I think we need to send someone to go round and check on the BPI

The BPI is involved in a scheme called Get It Right From A Genuine Site. It's well meaning, kind of like a Sunday School teacher getting you to colour in pictures of Jesus holding a lamb and believing that this will stop you from becoming a bad person when you grow up. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just it's so disconnected from how the world works.

Reg sits in front of his computer, about to torrent a dodgy Taylor Swift album.

"Hold on" thinks Reg, "before I do that, I should check the BPI's Get It Right From A Genuine Site site, just to check it is okay."

He checks the site.

He realises he is doing wrong.

He goes to Spotify.

He can't find 1989, so he sighs and goes back to the torrents.

There's a site to promote the campaign at getitrightfromagenuinesite.org - snappy, eh? - but this is where the BPI suddenly froze in panic.

What if someone started a site at getitrightfromagenuinesite.com? And they could fill that site up with things that aren't genuine at all. And the people of the UK, who have come to trust getitrightfromagenuinesite.org wouldn't realise, and MUSIC AS WE KNOW IT WOULD CEASE TO EXIST.

TorrentFreak has discovered that the BPI has binge bought all the domains it could find:

UK music group BPI owns the GetitRightFromaGenuineSite.org domain but to be doubly sure there are no imposters the group has also bagged at least 17 others, including the .audio, .band, .biz, .com, .digital, .email, .foundation and .net variants.

But what, worried the BPI, if people decided to try and parody our lovely campaign? What then?

And so, they fired up the registration site again:

TF discovered these domains while trawling through WHOIS records this week but it was more of a surprise to see that the BPI had also grabbed a bunch of ‘pirate’ versions too. As can be seen below, the BPI has secured the opportunity for people to GetitRightFromaPirateSite too.

Now, you could say there's wisdom in buying up a domain name that could work against you, but this is a pretty specific wording.

At time of writing, these domains are still available:

getitrightfromagenuine.site
getitrightfromagenuinesite.uk.com
pirateitrightfromagenuinesite.com (and all other variants)
getitrightfromatorrentsite.com (and all other variants)
getitfreefromagenuinesite.com (and all other variants)
getitrightfromaginuwinesite.com

You get the idea.

What makes this slightly less funny is that you're paying for this - despite the BPI being a cartel run by some of the largest businesses on the planet, the getitrightfromagenuinesite cybersplurge and the related activity is being paid for by the government.

Additional fun fact - you can still register a domain under the name BritishPornographicIndustry.

Jack from Jack And Jack makes it nice. Not actually nice.

Earlier this year, Ryan Seacrest ran a Make It Nice campaign, a well-intentioned attempt to try and raise the level of discourse on the internet. Amongst those signing up were Vine-grown rap stars Jack And Jack.

And how are Jack And Jack making it nice?

Erm, by calling people who post body positive images online sluts:

[Jack Johnson] tweeted: ‘I feel like I’ve seen a lot of girls use this “Body Positive” thing to post slutty pictures and not get called out for it [insert monkey with hands over mouth emoji]’

I think, Jack, you were probably looking for a emoji with a foot in its mouth.

Jack's career, like the Vine videos which started it, clearly has a tight time limit.

Taylor Swift porn site shows the problem with dot porn

From Taylor Swift's perspective, you can see the justification for her (or her management colossus) lashing out to buy taylorswift.porn and taylorswift.adult.

Because if she doesn't, someone else will.

When the .porn and .adult top level domains were announced, some voices suggested that these might be problematic as some brands or people might feel they have to buy their own names in the spaces to stop other organisations snapping them up.

And that's what's happened here.

In other words, Taylor Swift has been approached by an organisation and offered the opportunity to hand over thousands of dollars, in order to protect her image.

That's a shakedown, surely?

Britney Spears: Independent seems a little lost in the modern world

The Independent is very excited indeed by Britney Spears:

To many women, being called a "bitch", particularly by a man, is derogatory.

And there are equally as many reasons for why the term is perceived to be offensive as there are women offended by it.
[...]
Not so for Britney Spears, a pop singer who’s reiterated the word so often over the course of her career, it’s bizarrely formed part of her catchphrase ("It's Britney, bitch).

So, in a strange twist of neo-feminist fate, she’s decided to fully reclaim it with a definition of her own.

“Being a bitch means… I stand up for myself and my beliefs,” she wrote in a post on Instagram. “I stand up for those I love, I speak my mind, think my own thoughts or do things my way.

