Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Snidey Vodka: In recent years, record labels have taken to complaining vociferously about music piracy and MP3 freeloaders. According to figures being thrown about, the industry is losing around $4 - 5 billion a year due to piracy. (Note that the RIAA claims the global music market generates $40 billion per year, yet the the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry – a global organisation set up by the RIAA - claims piracy accounts for fully a third of the market.)

I don't intend to argue about the accuracy of those figures – even if the maths obviously doesn't add up. My concern is with the assumptions they're based on.

First of all, we need to distinguish between music distributed for...

The Indie Network: The demise of the record industry has become something of a hot topic over the past year or so, and suddenly there seems to be a lot of people interested in the emerging opportunities for indie artists. While things are bubbling away deep down in the depths, a number of major artists, of which Radiohead are just the best known example, have been experimenting with different ways of selling their work. Things are changing in the music industry and I get the sense that there are plenty of people who are willing to try experiments of their own.

While all of this has been going on, I've been busy laying the foundations for our own record label, 5 Finger Discount Productions. Much of the metho...

A Few General Observations On The Record Industry: The record industry is f***ed up. It produces crap, boring, stupid music which challenges nothing and it's only apparent purpose is to make money for the swine in suits. Yet music is a wonderful thing: it's ability to communicate thoughts, feelings and ideas is perhaps unrivalled. It is one of the key elements in our culture; it's something that helps define our personal identities in a way which no other art form does. It's the basis of the lifestyle and even world view of tens of millions of people round the world. It means something.

But the music being churned out by major record labels doesn't mean anything. It is all style and no substance. Meaningful content is systematically remov...

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