Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys: the bond
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- What do Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys have in common?
They both used online file sharers to get their careers rolling.
Then, having gotten to where they wanted to go, cynically went the other way, betraying the online music lovers who put them there, at the same time trying to stop other people from using file sharing as a career kick-start.
But now Lily Rose Allen is a heroine.
Lord Peter Mandelson positioned himself himself at the sharp end of Britain’s contribution to the entertainment cartel Three Strikes anti-P2P, anti-file sharing, anti-consumer effort.
Under it, people said to be ‘illegal’ file sharers would be warned twice, and then thrown off the net.
But the plan, developed the Big4 record labels and Hollywood, is becoming a major black eye for both himself and the British government, and he may now be having getting cold feet.
Nevertheless, when Allen blogged an attack on file sharers called It’s Not Alright, she was lauded by the Featured Artists Coalition, with signatories including Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Billy Bragg, Annie Lennox and George Michael, declaring in a public statement »»»
We … wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.
Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
But it could be Allen will soon be joining Mandelson in the Deep Regrets Club.
Because back when she was just getting started, she made a series of mix tapes which included clips from other people’s music.
She’d touted them on her official EMI web site and when, following her anti-filesharing outburst, she was confronted with these thefts (as Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music call such wickedness), tried to wriggle out of it by saying, Gosh, she’d made the mixes before she knew which way was up in corporate music industry.
‘Egregious offenders’
When the Arctic Monkeys hired online parasite the Web Sheriff to keep file sharers away from their then new release because, “when you have a million-selling album under your belt, letting your songs spread like a virus over the web doesn’t seem so cool,” as Times Online put it, was it their idea, or their labels’, Domino, EMI (in Brazil), Warner (US distributor)?
But there’s no doubt Lily Allen was self-motivated
Jeremy Silver (right) chaired the meeting which led to the Allen-inspired Featured Artists Coalition statement.
On Compatible World, “The new proposal from Lord Peter Mandelson for the UK to adopt a policy of broadband account suspension to be applied to the heaviest sharers, the now famous “egregious offenders” has sparked the new row,” he said yesterday, going on »»»
The Featured Artists Coalition voiced strong opposition to this and fuelled a heated internal argument inside the music industry. Lily Allen piped up in a strong voice – unexpectedly putting the conservative argument and saying “it’s not alright” to file-share. As a result the labels got very excited and did everything they could to “help” her and a huge amount of abuse came down on her head from the online community.
But Lily did speak out in a significant way. Her intervention highlighted the conflicted feelings of many musicians and artists. On the one hand they recognise the incredible potential and value of the net – on the other hand they can’t feel entirely comfortable knowing that their ability to make a living from their own creativity is being reduced by the actions of millions of people who consume without valuing their work – because they can.
So on Thursday night last week we gathered together at Air Studios in Hampstead, north west London, a group of about eighty recording artists – some well known – some more obscure – to try to explore the issues and where artists stood. Members from all sorts of bands like Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Blur, Travis, Keane, Marillion were there, Billy Bragg who is as impassioned and politically savvy as they come, David Arnold who writes the Bond music, Mike Batt who is an artist and the vice-chairman of the BPI all sat there together – ready for a ding dong. In an upstairs room, with his ear to the wall, George Michael was getting reports of the proceedings. Annie Lennox had her digital representative relaying events by phone. We sat in the round, in the studio’s cosy wood back-room with the old church stained-glass windows looking down on us, the paraphernalia of recording equipment shoved back to the walls and a couple of microphones to give people something to hold on to when they talked.
a quarter of an hour or so or so after the discussion began, “a timid and tearful Lily Allen came into the room, crouching behind the back row at first,” says Silver, continuing
She was encouraged forward and applauded for attending – and was quickly given a seat on the front row to take part in the debate which I had the dubious honour to be chairing. She was tearful, she was angry, she was foul-mouthed and she was eloquent. The whole debate didn’t entirely revolve around her, but she and Billy Bragg became the respective voices of the opposing positions.
The arguments swung back and forth. The conservative view is as strong among many artists as is the libertarian position. There was no particular rationale to which artists adopted which position and for an hour or so the debate simply swung back and forth. One guy from the Long Pigs, got very angry and walked out, saying something about how he “couldn’t understand why you’re being so soft on them – they need to be told”. Billy Bragg delivered an incredible, rowsing speech to huge applause about the need to be nurturing fans and the relationship that an artist has with them is the only one that counts. As the clock reached towards nine pm, I tried to push the room towards a vote. I thought that perhaps while they wouldn’t get agreement on the key issue of suspending peoples’ accounts, maybe we could all agree on the long term educational, cultural change that was needed and that new models were now critically required, perhaps we could conclude by emphasising the positive stuff we do all share.
