That delightful female rapper, Lil’ Kim is apparently being sued by her record company. Brookland Media are claiming that Kim has failed to deliver on her contract, and have filed a $2.5 million lawsuit in an attempt to get her back in the studio.

However, Lil’ Kim apparently wanted to change the terms of the contract, after originally agreeing to it. A stalemate seems to have occurred, and Kim has only recorded a few songs as of September, before refusing to continue.

Apparently Brookland are hoping to have the court validate the agreement and presumably force Kim to work under the original terms. According to reports they also want to prevent her from working for other record companies while she’s still under contract to them.

Seems like a fair enough request, but how long before Kim starts walking around with the word ’slave’ tattooed into her boobs and insists on changing her name to TAFKAK?

A recent study by the Canadian Government suggested that people who actively download music using P2P networks were more likely to buy music.

OK, that’s wonderful news, and a glowing testament to the BitTorrent community. But that’s not really the point. Reading the discussion thread on Digg, there was the suggestion that:

Pirates=Music Fanatics
Others=Mainstream radio listeners

But is that really true? I’m not so sure.

From having spoken to a number of people who use file sharing for music, TV shows and movies, many pirates download gigabytes of material simply because they can. You can download a band’s entire discography in one night, but if you add to that a couple of other bands, your favourite TV shows and a smattering of movies, you’ll have a massive library of digital goodies.

But will you have the time to listen to and watch all that material? Unless you’ve got no life at all, probably not.

It’s easy to take studies at face value. And the kind of statistics that the Internet makes available are very compelling. I just wonder if anyone’s ever studied the usage of all this digital media. How many items are downloaded but never used? How many are downloaded, listened to once or twice and then forgotten about?

Look at this comment from colincattral, for example:

However, I think that the pirates that do buy music are offset by by the ones that decide on a whim that they like a certain artist, and then proceed to download their whole discography. I’m sure everyone on digg can think of a friend or relative that owns three or four cds, but has 25,000+ songs in their music library. It’s kind of disgusting.

How many people have the time to listen to 25,000 songs? Get real!

The Internet logs everything, and the statistics we read about the number of illegal downloads are pretty compelling. However, without some kind of usage analysis, those figures are fairly meaningless.

Personally, I think that unless you consume the downloaded material repeatedly, you’re not doing anything wrong. Record companies allow people to sample music via mediums like MySpace, radio and television shows. And they recognise that these things drive sales. The difference with P2P is that it can’t be controlled by the record company and they can’t use it as a revenue stream.

Frankly, it’s time that the critics of file sharing accepted that downloading doesn’t equal using, and with digital media it the consumption of that media that counts. Not the number of downloads.

However, EMI are mounting a legal challenge because the service allegedly breaches copyright laws.

Right, we don’t give a stuff about EMI. That’s a given. As a consumer, you want music in a format that’s convenient to you. And with the rise of the MP3 and a generation of iPod users, listeners prefer digital.

Now, anyone who’s had a bad experience with a computer can tell you that they’re fragile. Viruses, hard drive failures and idiots can all conspire to delete an entire library of MP3s that have taken years to accumulate. A backup plan is essential if you want to keep your data safe.

There’s a great quote in Exchange Magazine about this:

Content owners have rights, but those should not extend to shutting down music storage websites that are not abetting copyright infringement. And nothing is stopping EMI from developing its own digital locker service. That a Web startup dreamt up an innovative business model to complement consumers’ busy lifestyles is no cause for judicial intervention.

MP3Tunes is neither facilitating piracy nor discouraging people from buying music in any way. In fact, by making music collections more accessible and therefore more valuable, MP3Tunes might actually cause people to buy more music.

OK, from another perspective, I can see how an account on MP3Tunes could allow people to share logins and therefore share files over the service. However, if EMI were to work with MP3Tunes, they could easily detect abuse of an account. Simultaneous logons from different locations, IP addresses, etc. Not a problem.

Unfortunately in the context of the recording industry’s long-running feud with the Internet, this latest case looks like yet another reason to see the major labels as a draconian money machine looking to protect it’s own interests as opposed to those of the customer.

Another voice in this issue is the man behind MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson. He writes clearly about the situation and questions the right of the record labels to invade their customers’ privacy:

Files are not MP3tunes’ possessions any more than the contents of a safety deposit box are owned by the bank that houses them. The storage provided by MP3tunes is the user’s own space. A Locker is empty when someone opens an account and that customer decides what files are placed into their Locker.

