Deadpoet's Defunct Cave

i've finally found proof that today's music is mostly the same! click on the title of this post to download a nickelback song... no, two nickelback songs which sound so alike, it's amazing. one song on the left speaker, one song on the right speaker. and both sound like the same thing. be amazed.

well, i've maintained that all those new 'rock' bands sound like each other, it's so hard to tell them apart. that 'college' rock sound, i believe someone coined it. an evolution of boy bands - and we know all of those sound the same already - only with instruments.

i came across the mp3 file through this disinfo article on piracy. which lead me to this blog entry:

As if there weren't already enough reasons to laugh at Nickelback

It's probably no surprise that I don't enjoy "popular" or "Top 40" music. It's corporate, bland, overplayed, unoriginal, boring, bland, and boring, It's also dumb. But just because I don't enjoy it doesn't mean I don't listen to it. I mean, how can you not when radio and TV is infested with this crap. Lately, one of the bands that I love to hate is Nickelback, slowly climbing the ranks and placing themselves up at the top with Creed, Matchbox 20, and countless others as "worst bands in the history of music."

So I received tremendous joy when I found the following file over on the SA Forums. Some internet genius took Nickelback's first horrible "hit," and mixed it with Nickelback's newest awful "hit." By "mixed" I mean one shitty song plays in the left speaker, and the other ear-bleeding excuse for rock plays in the right speaker. What a surprise, they are almost EXACTLY THE SAME. It's uncanny, sad, and hilarious at the same time.

Nickelback - How You Remind Me Of Someday

I felt it was my duty to share this song in order to spread the word on how horrible music is today, and I hope you all do the same. Oddly enough, this song incest sounds better than anything Nickelback will ever actually play.

Posted by Brandon at April 5, 2004 04:26 PM

which brings me to piracy. copyright law and intellectual property rights (IPRs) need to be reexamined. this is especially so with music. people have always recorded music (and tv shows, among other thigns) since recordable media has been around. but now, with almost perfect digital copies, the powers that be are bleating about stealing. well, we've always been stealing, if that's the case.

IPRs are supposed to promote creativity and enable owners of intellectual properties to profit from them for a finite period.

arguably, IPR has failed on the first count, if one looks at the music being churned out today. IPR has definitely failed on the second count. the length of copyright has been progressively extended since the conception of IP law. the extensions to the copyright usually occur when mickey mouse is under threat. yes, the mouse was supposed to return to the public domain a long time ago. ironic that disney cartoons have been profiting from stories that have been in the public domain for ages.

but back to music... who's really doing the stealing? record labels are usually the owners of copyright for the songs. how much really goes back to the artistes? the ones who were supposed to be stimulated by the propect of profits which IPR enable.

then there's this strange assumption that decline in CD sales is directly due to music piracy. perhaps the lack of quality music, or at least ORIGINAL music in Nickelback's case, is the cause. of course, that notion is absolutely ludicrous and inconceivable, isn't it?

if an album contains songs that justify their presence on my playlist, i will buy the cd. (i'll probably rip the songs to mp3 for my personal use on my laptop, but apparently even this form of copying is prohibited.)

you see, the album is an anachronism. we didn't have a choice in the past. good songs mixed with humdrum filler material. want the good songs? get the whole album. the entire music industry should realise that people want - and are able to get - choice. they should get off their asses and respond to consumer demand instead of sticking to paradigms that belong in the trash can of time. instead of making downloading and customising cds illegal, they should tap into this.

of course, efforts are getting underway. but the RIAA and the music industry in general has treated consumers like criminals so don't expect consumers to be highly receptive to these new avenues of legal downloading.

just because copyright law exists as it does today doesn't mean it's moral or ethical. i do, however, believe in buying original DVD movies. but that's another story. if i really want to get into the intricacies of copyright law with respect to each type of work, i'll be writing another media law paper...

speaking of which, for the mcm people, i bumped into stephen paine and teo yi ling at the LOTR exhibition last week. they're ENGAGED!