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UK Music use FOTL blog in three-strikes ad
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 30 September 2009
So, as may have seen, UK Music added to the on going file-sharing debate earlier this week by taking an advert in the Guardian and using it to print a blog entry by Andy Falkous of Welsh post-hardcorers Future Of The Left from earlier this year – ie before the latest round of debating on this issue – in which he recalls his frustration on finding his band’s new album available on the internet, illegally, just three weeks after is completion and over eight weeks ahead of its scheduled release.
While admitting that “it feels like getting annoyed about downloading in this valueless age is like taking issue with water for being wet or night for gradually turning into day” he adds: “Thank you for downloading in barely a minute something that we poured a year of our lives into, attempting (successfully, I believe) with a great and furious pride to better our previous low-selling (and leaked three months early) album, a record which flew under the radar for many reasons but mostly because most of the goodwill poured on it happened and had dwindled several months before it was available to buy. [But I’m now] a little worried that the [new] record we made will get lost amongst the debris and leave us playing shows like we just weathered at the laughably bad Camden Crawl this last weekend – fifteen people and a world of disillusionment”.
Questioning the assumption by file-sharers that music should be free, he adds: “How far, I wonder, does this entitlement for free music go? My guitars, should they be free? Petrol to get us to shows? Perhaps I should come to an arrangement with my landlord, through the musician-rent-waiver programme. Perhaps he should pay me, for his ninth-division indie-cred through association”.
It’s an interesting and amusing rant on the issue, originally posted back in April. You can read it in full here.
Of course, of even more interest is UK Music’s decision to re-publish the rant in the Guardian at their own expense. The fact it’s a well written piece was only part of their motivation, presumably. It’s key that they’ve chosen a lesser-known band who, while not unsigned and bedroom-based, are still very much in the ‘flog your guts out for minimal return’ stage of their career, a stage many bands never quite surpass, especially now there are a lot less silly-sized major label advance cheques on the table.
As the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis observed: “Clearly UK Music thinks its message isn’t going to get across if it’s delivered by multimillionaires: it’s hard to be lectured on the financial implications of file-sharing from someone who’s rich enough never to have to work again. Here, on the other hand, is the perceived effect of filesharing on a band who clearly aren’t interested in being featured on the Chris Moyles show or capturing that all-important early evening ITV market, and pride themselves on their integrity and conscience: half-empty gigs, albums released to no fanfare, because the excitement happened when they leaked”.
So there you go. The debate, as they say (well, I’m saying) continues.
