Frank Turner
Oct0
Quite excited, going to see Frank Turner again tonight at Manchester Academy 2.
Update:
Well, amazing of course! Especially loved the bit where Frank brought on a girl from the audience to play a Harmonica solo, apparently though her boyfriend was at the bar at the time and missed the whole thing!
Being suckers for Merch we also bought some playing cards and thought yeah that’ll do us and outside afterwards were some really nice t-shirts and hoodies, having some money left in my pocket, how could I refuse?
Setlist
- Live Fast Die Old
- The Road
- Long Live The Queen
- Substitute
- Try This At Home
- Dan’s Song
- The Real Damage
- Poetry Of The Deed
- Imperfect Tense
- Smiling At Strangers On Trains
- Sons Of Liberty
- District Sleeps Alone Tonight (The Postal Service cover)
- Love, Ire & Song
- Father’s Day
- I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous
Encore:
- The Ballad Of Me Of My Friends
- Reasons Not To Be An Idiot
- Photosynthesis
Lily Allen / 50 Cent / Music Piracy
Sep0
There’s been a thing blowing up the last few days that’s been a little odd and got quite out of proportion.
Basically Lily Allen was commenting on something 50 Cent said about how for him piracy is a way of getting fans to go to concerts, clothes, etc and he’s accepted that people will steal his music. Lily’s point I think is that that’s fine for an established platinum artists like him but what about those who haven’t quite made it yet. She’s been saying this for a while and at most opportunities – Mandelson wanting to cut off connections of pirates (is that really the appropriate term, another story there I think), an artists coalition against piracy, whenever Radiohead talk about stuff…
I think that Lily has just not quite got her point across in the way she wanted to and didn’t go about linking to articles properly.
Then boingboing weighed in (usually my favourite blog, but goes a little heavy on copyright issues I think) saying for one complaining so hard about piracy she’s using scans from papers and copy/pastes of other people’s work.
The upshot of which Lily has reponded by closing down her blog. Which I think is a shame, not least of which because it means her article gets deleted off the net. It’s kind of a dummy spitting reaction really and I hope she’ll reconsider rather than deciding to pass the debate on to other artists to continue.
Music downloads means that it can be consumed on merit rather than what gets pushed to us, but it does also mean that those who can’t afford to have their material consumed in what’s becoming the mainstream method will lose out, will go broke and not make their music anymore, leaving only those that made their money before the download thing took off. Maybe this is just the process we actually need to happen to sort the mess out, it’ll hurt for a while and the music will suffer but maybe on the other side it’ll be much easier for everyone.
So for reference here it is:
It’s Not Alright: 50 Cent
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2009
50 Cent
50 Cent: Piracy Is A Part Of The Marketing
from the they-end-up-at-the-concert dept
Famed rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) was apparently on CNBC recently talking about his “business acumen.” I have to admit that having three different people all trying to interview him at once is rather annoying — as they almost never let him complete a thought. However, when they ask him about piracy, and whether or not it makes him angry (around 2 minutes), he responds that: he sees it as a part of the marketing of a musician, because “the people who didn’t purchase the material, they end up at the concert.” He says that people can fall in love with the music either way, and then they’ll go to concerts. He notes that you can’t stop piracy either way, so why try to fight it? He also talks about other business opportunities for musicians.this is particularly selfish in my view, he seems to only be thinking of how piracy effects him. What about the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting his posters up,the people that designed his artwork, the people that run his website. Is he giving them a cut of his live fee?
POSTED BY LILY ROSE ALLEN AT 3:29 PM
I’m not sure I believe the story that she’s quitting the business.
Social History of the MP3
Aug2
Pitchfork: social history of the mp3. Some thoughts on this.
In 2001 for GCSE coursework we were tasked to do a ‘Personal Research Project’, basically we had to come up with a topic, look into it and draw some conclusions. I can’t remember what grade I got for it in the end but I remember it not being as good as I thought it would be. I thought I’d picked a great subject, one that nobody else in the school was looking at and it’s one that is still talked about in mainstream press to this day. My topic was Will MP3′s kill the Music Industry? To put the timeframe into perspective Apple didn’t release their mac-only firewire iPod until October of that year, the first iPod that supported USB properly was the 4th Generation model in 2004.
Through my uncle, who’s a conductor, I got an interview with a record executive at Virgin Records and he completely dismissed the idea of MP3′s. He couldn’t understand the appeal whatsoever and having followed the story since he seems to have summed up the entire industry. He was telling me about his expensive hifi and that the experience could never compare with poor quality compressed sources. At yet at school we were getting excited about Napster and AudioGalaxy, a friend had a 256MB Rio mp3 player. We had seen the future, Moore’s law was on our side and hard drives were getting cheaper and more capacious. Nowadays I can store all my music in a tiny box, ironically it sits next to our collection of CD’s which get heaved around the place taking up an entire wall. Not to mention the LP’s and 45′s which feed the Wurlitzer. I just came back from a Week long trip and in one device had at my fingertips pretty much every song I’ve ever loved.
So how have MP3′s changed the way I enjoy music? Certainly they have, certainly bands like Radiohead’s worries about the enjoyment of proper albums are true. I tend to employ playlisting along with listening to an entire back catalogue of an artist at a time. Other’s will just listen on random which is something I don’t like so much but I can see the appeal. But it’s got me thinking, have I enjoyed more recent albums as much as i’ve enjoyed albums I lovingly transferred to mini disc for my walk to school? Now that I can have 1000′s of tracks with me compared to a mere two maybe three albums do I listen to those songs in so much detail anymore? Is the music having less of an affect on me?
Time was I’d buy a CD and listen to it endlessly while buying more CD’s and only replacing it on my hallowed essential list if deemed worthy. Now it’s just so easy to have so much with you that there is no need for that one must-have disc to be kept on your person all the time, just bring it all…
I do think it has helped find new things though. Last.fm, Spotify – I have a bit of an obsession making sure listens are scrobbled so I can track and compile my habits. But finding new things isn’t quite as satisfying as coming across something you love so much you never tire of it.
Korn
Aug0
So my friend Dan from my course text’s me and asked if I fancied some tickets to Korn.
Kate and I had seen that they were playing a few weeks back and joked about going but alas it was sold out.
So I thought, why not? Having been a fan for a while I was only concerned about the kid factor at the gig. Which wasn’t to bad really with us standing where we were.
The band itself did a great set full of our fave’s and well played too, they sounded really good, as a band like them should.
An awful choice in support though (P.M.T.) do some bands do this on purpose to make themselves look better?
Also a mystery why they weren’t in the M.E.N. but still i’m glad I got the chance to see them in the Apollo.