Lily Allen’s MySpace blog post on file-sharing, which calls out Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, and others, has caused quite a stir in the UK. Patrick Wolf posted a response, Muse’s Matt Bellamy emailed his thoughts to Allen, which she promptly posted, and now “You’re Beautiful” singer James Blunt has joined the fray over stricter piracy laws in the UK.
“Sir, I want to put my hand up in support of Lily Allen,” Blunt wrote in an op-ed for Times Online. “She’s asking British musicians to galvanise over a serious crime: the death of a great British industry — our music business”
Whereas, Radiohead’s O’Brien thinks that unrestricted file-sharing is good for up-and-coming musicians, Allen and Blunt disagree. “Without the revenue from established artists, record labels cannot fund emerging musicians,” Blunt continued. “They’ll just re-master the Beatles albums again, because they can’t afford to put an amazing new band into a studio to record something that may surpass Sergeant Pepper.”
I see where he’s going with this, but let’s not bring the Beatles into this, okay? It’s easy to forget that the entire compact disc revolution was also a kind of remaster/reissue scheme. Though it would be kind of funny if this turned into a debate over the best way to make another Beatles.