Here is the second part of a series of posts where I have a think about a lot of the common complaints I hear from music fans, as they react to the massive change which the industry is undergoing at the moment. I’m just trying to think about it from a fan’s point of view at this point, trying to figure out if these laments actually have much merit, whether or not a normal fan really cares, or whether we’re just being silly.

Once again, here are the various articles that prompted this little festival of self-indulgence, so you have some idea what to expect:
A Penny For Your Thoughts by The Vinyl Villain (read the comments as well, because some of them are very thought-provoking.
Does the World Need Another Indie Band? by Tim Walker, writing in The Independent.
Why Has Modern Music Lost So Much Impact? by the Kings of A&R.
This comment, from a reader called Alex in the comment thread of my recent podcast – The Tribecast.

And here are the other posts in the series:
1. Fragmentation
2. Over Saturation
3. Hype Overload
4. Decreasing Quality

#2 Over Saturation

I am in real doubt as to whether or not over saturation really exists, but perhaps I have to concede that it does. There is a fuck of a lot of music out there to be listened to, but then there always has been.

Realistically, I think it is fair to say that there is probably more music being recorded and presented to the world as a whole for listening than there ever has been. Fair enough – cheaper technology and better access to distribution, even distribution as limited and basic as websites, blogs and MySpace all make this infinitely easier than it was before. So I can agree that perhaps the total quantity has increased, but I don’t think that makes a shred of difference.

If you think about it for even a moment, there has always been more music out there than you can listen to. What’s the difference now? More outlets? More outlets pushing more songs than before? Fewer filters between the musicians and the listener? I don’t know, but I think there are two things that have changed which influence people’s feelings of being overwhelmed by the quantity of music out there.

Firstly, we seem to be burndening ourselves with this odd sense of obligation to actually listen to more stuff. A lot of the time this complaint comes from bloggers and other enthusiasts – in other words, not the casual fan and not necessarily the deranged obsessive. The casual fan has always just listened to whatever comes along, sought out a little more of what really captures their imagination, and then drifted off to do something else and not thought about it. It may not be my attitude, but it is a healthy one. The really mental obsessive – the likes of John Peel and voracious vinyl accumulators – have always known and accepted that it was impossible to listen to everything anyway. Did Peel not say something that roughly paraphrases as: it would take me a month to listen to the amount of music I receive in a week. He knew it was fruitless to try, obviously.

I think the only people who worry about this are people like me, and probably you, if you’re a keen enough fan to be reading a niche page like this. The mid-level enthusiasts who are finding the explosion of availability exciting and yet overwhelming. We want to explore everything, leave no stone unturned, no bedroom talent unappreciated and we are starting to realise that it is just impossible. Without wishing to be brusque, there is only one solution to this: get over it, forget about it, it was never going to happen anyway. We can’t even listen to all the stuff we hear about, never mind all the stuff that no-one ever mentions. There’s too much for one brain to absorb or for one lifetime to even make time to listen to, there always has been, so get over it and stop worrying. Just enjoy the stuff you do listen to and stop whining.

Secondly, I think there is sometimes a little too much pressure to actually participate. In the old media model this stuff was delivered to you in a linear fashion. The radio was on, a band was playing or whatever it was – you listened, you absorbed it, or you didn’t. It was your choice and your only obligation was to engage or ignore, that was it – it was easy to be listener back then. Nowadays, with things like my comment section gazing pleadingly at you at the end of every post – two or three a day, remember – and the explosion of message boards, bands directly contacting you asking you what you think and all manner of other interactive media, there can seem to be a lot more to being a music fan than just sitting back and enjoying the tunes.

If you read this site every few weeks, which is how often I read a lot of websites, then the sheer volume of music and interaction you are missing can seem like an accusation, I would imagine. If a band drops a friend request into your MySpace inbox, ignoring it can feel like ignoring a specific question addressed to you in a conversation at a party. You feel you have to answer, and of course you don’t. Web 2.0 is an opportunity, not an obligation. If you want to come here, read a couple of posts, not bother commenting and then not come back for a month then no-one minds! If you want to ignore a hundred borderline-spam friend requests from MySpace bands, then so what? If you listen to a song, kind of enjoy it, but have nothing to say about it then so fucking what? You are the audience, not the artist and there is no obligation to anything, not even listen.

