¤ jetless heights

makin’ tea in your underwear

+ Tue, December 14

RIAA Is Love

I download music.

The RIAA would have my face on a million ads in every newspaper in the country with a fearful warning about how much money they sucked out of me.  There’s something more though.  There’s a deep, dark secret they don’t want you to know about.  They like to keep the people telling this secret quiet, hidden and without public voice.

Fuck ‘em.  I’m squealing.

I download music because it helps me purchase way more music than I otherwise could.  I download an album and then buy it.  And then I buy the entire back catalog of that artist.  And then I go to their concerts and then I buy their shirts and posters.  And then I write about how great that show was and then I encourage you to buy their music.  I download music and then I pump money into the music industry.  Most of my spending money, in fact.

The RIAA doesn’t want me saying this because it’s everything they deny.  All music downloaders are money-grubbing thieves if you ask them.  I am the vocal antithesis to everything they want a fearful public to believe.

Last spring, my good buddy said, “Hey, you need to hear this CD.”  It was Interpol’s “Turn On The Bright Lights”.  He sent me a digital copy and I madly fell in love with it.  He doesn’t listen to it much anymore, but I can’t go more than a few days without hearing that particular album.  Which is to say nothing at all about how often I listen to their other album and the numerous singles and EP’s of theirs I’ve bought.  You might even remember that I wrote about the incredible concert of theirs that I attended or the other general praise I’ve written for them along with song recommendations.

Today, at a historic record store here in downtown Ann Arbor, I found Interpol’s rare, import-only Black EP.  Very happy with this find, I immediately bought it and couldn’t wait to get home to hear it.

pop!  hiss!  pop!

“What the hell?  Why is this CD popping?”  Dumb question.  Copy-protected.  Those clever guys developed a way to physically write the disc in such a way that your burner won’t read it but your regular CD player will.  Or at least, your regular CD play will be able to try.

pop.

I returned that $14, 6 song CD immediately.  For a group interested in selling CD’s, the RIAA certainly has a knack for making the people most likely to buy CD’s do the exact opposite.

I encourage you to read about the campaign running at Downhill Battle for further information about ending the RIAA’s draconian practices and making music fair and free as we all know it should be.

6:35 PM  ×  6 Comments  ×  0 Trackbacks

+ Sat, September 11

9/11

I don’t think that anyone walking into Mrs. Dahl’s AP US History test that morning expected American History to be the one receiving the most difficult test.

9:28 AM  ×  4 Comments  ×  0 Trackbacks