Grammy Winner: Piracy Is Brilliant; I Love It

from the more-musicians-getting dept

Thu, Jun 26th 2008 11:14am — Mike Masnick

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

19 Comments

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Anonymous Poster, 26 Jun 2008 @ 11:37am

First Kid Rock blasts his label, now Joss Stone.

The RIAA is making enemies not only out of their customers, but out of their own employees.
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Willton, 26 Jun 2008 @ 11:48am

Re:
The RIAA is making enemies not only out of their customers, but out of their own employees.

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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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:05pm

Re: Re:
The acts that the RIAA likes to promote and wishes you would listen to are pretty much RIAA employees.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:11pm

Re: Re:
No, the RIAA is supposed to represent the interests of the *labels*, not the artists... Of course, in a perfect world that would mean the same thing...
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:12pm

Heh
Depending on whether you want to look in a positive direction or a negative one, you could start singing:

"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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Chimney Rock, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:36pm

I wonder if the RIAA is still freeballing
...after getting kicked in the nuts so many times.

I haven't bought RIAA member-made CD in two years.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:37pm

Re: Re: Re:
And that comment shows just how ignorant you are.

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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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:42pm

Or....
If she's not happy with her label, maybe her comments were aimed at hurting them more than a promotion of piracy? Or maybe she's just trying to increase tensions between them so they'll cancel her contract quicker or something.

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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Not Applicable, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:52pm

Re: Heh
you could start singing: "The labels go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah" (bad)...

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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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2008 @ 12:56pm

Uhhh... I think this is a non-issue with Joss Stone. I mean who would want a copy of that crap anyway...

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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Hank, 26 Jun 2008 @ 1:05pm

Good for Joss Stone
Now if we could just get the record labels on the right track. There isn't anything they can do to stop file sharing now, no matter what laws are passed or how many law suits they file, there is absolutely no way to stop it.
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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WarOtter (profile), 26 Jun 2008 @ 1:10pm

Re:
Yeah but I don't really think Amy Winehouse is exactly a model for smashing the social standard's....

She much more of a "I'll smoke crack until I look like a fruit roll-up!" type person.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2008 @ 1:11pm

Re: Good for Joss Stone
I think you missed the twist of the story there Hank. Joss Stone is a Social Climber and an opportunist. She is simply pandering to masses to solely get out of her EMI contract. With the right label you will see a very different Joss Stone.
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purplelephants99, 26 Jun 2008 @ 2:39pm

Re: Anonymous Coward
That was a large generalization. Not "almost every musician" is starting to look like a model. Only the pseudo-musicians you hear on the radio look like that. They're are thousands of indie and largely unnoticed musicians that don't look like model material. But yes, the popular musicians do typically look glamorous or w/e. I would consider that not largely the fault of the celebrities themselves, but of the magazines and shows that promote looking like that, and the corporations that sponsor such impossible appearances.
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JJ, 26 Jun 2008 @ 2:55pm

Sure, she's ok with it...
Sure, a big-name grammy-winning artist might be fine with piracy, but it doesn't effect her. It's the smaller, struggling artists who are hurt by it... I mean, umm... never mind...

(Yes, don't worry, I'm joking! :)
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some old gy, 26 Jun 2008 @ 3:21pm

Re: Sure, she's ok with it...
WooT, Masnick's Law!
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buckykat, 26 Jun 2008 @ 10:32pm

man, this makes me wish i liked her music.
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PaulT (profile), 27 Jun 2008 @ 1:12am

Re:
"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."

Neither is Joss Stone.
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waffles, 1 Jul 2008 @ 7:46am

I agree
I go to all the shows of the foreign bands I discovered through sharing music. They all get my money eventually. I buy posters and t-shirts too.
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