by SCOTT C

"You know what, I'm a fan of hip hop too. If I had a chance to get a hold of one of my favourite artist's CDs early, I would jump at it. So if some asshole from a recording studio leaks my unfinished, unmixed and uneven album, consider it a personal triumph. Play it for your friends, and if you like it, buy the version I want you to have. If you are a fan of my music, allow me to live off it so I can continue to bring it to you. But once you put it on a Web site and encourage people to download it, you become the bigger asshole. You are not respecting my artistic process and worse, you are taking food out of my children's mouth."

This is just part of a bigger, angrier letter that Talib Kweli left on his Web site talibkweli.com, aimed at the unknown individual who leaked his new album The Beautiful Struggle onto the Internet for all to download. Kweli really pulls no punches in his condemnation of the now-regular practice of beating labels to the mark, focusing more on his own personal disappointment in people who are clearly supposed to be fans.

Unlike a lot of artists opposing downloading on a purely fiscal level, I think Kweli's frustration stems more from artistic integrity and being robbed of the ability to release the finished product in a truly finished form.

Web sites like www.downhillbattle.org regularly promote what they like to call "music activism," or actions that will hypothetically make music and music culture better. Their focus is on changing the reigning monopoly that companies like EMI, Sony, Warner, BMG and Universal have enjoyed over the music industry for decades, providing information about the RIAA, royalty rates and the civil disobedience of peer-to-peer file sharing. Everywhere you look, people are talking about the fall of the music industry, drops in CD sales (and conversely, the rise in CD sales), rampant downloading and how the way people think about music has changed. Has it really? I don't think so.

The way the music industry looks at us, the consumer, however, is changing with every single day. PBS's flagship documentary show Frontline just unleashed a wicked new film called The Way the Music Died, which takes a closer look at what's really going on in an industry that is clearly going through some serious changes. Is it possible for an artist to succeed in a climate that is always chiming in with the decline of the industry? Is the industry really in decline, or has it just become a little too comfortable calling all the shots and doing business on its own terms? This is a great look at how we arrived at the point where popular music culture thrives on hits and hype, not even questioning the quality or integrity of the music we've been fed. Download this: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/view/ for more.

Please, don't probe... fathead@videotron.ca

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