But then something remarkable happened. As I pushed them to close, they wanted to argue on and the energy in the room suddenly lifted. Someone suggested that perhaps not suspension but bandwidth slowing could be a solution. Perhaps the ability to use email and basic web-serving could be preserved but the high bandwidth needed to make file-sharing worthwhile could be reduced. The room leapt on this compromise with a speed and a degree of excitement that we hadn’t seen all evening. No matter that it would cost the ISPs more to do this than to cut people off. No matter that people could still file-share just more slowly. No matter that squeezing might require as much of an invasion of privacy as suspension – a compromise position was in the air – and everyone leapt on it.
I called for a show of hands and about sixty percent of them went up, including Lily’s and Billy’s in favour of bandwidth squeezing. A significant minority voted against – mostly because they were libertarian, but a few who strongly insisted that hanging and flogging was too good for file sharers. There was a feeling of elation. Euphoria was in the air. Never mind the fine detail, much more importantly, the artist community had become united. Talking face to face, not through the distorting lenses of the media but in privacy with no reporters and no photographers in the room – the artists found common cause and we all celebrated that.
And so the meeting ended with a feverish capturing of the sentiment in a brief statement that was put out to the waiting media. And, as the hour neared midnight, the crowd drifted away with a sense that something important, even historic had just happened; something greater than reaching a consensus on a view about what to do about file-sharing to give to the government. Everyone had the feeling that the power of the artists’ community could be more powerful in this story going forward and that together they could work out solutions that might actually satisfy everyone – and that they were capable of practical deal making – more effectively than some of the other participants in the debate.
Adds Silver:
“Argue? of course they did! Compromise? Hell yeah! Who said tearful, emotional, angry artists – couldn’t also occasionally surprise themselves and act more like adults than the corporate grown ups could?”
He’s an ex-EMI Music Group and Virgin Records exec.
Stay tuned?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Arctic Monkeys – Arctic Monkeys slags file sharers, April 5, 2007
major black eye– Big Music vs The Invisibles, September 25, 2009
getting cold feet – Mandelson: shying away from 3 strikes deal?, September 25, 2009
online parasite – Arctic Monkeys slags file sharers, April 5, 2007
Times Online – Arctic Monkeys go bananas over file-sharing, March 31, 2007
attack on file sharers – Lily Allen disses P2P file sharing, September 17, 2009
Compatible World – File-sharing, artists and the egregious offenders, September 27, 2009
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September 28th, 2009 at 8:05 am
The thing is – IT IS NOT UP TO THE ARTISTS TO DETERMINE OUR LAWS!
Just because the artists have agreed between themselves what they think should happen, does not mean that the public at large agree – and since we live in a democratic society the laws should reflect the will of the public at large, not just a small (80 musicians vs a population of over 61 million) interest group!
September 28th, 2009 at 8:34 am
democratic?
what do you expect from a country that allows – and encourages – doctors to ignore doctor/patient confidentiality.
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8276609.stm
“If a patient is diagnosed with a genetic disease doctors will be able to tell relatives, without consent.
Doctors will also be asked to decide whether they should breach confidentiality and pass on the patient’s details to the police if they suspect a crime has or will be committed.”
September 28th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Thats another subject entirely… and not one I want to discuss – although I am not entirely against these measures, but the implementation is critical.
September 28th, 2009 at 9:37 am
“She was tearful,”
I’ll buy it.
“she was angry,”
I’ll buy it.
“she was foul-mouthed”
I’ll buy it.
“and she was eloquent.”
I don’t buy it.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Why oh WHY is anybody still giving ANY of these organizations the slightest bit of notice?
Okay, let’s talk ‘compromise”:
1. Copyright terms reduced to a SINGLE, 5-year term, REQUIRING registration.
2. NO renewals, no term extensions, no fucking around with it IN ANY WAY — no buying your way OUT of the “public domain” part of the bargain, assholes.
3. Damages for infringement LOCKED at the maximum price per song if they’d been purchased from a digital download site.
4. NO fucking around with people’s connectivity.
If they REALLY think downloads represent “lost sales”, then it is only reasonable that they be paid EXACTLY what they would have gotten if someone would have “bought” the track. (Of course, considering that they ALSO want the privilege of “licensing” DRM-crippled bullshit, even these reasonable compromises won’t even be discussed.
Lily Allen and EVERYBODY ELSE involved with these “rights” organizations are corporate shills. Despite his rhetoric to the contrary, the CHORUSS guy is a corporate shill.
If there is even a HINT of allowing these people any further ‘voice’ in the debate, the major media corporations WILL have won. We’re seeing this Stateside, what with Obama allowing the Wall Street types a “voice” in his so-called “reforms”, and insurance/pharmaceutical corporations calling the shots on so-called health-care ‘reform’.
“Dialog” with corporate lobbyists (or their front groups) consists of exactly TWO words: “You win.”