You can tell where I’m going with this, can’t you? It’s such a false lament: there’s too much music. There always has been, stop burdening yourselves with non-existent expectations and just enjoy the stuff however the fuck you please. It’s supposed to be fun!

(The Real) Tuesday Weld – It’s a Dirty Job but Someone’s Got to Do It
Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye
Bob Geldof & the Vegetarians of Love – The Great Song of Indifference

Hmm, nothing like a really depressing news story to start the day, even one that has been in the pipeline for some time. From the Guardian:

Illegal downloaders to get warning letter in government clampdown

Ah, splendid, just what we needed. This is, I think it is fair to say, a bit of a disaster. I am not a fundamentalist freeloader though, so my opposition to this particular approach is not entirely based upon opposition to the principle itself – not entirely.

Anyone with any sense will surely agree that the idea of government essentially mandating the eavesdropping on personal communications is pretty dubious to begin with. The fact that they are mandating it without the recourse to warrants or whatever the UK equivalent of probable cause might be is downright disturbing. And amazingly, this is the least of my objections to this deal, because with the rise in encrypted torrent traffic, the spying can be overcome with relative ease, so fuck them and their snooping.  But the internet is not just about communication, it is also a marketplace, so the argument doesn’t apply entirely that neatly.

No, the bit that really, really worries me is what amounts to the outsourcing of law enforcement to unaccountable bodies. When I objected to the privatisation of healthcare and education it was on a fairly straightforward basis: these services are supposed to be run entirely for the benefit of the ‘customer’. They are crucial and their presence and their health benefits the nation as a whole, so they should fall under the umbrella of government, it’s that simple. If you want to push it further than that, I think there is something fucking sinister about introducing the profit motive to the healing process. Do you want your doctor to have his commission in mind when he decides whether to prescribe you a massive run of anti-depressants or just tell you to get a little exercise, try and take your work less seriously and spend more time with your family? Or how about when teaching your little rugrats about something contentious like, say, political history?

Well this one goes a step further. In the Iraq war one of the most appaling developments was the massive use of ‘private defence contractors’, which is an obvious euphemism for mercenaries, who were completely rogue. Not only were they not subject to the laws of the nation they had invaded, but they have also been entirely excused from having to obey the laws of the United States, the people holding their chain. It’s fucking unbelievable – they are completely and utterly unaccountable. If you want to read more about this particular disgrace, pick any of the following articles.

So how is this relevant to this particular situation? Well basically the British government is outsourcing law enforcement within the British Isles to companies who have no accountability to the electorate. ISPs have already shown excessive enthusiasm to clamp down on people who actually use their networks. This is the ultimate free lunch argument, one more often employed by insurance companies: we are happy for you to pay for a service, however if there is any chance of you actually needing to use it, then we will be very unhappy indeed. Basically, they want rid of large data transfers, like movie and music sharing, because it burdens their networks and they can no longer get away with short-changing their consumers.

Add to that the fact that major media conglomerates hate it because it is an interaction that they do not own an can be abused in a manner that costs them money, and you can see where we are heading with this. The problem is that I have no faith whatsoever in anyone’s willing to tell the difference between legitimate, legal sharing and illegal sharing, which I will happily admit is bad and needs to be dealt with. Not like this though. Increasingly, small media outlets, and even some of the bigger ones, like record labels and DIY filmmakers are using filesharing as a method of distributing their work – of trying to gain a popular foothold without having to go through the onerous process of seeking approval from more traditional media.

Are Virgin fucking Media going to bother differentiating? I would put money on the answer being no. I would also put money on them basically threatening the living daylights out of anyone who seeds multiple torrents, irrespective of content and that is a big problem. I personally anticipate an attack, not on illegal activity, but on the whole bloody kit ‘n’ caboodle. ISPs hate it because it makes them work for their money, Big Media hate it because it excludes them, and the government has just given these two odious entities carte fucking blanche to do their level best to get rid of the whole shooting match.

