2 posts tagged “wired”
RIAA to Stop Suing Music Fans, Cut Them Off Instead from Wired.com
By Eliot Van Buskirk | December 19, 2008 | 10:26:17 AM | Categories: Music
"After suing more than 35,000 people for illegally sharing music since 2003, the RIAA has reached agreements with several ISPs to cut off subscribers' internet connections if they ignore warnings to stop, Wired.com has confirmed.
"The RIAA is planning to replace its "subpoena, settle or sue" process
that has been expensive for the music industry. It requires the RIAA to go through the courts in order to pressure those it
suspects of sharing music without permission..." Read the story.
I’d been meaning to blog on my favorite music-review site Pitchfork for a long time, but Wired (of all websites) beat me to it [The Pitchfork Effect]. Pitchfork is a music site devoted mostly to indie rock, but not exclusively.
Wired gave big props for Pitchfork’s forceful influence despite modest traffic and a puny staff.
Writer Dave Itzkoff reveals fine insights on how this site – born of honest, do-it-’cause-we-love-it writing – has quietly filled the gap between the off-the-mark, record-label pushers and surprisingly abstemious and refined music buyers, and how passion wins over agenda in the long run.
Pitchfork writers review what they like, take unrestrained digs at what they don’t, and are given space to write as much or as little as they please. And it all makes for sharp, funny, convoluted, doting, smarmy, constructively critical writing. Even their razor-clawed trashings seem to have a parental edge to them – Come on artist! You can do better than that! Though they do go way overboard many times.
I find it funny that in the interviews of reluctant-to-admit-it competitors, the jealously is barely hidden, and the aim is on the writers.
When an MTV suit tries to push his own website, saying it has great talent – “trusted as music experts” – you have to ask, Trusted by whom? Do 19-year-old kids trust in famous journalists? No wonder there’s such a disconnect.
Or when the mid-sized record-label guy bags on the Pitchfork writers, quipping, "You used to have to go to journalism school to have credibility” – that just smacks of 1950-style conformity and arrogance. (Early Rolling Stone anyone? I mean really early RS.)
But I’m partly re-treading here. I urge you to read the article.
