[LINK] Criminal Minds [WAS: Meet the music industry’s new misinformation puppet and learn how to benefit from her tricks]

[Kim Holburn]

You know I was surprised by something Lilly Allen said in her blog:

> You don't start out in music with the Ferraris. Instead you get a
> huge debt from your record company, which you spend years working
> your $%&* off to repay. When you manage to get a contract, all those
> pretty videos and posters advertising your album have to be paid for
> and as the artist, you have to pay for them. I've only just finished
> paying off all the money I owe my record company. I'm lucky that I've
> been successful and managed to pay it back, but not everyone's so
> lucky. You might not care about this, but the more difficult it is
> for new artists to make it, the less new artists you'll see and the
> more British music will be nothing but puppets paid for by Simon  
> Cowell.

Sad (and funny really).

On the other hand There is an amazing story here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/27/zoe-keating-web-fame-that-actually-translated-to-a-career/

Zoe Keating: Web Fame that Actually Translated to a Career

> Think of all the online fame that’s been created in the last few  
> years amid this hype of the Web democratizing celebrity. Now try to  
> name how many of them crossed over to mainstream popularity.

....

> Enter an unlikely Internet fame winner: Zoe Keating. Keating is an  
> avant garde cellist and that is her day job. She has no label. No  
> agents. Nothing. Just 1,081,522 Twitter followers (and counting),  
> the number one spot on iTunes classical music list, YouTube videos  
> of her performances and a Web site.


Here's a great quote from Zoe Keating:

> Keating also doesn’t have the normal hang-ups of a prima donna  
> musician. I asked her if she had the usual anti-corporate bias  
> against her music being used to advertise products and she looked at  
> me like I was mental. (See the clip below. The entire show is  
> available here.) In short, she gets that the model for musicians is  
> thoroughly broken and she revels in it. I asked if she would take a  
> huge record deal if it came to her now and she said “no” before I  
> could finish the question. “I would definitely do it myself because  
> I don’t want to compromise,” she said.


On 2009/Sep/27, at 7:56 AM, David Boxall wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 at 10:35:26 +0100 Leah Manta wrote:
> <http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2009-September/085057.html>
>> ...
>> The attack was very subtle and, even I have to admit, very well
>> played by the spin masters and agents of deceit at EMI as they moved
>> their new misinformation puppet to the front line of their private
>> war on anything that poses a threat to their dinosaur business model.
>>
>> As you pick your way through this story I hope it becomes apparent
>> just how duplicitous and calculating the music industry can be. And
>> how they, and their puppet like employees, will stop at nothing to
>> frustrate the efforts of genuine independent musicians and genuine
>> music lovers.
>> ...
> The piece goes on to detail a history of carefully contrived trickery,
> inconsistent with what I would expect of decent members of society.
>
> Which brings me to a thought that has been brewing in my mind since
> before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC): that business attracts
> criminal minds. The confidence trickery described in the subject  
> article
> is one example of that psychology. Microsoft's FUD tactics
> <http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2009-September/085052.html>,
> unnecessary use of proprietary technologies by firms like Sony and  
> Apple
> and other abuses of "Intellectual Property" privileges are similar  
> in my
> mind. The behaviour that led to the GFC (while the culpable were paid
> bonuses, some exceeding what an average worker could expect to earn  
> in a
> lifetime) provides further examples. The fact that we accept such
> shenanigans as normal business practice supports my premise.
>
> I marvel that Market Capitalism can redirect the energies of
> personalities that might otherwise be mobsters to potentially less
> harmful ends. While Capitalism harnesses them, they are by nature  
> still
> what they are. Without a firm hand on the reins, they inevitably do
> harm. Unfortunately, with conservatives like John Howard and George
> Bush, instead of firm hands, we got limp wrists. The pattern is now so
> well established that their less conservative successors have not
> learned the lesson or, if they have learned, fear to heed it.
>
> Those of that bent will probably assert that I'm accusing everyone in
> business of criminal intent. I'm not, but I believe the record shows
> that much of what's done in the course of business, though not  
> illegal,
> probably should be. To my mind, it's worth putting a few behind bars  
> to
> keep the (undeniably valuable) rest from doing harm.
>
> "/Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for
> the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
> /Attributed to John Maynard Keynes - probably paraphrasing
> Adam Smith.**
>
> -- 
> David Boxall                    |  All that is required
>                                 |  for evil to prevail is
> http://david.boxall.name        |  for good men to do nothing.
>                                 |     -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
>
>
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> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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