Joss Stone, Redux
p2pnet view P2P | Entertainment | Music : - When I started p2pnet in in May 2003, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to want to share music.“It was all about MIDI back then.
Then, in November, 2005, I wrote “But still very, very cool, nothing much has changed.” At the time, very few mainstream artist agreed with me. However, as far as I’m concerned it’s still all about sharing. And caring.
Anyhow, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) has been online forever and these days, “virtually anyone can take a midi file and using a program such as Garage Band or Reason create a near studio quality rendition of their favorite song,” says -1-Lone_Eagle on slashdot.
“This opens up an interesting discussion, is a remixed midi file an original creation? Or is it simply a copied work with the rights belonging to the original author? Is it Piracy? What do you think?”
“So what do you think?… At last, a singer with brains!”
That was my friend and p2pnet host Cliff Haerden at multibox.be over in Belgium. In a recent email, he was talking about Joss Stone, pointing to Dumpen Maar featuring a video of Stone singing the praises of sharing.
I did a story on it three years ago, but her message stands:
Interviewer: What do you think about piracy, about mp3, about the internet, about music?
Stone: I think it’s great.
Interviewer: Great?
Stone: Yeh. I love it. I think it’s brilliant, and I’ll tell you why. Music should be shared. I believe this is how music turned into like some crazy business. Now, the only part about music that I dislike is the business that’s attached to it. Now, if music is free, there’s no business. There is , however, “So I like it. I think that we should share it.There is, however, a Big Music organisation wholly dedicated to screwing, bluing and Tatooing as many music lovers as it can identify Led by functionaries Mitch Bainwol, and Cary Sherman (http://www.p2pnet.net/story/51072) Purporting to represent artists, it’s called the Recording Industry Association of America its entire raison d’être is to screw, as many music lovers as it can identify.
It’s OK. “If one person buys it, it’s totally cool. Burn it up. Share it with your friends. I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it; as long as you come to my show and have a great time and listen to the live show. It’s totally cool.
Interviewer: I think you are the first singer telling this story to me.
Stone: Yeh, because most people are, um, (“brainwashed”, from someone sitting beside her) yeah, they’ve been brainwashed – definitely, a perfect word for it.
Sharing is caring.
A while back, with UK singer Billy Bragg, I tried to start a site dedicated to putting artists and their fans together for their mutual benefit. It was called a2f2a — short for artists-to-fans-to-artists. It ultimately disintegrated, although what’s left of it is still online. What started it was the Featured Artists Coalition / Lily Allen Three Strikes and you’re Off the Net debacle, with Allen in the starring role, closely followed by the FAC.
“File sharing’s not okay for British music,” Allen had blogged in a post picked up by the mainstream media and trumpeted around the world. “We need to find new ways to help consumers access and buy music legally, but saying file sharing’s fine is not helping anyone — and definitely not helping British music,” she’d declared. “I want to get people working together to use new digital opportunities to encourage new artists.”
I’d posted that I’d definitely agree with the last part. It’s one of the reasons Billy and I started a2f2a.com. The other is, contrary to corporate music industry statements, online music fans would love to pay artists, as long as they know the money is going to them.
Now Stone, a UK soul singer who played Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s wife # 4 in The Tudors (right) series, has thrown herself into the file sharing menage telling the Press Association >>>
“She’s [Lily Allen] not going to win [the] fight [over downloads]. None of us will win that fight. So let’s just accept it and see it as something that can be beautiful and might change music for the better. It might sort the weeds from the flowers.”
Meanwhile, back then, Canadian singer Joni Mitchell declared >>>
“I’ve been screwed from the beginning. The deal that I got was just atrocious. I mean, it was like slave labor. And I’ve never really had a good deal in the business. I hope it all goes down the crapper. It’s top-heavy, it’s wasteful. It’s an insane business.”
Now, this is all calculated music. It’s calculated for sales, it’s sonically calculated, it’s rudely calculated. I’m ashamed to be a part of the music business. You know, I just think it’s a cesspool.”
She was referring to the corporate part, of course.
As to the rest, the online P2P sharing communities aren’t going away.
In another post check out Justin Frankel’s NinJam. It doesn’t support MIDI yet, but Frankel says it will.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
July 7th, 2011 at 1:14 am
There was a story on NPR a few days ago that gives an inside view of what goes on in the record industry. It shouldn’t surprise us that a top-billed “artist” is basically little more than a factory assembly-line worker.
From http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song
Getting a song on the pop charts takes big money.
Def Jam started paying for Rihanna’s recent single, “Man Down,” more than a year ago. In March of 2010, the label held a writing camp in L.A. to create the songs for Rihanna’s album, Loud.
At a writing camp, a record label hires the best music writers in the country and drops them into the nicest recording studios in town for about two weeks. It’s a temporary version of the old music-industry hit factories, where writers and producers cranked out pop songs.
Here’s who shows up at a writing camp: songwriters with no music, and producers toting music tracks with no words.
The Thomas brothers knew producer Shama “Sham” Joseph, but they had never heard his Caribbean-flavored track that became “Man Down.”
According to Daniels, the brothers listened to the track and said, “Let’s give Rihanna a one-drop! Like, a response to ‘I shot the sheriff!”
They wrote the lyrics to “Man Down” in about 12 minutes, Daniels says.
To get that twelve minutes of inspiration from a top songwriting team is expensive — even before you take into account the fee for the songwriters.
At a typical writing camp, the label might rent out 10 studios, at a total cost of about $25,000 a day, Daniels says.
The writing camp for Rihanna’s album “had to cost at least 200 grand,” Daniels says. “It was at least forty guys out there. I was shocked at how much money they were spending!”
July 7th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
Great post!
The music industry managed to pill up layers of copy right. First there is the author right the song score and the lyric and then the recording right and performance right.
With MIDI the author rights remain but not the recording and performance I believe.
July 11th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Here’s a good follow-up for the NPR story:
RIAA Accounting: How To Sell 1 Million Albums And Still Owe $500,000
from the who’s-ripping-off-whom-again? dept
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-accounting-how-to-sell-1-million-albums-still-owe-500000.shtml#c11
July 13th, 2011 at 4:41 am
All one sided bullshit. Where are real anon comments?
July 13th, 2011 at 10:35 am
If one isn’t heard one doesn’t exist.