Unlabelled

Recently, due to the debacles of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA, the subject of piracy is being discussed more than it has been since the 1800s. With the ongoing attempts of the content providers to colour all of us who choose the path of the download as criminal ne'er-do-wells. I, like a lot of people, download tons of stuff from the internet and can only apologise to the music industry that the £700-£800 I will drop on gig tickets this year is sadly not enough. Some of the keenest advocates of the pro-piracy argument, other than the residents of coastal somali villages, are the artists themselves. Given that, I think it's a fair point that the argument has never been between the pirate/customer and the content creators but rather between the pirate/customer and the content providers. That's a very important distinction because it paves the way for an important question. Do we need the content providers? The obvious answer here is, in nearly every case, yes. It costs millions of dollars to make even a relatively cheap television programme, films cost even more and let's not even talk about how much it costs Nintendo to make Mario again. That does leave us with one question. Do we need the record industry?

"Coldplay are big at the moment, could it sound more like Coldplay"

In the long-long-ago, the before times, we tolerated these sleeze-balls because they held the keys to the means of production and distribution. It cost a lot of money to make a record and to then distribute that to the record stores, record stores you may remember used to be places to buy music rather than to build collections of vintage vinyl. Obviously it costs thousands of pounds to put an mp3 on the... wait a minute. If you think that there is some kind of con going on here you are not alone. The music industry is notoriously unfair to the musicians. You see the industry works by loaning money to musicians in the form of an advance. It's basically a loan. Like all loans it has to be paid back. Due to this arrangement and the share of royalties artists receive, 20%, it is entirely possible for a film to make 11 million dollars and whilst the band fail to receive a single penny. This means that the second album will also require a loan to fund...

I can't believe there was a picture for this.

So what does the artist actually get out of this deal in the current day and age. They get their album professionally produced and distributed. Things that you don't actually need. Over recent years the increase in the availability of home recording tech and software, it is entirely possible for talented amateurs to put together an album that is indistinguishable from a “professional” album. Hell the Foo Fighters knocked together their latest Grammy winning album in Dave Grohl's garage, obviously Dave Grohl's garage is probably nicer than your house so it might not work that well for you. Why not record some live performances shove the videos on YouTube and build a bit of a following, once the audience is there fly on over to Kickstarter and get the audience to front you the money to hire your producer and the like.

This is what I'll front anyone making a Firefly themed album.

The record label will at least help you get the publicity you need though, they'll make sure the right radio stations play your tunes. Unfortunately none of the radio stations want to play your unique blend of battle-metal, chap-hop and nerdcore, so the record company tells you to be more commercial, to play it safe. Any record executive worth his salt will tell you, for example, that all singers need to be super-sexualised slut bags to hope of having success. Record labels are the reason the charts are cluttered with identikit pop nonsense who happen to be the exact same reason that you currently hate music. The record industry is a mechanism to take young fame-hungry “musicians” and take them from Nevermind The Buzzcocks guests, up to the heady heights of Nevermind The Buzzcocks guest presenter before finally dumping them into the Nevermind The Buzzcocks identity parade.

... I'm not as funny as the Buzzcocks writers.

The musicians who make a proper career of it fight the record label every step of the way. I'm not saying that all record labels work this way, some of the independent labels give a lot of control to the artists but the fact that this is a selling point for these labels says it all. Instead of relying on that process these days, due to the joys of the massively interconnected web of cables we have slung across this little blue marble, it is entirely possible for you to reach every single potential fan. You don't need to reach every single person on the net, you just need to promote yourself in the right places.

Much like the way your mum works the docks after the ships come in.

What about touring, surely the label will be of some assistance there? Well through the process of crowdfunding, it's not just possible to have a sell out tour without any help from the label it's actually impossible not to. You can sell the tickets then book the right venue to fit everyone in. You don't have to worry about overheads, just sell the tickets for the price we all know a gig ticket costs and work the rest out later.

£7.50!!! Seems fair.

The basic point I'm trying to make here is that these days it takes a lot of hard work to make it as musician without a record label, but you get to earn money whereas the old system was easier and it made a lot of money but you'd never see it. Please remember those are the people who call you thieves for downloading the Led Zeppelin back catalogue. After writing this I suppose I'd better promote my friends bands so check out The Subterranean Popular, The Intergalactic Graffiti Artists and Jail

eddie <take the power back>

Wild Wild Web

Every time a new frontier has been approached by mankind it has been treated by some with fear and suspicion, by others as a place to make a better life and by others as just out of reach of civilization. When we first started to sail the seven seas of this earth that third group sailed a little further than the others to take to a life of piracy on the ocean waves. When the Americas were first discovered many chose to ride into the wide blue yonder and live life in the lawless West. When mankind finally springs free from the bonds of this island Earth many of us will instantly opt for Space-Pirate/Cowboy lifestyles. But I want to focus on the one that's happening right now.

Google Image Search: Space Pirate...
First. Damn. Page.

