to be honest....
Date: September 15, 2000 11:15AM
I doubt it really matters one way or the other and I doubt sales will change by that much. The hardcore fans that have to get everything will buy the Japanese import anyway for the extra song so US sales drop by what? 500 copies??? um....I think they might lose $$$ here!!! lol Seriously though, the average fan probably doesn't even know there is a cd coming out and is not going to pay $30+ to mail order a cd when there is an imminent US release of the cd. I just don't see the advance release in Japan affecting the American market much---other than maybe INCREASING sales is the word is good so Sony might put a little more effort into promoting the cd in the US.
As far as Napster goes, it probably is a matter of time before the full Japanese cd is there....but unless you have practically a network connection, it's hardly worth your time to spend 1-2hrs per song downloading everything. Most people are running on a 56k connection--and there just isn't enough hours in the day to spend trying to mess with Napster and it's 20,000,000 transfer errors to get a full cd. More than likely, people will just dl the bonus song and wait for the US release to come out.
We shall see....
Kevin