Late last month, British digital music research firm The Leading Question released the results of its Speakerbox 2005 survey, which examined the music downloading habits of music fans in the United Kingdom. The survey confirmed what online music sharing advocates have asserted all along: So-called music pirates spend more - much more - on legal online purchases of music than do non-"pirates."
Drawing on the responses of more than 600 tech-savvy music fans (only those people who owned a cellular phone plus at least one desktop computer were polled), the study found that on average, people who illegally share and download music files over the Internet spend 4 1/2 times as much money on legal music downloads as do those who never share or download music illegally.
And despite The Leading Question's rather suspicious name, the firm's research can hardly be dismissed as the work of music industry antagonists. The Speakerbox 2005 survey was funded by a consortium of companies that included two of the so-called "Big Four" music publishers, EMI and Sony.
So now we know, yet again: Online, the best customers of the big music publishers are the pirates.
This survey makes it even clearer that pirates aren't the immoral thieves that the record industry makes them out to be. More likely, they're simply curious but cautious shoppers who prefer to browse and try things on for size before they buy. In other words, they're like every other music fan who has ever turned on the radio or read the record reviews in Rolling Stone. Nobody ever bothers to ask if those more traditional browser-consumers spend more money on music than people who simply wander into stores and plunk money on the counter, sound unheard.
The answer is so obvious, it shouldn't need to be asked.
PR FLUB OF THE WEEK GOES TO ...
Minneapolis-based folk singer Chris Koza, for the following sentence in a press release announcing his upcoming local appearance: "Conceived while living in New York, the Portland Oregon native recorded and mixed the material himself in bedrooms and basements around Minneapolis."
Listen, I don't care where your parents conceived you, but I would point out that you can't already be living at the time of your conception, unless you're some kind of fraternal Siamese twin.
Fortunately, Koza's music is much more intelligent than his PR agent's sloppy writing would suggest. He's got a voice that's reminiscent of a young Paul Simon, and his music comfortably rides the line between pop and folk, boasting immediately memorable music matched against image-rich lyrics.
Chris Koza appears with fellow Twin Cities-area singer/songwriter Joanna James at Sean Kelly's tonight, Aug. 4.
REGGAE WRIT BOLD
According to the band's official bio, the Itals are so named because "ital means pure, natural, and unprocessed." Strange; I had somehow long ago made up in my mind that the Jamaican-native reggae band (which was a favorite of a former roommate of mine) was named for an abbreviation of "italic," which I presumed to follow a metaphor along the lines of "tilted forward, for emphasis."
Ultimately, either interpretation could reasonably fit the band, which has been exhaling clouds of harmony-laden, emphatically danceable roots reggae since the mid-1970s. The Itals have never enjoyed the name recognition of contemporaries like Bob Marley and the Wailers, Culture or Burning Spear; but don't let that slow you down. The Itals are the real thing, as they'll undoubtedly prove when they perform at the Top Hat this Saturday, Aug. 6.
SWITCH FOR THE BETTER
It doesn't take much between-the-lines sleuthing to figure out that I'm no fan of noise-for-noise's-sake (see below for more on that topic). Jamie Henkensiefken (formerly of Missoula band Switch) can make noise with the worst (and best) of them - big, crushing blurs of angst that could drown out a jackhammer.
But crucially, Jamie also infuses her music with a silver lining of bliss that's ever trying to spill out around the edges. Her music has a levity at heart that keeps the head-banging from hurting: Just wait till you hear "Description of the Prior Art," a bouncy, jangle-punk number with a fist-pumping chorus that's all smiles underneath.
Jamie, who now resides in Seattle, will return to town this week with a spankin' new band in tow, to perform as part of a quintuple-bill gig at the Elk's Club on Saturday, Aug. 6. Other acts include Purrbot, the Tremula, Helmut Tag and Wuzhen. It all gets going at 9:30.
AS I LAY BORING
I guess I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, because as far as I'm concerned, the sound of someone puking their guts out, set against the din of a drummer imitating a machine gun and a guitarist beating the crap out of his instrument, is not fun or interesting to listen to. It does not make me confront my demons. It does not reflect the ugly underbelly of our society, nor the glorious extremes of human emotion.
It's just a brainless, heartless, sad joke.
Alas, it would seem that more than a few people find the joke worth hearing out, again and again, ad nauseum. That's the only apparent explanation for the fact that As I Lay Dying - a San Diego-based quartet that seems singularly intent on making Metallica sound like a bunch of elevator-music wussies - is not only commanding a co-headline spot on the second stage at this summer's Ozzfest, but also commandeering the 1,100-seat Wilma Theatre in Missoula for a gig next Wednesday.
I sincerely feel bad for anybody whose standards have been so soiled, whose ideals have been so corrupted, that they find this noise even listenable. A moist cowpie is more aesthetically stimulating and multitextured than this monotonous excrement.
Tickets to next Wednesday's show cost $18 in advance or $21 at the door. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Reach Joe Nickell at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.
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