She wrote this, did she, Jenn Selby of The Independent?

Do you understand how memes work, exactly?

Sure, Britney posted the "Bitchology poem" to her Instagram account. And, yes, you might see that an embracing its viewpoint.

But it's clearly just a jpeg, and about one tenth of second with Google Image search confirms this is a "poem" which has been doing the rounds of the internet since before Grumpy Cat was a kitten.

You wonder if when Jenn sees those "funny" ecards on Facebook that she assumes the person who is posting them wrote the things: "Hey, I never knew my great aunt Margaret was such an amusing and inspirational thinker on questions of motherhood and religion. And how did she come up with that test to see if you can read all those words jumbled up? She's an undiscovered genius."

Bookmarks: Damon Albarn

It's a pity that Damon Albarn's grumpy-old-manning about the internet is the bit that The Quietus are pushing on Twitter (ironic, given that he's mostly moaning about Twitter). The whole of Jude Rogers' interview with Albarn is a sublime piece of writing and observation:

We didn't film outside my actual house. I’d been there quite a few times before we filmed, just to see it. It's such a personal, strange thing to do...to just stand outside, trying not to get noticed by anyone. And then the day we were filming, the door opened, and I thought, "Oh God"... and this very elegant, conservatively-dressed Muslim girl in her mid-20s came out. And straightaway she went, "Hello Mr. Albarn". And I went, "Oh!" She said, "I know you used to live here," and I went, "How do you know that?" Then she told me that when she was a little girl, around 1995, another film crew came round and she remembered her Mum wouldn’t let them in. "And she won’t let you in now," she said. [laughs] Which is understandable! Then at the end she went, "Good luck, I know you’ve got a new record coming out" – she knew everything, basically, about me. I thought that was really, really nice, so I said, "Give my love to the house", and she said, "I will do." In that little moment, I felt that connection with the house and the people in there...I was really pleased about that.

HMV launches plans to defeat iTunes; realises it needs iTunes to be part of the plans

So, although it looked like it wouldn't make it through to offer confused elderly relatives a place to buy not quite the right CDs for the young 'uns this Christmas, HMV has survived in some form. Shrunk down, owned by a group known for restructuring; historical debts erased. Now, at last, the chain can focus on its unique selling point - being the only place you can go to buy recorded entertainment left standing. Right?

Hang on, they've just announced the completion of their image makeover. What did you guys come up with - something about your stores, right?

HMV has overhauled its online presence with a new, more editorially-focused site as it looks to re-exert its brand authority and customer experince through online channels.

Oh. Really? You're still thinking your a business which really has a future in being some sort of chatty webmagazine with some 'buy' buttons attached?

Why would you think that?

HMV chairman Paul McGowan said: “Everything we’re doing with HMV is focused on engagement, content and curation – all the things that HMV lost sight of in recent years.

“The passion within the business for the products we sell, the specialist knowledge and ability to recommend and guide our customers – from store staff to the team in head office – is second to none and the new hmv.com. brings that to the forefront.”

Did you ever go into an HMV before you bought the company, Paul? With all the best will in the world, nobody would ever have gone into an HMV store to ask musical advice from the staff, any more than you'd expect to get agricultural advice from the people who restock the dairy counters in Tesco. That's not to say that there weren't some HMV assistants who weren't passionate about music, but those that wee generally would have advised you to shop elsewhere.

The brand has recruited an editorial team to manage the site, while staff across the company’s chain of 142 UK stores will also be encouraged to contribute with content.

Given the PR disaster which followed HMV staff retaining access to official HMV channels that's quite a brave move.

However, at least this is something that you've fully thought through, right? It's not in any way a ragbag of half-formed ideas with a promise of better things to come, is it?

HMV general manager Caroline Pesch said: “As a hub for entertainment, a key element of the site is the sense of community and ease of use for finding local and relevant information. In addition to editorial features and reviews store staff can post their own picks and tips based on what’s happening on a local level. This is just phase one of the new site; as it develops we will be introducing lots more new and exciting functionality. The volume of content available will grow daily.”

Oh. Nothing says 'some stuff got written on a white board, and we think someone took a photo, and we're pretty certain there's something there we might be able to turn into some sort of web feature when we work out what the bloody thing says' like a vague suggestion that something "new and exciting" is coming in the future.