Basically, in the worst case, which it is not entirely unrealistic to expect, the ISPs will simply be so trigger happy at shutting down filesharers of all stripes that it gradually undermines the whole enterprise. More annoyingly, and more likely, is that large companies will simply wave about legal threats, much the same way they are starting to do on YouTube, and simply have anything turned off which they don’t like, and this is the crux of the problem. All that will be needed will be an allegation, and there will be no way to challenge it, no right of appeal, not because people don’t want to or don’t have grounds, but because very few individuals would have the courage to take on a massive corporation in court.  Basically, as far as I can see, this brings an end to the concept of due process in this area, despite how many times the RIAA have been humiliated in court, when their complaints have actually been required to cut the legal mustard.

Now that requirement will vanish. Bank charges are a classic example of unaccountable corporate entities acting outside the law with almost total impunity – it tooks years of crazy fees before enough momentum was built to finally challenge the banks in court. Their only downfall was that their greed eventually got the better of them. But with the RIAA in some cases extorting $222,000 for sharing 24 files people will, as with the banks, simply obey. Why wouldn’t you when it could cost you your house? No right of independent adjudication, no right of appeal, no capacity to resist, no due fucking process.

I am reminded of America’s laughably empty government catchphrase: “by the people, for the people”. If things like law enforcement are not in any way accountable to ‘the people’ what chance is there of their ever acting ‘for the people’?

Billy Bragg – NPWA
Calexico – The Guns of Brixton

I have been reading a few things recently about the state of music in the 21st Century. Not the state of the music industry exactly, but the state of music itself and its relationship with its fans. There are a lot of things I want to write about in response to this, so rather than one massive great big monster post, I think I’ll break it down into a small series of things which I’ll write over the course of the next day or so.

Firstly, here are the various articles that prompted this little festival of self-indulgence, so you have some idea what to expect:
A Penny For Your Thoughts by The Vinyl Villain (read the comments as well, because some of them are very thought-provoking.
Does the World Need Another Indie Band? by Tim Walker, writing in The Independent.
Why Has Modern Music Lost So Much Impact? by the Kings of A&R.
This comment, from a reader called Alex in the comment thread of my recent podcast – The Tribecast.

So, how am I going to break this down into relatively digestible chunks, so this post doesn’t just ramble on forever? Like so:
1. Fragmentation
2. Over Saturation
3. Hype Overload
4. Decreasing Quality

#1 Fragmentation

I may quibble with either the existence or the seriousness of some of the other things I am going to discuss in this series, but I don’t think I can honestly argue against the fact that there is severe fragmentation in the music market. Whether it’s a bad thing or a good thing, however, I couldn’t rightly say, although I don’t think it is great for the vast majority of music fans.

If you think about it, no-one really knows where or what the mainstream is anymore. Jay-Z headlines Glastonbury, the NME left relevance behind years ago, Top of the Pops is dead, radio stations are struggling and internet ones are actually under attack from the music industry itself, so where do we all find out about the next big thing together?

Well for the fanatics like myself and probably, given you’re here reading this, you too, the fragmentation is actually a bonus most of the time. It is what allows us to be here, examining some of the more obscure
corners of the indiesphere, whilst still keeping half an eye on the wider mainstream acts at the same time. It also helps us build communities of people, even ones who have never met, nor are ever likely to.

For the more balanced music fan, however, it can be a problem. I mentioned during the Tribecast that pop music, particuarly mainstream pop music is not particularly about the music itself from an artistic standpoint. I mean, there’s a reasonably rigid formula for pop hits, and they have to be catchy as hell for some reason, so it’s not like the music can get away with being entirely inept (vapid is another question), but for the listener the social aspect is often equally important.

Culture is a crucial part of group bonding – basic tribal behaviour – and the act of sharing cultural entities is an important way of binding a community together. So it really doesn’t matter what you think of a song, what matters is its capacity to appeal to a large number of people and enough awareness that it has the chance to become something shared by as many people as possible.

In the Tribecast I mentioned Mr. Brightside by the Killers as a perfect example of a song and an album that was so ubiquitous that it is now completely attached to the Summer of 2005 and in five or six years time, any of us who hear that song again will instantly associate it with whatever was going on in our life at the time. We’ll have that ‘Aaa, remember this!‘ conversation with a random person in a pub, and this will allow us to instantly bond that little bit more, and that little bit more easily.

