You make a good point. WE shouldn't care about that stuff. But when the band makes it so crystal clear that THEY care about it, it certainly warrants discussion when their plans to achieve it fall flat.
I feel like sometimes it distorts the picture, though.
Let's say 4 people taste a cake.
2 of them liked it, and 2 didn't.
But one of the 2 that did liked it, sees that the other 2 didn't and start saying that the cake was a failure/whatever.
Then the perception, for everyone involved, including the baker in case he's listening to his costumers, is that 3 out of 4 people didn't liked it, even when it was only 2/4.
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I know that many people disliked the release method, but I didn't. I had absolutely no problem with it, personally. I got for free an album that I really wanted. Me.
You and others in here have critizised several times that release method, and that's ok, I'm not complaining, but is it because you actually had a problem with it, or is because OTHER people (no fans, just general public) had a problem with it? My guess is that is the second, but I may be wrong, so asking anyway.
Either way, my point is that when someone complains "in the name of" other people (in this context) distorts the perception of how bad/good it was... are the fans who critizise the release method complaining because of it? ("dammit, not even our fans were ok with it") or just because non-fans hated it? ("oh well, at least our fans were happy about it!")
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We know what they say in the media, we kinda know what are their "big" goals, but we really don't have a clue about what were actually their expectatives or their plan to really know if it fell flat or not.