There's also an app, which Wired has heard all about:

[James] Coughlan, who was previously involved in building up Vodafone's digital music business, is first to admit that HMV has in the past "not really embraced the digital world in the way it should have done".

Yeah, that was Vodafone's digital music business that he built up. Because music is the first thing you think of when you hear Vodafone's name. Well, first thing after you've thought 'oh, the company that pretends its legally obliged to pay as little tax as possible'. And 'irritating bee commercials'. And 'spun off a military business'. But then, surely, you'd start to think about Vodafone's music.

There is, to be fair, a Vodafone Music twitter feed, which hasn't had a message since October 2nd. Erm, October 2nd, 2009. And vodafone.com/music just redirects to the Vodafone homepage. You can find out about Vodafone music, though, by searching on the site:

Vodafone Music has now closed
Vodafone Music is now closed, so you won’t be able to download any music from us anymore.

That's a pretty solid business built up there, then.

Never mind, though, James is now bringing his magic to HMV:

"What we're doing here by bringing a digital offering to market is we're amplifying what HMV's renowned for," he tells Wired.co.uk. "I see this lifting our physical business as well, because you probably are going to have experiences where you're in store and you're scanning physical products and the digital version may be a couple of quid higher than the physical copy you've got in your hand."

Interesting. The idea of having an app which appears to tell you that HMV's pricing policy is all over the place. Not entirely sure how advertising that your digital downloads are overpriced is really going to help, but you can't fault the honesty.

Still, Coughlan is at least dedicated to the idea of digital music. Isn't he?

Coughlan still believes that nothing really compares to holding a physical record

Oh.

But... he can at least tolerate the digital world, presumably?

"I fully support streaming and I think what it's done for the music business has been good. It's certainly ticked the box for the labels in being seen to act on what was going on over the last ten years with the likes of Napster and illegal downloads and doing their own education with the youth audience as to actually there is a value to music."

I'm not sure that sentence actually contained proper thoughts, so it'd probably be churlish to point out that Napster - the illegal version - closed down well over ten years ago. And that, arguably, streaming has done far more to undermine the traditional music business model by replacing the sense that music is a thing you collect and own than filesharing ever did.

Wired does praise something Coughlan has managed to arrange:

HMV has also managed to strike a deal with Apple that lets users download songs from the app straight into their iPhone's music library -- a first for a service other than iTunes.

Brilliant, right?

Except, almost as soon as the app launched last week, it vanished from the iTunes store. It turned out that if there was a deal with Apple, it fell apart pretty quickly:

Apple confirmed to The Guardian that the app was removed for "violating App Store guidelines", pointing to clause 11.13 in those guidelines: "Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected".

Early days for the fightback, though. And HMV does still have some stores on the High Street. Apple can't take that away from them.

Although a couple of the shops might be well placed for flogging iPhones from...

Myspace: It's back. Your stuff isn't, but it is.

Hey, everyone. MySpace is out of beta. Of its second or third incarnation. Or is it fourth? One loses track.

Still, the precarious business of relaunch is upon them, and surely they'll be making sure that the few existing users who've kept faith with the site through the lean years will be given the smoothest, easiest transition to the new look. After all, you don't want to piss off your most loyal community, do you?

Hang about... can anyone smell burning?

MySpace... you didn't chuck the blogs on the fire, did you?

Oh.

Pirate_Molly
Is it possible to give us access to our old blogs so that we can save them? I used Myspace as a travel blog while living abroad and would really love to have that content before it's deleted. :(

4hits
I agree, with ELAYEEMARIE I want my page that I had for years and worked on to make it me... MY SPACE was what it meant !!! A special place for me and my friends to share. " A PLACE FOR FRIENDS" was the objective. My page was like my Cyber home, it had a unique look and feel. The videos I had added would always give me a quick pick me up when I or my friends needed them. Our messages and comments that held importants to us cannot be replaced with music promotions or other usless commercials that you seem to think is what your true users want. What in the world would make you change this ? Money ! I think having the choice to open either or was fine, but if its gone, so am I... Thanks for the memories, goodluck

_stray_
You don't warn us and then take away blogs and private messages? There were things I wanted to keep from there! I would have logged it all on my computer if I had known, but to do this with no warning?!