At the moment there seems to be no shared mass market for this stuff, in fact Top of the Pops’ very breadth was probably what killed it. Looking at the Top Ten Albums lists for 2007, we see the Billboard Charts – the barometer of major label sales – giving us obviously ludicrous hits such as Hannah Montana and Now Fifty-Whatever. Even the superficial magazines were writing out lists full of LCD Soundsytem and TV on the Radio – a bloggers’ delight perhaps, but is it that representative of mainstream tastes? Bloggers are prominent at the moment because we are very easy to find, and there is a definite style of indie rock that seems to be very popular amongst bloggers. So we’re one of the most coherent, available voices out there, but I really have my doubts that we are representative of mainstream tastes.

All this results in the fragmentation we are talking about. As Alex said, in his comment on the Tribecast thread:

“I think songs like ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ and bands like Arctic Monkeys – that really capture the imagination of the mainstream, but that can also be looked back on a few months down the line without any hint of embarrassment – are so important. They’re the only point of cultural bonding (and drunken singalong) I can expect to have with anyone of my age in 10 years time.”

He’s right, but in other ways this fragmentation is a good thing. It allows, for example, smaller, more close-knit communities to form, often locally centred. Imagine if you find someone in ten years with a Toad Session recording in their music collection, for example. Or imagine, on a larger scale, meeting a fan of King Creosote and realising that you both talked on the Fence Beefboard at the same time. Or even just meeting someone who also reads The Vinyl Villain or, more likely, Said the Gramophone. That bond will be a hell of a lot stronger than a wishy-washy, generic ‘Oh yeah, I liked that Killers song’.

But remember that it isn’t just radio and television that forges these shared bonds. ASDA radio plays more and better indie music in an hour that pretty much any major radio station, and they probably have more listeners too, albeit not by choice. But this seeps in everywhere – in every pub and bar that plays music. If you’re in the same pubs as someone, you’re listening to the same music, and if it happens a lot you remember it, however subconsciously, so this process really hasn’t been stopped. Think about the ubiquity of cutting edge music in advertising and television as well – if we’re all watching Big Brother, we’re all listening to the same music.

Ultimately though, I think these things will consolidate. That’s what Capitalism does: builds bigger and bigger and shitter and shitter companies until there is an explosion and it all tumbles down and starts over. You can already see the growth of things like The Hype Machine and Drowned in Sound and to some extent The Guardian as well, all starting to point the way to the kinds of large entities that could easily grow out of the current sea of tiny enterprises. So for anyone worrying about the fragmentation in the actual music industry itself, I honestly doubt it will last that long.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that we often don’t know what is going to define a period of time until afterwards. What’s going to define 2008? Well we don’t know, do we – Vampire Weekend? It’s not unlikely.

The Killers – Mr. Brightside
Vampire Weekend – A-Punk
Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

I don’t like to just trot things out like some sort of parrot-powered news service if I can avoid it, but this news is very fine news indeed.

Calexico, who are one of my very favourite bands, have released a teaser mp3 for their new album, which will be called Carried to Dust and will be available on September 9th of this year. I am not sure if there are different release dates for the UK, but given the idiocy of international distributors it wouldn’t surprise me. Anyhow, the song is called Two Silver Trees, is downloadable from their MySpace page, and is bloody excellent. Has the pre-release mp3 leak become the new, revenue-less single these days? It looks like it I guess, and I suppose it makes a degree of sense if you treat a single as being there to drum up excitement and anticipation for the album.  Less so if you think of it as a revenue-generator in its own right, of course.

Anyhow, yes, there’s a new album. And they’re playing here. Yes, instead of the more habitual trail to Glasgow that bands visit Scotland tend to beat, we are getting Calexico at the Queen’s Hall on Thursday 11th September.

In terms of my favourite bands, I think it is safe to say that Calexico are right up there with the best. I bought and sort of liked Spoke, before somewhat losing track of them for a while. Then with Feast of Wire I was hooked, and have since explored forwards and backwards through their back catalogue with what I suppose can be described as gleeful abandon. When Mrs. Toad and I get a little tipsy of an evening, and the stereo is on just that little bit too loud, the chances of Calexico coming on the Toad Hall PA system are very, very high indeed.

