Lily Allen’s Traditional Copyright Infringement
WHEN Lily Allen said piracy was made for music, that in broadcasting music to the masses in a free and easy way new acts will find it harder to reach an audience, we wondered if anyone wanted to hear any more of Lily’s brain working.
Lily Allen knew that we did and set up her own blog on the subject, inviting other musicians to contribute.
Lily’s position is:
Music piracy is having a dangerous effect on British music, but some rich and successful artists such as Nick Mason, of Pink Floyd, and Ed O’Brien, of Radiohead, don’t think so. Last week, they told The Times that file sharing is fine. It probably is for them. They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world. For new talent, though, file sharing is a disaster — it makes it harder and harder for new acts to emerge.
Michael Masnick on Techdirt investigated:
When Lily was first trying to get attention, she created a couple of mixtapes with a ton of songs from other artists… available as MP3 downloads, and mixing in her own tracks… According to the tracklisting of the second mixtape, it included 19 tracks by artists other than Lily Allen. Both mixtapes (mixtape 1 and mixtape 2) are available directly off of Lily’s website, LilyAllenMusic.com, which has a copyright notice at the bottom from EMI.
Lily responds:
i made those mixtapes 5 years ago, i didn’t have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry back then…
Hypocrisy? Never. You live and learn:
Rolling Stone, we learn that Lily’s godparent was Joe Strummer, former lead singer of The Clash. And this:
Allen began working on music in earnest in 2002 and with her father’s help she was signed to Warner Bros. for a short time but released no music. In 2005 she began posting demos onto her MySpace page which was getting thousands of hits and eventually led to her signing with Regal Records.
Lily goes on:
Anyway the snippets of songs you hear on those mixtapes are about 30 seconds to 1 minute in length, in traditional mixtape style, it is infringement, correct, but it’s not my site, it’s EMI’s. i am not a hypocrite, i don’t illegally download music, and i still think unauthorised file sharing is wrong.
Lily’s is a traditional copyright infringement, leather bound and noble. As for being on EMI’s site, wasn’t she the one who made the tapes before she signed for EMI? Her position seems confused.
Now she’s given up the blog. And she’s even given up music.
Now Allen has said she won’t renew her contract with EMI, because “the days of me making money from recording music have been and gone as far as I’m concerned.”
Adding:
The singer posted messages on Twitter saying she was not going to attend an emergency meeting of music artists this evening to hammer out a unified position on illegal filesharing. The star says: “Hello, there is a meeting today in London where artists are meeting to discuss Piracy. My job done.
Lily is the great facilitator. She’s not there to explain thigns, which given what we’ve just read might not be a bad thing. On an upshot, Lily has given up music.
Or,er, as Allen’s rep says:
“She is not quitting pop music and is still promoting her current album, which is why she said she is not thinking ahead to another record.”
Nor listening to yours…
Posted: 24th, September 2009 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
