p2pnet.net News:- “Spitzer’s iron wrist shits to music industry”

Shits to music industry? So says Xinhuanet, the web site for China’s official state news agency, Xinhua.

It almost works, and it carries over into the body text. But obviously, it’s an error and the story goes on:

“Investigators in Mr. Spitzer’s office have served subpoenas on the four major record corporations – the Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group and the Warner Music Group – seeking copies of contracts, billing records and other information detailing their ties to independent middlemen who pitch new songs to radio programmers in New York State.”

For years, most sections of the mainstream print and electronic media have been serving up music industry lies, half-truths and disinformation pieces exactly as though they came from credible sources.

In all fairness, many (most?) of the outlets involved often don’t have much of a choice. They’re either owned – directly or at arm’s length – by the industry they’re supposed to be fairly and accurately reporting on, or they receive enough in the way of advertising dollars to make bucking Big Music an unpalatable, if not completely unacceptable, proposition.

However, in this case, there’s no problem because the story comes from the New York attorney general’s office and there’s no way it can be mis-reported, or not reported at all, especially because it’s Part II of the Big Four vs Spitzer story.

In Part I, he forces the members of the Big Music cartel – UMG (France), Sony-BMG (Japan, Germany), EMI (UK) and Warner (USA) – to cough up $50 million they’ve until now been able to avoid paying to artists under contract to them.

In Part II, he raises the spectre of Payola and ……

Stay tuned.

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See:-

wrist shits – Spitzer’s iron wrist shits to music industry, Xinhua, October 24, 2004

industry lies – Don’t ‘piss off’ the labels, p2pnet, June 24, 2004

avoid paying – Big Music vs Eliot Spitzer, p2pnet, October 22, 2004

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 24th, 2004 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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