And since ALL those acts tour and make a fortune with it, they aren't relying on streaming music royalties, and they aren't getting them. Everyone knows Spotify and Pandora and YouTube give PENNIES on the dollar. But fat cats like Stu Bergen of Warners and Dennis Kooker of Sony, can't stop chortling about how people LOVE music, and the "markets" are growing.
It's just that you aren't seeing the next Randy Newman, Loudon Wainwright, Procol Harum, King Crimson, Kate Bush or any other individuals with something unique to offer. You get a freak show like Sia, maybe. And all the sound-alike versions of Beyonce and Cardi B. You do NOT get what made music so vital and exciting an art form in the 70's and 80's.
Warners and Sony are gigantic corporations. They are leviathans that want to swallow a grouper or a shark, and spit away smaller fish as being not worth bothering with. Likewise, they are telling the world, "We are SUCH fat cats, we don't care what we spill, how we wet ourselves, or the crumbs we leave behind or the cake we leave on the plate." In other words, they don't give much of a damn about piracy.
Let's take a look at this fat cat Stu Bergen, for example. Look at this wall-eyed ass-face. You'd want him to marry your daughter? Be your accountant? Give you SINCERE advice? Expect him to care about anything besides how his suit looks?
The article in MUSICWEEK (should be Music WEAK) did not have a picture of Dennis Kooker, but the name is good enough. Dennis was bragging about how "paid streaming is the fuel" to...do what...keep this bastard driving a fancy car?
The arrogance of the uncaring Fat Cats is to have this motto tattooed into the jelly of their brains: "LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE."
The execs at Warners and Sony are living well. To them, the craven, parasitic and bratty bloggers who upload everybody's music for some Rapidgator money, or for a few "likes" and "nice comments" from strangers, are nobodies.
What if the F.D.A. thought that way? What if they said to Bergen and Kooker, "We no longer have standards on peanut butter. Don't expect us to monitor how many insect parts are in a jar of peanut butter. Look at it this way, if you can't see them, what does it matter? It's like some angry chef pissing in your chicken soup. If you can actually taste it, send us a letter. And we'll reply, "We will take the appropriate action," and do NOTHING.
There's an old comical verse from Ogden Nash about the termite who "found a piece of wood. He tasted it. It tasted good. And that is why your Auntie May...fell through the parlor floor today.
Pirates on blogs and in forums are dangerous termites. The more there are, the worse it gets, and here's another important point: they should be discouraged for the MORALITY of it. Some self-avowed "Bandit" or "Pirate" shouldn't be bragging about having 10,000 downloads on his FREE BLOG, or being around for FIFTEEN YEARS. "It's bad for business. It's bad all around." But hey, that was Sam Spade, and guys like Bergen and Kooker probably watch nothing but Marvel super hero movies while wearing over-sized custom-made Underoos.
Supposedly powerful guys who run Warners and Sony should be able to tell politicians, "Make it so we can have rogue websites BLOCKED, the way the FBI blocks rogue sites that interfere with commerce and promote illegal activity." Bergen and Kooker should be saying to Brin, of Google, "Your BLOGSPOT is full of obnoxious shit. Flush it out. Don't make our employees go through hoops. If we send a DMCA, take down the blog." Funny, they pushed Brin's YouTube (also owned by Google) to make sure that pirated music is identified and blocked. Why not do it for Google's Blogspot?
In his eulogy for his brother Bobby, Ted Kennedy said, "Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man....Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change..."
Of Bobby, he said, he was "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it..."
President Obama said that when something's not right...you MAKE IT RIGHT. He said if something's not right, the reason is because somebody is profiting from the status quo." You can see that minute of Obama right here:
Obama on SOMETHING'S NOT RIGHT When brats are going "Nyaa nyaa, you can't stop me," the response shouldn't be, "It's only because I've got my eyes closed." It should be, "I DO see you, and I'm slapping you down."
Tell me, Mr. Kooker and Mr. Bergen, do you allow ants to crawl on your feet, and flies to walk up and down your nose? Do you want roach parts in your peanut butter? Do you think artists such as Randy Newman, Loudon Wainwright, Procol Harum, King Crimson and Kate Bush should STILL be getting royalties from their work and be protected from parasites? Do you ignore them because they're not Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift?
The truly pathetic thing about this piracy, is that an intern, in ONE DAY, could end a dozen of the most virulent and obnoxious Blogspot blogs with DMCA's. AN INTERN. With a little PUSH, websites that offer downloads could be blocked. The owners could even be thrown in jail or forced to pay fines. It is way too easy for people to find pirated material, and that's largely the fault of GOOGLE, for having a search engine and a Blog company that thrives on the traffic, and organizations such as the RIAA, BPP, IFPI, BREIN and GEMA, who represent Warners, Sony, Universal and the rest, and could easily squash the bugs.
Somehow I doubt Mr. Kooker and Mr. Bergen shrug and say "Oh, I'll live with rats, roaches and moths in my luxury home..." They don't say, "I don't notice it, because I have more important things on my mind." Imagine if they called for an exterminator, and the exterminator said, "Sorry, I'm very busy" or "That doesn't seem to be a problem worth my time" or "Hey, I've made enough money this week, I don't need to make a house call for YOU."
The word to describe what Mr. Kooker and Mr. Bergen and the RIAA and the others are doing by NOT doing anything, is: CRAPATHY.
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