Oh For Fuck’s Sake
Someone here just isn’t thinking.
I was just sent a promotional email by someone acting on behalf of Sony BMG, one of the most clueless and technologically retarded megacorps that the world has ever seen. I have never know any marketing department be more stupid than Sony’s, and their tentative little tippy-toes into the world of online viral publicity show they have lost none of their flair for Gold Medal levels of bone-headed and almost comically obtuse attempts to deal with the evolving nature of communication. Bless ‘em, it’s hilarious:
If you should encounter any difficulties or have any questions regarding this download, please feel free to contact your RCA Label Group Representative and we will be happy to assist you further. Please find attached a hypertext link to a digitally encoded file of the above-referenced music, which you may reproduce for the sole purpose of publically performing such music on your radio station. Any other use, including, without limitation, the reproduction, distribution, modification, display or transmission of the music or file without the prior written consent of Sony Music is strictly prohibited. It is our understanding that you will delete the digital file in its entirety from your computer hard drive or such other storage medium employed by you within thirty days of the date stamp of this electronic mail. Digital song distribution is not intended to replace current physical music deliveries you may receive now. Its simply another option available to you for convenient access to our music. If you are currently on our radio promotion mailing list, you will also be mailed a physical copy of this material.
What the fuck are they on about? I don’t even have a radio station for fuck’s sake.
So, I assume they’ve clued onto the fact that blogs are a major way to share music, generate word of mouth and generally publicise emerging artists, because we have built up quite large networks and we share and talk about things we like. Cool. So they’ve sent some blogs some stuff so that they can have some of that word of mouth thing that we give them, because that sounds like a Good Thing. But The Internet is also where all these Bad Things happen, right? Like sharing, and stuff, and terrorism and other definitely Bad Things. So we’d better make sure these internet guys don’t share our music because that’s like Bad, as we’ve already proved with charts and graphs, so we’d better tell ‘em we’re not taking any shit on that one. Can’t have these guys sharing our music for free because that stops people buying it, and when they buy it, it’s Good, right?
So we generate word of mouth because we share and we encourage and we talk, so they want some of our action. But we’re also bad because we share, and we can’t have that. “Gnnnn… *Sony person’s head explodes* would someone please tell me what this internet thing is because I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!1!”
Brilliant.
David Thomas Broughton – Circle is Never Complete
Fiona Apple – Never is a Promise
[Disclaimer: Before anyone asks, this is not directed at the PR person who had to send this shit out. They didn't write anything themselves, so I am guessing they knew as well as anyone that this email was just getting deleted immediately without any attempt to even listen to the song. I've learned my lesson on that one, so stop laughing, this is entirely dedicated to the lawyers at Sony BMG and the marketing department who holds their collective leash. Brilliantly remedial lunacy. So stupid I almost sprained something just reading it.]
do you think they are like the guys at sugarape magazine in Nathan Barley?! sounds like it.
It sounds like Nathan Barley was being too kind. Honestly, is that even English?
These are the people who fucked up minidisk. Minidisk was amazing. And stable and re-recordable. And no one would bloody buy them because the only way to get songs on them was sodding Sony SonicStage. Not good enough! Minidisk was very close to being perfect technology, and they ruined it because they were afraid that we would all share our music too freely on it.
So you think they make life hard for you! Ha!
Sorry, also I feel your struggle.
Sony really are fucking idiots that way. They’ve only recently dropped Sonicstage for their mp3 players as well, which are brilliant little products – they did a hugely superior version of the iPod shuffle well before Apple – but they crippled everything with disastrously bad interface software and a devotion to ATRAC. ATRAC is (was) a great file format too, amazingly compact and high quality, but forcing Sonicstage to convert every mp3 to ATRAC before they would upload to the players itself meant transferring files took hours and hours. Just insane.
Thing is – can you tell from that disclaimer whether I am allowed to post the tracks on the site or not? I can’t. I guess they might mean ‘blog’ when they say ‘radio station’, but they could just mean the podcasts I guess. Or even just that brief show I did for Freshair. So in the interests of self-preservation (and a little snotty indignation) it went straight in the bin, inevitably.
Please share our music, but don’t you dare think about sharing it or we’ll sue you.
