An article at C4SS has had to be corrected due to factual inaccuracies that came out after publication. I regret the error I made in the commentary, “Music Piracy as Market Correction,” and have made the necessary changes to reflect the new information. At the top of that post you’ll find a shorter version of this statement.

One of the great things about working at an anarchist think tank like C4SS is that everyone I write with is also my editor, proofreader and ombudsman. I thank my colleague Jonathan Carp for alerting me to the developments in the commentary’s news hook – mainly that the source of the original Iron Maiden story, Citeworld journalist Andy Patrizio, reported incorrectly on information obtained by analytics company MusicMetric. Citeworld has posted a correction of their own, saying:

Update and correction: Due to writer error, an original version of this article stated that Iron Maiden used MusicMetric’s analysis to plan its South American tours. MusicMetric did not work directly with Iron Maiden. The analysis described in this article was carried out without the band’s participation or knowledge, and we have no confirmation that the band ever saw or used it. CITEworld deeply regrets this error, and we apologize to our readers.

Luckily, the phenomenon described in the commentary – that artists are taking advantage of the tools that brought the recording industry to its knees – is occurring with enough frequency to make this a relevant topic of discussion, with or without an Iron Maiden hook.

At C4SS, news commentary is the main source of content, with feature articles and other work interspersed throughout. This means that we rely somewhat heavily on what is essentially secondhand information – news reports or blog posts about events and issues that display relevance to our mission statement – to form the basis of our work. Every article we publish is discussed, edited and fact-checked to the best of our ability, but sometimes it isn’t enough. To quote a colleague, getting things wrong sometimes is “hard to avoid if you’re trying to be topical.”

Personally, it stings to see an article have to undergo surgery because an element of it doesn’t ring true. And personally, I feel like I got lazy in relying on the Citeworld article to provide my hook. So I do apologize for the error, and I will work to eliminate future such errors before you even read my work as much as possible.