Alice Cooper’s ‘Along Came A Spider’ Available For Streaming Free Online

No, I’m not talking about “LimeWire” or “eDonkey” or any other file-sharing network or any music-sharing website. I’m talking about Alice Cooper’s official MySpace page and he has generously made his new album, Along Came A Spider, available to listen to in its entirety.

That’s a pretty cool thing to do for his fans, but also makes me wonder if it will hurt the sales of the album. As I checked out the album on Cooper’s MySpace page, I did notice that there was a “Download” link for each one of them, but clicking them just presented me with a message that read: “Artist has not enabled downloads for this song.”

Admittedly, I am not much of an Alice Cooper fan myself, and really didn’t have any interest in downloading any of those tracks, but I did want to see if he had taken his generosity to that level.

It appears that the intent is to simply let fans listen to the tracks from the new album by “streaming” them in real time from his MySpace page. However, there are always ways around such things and some clever person has probably already written a “ripper” to pull music from MySpace and download them to their own computer. Let’s face it, if you can hear it, there is a way to capture it.

For all I know, Cooper and everyone else involved in the production of the new album are already aware of this, and they know that once fans get their hands on the CDs, some of them will be uploading them to file-sharing networks anyway. In that respect, I guess there’s really no harm done to those who are in line to profit from the new album.

Even for the multitude of fans who lack the technical expertise to download the tracks from MySpace, isn’t there a chance that some fans might spend so much time listening to the streaming versions that they get their fill of it and decide not to spend the money for the CD? Maybe I’m off my rocker here, and just don’t know enough about the level of dedication Alice Cooper fans have for the legendary rocker.

Anyway, I still think it was pretty cool for Cooper and the others involved in the decision-making process regarding this move, and I’m sure there are many fans out there who appreciate it. Check it out at Alice Cooper’s official MySpace page.

The official release for Along Came A Spider is set for July 29.