[Via Daily Swarm] In a fascinating post on the Tunecore blog, Tunecorner, Cheap Trick’s manager Dave Frey explains how Soundscan hurts artists by compiling and then selling their information to other record labels and music sellers, who then use it to cannibalize and undercut sales of new albums by way of predatory marketing for their own cheap, outdated wares. It’s an interesting and disturbing window into both the music and “information” marketplaces, how everything we do as fans — where we purchase cds or tickets or downloads, even where we read about our favorite artists — gets compiled into stats and files that are packaged and sold to whoever cares enough to pay, i.e. whoever stands to profit from such information. Yet even as Dave Frey has done his best to keep Soundscan’s greasy clutches off his clients’ industry whereabouts, the info-vulture still manages to purchase and re-sell enough information about Cheap Trick as to give parasitic former labels the opportunity to undercut sales of the new album (The Latest) with their own cheap re-issues and stupid repackaged “greatest hits” type crap.

So, if you’ve ever felt lame about purchasing some generic-looking “Best Of” instead taking the leap on an actual album, now you can and should feel a little lamer.