Calexico – Two Silver Trees

Does the title of that song remind anyone else slightly of Dr. Seuss? “Through three cheese trees, three free fleas flew. Through these cheese trees, freezy breeze blew.” Or something vaguely like that!

Hmm, there are some interesting bits and pieces of Young Republic news floating about that I thought I might pass on, seeing as they are both a top band and really nice people.

You remember how I mentioned a while back that the move to Nashville had interrupted their flow somewhat and brought about some changes in the band.  MJ the pianist couldn’t settle in Nashville and losing their flautist resulted in the drummer going with her, so things were a little rocky for a bit.  Well Dusty Jensen has been on board for a little over six months, I think, playing the pots and pans and they have a new EP approaching quite soon.  They and the label are still deciding whether to put out the most obviously commercially appealing EP first, or its companion, a slightly darker, less jaunty affair.

So what do you do – there’s no point being willfully obtuse with the music press because their concentration span just isn’t that long.  But then, why not just release things how you would prefer to do it and commercial stategy be damned.  Let’s face it, who likes what and why is a pretty random equation and not one that is really all that easy to second-guess.  My advice would be to fuck it and go with what you’d rather do, but then if anyone gave a shit about my advice then they’d be paying me to give it to them, wouldn’t they.

Anyway, there’s a recent session with the band up on The Futurist at the moment, which is the blog associated with WOXY.com.  There’s an interview and a couple of session tracks to download, one of which I have reposted below.  I’ve only re-hosted it because I am guessing that the WOXY chaps would prefer that to hotlinking, but if you’re from WOXY and want me to take it down then just say so.

The Young Republic – Third Night Balcony (Live on WOXY – full session here)
The Young Republic – Blue Skies

MySpace | Website | Buy from Amazon

I tend to fawn and gush over bands on Tough Love Records to the extent that it can be a little embarrassing, but I genuinely love both The Sequins and Honeytrap.  With Situationists, on the other hand, I can see a relationship that could go either way.

There’s a lot to like on this EP, and at the best they have absolutely nailed the perfect mix of old-fashioned indie sound and more current, punchy guitar pop.  There are moments within a couple of the songs that can be a little flat – a little standard, I guess – but when they’re good they are very good.  So where do they go from here?  Well I couldn’t tell you, obviously – if I could predict that kind of thing I’d be richer – but they do have another EP in the pipeline so I am looking forward to seeing if they can build on what is a very promising start.

The packaging alone makes this EP worth buying.  You get a piece of 10″ vinyl and a CD of the EP itself, all wrapped up in an excellent piece of graphic design and a really nicely executed, heavyweight card sleeve.  Tough Love put a fuck of a lot of effort and investment into their packaging, and are one of the few labels out there where simply owning the digital files just isn’t enough.

Situationists – This City Holds Us All

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Tough Love Records (Click on the ‘Product’ bit)

I don’t usually offer fashion advice on this website, but I feel I might just dip my toe in those shark-infested waters for a change because this is just brilliant.

Now, I am guessing not everyone who reads this site is as depressingly shallow as I am so I am going throw this question open to the audience: what exactly would you think of a girl who wore leggings with pads on the knees? Exactly. What else is there to think? Would you even have to buy her a drink first, or do you reckon you could get away with just whipping it out in the middle of a crowded pub, because I’d be surprised if the girl in question was going to be picky enough to demand a bit of attention first. Or even basic civility.

The leggings in question can be viewed here. Yes, you read that correctly, they go by the name of Mr. President. But surely no amount of ironic nomenclature can make up for the fact that you are basically suggesting that a girl walk around in public dressed in a manner that pretty much says ‘I swallow on the first date. Maybe even in the first quarter of an hour if you’re lucky’. I’ve known some pretty easy women in my time, but even the most loose-winged of them all liked to keep up some sort of basic pretence for at least a few hours.