Somebody needs to do a check on the ‘obscure’ artists listed above — methinks you’ll find that even the most ‘indie’ of them are REALLY from some tiny, out-of-the-way member of the RIAA, or one of it’s equivalents.
Sorry to sound paranoid, but corporate sockpuppets piss me off.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
” Somebody needs to do a check on the ‘obscure’ artists listed above — methinks you’ll find that even the most ‘indie’ of them are REALLY from some tiny, out-of-the-way member of the RIAA, or one of it’s equivalents.
Sorry to sound paranoid, but corporate sockpuppets piss me off. ”
Not paranoid at all.
Completely correct, actually.
Most ‘independents’ are in fact owned by the labels, and that ownership is carefully hidden.
With research, those connections can be found.
Rihanna
Arctic Mokeys
Lilly Allen
These are only a few that have had label contracts for a long time, but were put in
‘virally’ through YouTube under the pretense that they were just ‘regular’ nobodies that
got ‘Lucky’ enough to get a contract.
When Rihanna appeared and pretended to be new my daughter had one of those NOW CD’s
that was about 3 years old, that had a Rihanna song on it. I pointed it out to my kids, and
the obvious question was asked ‘ why are they saying she’s new, then ? ‘ .
I answered them honestly …
Lying is better publicity then the truth. She was a failed has been that they still owned so
in order to spark interest they created this story, believing that she had pretty much been
forgotten about and no one would notice the lie.
The saddest part is that they were ( mostly ) right.
You’re not paranoid at all Henry.
Respectfully, you’re just late to the party.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
“You’re not paranoid at all Henry.
Respectfully, you’re just late to the party.”
Not at all.
There used to be a website (I honestly don’t remember what it was, now, sorry) that listed members of the RIAA. Turned out that something like 80 to 90 percent of non-major labels were members.
The problem with organizations like the RIAA, BPI, BREIN, etc. is that they inevitably end up as mere front-groups for the same giant corporations, who end up dictating organizational policy.
RIAAdar? I honestly don’t recall the name, wish I did.
But the bottom line that I took away from that was, NO label — or artist — who becomes a member of these organizations can legitimately be considered “independent”, because they’ve thrown their support behind an organization dominated by major-label corporate policy decisions.
That’s where “first sale” comes in handy: if I *do* want to buy something polluted by RIAA membership, I kill two birds with one stone: I get a way better price, AND the ‘labels’ don’t get shit.
But my whole point was that we have to start calling “bullshit” on these corporate front organizations, and their idiotic lackeys.
It’s telling that they’re all into this “compromise” mode now: they know full well that they simply can not win — whatever new attempts at DRM they manage to invent are cracked within a few weeks, mass disconnections would just piss *everybody* off, etc. So since they’re completely and utterly powerless to stop the changing paradigm, now they start talking about “compromise”.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
” RIAAdar? I honestly don’t recall the name, wish I did. ”
Still there. Still handy
http://www.riaaradar.com/
September 28th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
” So since they’re completely and utterly powerless to stop the changing paradigm, now they start talking about “compromise”. ”
It’s not really compromise if only the Member labels and Corporate entities get to define the terms.
That seems to be the only way they’re willing ‘compromise’ .
That’s bullshit as well.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Riaa radar isn’t always 100% though.
It shows Lily Allen’s album ‘22′ released by 101 Distribution as RIAA ‘Safe’,
and we all know Lily can’t go anywhere without a leash.
I would take anything distributed by 101 Distribution as an RIAA mole.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Yup,
Other artists handled by 101 distribution are
Mark Knoppfler
Pearl Jam
Neil Diamond
Taylor Swift
Backstreet Boys
An RIAA label in disguise.
September 28th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
@ Henry: “There used to be a website (I honestly don’t remember what it was, now, sorry) that listed members of the RIAA. Turned out that something like 80 to 90 percent of non-major labels were members.”
It was, and still is, p2pnet, and it’s called, oddly enough, http://www.p2pnet.net/riaa labels.html . But it’s probably quite out of date by now.
Cheers!
September 28th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
your an asshole jon. no body reads P2PNet so give it a rest
September 28th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Suddenly I regret buying an Arctic Monkeys album last month.
@RW: The 12 comments on this article seem to contradict that assertion.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
” no body reads P2PNet so give it a rest ”
You’re here, aren’t you ?
You’ve been here almost as long as I have in fact.
You contradict you’re own assertion merely by commenting.
If you go away, then just maybe nobody will be here.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Is there any place in the world where the victims of a ‘crime’ are responsible to decide the punition that should be applied to those who offend the law ? As far as I know, we don’t let that power to victims of rape and murder, why are we letting victims of copyright infringement decide like this ?
September 28th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Dredd:
Thanks for the update on Riaadar (hadn’t searched for it for a while.)
