Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Wednesday 5th April: downloads, music & toilets

A rather unfortunate bout of illness has kept your normally robust Editor away from the Blog site, but now I am back with the latest local music news!

Live events on Wednesday 5th for South Somerset & West Dorset
Traditional Music @ Wheatsheaf Inn, South Petherton
Sweet Dreams @ Chicago Rock Café, Yeovil
Zoe Schwarz & Rob Koral @ Harry's Bar, Yeovil

Live events on Wednesday 5th for Taunton & Bridgwater
Comedy Night @ Brewhouse Theatre, Taunton
On English Ground @ Bridgwater Arts Centre
Madonna Tribute @ The Firestone, Taunton

Very Naughty Indeed
LONDON (Reuters) - The British music industry lost more than one billion pounds in the past three years as a result of people illegally filesharing on the Internet rather than paying for music, its trade organisation said on Tuesday.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) released its data as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the industry globally, launched almost 2,000 cases of legal action in 10 countries in Europe and in Hong Kong.

The British industry lost 414 million pounds last year as a result of illegal swapping of music on the Internet, up from 376 million pounds in 2004. In the three years to 2005, the total loss amounted to 1.1 billion pounds, the BPI said.

Editors Comment
What we want to know is how do they calculate these figures? There have to be some fairly massive assumptions about how many downloads are happening (unless the illegal downloaders just put their hands up to be counted).

The other big assumption is that if these tracks were not downloaded, then people would buy them at full retail. Well we doubt it; fact is if you find a way to get music for 'free' then you are probably going to try listening to some different styles, maybe things you would never buy for example. Just possibly, sharing files in this way actually increases the available market.

We are not condoning illegal downloads but we do wonder how painful this is in reality for the BPI members; who is checking their figures?


Late musician's loo snatched
A toilet belonging to the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia has been stolen from the driveway of a house in Sonoma, California.

It's not known if the toilet was taken by a wayward fan or a thief remodelling a bathroom.

The toilet once stood in the master bathroom of Garcia's house. The singer died in 1995, aged 53. Police say they have no leads (or loo paper).

Booze in space!
Scientists have detected a cloud of alcohol some 288billion miles across; that is a lot of booze! In science terms this is pretty exciting news as it was believed that complex molecules like alcohol could not be formed in deep space.However you could not drink this stuff as it's actually the harmful methanol version of alcohol rather than the ethanol we normally drown our sorrows in. Still if you want your piece of the action just head for a region of our galaxy, the Milky Way, that is called W3(OH).

Booze or not, have a great day

The Editor

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