FROM THE BLOG

Keep your filthy hands off my beautiful minions.

Read while this song is playing….Wierd Al has done it again.

——– In the battles of Copyright and DRM, Are we forgetting that the music industry is Created by Musicians and Curated by the Fans?—-

Dear major label-person thing,

I understand you have bad dreams these days. You have a long list of bogeymen and night terrors in the form of initials P2P, CDRs, then recently the postal service.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39280381,00.htm

Poor schmucks. Really. Your paranoia reigns greater than my muses’ combined.

You think everyone is unkind to you. First the pirates, then the consumers. Your victims often end up with a host of initials coming after them i.e the RIAA ergo, your hounds, your personal bitch.

To convince the public that we are indeed doing evil by sharing our entertainment, there is the endless citing of statistics on your part. Drop in album sales, drop in single sales blah blah blah…the list is tirelessly long.

At the best of times you are running around like headless chickens screaming “PIRACY WILL KILL US ALL!!! ARGH!!! PIRATE MORE AND NO MUSIC FOR U.”

——–end doomsday message—-

Really now? Let’s put some things in perspective shall we?

First of all Mr major label person, you don’t sell music. You sell plastic discs. So let’s not mix plastic with music. They rhyme, but are distinctly different beasts.

Then, when you feel like spending money on MTV, you spend it on making soft porn. Is it me or is every top 40 clip just jam packed with booties and titties? Do you mass hire your strip teasers? Do you realise that here in Australia, video hits is aired at Kiddy cartoon time? Of course, you don’t care, morals are defined as you see fit eh?

Let’s move on now to artist development shall we?

See I know by now that this is an absolute myth. A mirage you majors sent your A & R goonies to create for us indie artists to trek to. Guess what, I sussed you out and so did a million others.

See, the way you function now is about profit expansion. It’s never about the music. I guess I should thank you, the majors for bringing me Britney. Let me salute your cultural achievements. We never held so much cultural promise.

Then, the truth is, you let us artists do all the work, the plugging, the miscellaneous slogging, and when we’re ripe for the picking, you extend your hand of friendship. Of course, after that, you also require us to sell our soul to you, you take our copyright and keep it for the next millennia.

The last time I got a recording contract from you, your contract regarding copyright ownership for a song I WROTE extends to the “Universe”, just in case I run away to Alpha Centauri to hang with Mulder.

I told you to shove it up your nether regions…so far up you *hwarf * it back out your digestive tract.

I guess it makes sense to you and I don’t blame you. We do all the work and end up with 7% of the profits or less. We look stupid don’t we, in our drug fucked ways and muse laden madness. Then of course, you drop us all when our next album isn’t a jackpot. Or better yet, we suffer creative differences like Fiona Apple did and you hold our entire album hostage.

So I guess I can see why you would get upset with pimply teenagers who download our music. I can see why you want control and try to booby trap your artist’s records.

You’re a pathological control freak. That’s what you are.

Oh, and I don’t blame you. In this digital age, it also means you can’t crap jam your audience anymore. Us artists can also get to our audiences in the way we see fit and bring our music to wherever we want.

It also means that mainstream radio isn’t the only way to go. So while u plug away your Britney version 10.7s, us indies can go to a million podcasts and tastemaker sites to get our stuff heard.

Then there’s a good other lot of consumers, (me included) who gives commercial radio the finger and dilute into the cyberverse…you and your Britneys drove us there. Thanks to you, there has never been so much music and more fertile grounds for creation.

Oh my, did your budget for payola and whores for rent just exponentially increase? Which of the million tastemaker blogs and podcasts will you bribe? and can you?

So you freak out and start suing your customers who are still in their diapers. Got ya. And you start making use of different forms of music technologies that disallow consumers from ripping their CDs or from trying to convert the files that they PAID for and you give it fancy dancy pet names like DRM.

Amusing.

Look, I used to play with Barbies, Mattel never came after me for pulling out her head, and filling her with red play-doh and filling her body with holes so when I squeezed her she would look like she was bleeding. My Bleeding Barbie version 2.0…

By this simple logic, all I can say is if my minions PAID for their songs, they can do whatever they want with the tracks. They are also allowed to share it and rip it in a thousand billion forms to enjoy as they see fit. I do not believe in making them jump through techological hoops for that.

Guess what, most of my minions who bought my album can vouch that I also encourage it.

Of course, dear label person, I must salute you for covering up your tracks well, you tell us it’s for us, the artists’ good. You are protecting our income. For lack of a better word, B-A-L-L-S.

If ever we have been stiffed, it’s by you Mr label Person. We do all the work, you do all the money taking. In contrast, when my minions share my music, they share it for free. They plug my stuff all over cyberverse for free. They tell people about artists they love because they can, and because they want to.

Let’s not talk about pirates though, they can rot in hell and they already are. Why let pirates profit when there’s a beautiful thing called bittorrent? So let’s not worry, it’s a market that’s almost gone,in a matter of time, until they come up with a better plan.

Let’s also not talk about the people who never paid a single cent for legit entertainment. I understand that I, a musician, work in a service industry. I serve music, I know my place. If I’m going to get stiffed, I AM going to get stiffed. There are and were many ways to do it, starting with cassette tapes. All I can say is that most people understand value and will pay for it if they like it enough.

Not everyone is as dishonourable as you.

Of course, we still need you labels, but we need you to change. The world has gone digital but your brain still functions like a pathetic, ancient, 4-track recorder.

We still need the traditional stuff, we still need people to take care of the marketing and other itty bitty business gears while we turn ourselves inside out, examine our gross bits and write more new tracks with minimal interruption of business affairs. We still need those and we need you to work a better deal so that the next artist that wrote a massive hit doesn’t end up loveless, penniless and sleeping in the streets because you made us sign our souls for less than McDonald’s wage rate.

We also need you to stop suing music lovers.

And if you think this arrangement isn’t “profitable” enough, there are better things to sell than plastic discs in this century, start doing some thinking for a change. I salute the labels or management teams already taking steps to take care of the band and the fans.

To the others, get your shit together and keep your filthy hands off my beautiful minions. They are not to be blamed for you losing your jobs…

your pathetic, antiquated brain is.

Yunyu
www.yunyu.com.au
— Top Seller in EarshotMusic — Thanks to Minions who share
–Currently top 10 in CIUT FM, Ontario, Canada — Thanks to Minions who share
— 13000 views on Youtube in a month (Lenore’s Song video Clip) –thanks to Minions who share
— Regularly on Top 10 of Mperia.com — thanks to Minions who share
–Featured on Coolshite on the Tube — Thanks to minions who share
— Debuting on 98 KUPD FM, Arizona, USA — thanks to Minions who share & (who sent me there)
–And today, Shots Ring Out — Thanks to minions who share
–Debut Album Spiked Soul out in CDBABY and EarshotMusic now — For the Minions who share