Does Lisa Robinson have the right idea about promos?

I’d been mulling over this Idolator story about Vanity Fair editor Lisa Robinson and her publicists’ memo about ‘no more promos’ (even if the memo itself isn’t recent).  I’ve seen reactions range from ‘when did VF really care about music?’ to ‘good for her for going green’ to ‘everything’s going digital anyway...’ I think all these responses are legit actually though from the tone of the memo, it does sound like she’s being an elitist crab who’s using ‘green’ as a cover for her decision. 

I get lots of promos too and while I’d love to listen and write about every single one of them that I find interesting, there just isn’t the time to do that.  I wouldn’t go so far to say ‘no more promos’ though.  Even with all of the music blogs out there plus MySpace plus P2P sites plus Last FM plus Pandora plus Napster plus E-Music plus mailing lists plus dozens of other ways to discover music, I still get surprises from promos.  I’d hate to give that up, not just because I wanna get off any gravy train but because the music nut in me wants to keep discovering music I didn’t know about or appreciate before. 

I’ve got no beef against downloads if they’re listenable- I received a recent one from a label for a great R&B band that was all tiny and fuzzy to hear, really distracting a lot from the music.  For streams, they’re not the same as accessing music the way you want and when you want so that’s not as convenient to hear and appreciate the music.  If labels can overcome these hurdles, I’m all for digital promos.  I have enough problems with finding shelve space for my CD’s and the price for external hard drives has dropped so much (500GB for only $100??) that it makes sense to go this way. 

On the external HD tip, I’d recommend getting one regardless if you’re filling up your old hard drive or not- do you really wanna lose all that music that you ripped or downloaded for months or years now?

—Jason Gross