And on and on it goes. Adding insult to the very real injury, all these long-standing MySpace users are being given a status indicator on their names which makes them look like they've just turned up:

Blithely unaware of what the problem is, MySpace grin and explain how having a decade or so of your life wiped is a GRATE NEW FEATURE:

We're focused on building the best Myspace possible. And to us, that means helping you discover connect and share with others using the best tools available. Going forward we're concentrating on building and maintaining the features that make those experience better. That means you won't see a few products on the new site...

Blogs
Private Messages
Videos
Comments or Posts
Custom background design
Games
We know that this is upsetting to some but it gives us a chance to really concentrate on creating a new experience for discovery and expression. Feel free to hit the Me Too button if you have similar questions so we can track your needs and concerns.

Yeah, you know those very things that kept you coming back to MySpace all this time? You were like a schmuck. It'd be better if you had never done all of that, it meant your experience was bad.

Amongst the stuff that has gone, MySpace has wiped irreplaceable memories:

campbellshoney
I would like to know about this too, plus my old blogger friends, of whom two have now passed on. I came back to Myspace just to read their blogs from time to time!

There's a slogan for you, MySpace: "The place that exorcises your friends".

The idea that you can build a new service which relies on interaction by demonstrating that you can't be trusted with those interactions is a curious one.

So, what have they built on the smouldering embers of the old site? It's a bit like a poor man's Tumblr except - USP AHOY - they've gone with left-to-right scrolling instead of up-and-down. I know, innovative, right?

It feels like just another glossy, fawning pop site; the use of "my" seemingly ironic as the aim is to be a mediated layer between the-celebs-who-will-be-part-of-it-at-least-until-the-stats-are-shared and the plebs.

Seriously, though: that left-right scrolling? Did you do any user testing where that was hailed as a good idea?

Rolling Stone website passed from father to son

Here's a wacky coincidence - the person put in charge of running the Rolling Stone website, Gus Wenner, has the same surname as the man in charge, Jay Wenner. What are the odds, eh?

Now, it might be that Gus Wenner is the best-placed-person in the world to run the RS website, but given he's the bosses' son, it's hard not to smell a bit of a rat.

Gawker drips sarcasm all over the place:

Gus Wenner, 22, is an amazing media success story. Just a few years ago, he was a Brown University student playing in a band with fellow celebukid Brown student Scout Willis. Today, he's still playing in a band with Scout Willis— and also running the website of a major national magazine!
[...]
Jann confirmed the appointment to us. Gus followed the traditional route to a perch atop the media hierarchy: playing in an alt-country band in college. He's earned it.

Hey, haters, just because you didn't have the foresight to be made from the sperm in Jann Wener's testicles, how can you bitch against this hard-won appointment?

The email from Papa Smurf explained why Gus's skillset is perfect for running the key offering of a major international brand:

David Kang and I are very pleased —and I am very proud —to announce that Gus Wenner, after leading the re-launch re-design effort for our website, will now continue by heading up the overall operations of RollingStone.com.

There was a relaunch? There was a redesign?

Let's see how that worked, shall we?

Here's Rolling Stone a year ago:

And here's Rolling Stone today:

But maybe I'm being unfair - after all, front pages are front pages, right? Let's take a look at the pre-junior content pages:

And a year later, after the redesign?

Anyone prepared to undertake such a fundamental relaunch and redesign (albeit one that seems to consist mostly of dropping StumbleUpon from the social networking bar) is clearly ready for the big job.

After all, just ask Rupert Murdoch: what can go wrong with putting your untested son in charge?

AkOnLine

Remember the heady days in the past when we could barely get through a week without Akon dry-humping children on stage, or throwing children off stage, or upsetting Sri Lanka.

He's been quiet for a while, though.

Okay, we've been ignoring him for a while.

In fact - along with most of the world - we'd missed him attempting to launch a social networking site. It was going to be called Fantrace, and it was going to allow "fans" to interact with "celebrities".

Oddly, perhaps because that's what all social networks (apart from BliberdergFacebook) already do, it never took off.

He is still getting messages from the service, though - mainly angry demands for thousands of pounds from the people who built the site.

Oh, Akon. We've missed you.

MySpace have a plan

MySpace is the Rye of social networks, the thriving port whose harbour long since silted up and no longer sees the boats coming. But it has a plan; it's about to relaunch again, and to focus on music, again. And it has Justin Timberlake onboard, hoping that nobody will point out that he was buzzy before Tom was friending everyone.