It's easy for people to think in the overly coddled western world that new frontiers don't exist, and even if that's not correct we think those frontiers are beyond us. There's good money to be made running drugs through South America, but it's not exactly on anyone's list of places to build a better future. NO I'm talking about the frontier that you are exploring right now. Yes this article (oh look at me trying to pretend I'm a proper writer) and everything else you encounter on the internet are the new frontier. I don't mean that in some bullshit philosophical way I mean that when we ran out of sprawling wastelands which were notoriously hard to police we invented a new one. I'm going to focus on the West for this post because I was brought up with limited access pirate movies due to Costner ruining water based films also since Monkey Island there have been no good pirate games. Whereas I've watched tons of Westerns, countless episodes of Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman and played Red Dead Redemption. Also by combining westerns and technology I'll be able to make Firefly references.

If this isn't at least part of what you want your life
 to be I'm not sure I want you reading this blog.

So I think I should first address the lawlessness aspect I touched upon above, you see a big part of the appeal of the Western genre was that a lot of the West was beyond the reach of the law. True Grit is a story about 3 people travelling for a long time to find a criminal that the regular authorities didn't have the resources to pursue. Whilst True Grit is not a true story it is typical of what the west was like and indeed what the internet is like. I'm not saying that anyone reading this article has ever shot a man over a game of cards... although if you have yo can tell me, I'm cool... but you have all certainly breached international copyright laws. Now there are a million and one justifications for doing that, if House aired in the UK as the same time as the States I wouldn't need to download it, would I, Fox *spit*, but the reason we do it is because we know that we probably won't get in trouble. That's the same mentality that pervaded towns like Tombstone and Deadwood (yes, Deadwood was actually a real town). If you want to find the online version of tavern in a lawless frontier town then go to 4chan and check out /b/ I'm not going to link because you won't thank me. Now I'll admit the laws these people are outrunning are for the most part rules of social niceties but there is also a fair amount of flat out illegal shit occurring as well

Outside of the internet mixing cartoon bears and peadophilia is
seen as at best ill-mannered and at worst a sin against nature

While the West was lawless it wasn't without justice and revenge, justices deformed half brother. When someone had crossed, whatever the locals considered to be, the line by say punching the towns prettiest prostitute, stealing cattle or noncing a non-ginger (do what you want to the ginger kids no-one gives a fuck but then again they are the least attractive, so...) then it was time to round up a posse to bring the wrong-doer to justice. Alternatively they just grabbed the nearest 'negro' and crossed the thin line between mob-justice and lynching. I'm guessing I don't have to drive this one home to much but this totally exists online and even has it's own damn costume. Anonymous are a modern day posse/lynch-mob (it varies depending on where you are standing) with as much power for good or evil as there high-plain antecedents. However no-one believes this to be the worst part of the old West. No that was always a much more sinister phenomenon.

Yes, people pretending to be sasquatch, was a
huge problem but not the one I was referring to.

We've all seen the film Clint Eastwood rides into town to discover the Tavern, the General Store, the Ranch and the local Gold Mine all belong to one corrupt bastard who usually is shown early on punching a woman. He controls the flow of everything into and out of that town, hell even Zeke the ineffectual sheriff won't touch his boys even with all the brawling. Basically he's Gene Hackman in 'The Quick and The Dead'. If you live in that town he owns you. Surely we wouldn't allow such a thing to exist online would we, I don't know let me just check my Facebook. That's right in the littel town of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg is Gene Hackman... obviously outside of this metaphor Jesse Eisenberg was a much better casting decision. See whereas Google is the Pony Express and the Transcontinental Railroad of the New West social networking sites don't talk to each other they are closed systems and there making a small group very rich and this time we're not allowed to shoot them.

Being allowed to shoot them is one of the major plus points for fictional villians, but
does raise the issue of fictional rights, or as Americans call them 'The Constitution'

This metaphor works on so many levels that you can just keep pushing it. Flame wars are the new duels online word-slingers settling differences at High Noon fingers hovering over the keyboard until a helpful local yells "CAPS LOCK!". The geeks are the Native Americans seeing there spiritual homelands destroyed by a wave of fucking noobs. Where the West had its whorehouses, we have so much porn that I was desensitised to midget porn before I was twenty, have you any idea how hard it was to get desensitised to midget porn even a few short decades ago? It used to take a lot of effort... I did it by accident. However this torturous extended metaphor does have a point I want to get to and that is enjoy it while you can because it doesn't last.

Doesn't even make me laugh any more.

Pirates these days are a much sorrier affair than they once were and what was once the Wild West is now Cawker City, Kansas 'Home to the World's Largest Ball of Twine'. I'm not saying that the Internet will not remain a vast lawless playground for many years to come but when the hammer falls it will be a massive overreaction. You see pirates didn't just decided to quit. One day the British Navy and the East India Trading Company had a massive ruck with all of the pirate kings... there was a sea goddess and a Kraken... Seriously I don't have a lot to work with on pirates. However I can tell you that the death of the Old West was followed almost immediately by prohibition. You see when the authorities want something tamed they don't do subtlety they take complete control and drip you steady drops of freedom to see if you can be trusted. Which means that one day our Grandchildren will need an iris- scan to get online and will never accidentally see porn... I for one weep when I imagine that so, please everyone while you can, watch as much filth  as possible.

I don't want to live in a world where naked
cowgirl gets no hits on Google. Do you?

eddie <porn is fantastic>