Morning Music Notes – Another Ship Sunk?
UK’s Access to Torrent Site Pirate Bay is in Trouble
The Pirate Bay, one of the Internet’s leading (illegal) torrent download websites, has received a major setback in the UK (well, setback for them, positive news for the music and movie industries). The British High Court has ruled that the Pirate Bay website and its users (read: you!) are engaging in “large-scale copyright infringement” (via Slash Gear). This might then lead to UK internet service providers from blocking access to the site. Now where am I supposed to get my music and movies from? Members of the British music industry are pushing for this. I’m sure general users of the internet, like you and I, would love our surfing to be controlled, and we won’t get mad, just like we didn’t at SOPA/PIPA….
Blur to Play Olympic Closing Ceremonies, Along with New Order and the Specials
Blur will headline the Olympic Closing Ceremonies in a Hyde Park performance on August 12 (via Telegraph). The band announced this on their Facebook page, saying: “We’re rowing in.. going for gold.. grabbing the baton.. for the high jump.. No, hang on, is that right? Fact is, Blur have accepted the invite to headline the Olympics’ Closing Ceremony Celebration Concert in Hyde Park on 12th August.”
Tickets goes on sale this Friday at 9am, and will set you back £55, plus fees. If you like money and don’t like Blur, New Order, or the Specials enough to pay £55+ to see them, the concert will be broadcast on the BBC. Check out the official poster below. The band will also be playing the Brit Awards tonight, so make sure you tune in for that.
Viral video experts, OK Go, Discuss How Little They’ve Made From 100 Million YouTube Views
OK Go have the right idea. They make very memorable music videos (despite semi-memorable songs to accompany the videos). If you are unfamiliar, they made the one with them jumping on the trend mills, the one with the dogs and buckets and stuff, and the recent car driving / instrument playing one. Their manager, Jamie Kitman, recently spoke to the SF MusicTech Summit and explained that despite 100,000,000 YouTube views, the music is pocket change (via Digital Music News). “I can speak to an artist who gets a lot of traffic, which is OK Go,” manager Jamie Kitman said, “And I would say that ‘trickle’ is the operative word, in terms of revenue we receive from places like YouTube and VEVO.”
Instead, the band sell outs licenses their music to companies like Chevrolet, as that’s where the dollar dollar bills are. Unfortunately for OK Go and other prospective bands, the video views haven’t correlated to paid music downloads or album sales. Methinks the videos are stronger than the music, as I said above.
Listen! M. Ward – Primitive Girl
The “Him” part of She & Him is M. Ward (the She being Zooey “I could write about you all day” Deschanel). M. Ward is releasing a new album of his own on April 10, called A Wasteland Companion, which is a name I find cool. The album will actually feature Zooey Deschanel, as well as Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Howe Gleb (Giant Sand), and others. You can listen to one of the tracks, Primitive Girl, down below.
M. Ward – Primitive Girl (Single Version) by MergeRecords