Why the focus on Timberlake? Even if he was an example of the smaller band trying to build a fanbase who MySpace hope to attract, everyone knows he's sunk a wedge of cash into the project. Every time he goes "it's great", the audience thinks "you're flogging me your product" rather than "that's an independent review."

MySpace think they have something to offer in 2012, as MusicAlly reports:

“The promise of discovery and sharing new, good music was never really fulfilled by other services out there,” Tim tells The Guardian, while flagging up its streaming catalogue of 42m tracks from major, indie and unsigned artists.

Analytics to help make sense of fanbases will be a key part of Myspace’s pitch to woo back those artists (and management/labels).

“Artists are really tired of sending their fans over to one platform to listen to music, another to watch a social stream, and others watch videos, buy merchandise or purchase tickets,” says Tim. “They really are just looking for a home, and we try to be that for artists.”

Are artists really tired of that? And even if they were, couldn't they embed videos and purchase boxes into Facebook?

Isn't the fundamental problem here that MySpace are saying 'artists are tired to maintaining several sites, so we're going to help by introducing another site they have to maintain'?

And while wonderful analytics are a great thing to offer, they're bugger all use if there's no audience on the site to analyse.

Ah! But MySpace have a plan:

The new Myspace will be opening up in beta to more users, who’ll then be able to invite some friends (aka The Gmail Launch Strategy). Journalists are in already.

The trouble with trying to sell MySpace like Gmail is that when Google launched its mail service, it was brand new, and shiny. Everyone was excited and desperate to be let in.

Who is desperate to see what the new MySpace looks like?

Are there any 'opinion formers' who would really want to risk ridicule by sliding over to their friends offering secret passes to MySpace?

More to the point, what drives social platforms is numbers. Why would anyone spend time crafting a new MySpace site if it can only be accessed by a chosen few? And if people don't build sites, what will be there when the doors are opened to all?

More importantly, building a secret MySpace behind a big wall and only letting in a few journalists isn't really cherishing those few MySpace users who have kept faith with the site while the rest of the world has gone elsewhere. Not only are you telling them that they've been wasting their time on a wrong site; not only are you destroying their neighbourhood; but you're leaving them entirely locked out of the process.

In design terms, the rollout plan is as garish as any of those flashing colour-clashed pages that marked out MySpace back when it was famous.

Drowned In Sound no longer drowning in music news

Drowned In Sound have withdrawn from the rush to be first with the news (in the spirit of which, it's taken me the best part of a month to get round to mentioning this):

We are becoming increasingly aware at DiS towers that what people want from us isn't more reviews, more information (or "news" as some sites call it), more more, MORE! People want a hand to hold, and someone to whisper in their ear ideas as to what to focus their time on.

We hear your screams for a refined sense of recommendation, but we want to try to deliver it without seeming like the boy who cried wolf awesome... We're working at ways to do this better (with our limited resources) in an attempt to save you time ploughing through the overwhelming slew of releases which hit the shelves each month. Basically, we're trying to turn down the volume and put quality first.

This is why we've stopped running news that you probably already got from direct from the artist (or festivals) mouth or saw retweeted seconds after it was announced. This is also why we've given up on trying to fight with the PR industry for "exclusives" which for about five minutes generate traffic, before the same info or video gets republished on 3000 other music sites (some even remember to link back to the source). The traffic this sort of thing generates isn't worth the time and compromises that getting into bed with labels is worth.

It must be an intractable problem for a commercial music website - there's an awful lot of places pushing music news out, and once it's out, it's everywhere.

I'm not sure the correct response to this is what DIS are doing - you now get a monthly news mixtape. Because if news gets stale in seconds, there's nothing like waiting a month to hear it again, presumably.

The funny thing is that Drowned In Sound know that their role, if they're to have one, is meant to be that of curator - shouldn't they be bringing that approach to the news as well as music itself? Nobody has to just chunter out every press release they get, or link to every other site's album streams; in a sea of noise, isn't it the role of a news site to wisely select the items that their audience will find useful?

Drowned In Sound appear to have thrown the Marilyn Manson Eats A Live Baby out with the Tour Dates From Band As Dull As Bathwater..

Meat Loaf still at war with his double

Four years ago, Meat Loaf impersonator Dean Torkington was targeted by Meat Loaf himself. Back then, it was mainly down to the painting on the side of Dean's motor home.

