Despite rampant piracy which forced

Despite rampant piracy which forced the record company to release it several weeks early and disrupted their advertising campaign, Eminem’s new CD sold nearly 300,000 copies during the first long weekend to debut at number 1.

“We’ve never had a record debut at No. 1 on the SoundScan chart that hasn’t had the benefit of a full six days of sales behind it,” said Mike Shalett, chief executive of SoundScan. Yet Interscope Geffen A&M, the label behind Eminem, insists that illegal copies, made from one of three closely guarded master copies sent to manufacturers, hurt the release.

I believe most people will buy a CD after sampling several tracks by downloading MP3s, if it’s something they want to listen to.