The irony of it all is that these garments of horror were designed by World Championship Sperm Guzzler Lindsay Lohan, who has pretty much abandoned the world of pork swords for the world of beef curtains these days, and somehow that is way less sexy than you’d think. Either she designed these things a while ago or she is delivering something of a coded warning to her girlfriend Samantha Wotshername not to get too comfortable, because she could be off at any minute, fellating the next random stranger who catches her eye – much like the old days.

Either way, leggings with knee-pads! Are you fucking joking? That’s crazy talk.

The Decemberists – A Cautionary Song
Gavin Friday – Baltimore Whores

Apart from serving as an extremely efficient Idiot Badge, and providing endless hilarity in the form of Tom Cruise’s infantile Messiah Complex, I think the bit I find most fascinating about Scientology is just how easy it shows it to be to get people to believe patently ridiculous things.

I assume many of them are quite sincere in their beliefs that we are inhabited by exiled alien souls and all that stuff, and although there’s no qualitative difference between that any any other religious mythology, the big difference for me is the lack of mystery. Believing in the myths of Scientology is on the face of it no different from believing crazy stories about evil being caused by a magical being who took the form of a snake and persuaded some lass with her knockers out to eat bad fruit – they’re both just slightly bizarre fairytales and would be treated as equally daft, had they not the stamp of religious belief on one and cultish lunacy on the other.

With most religions, however, they at least have the Argument from Antiquity on their side, and the advantages of massive numbers, popular acceptance and the opportunity to brainwash from an early age, no matter how silly the magic that they are preaching. The Abrahamic religions have been telling their weird and wonderful tales for a couple of thousand years now, which gives them a slightly false sheen of respectability, and given how many people believe in them it seems less silly to do so, no matter how nonsensical a great many of the teachings would seem if evaluated on their own merits. And when you’re rasied with something from childhood it can be near-impossible to shake it off. How many sports fans just can’t allow themselves to say that they think that their team will win, even if they do? It’s just bad luck, and even sensible folk often will not do it, even if they tell themselves that they know better.

With Scientology, grown adults are persuaded to accept as true a series of stories that are not only obvious nonsense but are well know to have been invented by a second-rate science fiction writer about fifty or sixty years ago. How can we, as a species, be so desperate to believe in woo that we are capable of convincing our supposedly rational brains that this kind of slightly childish fantasy is even close to reality? What do you have to do to your brain to persaude it that the concept of Xenu is anything other than a little bit silly?

I suppose general angst, insecurity, tribalism, herding instincts and fear of the unknown all play a part, and maybe an actual psychologist would just laugh off the question as trivial, but I find it quite fascinating. Volcanoes and aliens? Really, seriously? I suppose it ties into the secular West’s increasing fanaticism about idiotic forms of alternative medicine and anti-vaccination lunacy and things like that – we just seem to have an inner need to believe in some sort of magical agency and are collectively prepared to project it onto almost any variety of foolishness you can imagine.

Robbie Robertson – Somewhere Down the Crazy River

I’ve just recently heard a couple of versions of an old folk song called Barrett’s Privateers, and neither quite captured my imagination.  Two groups I know – The Men They Couldn’t Hang, whom I love, and the now defunct Australian band Weddings, Parties, Anything, whom I quite like – have covered the song, and presumably there are countless more.  Neither recording really captures the experience I once had hearing it live, and both are live recordings themselves.

The first time I actually heard the song was when The Men They Couldn’t Hang performed it at King Tut’s in Glasgow back in about 1995.  They, as is generally the way, sung it entirely unaccompanied (acapella just sounds a bit gay, I can’t call it that) and it was absolutely spine-tingling.

The song itself was written by Canadian Stan Rogers back in the 70s and tells a pretty convincing tale of a young man lured away to the sea and piracy, only to end up broken and crippled at the age of twenty-two after a brief and disastrous expedition to plunder American trading vessels in the Carribean.  The venom with which the Men They Couldn’t Hang snarled it out brought the bitterness of the song vivdily to life in a way, I suppose, that a studio recording would find it nigh on impossible to capture.

Their live recording isn’t bad, it must be said, but hearing it live was something else.  Have a listen and see if you can quite imagine what I mean:

The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Barrett’s Privateers
Weddings, Parties, Anything – Barrett’s Privateers

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.]