Ah, the music industry really doesn’t grok teh intenetz. Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who coordinated the Australian Music In Tune propaganda flick I mentioned on the weekend, didn’t know their website was offline until phoned them. Meanwhile I’ve written a piece on this for Crikey, to appear a couple hours from now. [Update 1.20pm: It’s being held over until tomorrow. Apparently Crikey found something more important than me.]
Oh you poor, dear record companies…
You’ve got to hand it to “the music industry”. This week they released a propaganda film Australian Music In Tune which asks us to sympathise with musicians because they’re all poor struggling artists. Diddums.
The only reason musicians trying to “make it” are poor is that as soon as they do get that sought-after recording contract they still pay for everything from there on. Before they see a single cent from their music, they have to pay off the studio hire, recording engineer, video director, stylists, set designers, editor and dozens of other parasites — including music company executives with their nice lunches and their BMW leases.
An entire industry — “the music industry” and their retail outlets — sits between the musicians and their audience, sucking out something like 90% of the money in the process.
And they have the gall to rope musicians into their propaganda film under false pretences, telling people like Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall that it was a movie about life as an artist.
He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.
OK, so who are the guys in the photo? Jared Madden (left) and Adam Purcell (right) have created tune-out.com in response to the industry crying poor.
Page 161
I noticed this blogging meme over at Quatrefoil’s place and thought I’d give it a try. The results are surprising.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 161.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Use what’s actually next to you.
And the sentence is:
“Sensitive site exploitation will continue.”
That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense by itself, but the next one adds all the context you need:
So far there had been no WMD stockpiles found.
The book is State of Denial: Bush At War, Part III by investigative journalist Bob Woodward. It’s been months since I read it but for some reason it’s still on my desk.
This afternoon the BBC reports that unnamed “US officials” have evidence that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. Here we go again. I think I might listen to some classic Detroit techno instead.
Apple becomes biggest music retailer in US
Apple is now the number one music retailer in the US, surpassing Wal-Mart in January 2008. Apple now sells 19% of all recorded music in the US, Wal-Mart 15%, Best Buy 13% and Amazon 6%. Hat-tip to Daring Fireball.
The Real Brendan Nelson
Will the real Brendan Nelson please stand up? Is it the man Annabel Crabb saw on Tuesday, the mild-mannered doctor with “substantial empathy for those suffering from misfortune” whose “attention is drawn disproportionately to the Gothic end of the human suffering spectrum”? Or is the rabid Bon Jovi fan?
Quotes of the Day, 11 March 2008
Eavesdropping highlights from the last 24 hours:
- “Somehow I suspect book lovers feel the same way about Harry Potter as music lovers feel about Jeff Buckley.” (Alastair Rankine)
- Overheard while walking past a house where young boys were playing noisily: “I’m the birthday boy so I have to be team leader.”
- “Someone in my office just said ‘cyberspace’. I hope I’m not paying them.” (abacab)
- In response to my comment, “Stilgherrian is thinking about things that geeks think about”, someone who should probably remain nameless said: “Most geeks I know think about banging Natalie Portman in a blow-up-pool filled with custard…”
- “Stilgherrian, one day in the future, your life will confuse historians.” (Nick Hodge)