Grammy Winner: If You're A Good Musician, You Have Nothing To Fear With Piracy

from the but-if-you're-bad... dept

Last year, we wrote about Grammy award wining singer Joss Stone and her opinions on file sharing where she said she "loves it" and thinks "it's brilliant." More recently, Stone was asked about her EMI labelmate Lily Allen's recent misguided attack on file sharing (even as she, with the help of EMI, was file sharing a ton of tracks). Stone's response, as noted at Freakbits, is basically that musicians who are good have nothing to fear, but she could see why musicians who aren't very good (apparently, she means Ms. Allen) do have reason to fear:

"She [Lily Allen] needs to sell records because she's not a singer, and that's not an offense to her because I think that she knows that too," says Stone.

"...when musicians are really making real music people come to the show and that's what we make our money from, from playing live. And I think it's probably harder for an artist like Lily and many other pop acts. It's really about the track and about their personality and their celebrity and that's how they make their money is selling those records."

Stone says that Lily cannot win a fight against music piracy, and for that matter, neither can anyone else.

"So let's just accept it and let's see it as something that can be beautiful and it might change music for the better," she says pragmatically. "It might sort the weeds from the flowers."

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Grammy Winner: Piracy Is Brilliant; I Love It

from the more-musicians-getting dept

Slowly, but surely, we're seeing more and more musicians understand that "piracy" isn't a threat but an opportunity. Take the latest example, as Grammy-award winner Joss Stone apparently stunned a television reporter by telling him that piracy was "brilliant." First the reporter asked her if she had an iPod, and she complained about losing a few. So then he asked what she thought about people downloading songs, and she cheerily said it was "Great!" The reporter then pauses, as that wasn't the answer he was expecting, and then repeats back "Great?" So, she responds:

"Yeah, I love it. I think it's brilliant and I'll tell you why. Music should be shared. It's ok, if one person buys it, it's totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don't care. I don't care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it's totally cool. I don't mind. I’m happy that they hear it."

I was curious to find out what her record label thought of all of this, and it didn't take long to discover that Stone is quite unhappy with EMI as her label, and is looking for legal ways to get out of her contract with them. Maybe if they weren't suing all of those people who are helping to promote Stone's album, she wouldn't be so angry with them.

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