The Beatles are the latest in a long line of names to tell us that 'Music Matters', as part of a grass roots operation against piracy. Though John and George aren't the ones sanctioning the action. And no, it's not even really Paul and Ringo telling us this little life lesson either. But anyway, when we say 'The Beatles' we obviously mean that someone at the record label has received consent from someone's estate and the Beatles' name is green-lit to be used. You wouldn't expect the Music Matters campaign to breach its own copyright protection objectives and make a laughing stock of itself.... To receive mixed messages from the music matters campaign? Who'd have thought such a thing were possible!.
No, the mixed messages are loud and garbled enough in this particular production. The rather swish video makes the point that the Beatles are a band that has fallen into collective ownership. The Beatles, we are told, are the close friends of a stick boy who grows into a stick man (or stick man child, he gets thrown out by his wife at one point). And he finds out that the Beatles are everybody's friends too!. And though we 'own' the Beatles now, it's not like they've suddenly give up on the whole corporate juggernaut thing and started selling Royalty free music. And no, it's not reverse psychology. Nobody is giving the Beatles away in the hope that you'll not want to download something you no longer have to steal?
And this isn't the first time they've done something that undermines their point. Blind Willie Johnson's Music Matters profile was another gaffe, a swing-era artist who continues to influence artists to this day. Among them? The White Stripes, Bob Dylan, Led Zep and Nina Simone. He died pennyless in 1945 in the ruins of his burnt out old house. He had 30 records to his name. Would the music industry have really let one of its best and brightest die in such an ignoble way? You bet it would have? Is it maybe because, whether you pay them or not, they treat their artists terribly?
Music isn't merely a cacophony of Sound effects. And artists deserve to reap what they sow. But surely I am not the only one who feels that the industry is smothering genuine creatives and then refusing to effectively change with the times? Artists should be ditching these mixed-message ridden campaigns and trying to create a new music industry.
Evie Baker writes blogs for Audio Network and is (thankfully) a giant music love.