They're still at war, though:

A Meat Loaf tribute artist from Lancashire is fighting a $100,000 (£64,000) writ from the US rock star, who accuses him of being a “cybersquatter and online imposter”.

Dean Torkington, 49, from Burnley, Lancashire, has used the MeatLoaf.org domain name since 2000. Torkington, who has performed his show To Hell And Back: (A Tribute to Meatloaf) for 16 years, argues that since he has shed 11 stone in the last two years, he could no longer be considered a “dead ringer” for the well-upholstered rocker.

Yes, that's right - the man who made his name pretending to be Meat Loaf is now too grand to be Meat Loaf. Or not grande enough:

“To be honest, losing all the weight wasn’t good for a Meat Loaf tribute act anyway. His pursuit of me through the courts has left me thinking differently about him. I do include some of his music in the show but I see it more as a tribute to the songs rather than the man.”

Dean suggests that, perhaps, his original material has sparked jealousy:

Torkington believes that his own original album, The Bat Strikes Back, angered Meat Loaf and provoked the writ . He asks: “Could the reason be it got a better review than Bat Out Of Hell 3 in Classic Rock Magazine?”

I don't think anyone of us can claim to know what goes on in Meat Loaf's mind, but I'm prepared to guess that, no, that couldn't be the reason.

According to The Independent:

Torkington met Meat Loaf backstage after a Liverpool concert in 2003 and claims the star asked him to hand over the domain name for £1,300. He declined.

.

Hmm. Let's look back at the Lancashire Evening Post in 2008:

He said the problem first surfaced last year when he was sat in the front row of a Meat Loaf concert in Liverpool when a man dressed in black handed him a note saying that the American singer wanted to meet him backstage.
[...]
"Then Meat Loaf's manager questioned me about using the website domain that I have. I told him that I would change the van but there was no way they were taking my website as I have had it for 15 years and it is really popular.

So either this happened "last year" from 2008, which would be 2007, or else in 2003. The story is all a bit confused, isn't it?

The return of dotmusic, sort of

Remember dotmusic? The one-time online home of Music Week from the days back when the internet was in black and white and closed down at 10.30? Sold on to BT, and then to Yahoo, where all the effort and marketing cash ended up in the service being folded into the now-defunct-on-its-own-right Yahoo Launch? You remember, right?

Lets hope Yahoo kept the paperwork, though, as there's no fewer than four (five, depending on how you count it) companies called dotmusic something or other bidding for the rights to be registraron the soon-to-be-launched .music top-level domain.

.music is part of a massive push to try and create new domain names, partly to stop the crush of demand for the dwindling supply of .com names. (It's doomed to failure, of course - large numbers of .music and other new web addresses will be registered, at great expenses, but research will discover that people trying to guess names will still always plump for .com, and so that's where the real demand will be. You know how you smile indulgently at companies that still use .tv as their main website? It's like that.)

Hypebot has a helpful list of contenders:

DotMusic Inc.
Dot Music / CCGR E-Commerce LTD - founded by Constantine Roussos, who began lobbying to establish the .music top level domain in 2005 and has the edge with the support of TuneCore, LyricFind, CD Baby, ReverbNation, The Orchard, INgrooves Fontana and others in the industry.
dotMusic Limited
Amazon
Victor Cross
Charleston Rd Registry / Google
.music LLC / FarFurther - supported by the RIAA, The National Music Publishers Association, A2IM, Impala and The Recording Academy.
Entertainment Names Inc

I know, it's like suddenly in the middle of 2012 there's something a bit like an ITV franchise round.

The real point of interest here is that the Roussos bid and the FarFurther biddraws support roughly split between internet-native businesses (Roussos) and old-school music endeavours (FarFurther). I think a useful rule of thumb is any initiative being supported by the RIAA is liable to work against the general interests of musicians and audience, and in favour of the multinational companies which used to be the music industry. On that basis alone, lets hope one of the others wins. The RIAA already believes it controls music; let's not let it control .music, too.

Billy Corgan blames the internet for killing rock

Billy Corgan thinks that Facebook is stifling innovation in rock music:

"You've got a Facebook with a few hundred friends. If you do something truly radical, are you ready to withstand the forty negative comments?," Corgan asks. "Most people aren't. So they're getting peer pressured at levels they don't even realize," he adds.

