Slashdot Mirror
Weird Al Says 'Don't Download This Song'
Kazzahdrane writes "Known geek and comedy singer/songwriter Weird Al Yankovic has released the first song from his new album 'Straight Outta Lynwood' for free on his MySpace page. The track is entitled 'Don't Download This Song' and tells of the dangers of illegally downloading music from filesharing sites." His MySpace page is most excellent. "Hi. Al here. No, really, it's Al. Seriously. What, you don't believe me? Go ahead, check weirdal.com. Hit the MySpace link. See if it brings you right back to this page. Go ahead. I'll wait. See? It's really me. I should point out... this means that conversely, all those other people on MySpace who are claiming to be me or implying that they are me... are definitely NOT me. I'm sure they're very nice people... they're just not 'Weird Al' Yankovic. I assure you."
I look forward to the music video that is supposed to air on Yahoo music at 10:00 PM Pacific Time tonight (August 22nd).
Enjoy one of the last artists that is still concerned about his fans and music no matter how hilarious and campy it may be. He has the sense to realize that he's very well off compared to his fans and jokes about solid gold humvees and diamond studded pools.
My work here is dung.
I wonder if SCO has licensed his "Dare To Be Stupid" song yet?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Hi, I'm part of the reality squad. I feel it is my duty to inform you that you did not get p1st fr0st. Sadly, you recieved the far less prestigous p1rd th0st.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Joke: ->
/|\
You: O
/ \
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
The RIAA begins researching ways to silence this insolent artist who seems hellbent on allowing people to access music (even if it IS his music) for free. They've been cheated out of their share. The following were just decided on by the super secret RIAA meeting on financial vengeance. Step 1. Get Angry Step 2. Talk about how you're cheated. Step 3. Sue Wierd Al and anyone who downloads the song (it says explicitly do NOT download the song,. it's in the title!) Step 4. ???? Step 5. Profit!
Weird Al and MC Lars should have a rap battle about music piracy. They'd sell millions of records. Or have millions of downloads. Or soemthing.
Really if you don't like Weird Al then you must have been unloved as a child.
His MySpace page is most excellent.
Was this summary written by Keanu Reeves?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Pfft, yeah. He only has 6 platinum records, and 3 gold. You told him!
Looks like his actual site server is getting trashed, but the last time I was there you could download another song, "You're Pitiful".
:o
It's pretty app when thinking about the steretypical Slashdot person.
From what I can remember, he put it online because some copyright/trademark thing kept him from using it on the next album. Not sure what it was, though. It looks like you can at least listen to it on his MySpace page.
One thing I love about Weird Al's songs is that he does his research. In the song from this "article", he mentions such things as Kazaa. In "All about the Pentiums", he throws out a lot of technical terms.
Weird Al is one of my favorite people ever. He's pretty good to his fans, he fights the true fight, and is hilarious to boot. I can't wait for this next album.
Weird Al doesn't tag his MP3s when he rips them. For shame.
Somebody please tell me that got Slashdotted...
I think MC Lars had it better:
Download this song
like the other commenters, i too had no trouble with Poodle Hat.
in addition, as for Al's supposed anti-downloading stance, it should be mentioned that he is in a somewhat unique position: literally hundreds of songs that AREN'T his are constantly attributed to him on file sharing systems, just because they're (ostensibly) "funny". Al maintains a relatively innocent, upbeat personna, but many of the songs misattributed to him are stupid, mean spirited, or far raunchier than anything Al would want to be associated with. it's a significant problem for the guy that goes much deeper than simple lost royalties.
that said, every time i've heard him asked about file sharing, that is how he has framed his response. he doesn't want people to think he wrote "smoke a bowla"
i could live a little longer in this prison
He's not stupid. He's well aware that the music people are most likely to download free of charge rather than pay for is the stuff they have no intention of keeping long-term. (If you really like a song, and are still going to like listening to it five years down the road, you'll happily shell out for a CD).
That category covers Weird Al's entire catalogue rather nicely, though. Really, his songs are mildly amusing for the first few times you hear them - maybe a couple dozen at most. They're not particularly well played / sung / recorded, the lyrics aren't amazingly incisive and won't stick with you in any meaningful way - they're just a source of a quick chuckle. Weird Al more than most is probably feeling the pinch as his bottom line fades away. Really, when was the last time anybody around here listened to "Eat It" or "Like a Surgeon"? The songs he parodied live on much better than the parodies do, and even the originals are getting a bit long in the tooth.
