January 30th, 2008 Justin
It seems the U2 manager wants illegal downloaders ‘blacklisted’ and reckons that downloading is ‘destroying the recorded music industry’:
McGuinness targeted makers of devices that have been used to play copyrighted content [... saying] “Hardware makers should share with the content owners whose assets are exploited by the buyers of their machines”.
As Techdirt noted — ‘The oil industry’s success is built on the backs of the automobile industry, but does the automobile industry demand that oil companies have a moral obligation to pay them? Computer makers have built a multibillion dollar industry on the backs of the internet and software companies — yet, no one says they have a moral obligation to pay those companies anything. Travel guides have built huge business based on hotels and restaurants around the globe, but does anyone think that those travel guides owe the hotels and restaurants money for doing so?’
He argued that the recent Radiohead release of a download priced on the honesty box principle had backfired. He said: “It seems that the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire even though the album was available for nothing through the official band site.”
The majority were through torrents? That’s not what Forbes.com says: ‘more than 500,000 total illegal downloads [... is] less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com.’ Also, going by these comments, it looks like a fair few of the torrent downloaders were doing so because the main site was so hammered they couldn’t get through that way — even though they wanted to.
“Notwithstanding the promotional noise, even Radiohead’s honesty box principle showed that if not constrained, the customer will steal music.”
Yeah! Fucking customers! I’m sure the world would be better off without them,
allowing U2 to get on with the job of making $355 million per tour, without these thieving
scum getting in the way. ….oh, wait…
This
isn’t the first time McGuinness has foisted consumer-hating crap on us. Check
right for a photo of himself and Bonio grinning in support of the extension of copyright
in the UK — presumably he’s worried that Bonio’s great-grandchildren won’t be kept in
the style they’re accustomed to in 95 years
time.
All I can say is, read the Techdirt article.
It scuppers his greedy ranting much better than I can:
More money is being made on concert revenue than ever before. More artists are making music than ever before. More music is being heard than ever before. Even more musical instruments are being sold than ever before in the past. Yet, because one segment of the market (the one selling plastic discs) is unwilling to take some simple steps to change its business model, everyone else has to pay up?
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January 14th, 2008 dukelukem
I missed out on the first three of this French label’s compilation albums and though the fourth one has copped a bit of flak from the blogorati I reckon there’s plenty of good stuff on there, mostly in that Ed Banger/DFA indie meets electro style.
Highlights include a vocoder heavy fuzzy remix by Boyz Noise of Feist’s My Moon My Man which sounds pretty sweet and a song by twitchy Britindie hopefuls Foals which I saw on Channel 6 last night (the leader singer has got a catastrophically bad hairstyle bless him.)
Feist - My Moon My Man (Boyz Noise Remix)
Foals - Hummer (love that glitchy section about 2 mins in!)
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January 13th, 2008 Justin
Man, this is scandalous!
‘Many fans came to know [Scientist's] music due to half of his album ‘Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires’ being used on the soundtrack for the popular videogame Grand Theft Auto III. The tracks on the fictitious radio station ‘K-Jah’ are composed entirely of songs from this album. However, Scientist received no royalties for this, and sued Rockstar Games unsuccessfully in a US court. The court ruled that according to precedent a recording mixer was not considered the author of a musical work, and so Rockstar were correct to treat the producer Henry “Junjo” Lawes as the copyright holder of the album.
This ruling could be argued to neglect the fundamental difference between dub-reggae and other kinds of music - after all, the album is marketed as ‘Scientist rids the world of the evil curse of the vampires’: so the publishers and self identified licensors are prepared to attribute authorship to Hopeton Brown when it suits them, but not when it comes to paying him royalties. It can, however, be argued that Scientist was introduced to a much larger audience as a result of the licensing of his album to Rockstar, in which case he may have sold more albums as a result.’
Scientist is a fucking genius, and ‘Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires’ one of the best dub albums recorded. What a scam.
Pick up some great Scientist tunes at It’s Coming Out Of Your Speaker….
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January 3rd, 2008 Justin
Happy new year!
I’ve been remiss in blogging here — new job (in an office rather than working from home) and so on, means less opportunity to listen to music. Hopefully I can remedy that soon.
Still, while I’m here, let’s enjoy this fine anti-acid lecture from the ‘Big Lebowski’ soundtrack:
Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
This features in the middle of this superb ‘Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve’ DJ set from July — if you fancy a bit of dance-tinged psych, go download it asap! A good few of the tracks in that set are from their new “West” EP, it looks like.
Also, I’ve heard a leak of the new Hot Chip album. I have to disagree with the occasional bad review I’ve read on the blogs — I think it sounds fantastic, and I’m really looking forward to it dropping in Feb.
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