DETROIT, MI  [Tuesday Mar.2.2004]  /WMQT.com/ -- A week before Sarah McLachlan's "Afterglow" was released, fans could purchase live versions of five songs she had recorded while appearing on radio shows to promote the album. As record labels and online music sellers figure out how to sell their products on the internet, they come up with some pretty nifty innovations. Take Beyonce's version of the "Star-Spangled Banner." You think that's going to wind up on her next album? Of course not. So what to do with it? Sell it online for a buck and bang-lotsa bucks.

It used to be that fans could only access songs that weren't on albums through bootlegging, which meant a lot of great recorded music was missed. Thanks to the internet, those songs are made available to the public through websites like Apple Computer's iTunes, and everyone wins. For example: The day after Beyonce's Superbowl anthem, the song was sold on iTunes for 99 cents and was the top seller for a week solid.

In the six years it took Sarah McLachlan to make the leap from album #4 to album #5, fans were chomping at the bit for some new material. When iTunes made her radio performances available, fans leapt at the chance to hear something new. "It's exciting," McLachlan says of the technological developments since her last release. "You either embrace it or you lose out."

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