Grand Funk Railroad – The Trichordist

East Bay Ray of The Dead Kennedys and I had an informal bet going. Well maybe not a bet, just a sort of prediction that once Ray spoke against ad supported piracy at SF Music Tech, the music tech bloggers would start with the usual name calling.

Sure enough right on cue we see Bruce Houghton’s Hypebot giving Mike Masnick (see the “Google Shill List”) a platform to bash Ray and other artists. “Whining” “Old” “Grumpy” and “Rant” were some of the unfair and unbalanced terms that Ray and I predicted they would use in the de rigueur post–SF Music Tech cyber bullying. And they did.

(compare to SF Weekly less hysterical coverage here.)

This is pretty sad since ending ad supported piracy is a no-brainer—even Google and Yahoo! fall over themselves to try to explain their unexplainable connection (see USC Annenberg Innovation Lab report). Both artists and the legitimate music tech firms are negatively affected by ad supported piracy. For instance legitimate music streaming services have to compete against these same unlicensed services for ad revenue. Why the music tech space bloggers fail to grasp this is a mystery.

Bruce Houghton also owns the talent agency Skyline Agency. This agency tends to have a lot of “Old” and “Grumpy” artists that would probably go on a “Rant” if they were to see that their agency head is tacitly defending this practice. So we prepared a few screenshots.

Any comment Bruce? Do you think that this practice is acceptable? How do our “future” music models like streaming compete with the guys that don’t pay any royalties to artists? We’re all ears.

Pure Prairie League piracy brought to you by BMW.