It seems like a lot of what I find on the internet is older stuff but always very interesting. This is a piece from BBC News in the year 2005.

Alex Kapranos of the band Franz Ferdinand believes that the government needs to have a bigger role in Scottish music.

He states that for cultral output to thrive, there needs to be state input aswell.

I guess what he means is that music, as nice as it is, doesn’t make much money but costs a lot to produce. If the government want to have nice music on their radio stations, they need to provide funding for ‘musos’ to go into recording studios and make music. Aswell as helping less experienced, poorer bands with instruments, amps, all that kind of stuff to make the music sound good.

“I think the role of musicians is to question politicians rather than to go to bed with them,” Kapranos said.

So although musicians need funding from the government and are thankful for the funding they get, they shouldn’t suddenly write songs about how much they love the government. Bands should still stick to their Green Day, American Idiot punk roots which say ’screw the authorities’.

Kapranos believes some parts of music need help being sustained as they are not ’self sufficient’. I’m guessing this applies to the expense of making music which far outweighs the profit a small band gets from putting their music out there.

In addition to his comment about ‘bedding’ politicians, he also says having tea with them is not a good idea either, meaning it’s best not to get too close and friendly to one particular party.

I still think this goes back to the punk kinda movement where music was about doubting authority rather than agreeing. Even rock music has a degree of rebellion rather than conformity and I think it’s important to keep it that way. Even if bands do get help from the authorities, definitely does not mean they’re your best friend.

“If you take everything I’ve accomplished in my life and condense it down to one day, it looks decent!” – George Costanza

Tory.

In November 2002, this was posted on the BBC website. The basic message in this article is that Microsoft believe they will never be able to stop music piracy.
I find this very interesting because I had always heard that one day, some government department or the police would come into people’s houses, seize their computer and arrest them for the hundreds of music files they have on there.

Although this article is many years old, therefore no longer news, I didn’t know about it so I wonder how many other people had no idea music companies were kinda ‘giving up’ on catching ‘pirates’.
An idea music makers have had is to make CD’s which cannot be played in computers, therefore people would be slightly disadvantaged when trying to either play the music or copy the music.
Personally I don’t like this idea. I know one of my friends doesn’t have a radio so maybe playing music on her computer would be the only way she could listen to it.
I find playing music on my computer very useful, plus, with a program like LastFM, I can make my own playlists and keep track of everything I play. I recommend Last FM, it’s very interesting to find out what your favourite band REALLY is or rather your most played band.
I like that playing music on your computer, you can play all the music you own, all at once in a particular order or shuffled. You can’t do that with a CD player.

The article says though, that even that, researchers believe will fail.

For me and my friends, downloading music is helpful because in New Zealand you cannot find some bands’ CD’s. If you are into ‘non mainstream’ music, it becomes very difficult to listen to the music of bands you love if there is no way to buy CD’s of that music.
There are shops such as Real Groovy which sell some non mainstream music, however, it is expensive and some music is still not there. This is one shop I will go to to find out a bit about the effects of piracy.

The fact music is expensive is another hitch. Why buy music which is expensive when you could download it for free?
I’m not saying that downloading is a great solution to anything, I know it’s a problem for musicians. But for me, if I’ve downloaded music from a band and I like them a lot, I will try and find a CD that I can buy. Downloading is a great way of getting musicians out there. Aswell as file swapping. My friends and I often show each other bands by swapping songs via MSN because it’s easy to do it that way.
After that it’s up to the person if they want to go and get a hard copy of the music.

There is something very attractive about hard copies of things still. I enjoy hard copies of documents as opposed to seeing them on a screen, I prefer CD’s rather than downloading music, I prefer newspapers as opposed to reading stories on the internet etc.
Sometimes the old fashioned way is just best.

Pictures: Top Right
Bottom Left, taken by myself.

“Music can change the world because it can change people.” -Bono.

Tory.