
It is not the first time Nuclear Blast has blundered with Nightwish material. Earlier this year, the release of “Eva“, Nightwish’s long-anticipated first single with new singer Anette Olzon, had to be put forward after it, too, had been leaked onto the internet via the German record company.
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