Grammy Winner: Piracy Is Brilliant; I Love It
from the more-musicians-getting dept
Slowly, but surely, we're seeing more and more musicians understand that "piracy" isn't a threat but an opportunity. Take the latest example, as Grammy-award winner Joss Stone apparently stunned a television reporter by telling him that piracy was "brilliant." First the reporter asked her if she had an iPod, and she complained about losing a few. So then he asked what she thought about people downloading songs, and she cheerily said it was "Great!" The reporter then pauses, as that wasn't the answer he was expecting, and then repeats back "Great?" So, she responds:"Yeah, I love it. I think it's brilliant and I'll tell you why. Music should be shared. 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 listening to the live show it's totally cool. I don't mind. I’m happy that they hear it."I was curious to find out what her record label thought of all of this, and it didn't take long to discover that Stone is quite unhappy with EMI as her label, and is looking for legal ways to get out of her contract with them. Maybe if they weren't suing all of those people who are helping to promote Stone's album, she wouldn't be so angry with them.
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Filed Under: copyright, joss stone, music, piracy
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The RIAA is making enemies not only out of their customers, but out of their own employees.
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I can promise you that Stone is not an employee of RIAA. Neither is any recording artist. The RIAA is supposed to represent the interests of people like Stone, not the other way around.
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Artists are customers of as well as the product manufacturers of the labels.
The RIAA represents the interest of the LABELS.
This makes everything the RIAA does logical. Not smart, but logical.
For the Artists a music label is becoming less and less relevant thanks to the rapid boom of communication we have thanks to computers.
After all, that was the whole point to a record label before. They would advertise and market the product you sold them when you signed the contract. And you'd get a small portion of the proceeds.
What's the point when literally ANYONE with a minimum wage job (at least in the US) can afford to do the same for very little cost.
Social networking sites provide a free medium. You can even setup a very basic web page and use Paypal or Google Checkout to get donations and sell product. And with music you can distribute it purely digitally so you don't have shipping costs!
Flat out, if more artists understood the technology or knew someone they trusted that did the labels would die.
If the any label was smart they would have created a service similar to iTunes, but completely DRM free. Hell they could have done the streaming audio that Last.fm does on the site as well.
They could have been the ones making money off of artists still. Instead, they didn't want to change and now they are in their death throes.
For some, its not too late to change there ways. For others like EMI they've angered their own customers and product manufacturers. Soon they will have no music to sell, and no one will willingly buy it from them if they did.
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Heh
"The labels go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah" (bad)
OR
"The musicians go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah" (good)
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Re: Heh
they'd probably send you a C&D letter and sue you for copyright infringement... and/or.. singing a song in public and not paying someone for it.
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I wonder if the RIAA is still freeballing
I haven't bought RIAA member-made CD in two years.
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Or....
It'd be interesting to see if her opinions on downloading stay the same when/if she gets a new label.
I am a cynical person :(
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Oh... Thats right she won a grammy. Next week she will do a commercial for Maybelline. And next its off for a Cameo appearance in circus of the stars. blehhhhhhhhh!!!
Has anyone ever noticed almost every musician is starting to look like they just stepped off a models run way. Cept for maybe Amy Winehouse. But she is not from the US.
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She much more of a "I'll smoke crack until I look like a fruit roll-up!" type person.
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Re: Anonymous Coward
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Neither is Joss Stone.
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Good for Joss Stone
It's like introducing a new fish to a river system and then saying you need to remove that particular fish 3 years later, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN
I must say, I haven't purchased a CD in almost 6 years, however I do go to concerts, pay for pay-per-view live shows, and buy merchandise of my favorite artists. Plus, I push my favorite artists on my friends and family, creating more people going to concerts and buying merchandise.
This is like stepping over a dollar bill to pick up the shinny quarter.
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Re: Good for Joss Stone
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Sure, she's ok with it...
(Yes, don't worry, I'm joking! :)
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Re: Sure, she's ok with it...
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I agree
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