Personally I’d say Fuck ‘em. If they can’t be transparent (& therefore proactive in the promotion of their acts) then they don’t deserve our effort or attention.
Well that was exactly what happened – I just deleted it immediately. But I still find the disclaimer amazingly unclear, and hugely hostile. It begs the question of whether or not they actually want to interact with us at all, because it doesn’t look like it. In which case, it’s fine, just go away. But disclaimers like that are why no-one wants to play with you anymore, guys. You may have the shiniest toys, but we can live without them, frankly.
Yes. Fuck ‘em. I’m sorry you threw out the CD, though. If you collect enough you can add some glue and sparklies and make a dynamite wind chime.
Oh wait. It was a download, not a CD. Not much use as a wind chime, that. Definitely fuck ‘em.
There was no CD. The PR company in question keeps asking me if I receive CDs but as far as I can tell they never actually send them because I’ve never received a single one. That part is their fault of course.
They would, of course, insist that any promotional CDs they sent you were destroyed after thirty days.
Even those made into windchimes.
Or butt-plugs.
You’d think I was actually a fucking employee, the way they’ve worded it. Do you want to play, boys, or not? Because if you do then you are going to have to learn to play nicely.
We’ve had this discussion about Sony on here before.
They’re unlikely to change because the stupidity is clearly deeply ingrained throughout the entire corporation.. Equally we – as consumers – are unlikely to stop feeding money to them because their kit is generally amongst the best for the price (even if it’s not compatible with anything we own made by other brands) and their A&R department includes some of the world’s most popular artists (They might not be amongst the popular artists on websites like this one – but they certainly shift units by the freighter-load.) Their hand is just too strong to worry about mere trifles such as this… Microsoft, anyone?
Would CDs work on a windchime? Wouldn’t they just, sort of, go ‘clack’?
Windchimes are for cunts.
[/patentlysillyandridiculouslysweepingstatement]
They are though.
You fucking supercilious prick! My family has been in the business of designing, manufacturing, and distributing wind chimes since the late 16th century. I am frankly shocked to hear such flagrantly anti-tintinnabulist sentiment expressed in a public forum. For shame.
I bet your family don’t use CDs to make the windchimes though, C&B.
Windclackers maybe, but not windchimes.
Is there any truth in the story about fastening a CD next to number plate on your car preventing speed cameras from reading it?
C&B, you’ve just fallen in love with that phrase, haven’t you? Maybe I should make it the blog’s official strapline: Song, by Toad: the barely thought-out musical musing of a fucking supercilious prick.
Sounds good, I’ll order the t-shirts.
Dylan! Do I look like the kind of person whose family is in the fastening-CDs-to-car-number-plates business? No. We’re all about wind chimes. And yes, they clack. Just as the magnificent wooden wind chimes of Leipzig clack, and just as the legendary carrillón o campanas de viento of Toledo, which are crafted entirely of hand-sewn formica, clack.
I am only now starting to realise how appropriate the title for this post is becoming.
Would fastening wind chimes to the number plate on your car have any effect?
Other than, of course, causing gangs of children to run after you down the road demanding a 99-Flake with chocolate sauce.
Th only thing I have ever fastened to a car is a prophylactic on the end of an exhaust. It filled with exhaust fumes when the car revved & inflated to a stupid size before bursting loudly, causing the driver to get out to inspect – possibly thinking his rear end had shat off. I was 12. Apart from the miles & miles of woodland & gambling hillsides with all their treasures for a young mind to get lost within, it was the only fun we had (not counting knock knock ginger, of course) that didn’t involve discovering girls.
Here in Virginny one of the more common automotive accessories are Truck Nutz, an immense rubber scrotum with two huge testicles a-danglin’ from the trailer hitch.
http://www.yournutz.com/store/images/BallnChain.jpg
Oh I’m proud to be an Amerkin, where at least ah know ah’m free.
Ouch. John Steinbeck would be proud.
I want some trucknuts for our Trabant. Oh its a Volvo isn’t it? It just feels like a Trabant.
.. And if the fuel crisis gets any worse you’ll have half the neighbourhood following you around with jerry cans.
Trabant. You cheeky tart.