C’mon guys, you Know The Deal… it was stolen!

On November 27th, 2024 out of the blue a “new” Goo Goo Dolls release appeared on the internet: a 1991 live show which was not officially released by the band. “YAY!”, you might say. Hold your horses, Goo enthusiasts. Something fishy is going on here.

There is a live show which is being sold on some digital stores, and it is also streamable on platforms such as Spotify. It is titled “Know The Deal (Live)”. Bear in mind, this release is not available for those who live in the USA, furthermore only a few countries in Europe are allowing it to be commercialized. Below is a screenshot of the album as it appears on the Italian section of Qobuz:

Hold on a second… Haven’t I seen that track listing before. Right, Sean?

I’m sure you all remember Sean Hampson. He is the first Contributor the Temple has had the pleasure of working with. He provided us with a lot of amazing content, which you can find (but not download) here.

One of his first releases was a 1991 concert that was aired on the radio, specifically this one: the “Hold Me Up” Promo Show at The Industry. I was able to listen to the entire “Know The Deal” release and, believe it or not, it sounds exactly the same as Sean’s release. If you have the opportunity to listen to “Know The Deal”, and feel like comparing it to Sean’s version, below is the latter:

How can that be? Simple. Someone stole it from Sean, and from the Temple as well, and is trying to make a profit off it. As you can see in the screenshot above, they are charging 10.12 Euro for a purchase.

Let’s do a quick dive into who posted that release on digital stores, after having stolen it from us and Sean without our consent.

The label publishing it is called Pipe Dream (Is that a reference to the pipe dream of making money by milking someone else’s work?) and on Qobuz they have released other bootlegs, as you can see below. I wonder if the artists or bootleggers for those gave their consent to have their stuff released by Pipe Dream. Please notice that the US version of Qobuz only features one release under Pipe Dream, whereas in some of the European sections, like the one pictured below, they include a more extensive list.

I couldn’t find any more information about Pipe Dream after a couple of hours of internet research. I thought that informing our readers about this was important. It looks like some people like to steal our releases, which I’m fine with. However, trying to make a buck off of it is something I don’t think it’s quite cool.