I'm not shedding a tear or excusing him though - he needs to find a way to market his product that caters to its short-lived nature. Realistically, that probably means he needs to be making his money from things like non-stop live performances in small venues around the country, where fans can get up close to him, for a period of several months after he releases a new album. It's hard work, but it is a lot more honest work than expecting to make a mint off sales of an overpriced product people were forced into buying because you don't give them a pricing option that befits the lack of replay value.
Crap. I hit submit by accident.
Back in 2000, Spinal Tap (sorry, I don't have a n-umlaut key on my keyboard) borrowed the domain tapster.com from some sort of brewery interest web site to put up a parody of Napster. Contrary to Nigel's comment, they actually had a lot of songs up there, mostly Spinal Tap, but they did have at least one "mislabeled" song, which was Zappa's "I am the Slime".
But the Tapster curse lives on, and even the "orignal" tapster.com is no more.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I have very mixed feelings about [Napster]. On one hand, I'm concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!!!!!
He's previously said that his biggest problem with internet downloading is that many files on the internet are incorrectly labelled with him as the artist, some of these being much more offensive than his actual material.
Try turning off your flashblocker -- it's played as a flash file, with the actual mp3 being available at http://www.dontdownloadthissong.com/tracks/DDTS.mp 3
Since we're already spending so much time here and acting like junior high kids, I want myspace style slashdot profiles. Imagine what this would do to the community. When you read a post and think to yourself "Overweight, Undersexed Wow junkie" you can click the link and see their photos to confirm your suspicions. Plus, think of the fun we'd all have writing the CSS code to design our pages. Instead of harping on people for their grammar, we could point out how their profile page isn't XHTML compliant.
Taco would be everybody's friend by default, but if you're friends with the real CowboyNeal (or a girl) you would totally put that in your top eight.
Our mail system would be IMAP though
For those without flash: http://www.dontdownloadthissong.com/tracks/DDTS.mp 3
As stated, Lynwood, CA. Where Weird Al went to highschool, and his parents lived until their recent deaths. Also one-step away from Compton, with about the same reputation: bunch of good for nothing hoodrats trying to be tough and causing problems (as a former resident I can say that with the utmost certainty).
Not like Weird Al? You must be Communist. Or live in Oregon. Or both.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
yes, it's iTunes fault Wierd Al went in and renogiated his contract so that he got less for digital sales.
Please, Wierd Al should have understood what he was signing. The label is screwing him, not iTunes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Weird Al is distributed under a faux independent label, Volcano Records, which is owned by Sony BMG, who brought us intrusive DRM and is a proud part of the RIAA intellectual "property" lawsuit cartel. Now I have to get a new goddamned movement for my irony meter!
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Woosh!
The (semi-ironic) twist here?
The album, according to Amazon, is being released as a DualDisc, and that means that some computers and players won't be able to handle the album. Of three computers in my dorm room last year, none of them could play the newest Springsteen album.
Because of the format choice, there might be some people that don't have any choice but to download the song, either legally (assuming iTunes sells it like they do some of his other albums) or through other means.
Goo goo g'joob.
I own all of them, actually. Anywhere from 1-5 songs per album is an original that parodies a genre or a particular musician without mimicking any single song.
I like to sing. Because Al has jokes in his lyrics, he usually does a really good job speaking clearly so the listener can get the jokes. I could sing along with Smells Like Nirvana the second time I heard it. I still don't know all of the words to Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, and I've heard that dozens of times. Weird Al is one of the only musicians whose lyrics I never need to look up after hearing a song.
I also have a taste for really bad puns and silly jokes. That's a help too.
If you have a less silly sense of humor, I can respect that. If you don't like the voice... I have many friends who go berserk for Rush, and I can't listen to their lead singer without wanting to shove a pencil through my ears. So I can respect that too.
Our story begins with a skim over the day's Slashdot headlines. The regulars are all present: Government X adopts OSS/ODF, Mr. Nobody gives a loose overview of security problem Y, and SCO does transparently underhanded deed Z. Yet one topic in particular grabs my attention...
Being a Weird Al fan, and well-aware of the problems he has collecting from his label, my mind registers the topic both as a must-Read-More and as another chapter to take note of in the long saga of digital music rights. With significant anticipation, I add it to my other fifteen or so open tabs and proceed to work my way through my article reading queue.
