It’s often scary when an industry education-focused organisation starts to simply spout the corporate PR. But it can be funny too.

I receive emails from the Music Tank people, and I occasionally go to their seminars. So naturally, I also get their mailouts. They started life being all ‘What should we do about DRM?’ and ‘How do we make money from ringtones’, but they’ve moved on.

Now it’s ‘Let us celebrate the honourable major record labels and their mighty crusade against the evil pirates’. Believe it or not, the following is a direct quote from an organisation that works in, for and with the music industries:

This week saw the RIAA gain its first victory in what is proving to be an epic industry war against the global menace of illegal filesharing. In fining Jammie Thomas (will the irony of her name ever carry over the pond?) a whopping $220,000 for 24 of the tracks she made available on the Kazaa network, the industry has issued its most severe warning yet to the worldwide illegal filesharing community: “get you’re a** to iTunes… or you might be next”.

The first sentence had me in stitches, and the last line (spelling error and all) finished me off. Their cheap-shot joke in brackets in the middle suggest they may not be the comic geniuses the rest of the note suggested — but then perhaps they’re not trying to be ironic.

And, I’m sorry, is iTunes the only record industry cartel approved site for authorised music downloads? Aren’t there other people Music Tank’s constituents have contractual agreements with?

They started to lose me when they started agitating for copyright extension (despite the overwhelming objections by the music industry people in the room at that particular seminar) and higher prices for music downloads across the board (higher?! are you insane?!!!).

The scary bit, of course, is that these guys are owned and run by the University of Westminster. Remember what universities used to do? Critic and conscience of society. Not corporate mouthpiece.

Music Tank are never having any more of my money, and I’m appalled that Westminster are allowing this sort of thing to go unchecked.

New Zealand’s lovely, isn’t it? Just look at that view. And such great music. Why do people have to spoil it all by being rude and unhelpful?

No matter where you are in the world, it seems that bullying is now so entrenched in the culture of the record industry that a simple conversation can never be the first step. You have to open with a threat.

We’ve come to expect stories of bullying tactics, legal threats and wholesale suing sprees from the major international community of recording industry associations.

But you’d think in a place as small, kind, scenic and tranquil as New Zealand, the record industry would take a more diplomatic approach to representing its stakeholders’ interests.

New Zealand broadcaster Liz Barry champions her favourite local music on the internet. She recently had a phone call from Campbell Smith — the boss of RIANZ (New Zealand’s RIAA and BPI equivalent) warning her:

Don’t play any of our music or there’ll be trouble…

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In amongst all of the comments I’ve received recently in response to my dialogue with Paul Birch, there’s been a number of interesting points that deserve pulling out and discussing further. The first of these is from Paul himself.

In response to the recent New Music Strategies post An IFPI & BPI Board Member Writes, there have been a lot of insightful and interesting comments — many of which raise interesting side issues that I’d like to extract and examine more detail.

One commentator remarked that since he’s not allowed to duplicate his CDs for backup purposes, he’d like to know who was going to replace them if they got scratched. This is where Paul re-entered the conversation.

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In the context of a blog about the online music world, I thought you might be interested in an email exchange I’ve had this evening with a board member of both the IFPI and the BPI.

I’ve had an email conversation with Paul Birch of Revolver Records this evening. Rather than comment on it, I’ll just post it here for your information, in full and unedited, with his permission.

_______________________

Andrew

Paul

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Hi Paul,

You might be right, but I’m not a government funded institution, and nor do I consider my criticism of the RIAA indiscriminate.

However, if you find something that’s factually incorrect, I’d be more than happy to amend it.

Thanks for checking out the site.

Cheers,

Andrew

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