And to think...

... I actually used to LIKE Lily Allen (well, as a person I’ve never been sure, but this recent saga will certainly affect my appreciation of her music).

So basically, some members of the FAC took a specific interest in how file sharers ought to be tackled. I’m fairly sure opinions on file sharing would have differed amongst the members, but they had one specific goal in mind: do not punish file sharers by suspending their Internet connections. To do so might turn them against the music industry. Seems fair enough to me.

So then, Ms Allen, in a rage of self-obsession, takes it upon herself to shout back at these folk, saying that piracy is not acceptable and people who file share should be punished. This is done somewhat haphazardly and crudely (she makes the unforgiveable mistake of confusing ‘stealing’ with ‘copyright infringement’), with only responses from the odd artist actually making any sense at all (and most of these were, like the FAC, not supporting file sharing but confessing that suspending Internet accounts is not the best form of punishment).

I’ll have to recall this to the best of my memory since she has now taken the blog down, but her argument centred around new artists that couldn’t be signed because people were ‘stealing’ their work, and moreover, the good kids at the record companies were losing jobs ‘because’ of Internet piracy. As others have pointed out, you can’t blame file sharing for a decline in music sales, because you can’t be sure that a downloaded file is the equivalent to one sale. And we are, moreover, in a recession that probably accounts for more money losses than file sharing does. Finally… is it just me that supposes one might be embarking on a career in music, not a business? Naturally, one needs to keep their head above water, but their priority ought to be getting their music heard.

That’s all I’m going to say about my view on file sharing. I don’t think any one person really knows exactly how it affects artists; record companies are clearly too obsessed with the money aspect and are spreading far too much propaganda to be trusted (‘stealing…’). What I do know is that Lily Allen is a moron. She eventually shut the blog down due to ‘abuse,’ which I detected no hint of. Quite the opposite, there were some very coherent comments on there… they just happened to argue against her. She didn’t bother to respond, then closed it down when she realised her game was up. Unbelievable. But it gets worse.

This woman then went and tried to convince people that her brief stint in blogging against file sharing had made a difference, and how she was now ‘passing the baton’ on to other artists. I feel sorry for whoever receives that mess of an argument to try and smooth out. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she said she wasn’t going to go to the FAC meeting because she didn’t want to detract from the issues at hand… what? That doesn’t make an ounce of sense. Why didn’t she just admit that she’d made a fool of herself in arguing some severely uninformed opinions against something that didn’t oppose her views in the first place?

Oh wait, she did go in the end. Radiohead guitarist deemed her ‘extremely brave.’ Please don’t feed the idiots.

Music Snobbery

Isn't it weird that people always claim that a mainstream version of something a little less well known simply murders the original? How very odd that a later version with much more funding is always classed as a brutal slaughtering. Do they do it on purpose?

I am talking about music, films, and other such media that attempt to remake or cover the original. I appreciate that it's always important to hold the original with some regard, but why on earth do people have this overwhelming need to slip into the conversation that they saw/heard the original before the arrival of the revised edition?

"The Japanese one was better."
"It's not as good as the book is" (Don't get me started on this one)
"They MURDERED that song."

Notice how, when someone covers an already famous song, people are less inclined to express sentences of this nature? Furthermore, it seems to work the other way round; "Yes, X is a great song, but I've heard this acoustic version by a band you've never heard of and it's SO much better." What do you want, a frigging medal?

I found the American version of "The Ring" scarier, and I think Leona's version of "Run" is better than Snow Patrol's. What are you going to do about it?