Die britische Pop-Sängerin Lily Allen hat sich verschiedentlich mit aus meiner Sicht teilweise etwas wirren Argumenten gegen das File Sharing ausgesprochen:

► My Thoughts on File Sharing
► More Piracy Stuff

The internet is the most amazing thing, but it should be OUR thing, and ironically piracy is just playing into the hands of the corporations. What these artists and creators do, they do for the love of it, I know its hard because money is scarce but we have to inject money back into these areas. It’s not fair to steal peoples material,I know it’s art and it has no physical value but even Shakespeare had shares in The Globe Theatre. People will lose their jobs, you’ll be watching X-factor, Simon Cowell will be getting richer, radio stations will be churning out old back catalogues from people your dad or even your grandads age(vera lynn is No 1 this week) and the taxpayer will have to subsidize yet more unemployment. Please, please, please go and see a film in the cinema instead of buying it in Tesco’s car-park , buy a c.d. or album off itunes if you really like it, and god help us, keep buying books . If we do this, i really think we can make a difference.

Interessant ist die Reaktion einer Sängerin wie Joss Stone auf Lily Allens Standpunkt:

She needs to sell records because she’s not a singer, and that’s not an offense to her because I think that she knows that too. (…) I think she’s a performer and she’s more of a personality than she is a singer. But I think when musicians are really making real music people come to the show and that’s what we make our money from, from playing live. And I think it’s probably harder for an artist like Lily and any other pop acts. It’s really about the track and about their personality and their celebrity and that’s how they make their money is selling those records. (…) So the downloads – she’s not going to win that fight. None of us will win that fight. So let’s just accept it and let’s see it as something that can be beautiful and it might change music for the better. It might sort the weeds from the flowers.

Interessanterweise entkräftet sie gerade das Argument, dass bekannte Musiker tendenziell weniger verdienen könnten, indem sie klar stellt, worum es aus ihrer Sicht wirklich geht:

Who said that musicians have to be millionaires? Who made this a rule? We don’t need that much money. We just don’t. We only need enough to make music and to eat and to go on tour.

Vor diesem Hintergrund ist der folgende 30 Sekunden lange Ausschnitt aus einem Interview mit Gerd Leonhard sehr interessant, der beschreibt, was Geld verdienen für einen Musiker auch bedeuten kann:

Bereits 2008 hat sich Joss Stone folgendermaßen über das File Sharing geäußert:

I think it’s great… (…) Yeah, I love it. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why (…) Music should be shared. (…) It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.

via: Techdirt, MediaFuturist
Bildquelle Lily Allen: Wikipedia (CC-Lizenz)
Bildquelle Joss Stone: Wikimedia Commons (CC-Lizenz)