Corgan, of course, is known for his radicalism, taking the wild and crazy step of reviving the Smashing Pumpkins not to pacify the gods of iTunes or Facebook, but simply because it was a valuable brand name that could be used to shake dollars out of ageing fans desperate to chase their fading youth but who were, frankly, uninterested in either Zwan or his solo stuff ("for wild experimental reasons").

You've got to wonder how people would get 100 Facebook fans if 40% of them didn't really like what you were doing.

The bigger question, though, is if Corgan actually understands what experimentation and risk-taking actually are. If you do something really different, difficult and challenging and don't expect half of your fans to dislike it, you're probably not really taking that big a leap.

The suspicion has to be that Corgan doesn't really like the internet because it's not an environment that rewards very rich men pulling 'serious thinking face' with quiet nodding and the odd tear of respect. Corgan dates from an era when rock stars were at the top end of a one-way street of adoration. It's no wonder he doesn't feel comfortable in a world where the audience talks back.

The irony is that if the web had been a more common medium twenty years ago, Corgan might have been saved from disappearing into his own fundament.

Gordon in the morning: The remake

Interestingly, Gordon Smart's Bizarre is no longer the home of showbizzyness on The Sun website, but a subsection.

I suspect this happened at the start of the week, but it looks like nobody else really noticed as they've had to stick a big button on the Bizarre page (which is now explicitly the home of Smart's column):

On the Showbiz page, there's a clickyback box:

All a little odd. Is it trying to raise the profile of Bizarre, or bury it? Is Gordon trying to distance himself from the bits he doesn't write (but would still be responsible for, as editor) or gather the pieces he's proud of?

Or is there another reason for taking the bits from the paper into a separate area, around which one could, say, throw up some sort of wall?

Or - and this is a real possibility - could it just be a poorly thought-out tweak to a website which already has some strange navigation issues?

Glitter on Twitter wasn't Gary Glitter

Get ready for a shock: the Gary Glitter twitter account wasn't actually Gary Glitter at all.

I know, I know. You'll need a moment or two to process this SHOCKING NEWS.

So, what was the motivation behind pretending to be a paedophile on the internet?

To, erm, prove that the internet is full of paedophiles pretending not to be.

@OfficialGlitter was a fake account. But imagine if it hadn’t have been. I’ve got almost 20,000 followers now. That’s 20,000 people I can send private and direct messages to. That’s hundreds of thousands of photos I can view. Imagine for a second, I set up a profile saying I was a “Justin Bieber Fan Club”. How many young girls would follow me? I hazard a guess at a few thousand. The scary thing is that most parents wouldn’t bat an eye-lid at their child following a profile that seems to promote their favourite singer.

I can't help thinking that if you really don't want paedophiles lurking about misleading children, offering online advice about the best way to do it might be a little self-defeating.

The person who pretended to be Glitter - "Ben" - also fumed that his eye-catching social experiment, erm, caught people's eyes:

Another interesting point that shocked me, was how very little effort it took to get the UK Media to freely promote this fictional “comeback tour”. Supposedly trusted and reliable media sources were providing me with free publicity and promoting awareness of the fictional Glitter tour/album/book.

The following sites brought in a massive increase in followers to the page within the first 24 hours by featuring a story/article on the Twitter page:

NME Magazine, Huffington Post, The Daily Sun, The Metro, ITN, Music Rooms.net, Yahoo.com, WebProNews.com, Vice.com and StereoBoard.com

How low do the media have to sink to sell newspapers or boost ratings? Do they actually have to lower themselves to promoting a convicted paedophile’s twitter page which could have potentially brought sales for Glitter’s (fictional) books or music? They would be responsible for putting money into Glitter’s pocket.

Ben seems a bit confused here. His 20,000 followers somehow proves something, he admits that a lot of those came about because of media coverage, and says that's bad, but at the same time:

I’d like to thank everyone who knew about this experiment and the people who helped me bring this matter to the public.

Didn't the main way this 'experiment' worked was by the media bringing the Glitter account to the public's attention?

Ben wanted to create a public outcry over the presence of Glitter on Twitter to make his point. Without the media covering the account, there would have been no outcry; no 'proof'. He's suggesting that the press should have ignored the Glitter account, but at the same time says it's great that there was an anti-Glitter furore. It's a bit like this hadn't really been thought through, isn't it?

And surely the notoriety of Glitter meant "his" account got attention in the way a common-or-garden paediophile (even one being Justin Beiber's fan club) would never have picked up? Doesn't that undermine the claims?

More to the point, most of the positive followers appear to be older people with a nostalgic connection to Glitter. However much you might worry about their taste and ethics, this account wasn't proving to be a massive lure to children. What exactly did Ben think he's proved here?

Ben rails at the media promoting the tour and book and music of his made-up Gadd. But didn't his account also promote Glitter's music? Won't he have sparked a few sales and put a few quid in the old man's pockets just by his work alone?

More worryingly for Ben, he also revealed there's a lot of people in the UK who feel excited at the idea of a Glitter tour. He might have thought he was making a point about creeps online. Instead, he's done some valuable market research to help prep a Glitter comeback. Good work, Ben.

Gordon in the morning: Hunt the cybersquatter

Yesterday, we had something nice to say about Fox News. Today, it's some good work from The Sun, as the paper hunts down the bloke who bought the Amy Winehouse Foundation web address.

The story is duo bylined to Emily Nash and Gordon Smart; one rather suspects Gordon's main contribution to the effort was adding his name to the byline.

Still, they track down Martin McCann, who also registered a company in the name of the Amy Winehouse Foundation. McCann is not impressed with Mitch Winehouse calling him a dickhead on Twitter:

He said: "I'm not exploiting anything yet. I've just bought some domain names. Anybody could have. It only takes the click of a mouse. I'm not ashamed or embarrassed. Detach yourself from emotions and think business."

Although "thinking business", the charming Mr McCann claims that he's actually setting up his own charity.

"He [Winehouse] is making every effort to hijack this charity to satiate his own needs for the charity. She's not the only Amy Winehouse in the world."

Ah, he's set up a charity for other Amy Winehouses. Presumably to help them with being asked "what, like the singer?" whenever they book taxis. How strange that he only came up with this passion for assisting the hundreds, nay, thousands of other Amy Winehouses a few seconds after Mitch Winehouse announced his plans to set up a charity.

McCann points out that there's nothing illegal in what he has done. Nothing illegal at all. His conscience is as clear as his soul is empty.

Turntable turns off

Turntable.FM, the music sharing-streaming-discovery service which has had everyone excited for the last week, has blocked the world except the US from using its service.

We’re very sorry, but while we would love to let you in and rock out with us, we need to currently restrict turntable access to only the United States due to licensing constraints.

We are working very hard to try and and get you in as soon as possible.

If you believe this is a mistake and you are located in the United States, please e-mail help [at sign] turntable dot fm

Again, sorry, and we hope to see you soon.

Billy Chasen
CEO

When it says "licensing" it means "the legal workaround we're using to avoid the need for a license".

Google should buy the music industry, says Glynn Moody

There's an interesting bit on Techdirt and opendotdotdot pointing out that Google, rather than being disgusted by the labels, could actually buy them. Without breaking a sweat.

It's not a totally original thought - at an In The City at the end of the last century I remember hearing someone pointing out that Bill Gates could buy all four major labels should he wish (assuming the competition laws would let him). Maybe he should have done - that might have given the Zune some leverage over the iPod.

Still, Glynn Moody thinks the thought again:

But that throwaway comment also raises another interesting idea: how about if Google *did* buy the music industry? That would solve its licensing problems at a stroke. Of course, the anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say about this, so it might be necessary to tweak the idea a little.

How about if a consortium of leading Internet companies -- Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon etc. -- jointly bought the entire music industry, and promised to license its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis?

EMI and Warners are both up for sale right now, it's true; but it's hard to picture Google and Microsoft setting their differences aside long enough to employ Josh Groban. Nor is it clear why Baidu would want to sink its money into Western labels.

But it's a lovely idea. Unworkable, but lovely.

Warners: EOS to go?

Cisco is causing a bit of a flap tonight as it axes most, or possibly all, of its non-network-focused subsidiaries. The highest profile corpse is the Flip minicamera division, but Digital Music News is reporting that EOS might be wound down, too.

EOS is currently the system powering most of Warner Music's artist websites. Cisco tried to interest the other majors in joining Warner on the platform, but they said no. Because, after all, what sort of company puts its main business onto a third-party service which could vanish overnight?

DMN speculates that the contract would have been drafted so that screens won't suddenly go blank overnight, but if you work at Warners and know how to code up a website, you might not want to book any non-refundable tickets for the near future.