I just bought 5 albums.
Not bad considering I spent some time today downloading a lot of music eh?
Well lets see earlier this afternoon I was downloading some Pearl Jam, it was in fact a cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday…or at least it was suppose to be but it wasn’t. It did remind me however that I really liked their live versions of Last Kiss, so I downloaded some of that. I was in Tower Records this evening and I was thinking about the stuff I had downloaded and it struck me that I don’t own a single Pearl Jam album. Quite a hole in my collection. Like many bands that won’t sorta below my radar when I first got into music (and I’ll get to them in a moment) I had no idea where to start. Loads of albums and I don’t know what I should buy. So I was having a browse and in something that surprised and impressed me, they released a cd of if not all, most of their concerts from the 2000/1 world tour. You could get cds of London, Glasgow, Paris, Stockholm, New York and many many other places. How great an idea is that? So 10 minutes later I’m leaving with the double cd of Pearl Jam live at The Point Dublin 2000. Guess what I’m listening to now?
I’d never have picked that up if I hadn’t downloaded some of their stuff this afternoon, I would never have thought oh hey I have no Pearl Jam. That’s £16.49 I wouldn’t have spent on a cd. You don’t hear much of that do you? Its all stealing music, loosing us money and cd sales and royalties etc etc.
Well here is my take on that. My love for Napster (and the various clones these days) is simple. Live tracks and live cover versions. That’s what I download, if I want an album I’ll go out and buy it. Simple as that. If I could go out and buy an album of The Smashing Pumpkins live that included their covers of U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday and Stay I would, in a second. Were I able to go out and buy a cd with Michael Stipe (from R.E.M. fame) singing lyrics to U2’s One with music by Radiohead, hell I would get up early and be at the door when the shop opened. U2 are a fantastic band live, I saw them at Slaine last year and it was one of the best days of my life, their songs just lend themselves to live performances. Over 80,000 people singing along just adds so much. Being able to go somewhere and get my choice of my favourite tracks from various gigs over the years just plain rocks. To be able to have the entire of U2 live from Croke Park Dublin in 1987 a click away is fantastic.
The same goes for R.E.M., Metallica, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and many many more. I mean I have Alanis Morrisette doing a cover version of Radiohead’s Creep, R.E.M. covering The Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t fear the Reaper, JJ72 doing an acoustic version of their own track Snow from a festival in Japan and the list goes on. You just can’t buy this with money. It really is as simple as that. If you could, I would pay it.
This afternoon for the first time in a long time that I can remember I was really excited about music. I was listening to some of the best bands in the world signing some of the best songs in history and at one stage I was so tempted to just start singing along in the office. Guns N’ Roses doing November Rain so nearly brought that out. Walking home from the bus stop tonight was just a whole musical experience.
Guns N’Roses, Nirvana, Pearl Jam have all got one thing in common for me, I first really heard them all when I was working in Dublin about 3 years ago. Someone had put some MP3s on a Mac I was using. I heard them and they blew me away. I got into music far later than most people seem to do. I was in my mid teens (i.e. mid nineties) before I really got into it. They slipped me by like so many others that I am still only discovering. At the time Napster was just beginning to take off and around the call centre it certainly did. Day after day we downloaded music and ran servers and it was pretty much the musical education of my life. Previously if it wasn’t in the Top 40, or played lots on MTV it just escaped me. Fuck me did I miss a lot of great stuff. As a result I bought albums by loads of bands that I had just never thought of buying or indeed even heard of before.
Anyways tomorrow I’m going to download more and I’m not saying I’ve never and will never download a non live track because it would be a lie.
I can say that in complete honesty that downloading an mp3 has ever stopped me
buying an album.
I can also say in complete honesty that downloading an mp3 has caused me to buy an album, and I can say that quite a few times.
Just some thoughts on the matter….