The thing of it is, we’ve got them by the balls, and they know it (the corporate fatcats, that is.) Every time they try to do this propaganda shit (like Lily Allen’s blog crap), it doesn’t take very long for somebody — or a lot of people — to call them out on their bullshit.
How long did the Lily Allen thing take, three days? They can “debate” how much tongue-action to use when sucking corporate cock all they want. They can also buy themselves damn near any ‘law’ they want. What they CANNOT do is make people either *obey* said ‘law’ to any meaningful degree, or continue to take them seriously.
Lily Allen and every other “anti-p2p activist” are basically doing a bad Cartman imitation, standing their screaming about how people don’t “respect their authoritah!” Fuck ‘em. Nobody’s going to take it seriously, and they know it. That’s why they’re backing away from the “3 strikes” idiocy, because they know it’s impossible to do, won’t make a damn bit of difference against p2p ‘piracy’, but WILL piss a lot of people off really badly.
The only “leverage” any of the have, ultimately, is if *we* take them seriously.
September 29th, 2009 at 11:13 am
” The only “leverage” any of the have, ultimately, is if *we* take them seriously. ”
I’d really like to believe that but here’s the thing ….
The reason they lie so much in the msm is because they don’t give a fuck if we know they’re
lying. They ONLY care about the thoughts of those in actual power.
The Media companies and governments have the SAME problem …..
” t doesn’t take very long for somebody — or a lot of people — to call them out on their bullshit.
How long did the Lily Allen thing take, three days? ”
That’s the common problem.
If the government can’t hide things from us, then that’s a BIG problem.
Officials in power not only have cash incentives to give the labels what they want, but
they have their own dung being pulled into the sunlight, almost on a daily basis, to
deal with. Governments have GREAT reason to go along with what amounts to
economic censorship, and censorship via copyright.
The labels aren’t only giving them money, they’re showing them HOW to use the law the
labels craft to eliminate .. ummm inconvenient , tales from reaching too many eyes on
the web. It took three days to call lily allen on her bullshit, but almost EVERY TRACE OF IT
was removed almost immediately.
The’re learning fast.
All governments have a lot of reason to be willing to help.
They have NO reason to care if we know about it.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Dredd:
This is what bothers me, Y’know?
1. When are we — those of us who are supposedly so tuned in to the cultural vibe — going to stop taking the “mainstream media” seriously? Fuck the MSM; they’re good for exactly TWO things: entertainment (South Park, for example) and ridicule. Nobody takes them seriously, except for people from non-computer-using demographics (my 80 year old Grandmother, for example.)
2. Even totalitarians know that the “total state” is impossible. Even if they *did* develop some kind of magical ultimate compliance-tool, they’d *have* to continuously invent ‘enemies’ and ‘crises’ in order to justify their “power”: why else do you think the history of every totalitarian regime (from the medieval Catholic church right up to the Khmer Rouge) is an endless catalog of witch-hunts?
Power NEEDS “subersives”, and those in ‘power’ know this FULL WELL:
The Catholic church needed “heretics”
The Nazi’s NEEDED the Jews and other “non-Aryan” elements
The “Red Scare” of the 1950s *needed* ’subversives’ and “deviants”.
The thing of it is, those “in power” KNOW this full well, which is why some kind of magical ‘total compliance’ scenario would be the ultimate horror. Power *needs* rebels and subversives and suchlike.
What IS disheartening to me, is the fact that some people still continue to believe that those “in power” really ARE aiming for total compliance. Shit, Orwell even understood this: read 1984. The Party *created* “the Brotherhood”.
I realize that it’s tempting to believe that those “in power” actually *do* want some sort of human hive of total compliance, but really, think about it: “power” is about status, privilege, and coercion. There will *always* be “countercultures” even if those in power have to *create* them, or else there’s no way to justify the system’s rules or — more importantly — the privileges that GO with such social structures.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
” Even if they *did* develop some kind of magical ultimate compliance-tool, they’d *have* to continuously invent ‘enemies’ and ‘crises’ in order to justify their “power”: ”
heh,
What about this statement ISN’T familiar sounding ?
From suicide bombers to seekrit muslims, you just described
the cowering pansies of the USA today.
September 30th, 2009 at 12:17 am
“What about this statement ISN’T familiar sounding ?
From suicide bombers to seekrit muslims, you just described
the cowering pansies of the USA today.”
Whaddya mean “today?”
We’uns have a long-standing tradition of the “dangerous other”: if it wasn’t “redskins” ripe for the killin’ out on the frontier, it was the “Yellow Peril” posed by Chinese immigrants, or the Irish, or ‘darkies’ or etc. etc.
The “War on terror” is nothing but “Cold war 2″, because if we didn’t have some kind of chronic “crisis” going on, people might actually start noticing that those at the top of the sociopolitical hierarchies (corporate/governmental/religious etc.) were worthless jackoffs.