The original material girl played a little prank on the P2P file sharing users of the world recently, when she flooded P2P networks with a fake copy of her "American Life" single, laced with a special message of "What the F do you think you're doing...??!"

So unhappy is M with the thought of people stealing her music, that she upset even loyal fans with her aggressively played jape. But the plan was to backfire.

"The hacker scored a minor victory against Madonna by breaking into her site over the weekend and posting all of the tracks from "American Life" for download. According to The Smoking Gun, the site went offline after the attack and remained down for close to 15 hours.""

I especially like this quote from The Reg:

"Swearing at your most loyal and eager audience ranks right up there with filing lawsuits against college students and launching attacks against our armed forces. It's also on par with making new CDs as difficult to open as possible, bound as they are with glue and cellophane."

More here.

Oh, I can certainly confirm that fake mp3 bit. Someone I erm... know... downloaded it, and was very surprised to find Madonna asking him for a fight!

LOL Phantasm, I wouldn't worry about it, your friend will get hold of it soon ! All Madonna managed to do was delay the time it takes to get her Album on peer2peer.

What makes you think that my friend even wants another mp3 from that skank now that she's pulling stunts like this?

I agree, that seems a little on the shady side of things for her to even think about doing this. Even if she doesn't like P2P doesn't mean she should take it on herself and ruin her reputation. Oh well I guess she'll just have to deal with the consequences.

There seems to be an epidemic of corporate mentality as well…:P

But we will sit back and watch. LOL. Great I love it!

From here.

In any case, I was pretty disappointed to find "American Life" really rather uninspired.

Her disks also weren't selling that well at $12.99 or something, so she had the price lowered to $9.99. I heard this somewhere today, I think on FOXNEWS, don't have a link though, you'll just have to trust me on this one.

If they could drop cd prices to say less than $5 I'd be much more likely to go buy it (espically if places like Wal-Mart would sell unedited versions). But when places charge $16.99 and up for a disk (which a lot of music stores do around here) its just worth it to spend the few minutes looking for some high quality mp3s of it from your favorite source.

it just shows that many like madonna who claim to be artists are less interested in expressing themselves thru art than they are in ammassing wealth thru consumers.(whom they call fans)

true artists are driven by a desire to create and express themselves thru their art. most of the great artists who works have stood the test of time died paupers, unfortunately. but their passion expressed in their art will still be remembered admired and inspire us long after people forget who madonna was.

CDs under for 9.99 or less sound much more appealing than 14-19.99.

While I still wouldn't buy a CD for $10, if they were $4.99, then we'd talk. I recognize the majority of cost is to make up for licensing, overhead etc.. But I hate paying 15 bucks for something that costs a fraction of a penny to make.

A store in the Mall here in North Carolina called "The Sound Shop" just recently went out of business. They were selling CD's for around $18 for very many years. Now THEY are paying for it. It is kind of sad though because P2P is putting people out of business and even though I download music off of their I dont agree with people that do it (nor myself for doing it), and I am a musician myself so I understand band's situations.

The world changes.

Sometimes we all do forget to stop and think that it is the 21st Century....

The world changed a lot at the turn of the last century, don't think for a moment that its not going to in much the same way right now.

A lot of things are going to exist in the future that are new and wonderful. But a lot of other things are going to no longer exist, and that includes some good things from this time as well.

My Gran used to talk about missing the tram cars. And so she should. But that time is over now.

Maybe in the future, there won't be a - dissemination - that's say, of music, or video or sorts of other kinds of information in the same way that there is now.

Music will change because the human race is changing, and maybe in the future there won't be crap like Boyzone, Take That, Robbie Bloody Williams, etc, etc (a time I shall welcome!).

Maybe in the future, we won't even think to buy music from a store, because the whole point of it will be how it evolves on-line on the internet, getting shared and changed and worked on.

Music itself pre-dates by millenia the fashion in which we presently market it. Surely the way we look on music will change over time.??

Did you think about that?


What is it you love - music, or how you pay/obtain/trade it?

Surely its the music, and only the music that's most important.

Oh, and no one give me any BS about "if no one paid for music, no one would have the urge to play it well, distribute it, etc, etc..."

We've been making music for a lot longer than we've been making as all pay for it in increasingly greedy ways.

To tell you the truth, I actually like Madonna's little stunt...

It's a much better approach than suing everyone using p2p services, and does get the message across...

It's not like we've got any right to download music for free over the internet, and thus we can't complain when things like this happens imo...

Ok, so swearing at your fans might not be such a good idea, but if you really like Madonna's music go and buy the cd, don't just download it..

When you download music (or films/programs) from the net, you are doing something illegal... And as such can be prosecuted.
IMO it's better that the companies, which products are being downloaded, are flooding the p2p networks with bullsh*t and thus making them harder to use, than suing everyone who's ever downloaded something...
NOTE: this is as long as whatever they're flooding the networks with doesn't do any harm to the machine it's downloaded to...

I very much agree that the prices on cd's these days are way to high, and that the labels should "get with the program", though that doesn't mean I think we're entitled to download all the music we want...

I short: when you download something illegal from the net, you are taking a chance, and don't really have any reason to complain when something like this happens...

.02$

Absolutely agree... if you truly like her music then go buy the CD!

"Swearing at your most loyal and eager audience ranks right up there with filing lawsuits against college students and launching attacks against our armed forces. It's also on par with making new CDs as difficult to open as possible, bound as they are with glue and cellophane."

On this statement, I just have to say that everyone is free to express their opinions, even if it is against the interest of the country, this is a free country.

Well In theroy there are free countries but without all the strictness and people complaining the world would not have boundries...

The people who push the limits alow for the world to head onwards, the ones who complain slow down the decay.

~~!!!End of Rant!!!~~

This person has preformed many illegal operations and shall now be fined upto the sum of 10, 000 dollars, If ol' Bill Gates can catch me.

For what it's worth, and I realize that I may be in the minority, the few tracks that I get ahold of that aren't quite legal, I either buy or trash. Because of the constant crap the RIAA pushes out, it's typically trash. That's what p2p is really great for- try before you buy. Just download 3 or 4 tracks, and you'll be able to guess the rough quality of the CD- good, average, or crappy.

And on that note, a quick Rant to the RIAA on claiming to have lost money: If you sell your CDs and concerts for more money than the average person has, pump out total crap, and attempt to keep people from using the music on their favorite sound system (for me, it IS my computer), yes, you're going to lose sales. Sure, you can prove this to be caused by anything, but I think if you ask around you'll legitimately find out that 90% of your lost sales are due to direct actions of yours.

Sorry.. and for the record, since Madonna's track which has been passed around now has been revealed to be pretty poor, I think I'll pass on her CD, $9.99 or $.99

Music is art, a form of communication. It can be quite beautiful.

The dinosaur Record labels, RIAA etc. are middle men that have no right to stand in the way of the instruments and my ears. They have been charging ever increasing prices for records and CD's that are exorbitant and out of most people price range and I feel that their scam is finally up.

Remember people that the musicians are not getting that $19.95 you’re spending on that shiny new $0.03 piece of plastic and the other few cents worth of mass produced packaging. No! big fat suits get the bulk of that money and I am not going to support them.

When the music "industry" finally breaks down and all that we are left with is the music I will be happy to give an artist $4 for a collection of his songs, which is far more than he/she makes now on each CD of their work sold. Peace -Derek

I found two links after posting the first is an article that shows how many artists owe money after getting a record contract and producing a CD.

The second has an interesting insight on the cost of making the physical CD, case and Liner compared to retail prices. -Derek


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