I (grudgingly) visit myspace, but something's amiss. There is no download link! Nothing in the navigation menu, the news posts, or the comments make mention of where I can obtain the song, yet visitors proceed to comment on how much they enjoyed it. Looking for an alternate link, I return to Slashdot, only to find more reactions without mention of any download difficulties. And so I begin to worry irrationally: "I'm the only one in the world who can't listen to Weird Al!" I've had usability issues with myspace before, but normally after a minute or so of misguided clicking I'm able to stumble upon something that hints at actual content. I try two other domains, weirdal.com and dontdownloadthissong.com, only to find the former hopelessly slashdotted and the latter unusable. My frustration continues to build.
I reflect that perhaps it is a browser compatability issue - I am using Konqueror after all - and try my luck with firefox. After configuring it to *not* attempt DNS queries over IPv6, that I might reach the content I so desperately seek this century, I find that myspace persists to mock me. It is as if some divine administrative force knows my IP address and has modified the web server specifically to torment me.
I search for torrent files - first through links from kind slashdotters looking to boost their karma, and when that fails, via KTorrent's integrated search plugin. Bittorrent.com? No matches. Isohunt.com? Nada. Mininova? Bytenova? Torrentspy?! My heart races as I continue to exhaust the list of built-in known search engines, until... Aha! The Pirate Bay has found one match, uploaded a mere twenty-two minutes ago.
But to use a torrent from the most infamous peer-to-peer site in existence, what would that make me? Is the torrent legal? Just because Weird Al chooses to distribute it on his webpage doesn't mean he releases that right to others. I'm sure under these circumstances he couldn't possibly mind, but not having heard of the song's existence prior to reading Slashdot, I simply do not know the record label's stance on the matter, or whether they even have partial rights over this particular mp3. But it does not matter - I must have the song!
The irony - that I am bittorrenting a free-as-in-beer song that possesses a satirical name mocking filesharing litigation, and am potentially committing a copyright violation in the process - is not lost on me. My idealistic side taunts the RIAA, "I just DARE you to try to sue me over this, my only infringement!" My pessimistically pragmatic side notes that the unusual circumstances would make no difference, as I would be forced to settle, and never see my day in court anyway.
I emerge from my digression to the present.
No peers or seeders. For the moment, the music industry and other enemies of Peer-to-Peer breathe a sigh of relief.
Then it occurs to me that the song might be unreachable to those who have not installed the dreaded Flash Plugin. But why? A slashdot commenter mentions that the song is indeed in the mp3 format, so it is not as if my lack of such a player could possibly prevent me from obtaining this song. For what kind of sick madman would consign a publically-downloadable mp3 to the clutches of a proprietary system and that system alone?
As a rule, I have abstained from using Flash on my desktop's Gentoo installation. This self-denial is due to a combination of fac
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
There is some fine irony in that statement.
Liability and contract don't end when a firm is bought by another one. So by refusing to honor a previously signed up contract with scrotti brother that they bought on, sony would not only open themselves to liability, but likely void the contract freeing to sell the CDs.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In between the lawsuits against dead war veterans, flooding the USENET alt.binaries groups with Russian child porn (DIAF, you sick commie bastards!), and making Paris Hilton and Kevin Federline CDs--which will make great clay pidegons when it reaches to dollar store next month--RIAA's taste in music is about as bad as the food in an unplugged fridge in Phoenix.
This song was not long enough.
On the other hand, Al points out the fallacies that have been used to discourage downloading such as a slippery slope, threats of damnation, and treatment worse than violent criminals. Al would win a Grammy for this song if the people at RIAA weren't evil.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
I see a trend here...
Wierd Al
MC Lars
Cruisbox http://audiopium.typepad.com/thatpodcastsong/
Can anyone else out there imagine a Live Aid style gig to raise funds to pay lawyers to go up against the RIAA...
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
Can you imagine the irony, if this was released as a single and it went to Number 1 ...then again, everyone would download it anyway, so it would never get anywhere. But, just for a moment imagine that...
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
That's because you didn't get it. Weird Al also does "style parodies" in which he does a song in the same style as another artist, but not actually a parody of a specific song. For example, listen to "Germs" on "Running with Scissors" - a parody of Nine Inch Nails.
I'm pretty sure that "Don't download this song" is a style parody of "We Are The World" - that benefit song sung by hundreds of celebrities in the 80's (Michael Jackson et al). It was also taken off in the Simpsons with "We're sending our love down the well". So now you know!
The question shouldn't be whether or not it really is Al. The question should be whether or not it's an honest-to-Allah MySpace site.
I mean, if it really is a MySpace site, then how come my eyes aren't bleeding?
Weird Al, How could you? An MP3 encoded at 96 kbs at 22.05 kHz...
Today a piece of my inner audiophile died.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4