Not Down With Prince

A couple of weeks ago I had a hankering for watching a Prince music video. I didn't really care which one it was as long as it was from the 80s. When I searched for any on YouTube, I barely got any hits and when I clicked on one for When Doves Cry, the video played without sound. I was puzzled, tried a different video, and got the same result: a muted music video. Finally scrolling down to the comments area, I discovered that all Prince videos on YouTube wouldn't have sound because the Artist himself was trying to "reclaim the Internet." This meant he was attacking any and all "illegal" uses of his property, including both his music and videos. For some reason, I hadn't been aware of this controversy at all for the past couple of years.

According to stories from a year ago, Prince hired a British-based company called Web Sheriff to hunt down those who were using his material in a pirately fashion. They've gone after sites like YouTube, Ebay and Pirate Bay on his behalf. It's actually quite fitting that a prince should be attempting to suppress pirates with a sheriff. The problem being that Prince is yet another in the long line of people misunderstanding the Internet and its potential for the future of music and promotion. I know I keep coming back to this issue on this blog, but it's something I feel quite passionate about.

I can fully understand not wanting your copyrighted work to be sold as pirated copies via Ebay (although I've never come across any pirated music except for bootleg concerts) or to be distributed free via torrents, but uploading Prince's music videos or using his songs in YouTube video clips isn't pirating in the same way. YouTube is often the only place people can view what they want on demand - before the giant Mighty Boosh purge a year ago, I was first introduced to the series via YouTube. How else was I to watch a series that is only broadcast on foreign networks and can only be purchased in a different region code? And because of the exposure on YouTube, I ended up becoming a huge fan, buying all three series and the live DVD in Region 2, and then buying a DVD player that could play them. Not to mention BBC iPlayers don't work for anyone outside the UK, which has forced me to find alternate, seemingly "illegal," ways to watch documentaries or series that I can't find any other way. The BBC has been particularly ornery when it comes to watching their content; not only have they had tons of clips removed from YouTube, but they don't allow foreign viewers to watch their clips via YouTube unless they're posted to the BBC Worldwide account. A completely counterproductive tactic. If those at BBC were on the ball, they could see YouTube as a marketing measurement tool. The more people trying to watch a particular show or series from other parts of the world, the more they could potentially market their product there by releasing on an appropriate format.

And when I want to see a music video, I won't be sat in front of the television waiting for a Prince music video to pop up on the music video channel. Hell would be having a toboggan party before I would see a music video from anybody on music television. YouTube has transformed the music video industry in that any artist with any budget can get exposure without television executives, advertisers and programmers getting in the way. The fans who are posting Prince music videos are not personally profitting from them - they are merely providing a service to other Prince fans. The greed is not coming from them, it's from Prince himself. It's a shame that someone who has had such a visionary career in music can't see the future this time. It's also rather ironic because Prince apparently received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 because he was the first artist to release an entire album exclusively on the Internet. Of course this isn't hugely surprising for someone as conflicted as Prince is.

All Prince has succeeded in doing is creating a backlash akin to ones both Madonna and Metallica have experienced. Several videos like the one above are protesting Prince's actions, and Prince fan sites banded together as Prince Fans United to take on the legal take-down requests. Despite this, Prince has continued the crusade, including taking down all fan footage of his cover of Radiohead's Creep at Coachella this year. However, just as Prince has said, you take down one and hundreds more crop up the next day - I managed to watch the Creep cover here (aside from blistering guitar solos, not too much to be excited about). Fighting the proliferation and nature of the Internet is a losing battle, and any victory is a pyrrhic one. As Radiohead has proven, established artists can both continue their success and work within the new framework of technology and music distribution. And with someone like Prince, whose live performances and music videos have been intrinsic to his success, allowing footage of him (which would have been public in the first place) to circulate would only benefit him, especially at this later stage of his career.

I've been a Prince fan since I was a teenager, but this hasn't been the first time I've felt burnt by him. Six years ago, Prince came to Winnipeg, but tickets were well over $100 a piece, so I, being a financially-challenged student, didn't go to the show along with many others who viewed the price tag as exorbitant. I then found out that he performed a much cheaper aftershow at a small venue, but it was too late. The fact I only just found out about this more recent controversy probably says something about how much I've been following Prince these days. Apparently I'm just as out of the loop as Prince is - we're both still caught up in the good old days from 20 years ago.

Sign O' The Times - Prince

Creep (Live at Coachella) - Prince

If a Gallagher Falls in the Forest, and No One is There to Film It...

