The Counting Crows' new album is all covers -- and the long-lasting alt-rock band's giving away a sampler via BitTorrent. Grab the download bundle of 'Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation)' here.

The "guided tour of Counting Crows inspiration" has six items. There's four songs -- 'Untitled (Love Song),' 'Like Teenage Gravity,' 'Hospital' and 'Meet on the Ledge' -- as well as high resolution artwork and liner notes from frontman Adam Duritz.

As you may know, BitTorrent is a few things itself: It's the peer-to-peer 'information sharing' protocol that allows users to share bits and bytes in a decentralized manner. Tracking sites like ThePirateBay have gained notoriety for piracy charges. BitTorrent, Inc., is a bit different -- the company maintains the protocol as a for-profit business.

And now, as so much music is 'shared' (that means stolen) via BitTorrent, it seems BitTorrent, Inc., is stepping in to make the protocol a bit more broadly accepted. In this case, the artist is giving away the music directly, rather than an anonymous user uploading a leak. Duritz is all for the new campaign, citing that BitTorrent will help the Crows reach new listeners.

“I don’t know how I didn’t think of this earlier -- it’s the most obvious thing in the world since BitTorrent has such a huge global reach,”  Duritz said in an interview. “It’s not just about getting music to the people who would buy it anyway -- even though that is, of course, very good. The hardest thing to do is make new fans.”

 

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