"Have one on me," indeed, it would seem.

Drag City almost pulled it off.

Joanna Newsom's widely-anticipated new album, Have One On Me, is scheduled to be released in stores this coming Tuesday (February 23rd). And for a while, it really did look like it would be the first high-profile new release in a long, long time to make it to record-store shelves without appearing on the internet first.

As we just got through saying, we are firmly in year-end list season. And since it's 2009, we're also in decade-end list season (vote here! You're telling me you don't have an opinion on the Knife vs. LCD Soundsystem? Or In Rainbows vs. Veckatimest?). And all that's fine. It's kind of fun, even, sometimes.

Pointy-eared, ivory-tower webternet theorists and starched-collar marketing gurus love to talk about the power of social networking. And major record labels have spent millions combatting internet music piracy. But today they all should be taking a lesson from Boston hardcore heroes CONVERGE.

Two days ago, when Converge's new album Axe To Fall leaked to the internet (its official release date is October 20), the band did something that appears to be unprecedented: they publicly shamed the leaker.

This is what the internet looked like when Chinese Democracy should have been released

Big week on the internet this week for music, as the last wave of high-profile 2008 releases are making their way to the masses.

First, Chinese Democracy is here. If you're reading this, chances are you know what Chinese Democracy is by now, which means you also know it has its origins in the 1990s.