Pink Floyd Via P2P
Can you live without the Pink Floyd performance from Live 8?
Not me.
And there you’ve got it. A system that’s not set up to meet demand. An
entrenched bureaucracy so out of touch with its consumers that it confuses desire
for acquisition for piracy.
MTV doesn’t respect the music.
EMI doesn’t respect the music.
The only people who respect the music are the audience. They’re the ones who
care, they’re the ones this business is built upon, why don’t they get any
respect?
How come the Live 8 performances weren’t available IMMEDIATELY upon
completion?
Well, there were RIGHTS issues. And CREATIVE issues. And BUSINESS issues.
But the public gives not a shit about all of the above, people only care
about music. They’ve bypassed the bureaucracy, taken not only MATTERS into their
own hands, but the MUSIC!
Live 8 was a dud. Certainly in America. Where MTV’s coverage was horrific.Â
But, startlingly, Live 8 is having a second wind. On P2P sites. Bob Geldof
and his artists should maybe stop focusing on the G8 summit, where they have
very little impact, and on the business they’re INVOLVED IN! God, if only Bob
told people to sign a petition if they downloaded the Pink Floyd performance,
ANY performance from Live 8. Maybe THAT would show the labels, the WORLD,
what demand there is.
Now aficionados know that something goes down at a live show. You believe
the music sounds much better than it actually does. It’s about the environment,
the EXCITEMENT!
And I’ve got to tell you, the Dido performances from Live 8 don’t really
register. You hear them a few times and you might even delete them from your
iTunes library (yes, you’d NEVER throw out a CD, but you’ll trash MP3s, because
you know you can get them again, whenever you want, INSTANTLY!)Â But Pink
Floyd…that’s something different.
To be sitting in my own house, in front of the computer, and hear David
Gilmour start picking the intro to "Wish You Were Here" gives me chills. And then
Roger starts to talk. His words will become etched in my brain like the
dialogue on the "Woodstock" album.
"So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell"
I ask you, a world wherein everybody can have the music they desire
INSTANTLY, for a low acquisition price, where music dominates in a way it hasn’t for
decades, is that HELL, or HEAVEN?
We’re living in heaven. The labels just don’t know. And most of the artists
either.
The number one desire of an artist is to get his work exposed to the most
people possible. Sure, he wants to get paid, but that is the SECONDARY desire.Â
Only mercenary creeps like Gene Simmons would say otherwise.
Pink Floyd has given us this gift. Men so rich they don’t need any more
money have delivered joy to tens of millions of people around the world. As you
sit there depressed in your corner office, thinking the business is in the
shitter, all over the world there are people who are ELATED! Not watching videos,
but sitting in front of their computers, walking with their iPods, listening
to "Money", "Wish You Were Here", Dave’s explosive guitar in "Comfortably
Numb", the one the idiots at MTV talked over.
And it’s not only baby boomers who know. It’s the younger generation too.
This is the biggest event of the summer. You just don’t know it yet.
Just like people keep buying "Dark Side Of The Moon", they’re going to keep
trading Pink Floyd’s Hyde Park performance from Live 8.
