Every now and then you get reminded that despite its veneer of sophistication the interweb can often be little more than a brawling saloon bar in the wild West or a braying lynch mob hungry for blood.
In the last day or so there’s been a little bit of controversy about what appeared to be a music critic for a daily newspaper putting up an unopened promo disc on ebay. I came across this story via Twitter and went to Stereokill (a site I’d not heard of before) to check it out.
The fact that the artist concerned, Imogen Heap, was taking direct action and trying to scupper the sale by upping the bid to millions of dollars appealed to me.
I’ve had experience of trying to persuade Ebay (not to mention Blogger, Myspace, Wordpress, et al) that a particular user is breaching their stated terms and conditions, often to no particular effect. Figuring that it's often easier to get blood from a stone, I was pleased to see Imogen taking it on this way.
Another artist whose work I'm fond of, Thomas Dolby, picked up on the Ebay battle in what I thought was a great post about music critics in general and has since reported today that the issue has been resolved.
What was interesting for me in all of this was the response to the story over in Stereokill’s comments section; veiled threats, demands for resignations, people offering all kinds of “helpful suggestions” as to how the investigation should be pursued and prosecuted.
It’s not what is being said so much as the tone of it.
By internet standards it’s all fairly tame stuff.
Yet I can’t help shudder when I read this kind of "hang 'em high" knee-jerk tosh which people always seem in such a hurry to spout off.
Posts
6 comments:
laughing quietly to myself...but hats off to Imogen Heap for her approach - very funny. I was a buyer for a major chain in the 80's and 90's, back when promos flowed from a never-ending well. I often dealt with others who schemed the system to make a living off selling promos and it always repulsed me. With the industry in it's current state, watermarking helps...sure...but is not enough, and perhaps entirely inappropriate.
Hmmm... you've hit upon a particular issue that deserves wider exposure and one I've been trying to alert DGM Live to... the manner in which "bloggers" can, and do give away entire albums and discographies for free because Blogger LET THEM. Challenge Blogger and point out that copyright is being violated, they just fob you off with a generic mail informing you of their belief in "free speech" therefore they won't take any action and the blogger carries on with their heinous deeds. Only way they can be stopped is if the artiste themselves mess about filing a DMCA... and what happens? That blogger will tell it's readers that they've had a DMCA filed on them and that particular artiste is then regarded as an "asshole" simply for protecting their work...
Makes my blood boil.
I commented on Stereokill that the only way to stop this is to not give away promos - but that means journos would need to buy your CD for you to get a review...
So, surely, the sales generated by a good review based on a free copy are worth more than the freebie CD giveaway - or why do it? And that includes the rather insulting situation of an unopened promo being sold on...
I read Thomas Dolby's piece on the matter and noted that the cost of promos, be they CDs or lavish parties, are deducted from the artists royalties, not paid for by the record company - this points to poor work on the part of the artists legal representatives - but hey, in those days you did anything to get a deal, right?
As for MP3 Blogs, I was dismayed last year when trying to publicise my own music, through my own blog, through links to uploads of my own material, that Blogger removed my posts without permission on the basis of some robot software identifying my song titles as being work copyrighted by someone else...
I had no recourse...
Yet Blogger accomodates hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs from which whole albums can be downloaded illegally for free with no reference whatsover to the artists' copyrights...
How can that be?
Anyway, there you go - just my worth less than two cents worth...
Right on, Mr. Smith!
I'm the editor of Stereokill, and helped write the story which then became the focal point for a lot of the anger. Unfortunately, we later found that we leapt to the wrong conclusion and called out the wrong person, so we had to eat our words a little bit.
The problem, I think, lies not with the idea of sending out promos (we receive a lot of them, and would never dream of putting anything on eBay), but in a somewhat un-targeted approach to who receives them (which also leads to a lot of them not being listened to), and a lack of care taken by some in how they are kept and disposed of.
Hi there Marcus,
Whilst the comments here tended to focus on the notion about who gets promos and what happens to them, the thrust of my post was aimed at the "hang 'em high" rush-to-judgement attitude by many folks commenting on your original article.
Post a Comment