Pop star David Bowie has turned to the Internet as a way of correcting a mistake on his CD “Bowie at the Beeb.” A free Bowie track is being made available online to those who have bought the 3-CD set, due to an error in the original printing of the CD.
The CD has two identical versions of the song Ziggy Stardust, as opposed to the two separate versions, both originally recorded in 1972, which were intended for the disk, MusicMatch Inc. said in a statement Tuesday.
Rather than recall the CD, David Bowie, EMI Group PLC and Virgin Records Ltd. are taking advantage of the Internet as a way of correcting the mistake, the company said.
Those who have already purchased the CD can go to the MusicMatch Web site for the download of the song, “Ziggy Stardust,” if they first download and install a copy of the MusicMatch Jukebox, the company said.
An estimated 250,000 copies were shipped before the error was discovered, the company said.
Once the MusicMatch Jukebox program is downloaded, the user can then put the CD into the CD-ROM drive at which point the CD will be identified and the “new” live version of Ziggy Stardust can be downloaded onto the PC, MusicMatch said.
The technology that identifies the CD is called CDKey, which was developed by Gracenote Inc. (formerly CDDB Inc.)
More information on downloading the David Bowie song can be found at http://www.musicmatch.com/get_music/. EMI Group, in London, can be reached at http://www.emigroup.com/. Gracenote, in Berkeley, Calif., can be contacted at http://www.gracenote.com/. MusicMatch, in San Diego, Calif., can be contacted at http://www.musicmatch.com/.