The popular bands Blur and Radiohead have teamed up to fight the British government’s plan to begin “three strikes” laws against Internet pirates, one that has pirates kicked off the Internet for downloading unauthorized music three times.
The FAC (Featured Artists Coalition), will represent the “best interests” of the recording artists, and believes that file sharing in fact is better for the artist, as it encourages concert ticket sales and merchandising. The FAC does conceit that file sharing hurts record sales however.
The Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien adds: “My generation grew up with the point of view that you pay for your music. Every generation has a different method.
“File sharing is like a sampler, like taping your mate’s music. You go, ‘I like that, I’ll go and buy the album’. Or, ‘you know what, I’ll go and see them live’. What’s going on is a huge paradigm shift.”
Blur drummer Dave Rowntree also added: “The fact that file sharing goes on, and is as popular as it is, is an incredibly positive thing for the music industry. The fact is that music is so popular that people are willing to break the law to get it.”
All the bands in the group add that file sharing is bringing their music to new generations of fans, those that did not grow up with a radio, and instead grew up with the Internet.
Says Nick Mason, drummer with Pink Floyd: “The last thing we want to be doing is going to war with our fan base. File sharing means a new generation of fans for us.”
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Result for: new generations
Confirming reports published yesterday, The Beatles, MTV and Harmonix have jointly announced that they will be collaborating on a “brand new videogame featuring the music of the iconic Beatles” and will be out in time for the holidays 2009.
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos added the game will be a “new, full-blown custom game title production built from the ground up”. This won’t be a special one band branded game like Aerosmith had with Guitar Hero however, it will be a whole new game.
Jeff Jones, CEO of Apple Corps, noted that the catalog would include songs from the entire run of The Beatles. It also appears the game will work with peripherals from Rock Band as well as Guitar Hero.
“We want to take players on an experiential journey through the band’s history,” he said. “A visual exploration of the Beatles’ imagery is a big part of this project,” Rigopulos said. “With apologies…there’s very little that we’re ready to say about the game itself.”
MTV Networks president Van Toffler added, “We’re going to provide the ultimate platform for new generations of fans to start their own love affair with the Beatles”. Van Toffler also noted that the song of George Martin, Giles Martin, would be doing music production for the game.
“The thing that we’re trying to keep to is for people to play the songs as though they’re playing the originals. So we will be adhering to the original mixes my father and the Beatles did, and trying to preserve the sound quality as much as possible,” said Martin.
