Why Aren’t They Moaning About the Fucking X-Factor?
In amongst all the hoo-ha over Christmas about that karaoke bimbo’s brutal bum-rape of Leonard Cohen’s wonderful Hallelujah, and the brewing legal nightmare caused by indiscriminate wielding of DMCA legislation, I started to wonder a little about the music industry, who is fighting who and why, and so on.
Of course I entirely accept the music industry’s position that evil free music is killing babies and committing acts of terrorism and so on, and that it is largely people like you and I who are to blame for Britney Spears and Robbie Williams having to lead the deprived lives of poverty and servitude into which they have so cruelly been forced in the last few years by the unlimited evils of ‘right-click, save as’. I mean, it’s just obvious, really.
One thing I don’t quite get, though, is why it is only filesharing that they hate. Apart from the impact of the music-as-data model replacing the music-as-product model, which has clearly confused and annoyed the shit out of everyone with any sort of vested interest in the latter, there has been another pretty seismic shift in the music industry in the last few years: karaoke pop shows. Read the rest of this entry »
