Slashdot Mirror
The Chumbawamba Factor
putko writes "Chris Dahlen has written about BigChampagne, a company that looks at peer-to-peer downloading to provide marketing data to record companies. By analyzing what folks are downloading, when and where, BigChampagne can tell the record companies what people like, what other records they like and other information critical to deciding how to allocate marketing dollars. As mentioned in the article, record companies started using this information (secretly) even as they were trying to stop filesharing via the courts."
Oh yeah, down with the RIAA!! How dare they profit from something illegal! Rock on Chicago, Rock on London, Rock over RIAA.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
"..and other information critical to deciding how to allocate marketing dollars" i.e. information critical to prosecuting as many people as possible. Who here really believes that they will stop at monitering the tracks downloaded?
Matthew Grint Midnight Artists
Well, I guess we get knocked down, but we get up again! They ain't never ever ever gonaa win!
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
A classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do", methinks.
Both users and providers get what they want, illegally.
-- Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, iuva.
First off, for those of you who have no idea, or only a vague memory; "Chumbawamba are a band from the UK who use their music to promote anarchist ideas."
So the RIAA et al are trying to put an end to P2P, while hypocritically using P2P stats to know what's hot; they have crossed the threshold from tyranny into absurdity. What judge, knowing this, will still side with the RIAA in the future? Does this not set a precedent that the RIAA sees value in P2P?
The RIAA is reacting to a market change; P2P. They are learning that P2P has value to them, perhaps more value than loss, in that they can get a real consensus on what people want. Furthermore, the RIAA can no longer deem P2P as an immoral behaviour that corrupts society, because the fruit from the tree has poisoned their self-professed purity.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Lots of crap music that sounds mostly the same keeps being marketed by the suits. One of the most heard phrases when it comes to justify downloading copyrighted music off the net: "I just download the crap that's not worth paying for."
Hmmmmm...
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Does this mean that at last we can get charts which really reflect what people are listening to?
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
...I was never a big fan of "Tubthumping". Look at one of my latest posts (Sunday night) in a friend's JE about the worst music evar.
I'll also say, why in the hell is the music business so fired up to make nothing but hit records instead of providing people with access to music with artistic integrity? Yeah, they should make money, there's no doubt about that. They are, after all a businesses and they exist to make money. But, don't they also exist to give artists a voice? Whatever happened to that part of the equation? When did they discard the idea that popular music can also be truly artistic expressions of a musician's mind, body and soul? I don't even have a problem with there being people who make million dollar incomes when they do nothing more than pencil pushing in the whole cycle of musicial distribution. But, the musicians who actually create the stuff should be making at least as much as they do because without the artist, the business is nothing.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Sounds like something I heard someone on TV last night say. There is a group of roomates that live in a rather large house. One guy and a girl really like each other. She's fallen for him completely and he "wants his cake and wants to eat it too." Explaination, he wants this girl as his backup in case he can't find another girl to bring home from the bars or whatever.
With the RIAA using filesharing while trying to shut it down seems a bit odd to me. Recording artists for example are being "ripped off" by downloaders. Right? Well, the very same companies that are supposedly trying to stop the illegal downloading of music are using that data as a way to market or create new media.
Something else I'd always wondered about is why pirating Adobe producs was so easy. I'm using the GIMP now, but back in the day all you had to do was download and get a key-gen and Boom! You're in business. I almost wonder if Abode looked the other way in order for people to get used to using their product so that later or in a business type arena, the artist/developer would request that the company chose Adobe's products. I've got to get back to work.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Uh, sorry to burst your bubble, guys, but in 2000 I was more interesting than Axl Rose!
At any rate, I'm at a loss to understand what today's round of fake-ass outrage is about. Record labels tried to shut down illegal filesharing but also tried to get what value they could out of the data. That's wrong why, exactly? This is even lamer than yesterday's fake-ass outrage over "OMTFG, they're suing single mothers!!!"
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wouldn't this market analysis reveal which music people are willing to pirate rather than purchase?
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
In case people get the wrong idea from the article, Tubthumping is *not* the only good record Chumbawamba have made, and it's not even very different stylistically from some of their other stuff.