It certainly raises questions about the rights of the consumer when dealing with music they’ve bought. If you’ve had a hard drive failure, does the record company expect you to buy every MP3 again? That’s simply not realistic. If I’ve purchased the music, then surely I’ve got the right to insure against losing it?

The problem is, record companies are so busy trying to protect their precious copyrights these days that there’s virtually no legal way to listen to music unless it’s on the original CD. Customers like me are confused and concerned by the attitude of record companies to customers. I think it’s high time they stopped suing us and started listening to us!

What about you?

As fast as helpful music fans put the video on YouTube, Warner and the YouTube admins are pulling them down. Sure, there’s an official version available, but guess what? It’s not available in my country.

Last time I looked, it was the 21st Century and the Internet had rendered phased releases in different countries impossible. No, irrelevant.

Now, if I could be bothered, I’m sure there are plenty of copies available through less legal channels. Fact is, Madonna isn’t really on my radar, so I won’t waste my time. I could be telling you what I think of the new single right now, but someone doesn’t want people on the Internet talking about her music.

Who’s the brainiac behind this anti-marketing decision? Is it Madonna or is it Warner Music? You’d like to blame the record company, but face it: Madonna is a major established artist. You have to assume that the buck stops with her when it comes to these types of decisions.

So, dear Madonna, would you please explain what your grudge is against the Internet? And why can’t I, in my remote corner of the UK, watch your stupid video?*

* I’ve seen it, by the way. You can’t police every corner of the Internet, dearie. But nice to see a poker company is making a fast buck out of your video.

[Bonus link: Idolator have some good commentary on the new Madonna/JT single. I won't be wasting my money on it.]

Starbucks are mopping up a huge number of geriatric songwriters for their Hear Music label. Carly Simon is the latest in a line of formerly great artists to have signed up with the Starbucks record label in order to get their music force fed to the mocha swigging masses.

In addition to the much loved Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor are known to have released music under the new label. I won’t lay the boot into these acts, but I find it interesting that Hear Music is signing up older artists by the wheelchair load.

No, seriously. I’m a big fan on Joni Mitchell’s work and some of her more recent retrospectives have been as good if not better than the earlier material.

And despite my loathing for Macca, I believe that these older artists still have much to give. I just wonder what’s in it for them. Can Hear Music distribute the music to a wide audience? Roughly 50% of their sales are done in Starbucks stores. Do they have a good marketing/distribution chain or are they relying on point of purchase sales combined with sales to long-term fans?

Does the exposure in one of the largest coffee chains in the world result in new, passionate fans or does it diminish your music into background ‘ambiance’ for dinner parties? I don’t know. Answers on a postcard please, because I’m cynical about what Starbucks’ Hear Music means for artists. Is this the label you sign to when you’ve given up?

The last few months have been pretty interesting. I’m thinking back to Prince’s freebie distribution of his Planet Earth in a Sunday paper. Lately, we’ve had Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails dissing and then divorcing his record label. Radiohead have gone and released their album over the Internet, allowing fans to pay whatever they think the album’s worth.

There’s an interesting article over on the CNN website about all this, citing other major artists making innovative decisions about their careers:

Earlier this year, Paul McCartney signed with Hear Music, a startup label launched by coffee retailer Starbucks Corp. and Concord Music Group, rather than going to a major.

Even the Eagles are going it alone with their upcoming album, “Long Road Out of Eden.” The group, which has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide, will release the album exclusively through Wal-Mart stores.

The latest news is that Madonna may be considering dropping her long time label Warner Bros in favour of a new arrangement with Live Nation.

It’s worth noting that at the unsigned scale, artists have MySpace and other Internet properties to connect with their audiences. At the level I like to call ‘international superstar’, the opportunities are far greater. And while I’m not really interested in what Madonna’s arrangements are (as long as she keeps her aging lycra-clad arse away from me), this hopefully represents a seismic shift in how musicians think about promoting their work.

I don’t think this means the end of the traditional ‘evil recording industry’ model – too many artists still want nothing more than a major deal – but it’s nice to see other opportunities springing up for musicians.

The wait-and-see will be in how these pioneering artists fare in this new industry – will they sacrifice their careers for their beliefs, or will they eventually return, cap-in-hand, to their original labels?