By now the entire world has likely seen this clip of Noel Gallagher being pushed into his own monitors at the Virgin Festival in Toronto (I myself have viewed it at least six times - usually just the bit where Noel goes down like a tree and then Liam postures like a hard man once his adversary is fully restrained). Besides being a lovely little piece of schadenfreude, especially for all of us who despise the Gallaghers and their brand of working class stereotype confirmation, this clip demonstrates several different things about music and media.

Firstly, isn't this exactly what Oasis ostensibly thrives on? They paint themselves as hardened working class Mancunians, who fight each other just to prove their testosterone is in good working order and who, as rock stars, live dangerously on the edge. It appears Noel doesn't like falling off the edge, though. And it appears that Liam's first reaction when confronted with danger is running away and shielding himself. Oasis has continued to have some preposterous mythical status, especially in the UK (where they are currently all over NME and its Web site and where, almost without fail, they would grace the cover of Q magazine every spring - I know because I was in the UK for several different springs and every time I looked at the newsstand the Gallaghers were on the cover). Even Oasis fans admit that they haven't had anything worth listening to since What's the Story Morning Glory, so why the constant attention when so many of their peers never get press anymore? Because they never stop slagging off everyone else, especially those with higher intelligence? Because they constantly give grandiose promises without ever fulfilling them? Because they wrote a few feel-good anthems for the yob? Because the music press has turned into strictly tabloid press? In which case, the more outrageous the Gallaghers' behaviour or performance venue is, the more press they get.

To me, Oasis represent bloated stadium rock taken to its logical conclusion - they are U2 without the social conscience. That "legendary" performance at Knebworth (that gets rehashed and reminisced over every so many years) blew out any notion of quality over quantity or connection with your audience. I suppose that in many ways Oasis appeals to so many people because they are supposed to be the quintessential rockers - living an extravagant lifestyle with sex, drugs, and violence, posturing like the Stones, but without the history of solid music to back it up. They do and have things as big as they can to compensate for a back catalogue that isn't so impressive. If you separate yourself so far from the audience, you can maintain some sort of charade that you, as the artist, are special by virtue of spatial relations. Had someone attacked Noel in a pub setting, it would have been taken as par for the course; the fan-artist divide wouldn't have been accentuated by tons of security and a massive canyon between the front row of punters and the stage. Fame and physical distance changes the situation into a media circus and a viral video.

Thus far, it seems the only source that claims that the attacker was a "blog commenter" is Stereogum, which implies that the attack was provoked because Noel Gallagher had previously insulted Radiohead. There's no back-up for this assertion as far as I can tell, but I would assume a lot of people wouldn't need a specific reason to attack the Gallaghers. While the idea of an angry blogger taking Gallagher down in the name of Thom Yorke is hugely funny, the fact anyone would posit that it could be an irate blogger implies a certain opinionated and subversive milieu for bloggers, which I suppose is correct to an extent. The attacker's subversive involvement on stage points to not only a breach in security, but also a breach in the established artist/fan division. It also points out that fans or anti-fans are becoming just as visible as the artists themselves.

The fact someone was there filming the concert, so that there could be a viral clip circulating, is of interest in this capacity. It's become increasingly easier to film live concerts, whether with a crappy function on a mobile phone or with an actual digital video camera, and this has become both useful and frustrating. It can be useful if something rather unexpected or momentous happens (as shown with Noel Gallagher) and if you were at that concert and just wanted a souvenir; however, at the same time, having that souvenir can almost cheapen the experience by altering the bits you actually remember and the way you remember experiencing them firsthand (I've had this happen to me a couple of times). I wonder about what kind of experience the people filming are having of the show - isn't it a bit of a secondhand one? In which case, are they there for the actual music and the experience of the show, or for some bizarre mediated version through which they can prove that they were there? To get a bit Baudrillard, the simulacrum is more important than the reality.

I also think filming concerts in a venue that doesn't allow for decent acoustics or a remotely clear picture is an exercise in futility - YouTube is cluttered with these types of videos. Why would I want to watch ten seconds of a gig tipped horizontally? I suppose this type of video clip just reasserts the increasingly solipsistic online society that assumes that others will want to experience another's life, including which shows he/she attended, in all its grainy, distorted glory. Or these videos become proof of your own activities and your own attempt at popularity and fame. The person who posts a video bootleg can become just as popular as the artist featured on the bootleg. So the recorder/poster of the Noel Gallagher clip has their week of fame while gifting the Gallaghers with some free publicity in some skewed universe of media symbiosis.

And I'm really no better than the attacker or the video clip poster by writing this piece, drawing more unneccessary attention to the Gallaghers. However, I will say the attacker's strategy was all wrong. He should have gone for Liam first.

Falling and Laughing - Orange Juice

All Fall Down - The Sound

The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand