Apparently there are trace elements of metal in bottled water...

Still the filesharing battles wages on, despite the fact that there is no war. Dom Lawson’s entertaining article on this subject apparently fell foul of Metal Hammer’s editorial scythe. We can only assume that they didn’t want to fall on the wrong side of this prickly debate. And who can blame them, why risk pissing off your superiors over a war that’s apparently being waged elsewhere?

I do wonder though, how many folks out there who are earnestly ‘trying’ before conveniently ‘forgetting’ to buy. Is this costing the music industry money? Maybe. However, that’s largely beside the point. The issue here is that music is no longer a commodity that can be contained and rationed. The commodities are the physical items that accompany the music – the CD, the cover, the box – these are tangible goods that should be exchanged for money.

It’s because music is freely available that this situation exists. I’m sorry to restate the obvious, but it’s worth thinking about this. Water is ‘freely’ available in the UK. We pay for that by way of taxes (rates). The only time you pay at the point of receipt of water is when you buy the bottled stuff, and then what you’re actually paying for is the container and the convenience (plus the mark-up of whatever establishment you purchase it from). The future model of music will resemble this, and take a look at Spotify to see this in action. The music industry already knows this and the majors all own a stake in Spotify. The problem with this is the margins are much lower with models like this, and until the majors can shuffle their operating models to account for this and pacify the investors, they’re going to carry on chasing rainbows with lawyers and politicians.

By the way, the words on this page are not a commodity either. By the time this piece makes it onto the blog it will have eaten at least an hour and a half of my time. This blog probably eats more of my time per month than your average unsigned band does of the band members’ time. Should you wish to take these and consume them in any way you see fit then please feel free to do so. If you want me to save them onto a CD and send them across to you I’ll charge you for the CDR, postage, packaging, and round that up for my efforts. If more people start to read this blog, maybe I’ll put some advertising on it and try and cover the cost of the server and maybe I’ll even get a bit extra. If you want to take any of my articles and make money out of them (god knows how you would do this) by posting them on your own, commercial, website, then you will have to pay me. If you do not I may take legal action. Will I try and charge you for simply reading this article/blog despite that is takes time, effort and money to run? Hell no! Readers are more important to me than profit, and without them I stand no chance of making any anyway. The printed media industries learned this years ago. These days, some newspapers are moving to models that they no longer charge even for the physical product, and make money from the extra advertising revenue gleaned from the larger distribution.

I don’t know why I’m telling this to you lot – you already know this. I also don’t know why I bitch about the fact that this debate is still happening, I actually quite enjoy it.

The Good

Devin Townsend nonchalantly Tweets:

@dvntownsend counting down…late nights, great progress…suddenly very happy about record 2. Released around Nov 20.

and unleashes more verbose psychobabble on the world:

Musically, ‘Addicted’ is along the lines of the big, wall-of-sound hard rock/heavy metal of Ocean Machine and (The Devin Townsend Project’s) ‘Accelerated Evolution’ — even Physicist at points. It is a very direct and ‘to-the-point’ album with an emphasis on groove and the chorus.

Exciting stuff, seriously. If it’s 1/10th as good as Terria or Accelerated Evolution, it’ll be amazing. Perhaps more tantalizing however is:

On other notes: I have been rehearsing with a new band, and we will start touring in early 2010, representing all the back catalogue of solo material, from ‘Ki’, ‘Addicted’, Physicist, Ziltoid, Terria, Ocean Machine, The Devin Townsend Band, Infinity etc… I have some big plans for this and rehearsals are sounding amazing. The touring entity will be called ‘Devin Townsend’ and is essentially a way for me to get out there and interact again and showcase 15 years of music that never really got its fair shake. We look forward to seeing you out there!

Yeah! You better be doing that in the UK Mr. Townsend!

Next – A new track released off of Megadeth’s anticipated new album:

Do I hear some leanings back to Countdown to Extinction days? Speed metal loveliness indeed!

Every Time I Die released another new track off of the forthcoming New Junk Aesthetic on their Myspace. This is a delightfully pleasant recording, but does anyone else notice a hint of a softer, more commercial sound seeping through? Could this be the beginning of a slippery slope for the southern hardcore mavericks?

This week I discovered that not all Metalcore sucks, with the introduction to my music vocabulary of Burnt by the Sun. Like a darker version of Hatebreed, they keep the breakdowns to a minimum and deliver top notch aggressive metal. I may even put on some big sunglasses and a fake beard (to wear over my real beard) and venture out surreptitiously to but a copy.

Other stuff keeping me happy:

• No Made Sense with their brutal progressive hardcore and stupid sounding album title
• Photonic, which has lead me to dust off various albums by Fugazi, Pavement and Guided by Voices
• Oceansize. Apparently they have an EP out soon.
• Earth. Slowly I’m getting my head around this most frustrating of bands. Albums Pentastar and Hex are simply beautiful but also infuriating.
• Revocation. Everyone is carping on about them like infatuated teenagers thanks to Cosmo Lee’s article suggesting that they may be the next great metal band. That’s probably going a bit far at this early stage, but they are pretty good. The guitar solo on Dismantle the Dictator is to die for. No doubt Metal Hammer will be forcing them down our throat for the next 3 years.

The Bad

Desparately naive wannabe journo’s laying into indisputably legendary bands like Black Sabbath. Why on earth would you write such an ill-informed bucket of badger shit is totally beyond me.

Music streaming site Spotify is part owned by the evil overlords of the music industry in an attempt to keep the site afloat in the face of pitiful advertising revenues and in lieu of paying out royalties to the record labels. If this isn’t depressing enough, it sounds like the artists aren’t getting any royalties either and are unlikely to see any dividends when some cash burdened corporate is stupid enough to buy this service which is as likely to see profit as I am likely to turn green and transform into a million dollar bill.

…and the Ugly

This dude bustin’ some classy moves. I have been known to do this after a couple of beverages, which is when it gets truly ugly.