In particular my I recommend "Give the Anarchist a Cigarette", "When I'm Bad" and "This Girl".
Also a great live act.
http://savingiceland.org
You happen to have answerd part of your own question. They are, after all a businesses and they exist to make money.
Regarding artist integrity. When was the last time you heard an artist really singing about artistic impression and look at the lyrics of any popular song and hear or feel any of that? The new hip-hop artist of the day for example. All they sing/rap about is how many Hoes they can or have slept with and how much money or "bling" they have. Most of the music out there is about the same things. Why? Because that's the kind of music people are interested in.
musicians who actually create the stuff should be making at least as much as they do because without the artist, the business is nothing.Have you seen how many of the artists out there write their own songs? Not too many. Artists are the expendable part of the business. You've got song writters and producers that are doing all the behind the scenes work. The artist themselves are just the pretty face that has to go on tour and loose their "private life" to people like the you and me that want to know everything about them. I'd like you to find a songwritter (mostly nameless and faceless to the general public) who has done songs with popular artists that donesn't have any money. If Brittney Spears decided never to return to music, they'd just find another pretty face to sing all the same songs.
Ahh, my rant is now over. That's my 2 cents for what it's worth.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
The companies that licence anime in america do roughly the same thing. They watch the fan sub community for what is popular, then licence it and sell it.
The Chumbawamba Factor...
He gets a Manics song
He gets an Elvis song
He gets a Roses song
He gets a Beetles song
He rips the songs that remind him
Of the good times
He rips the songs that remind him
Of the better times:
Ripping the night away
Ripping the night away
I get DCed
I get on line again
You aint ever gonna keep me down
I get a trojen
I get installed again
You aint ever gonna gonna keep me down
I get Metalica threats
But I get wise again
You aint ever gonna keep me down
I get RIAA email
I get IP Spoofing again
You aint ever gonna keep me down
'Don't cry for me
RIAA...'
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
You can clearly see that BigChampagne is only looking from a mainstream perspective. From their limited point of view, Chumbawamba is a "one-time punk band".
Reality is far different-- Chumbawamba is one of the most successful punk bands in existance. They've been around for 25 years, released 20 albums & EPs, individual members released another 20 or more and have one of the largest followings of any non-mainstream bands. Their styles range from English Rebel Songs from 1381 to their modern pop-punk hits.
BigChampagne makes the same mistake as the big record companies-- they only look at the most popular bands, and are completely ignorant about the success of smaller bands and smaller labels.
The small band segment of the music industry is growing, and the mainstream music industry seems to be shrinking -- they keep complaining about reduced sales every year.
They are a dinosaur.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
ahhhhg this just proves I'm sick in the head, by remembering this crap from 2 years ago!!!
2 2&tid=141&tid=187&tid=98
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/10/15412
Sig
Funny thing... You are wrong. I decided to be nice and take you up on your challenge, and every CD I checked was marked as copyrights being owned by the record label. Though on a few it wasn't easy to find.
Of course, if you've paid any attention to the bitching artists have been doing for years over how the labels treat their music you wouldn't have these dilusions that most signed bands still own the copyrights to their music, because it simply isn't so.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
If BigChampagne's is so rock-solid, why aren't the labels rushing to get b-sides, unreleased covers, bootlegs, and out-of-print back catalog material up on iTunes and other commercial services? For me, that was the greatest thing about the Napster of old...material that wasn't commercially available for one reason or another. There's a goldmine to be had on that stuff and even Steve Jobs has mentioned how much material the labels are sitting on and haven't done anything with yet complain about declining sales and blaming piracy for their woes.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"Chumbawamba were a one hit wonder"
How very dare you! I spent many a happy evening as an indie student dancing to "Timebomb", "Enough Is Enough" and "Homophobia".
Seriously though, whilst they may be in the one-hit-wonder category in the USA, in the UK they had a string of indie-chart (roughly synonymous with the US "Alternative Chart") hits in the early 90's (throughout which I remained a member of the Young Conservatives, so obviously their political aims were significantly less effective than their indie-chart abilities). I would have thought that all of their releases from about 1991-1995 would have been in the UK Indie Top 20.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com