It’s retarded.

First of all, Lily Allen is parroting talking points fed to her by an industry that funded its own most damning counter-argument. We now know that many in the industry know that file sharing is better than just good for business, but the very blood in its veins. We have empirical proof of this. Yet some still cling to old dreams in which the music industry survives, let alone thrives, when no one can listen to music without paying for it first.

Second, bandwidth throttling is only slightly less futile than cutting off connections. And it will never happen. At least not here in the US, and not likely in the UK or Europe either. As Sweden’s ISPs learned the hard way, crippling service to the most demanding customers is kind of like McDonald’s taking the meat out of fat people’s burgers. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out how that one would turn out.

I think it’s time to go a little further than simply pointing and laughing.

I wish I didn’t have to provide this disclaimer, but I should, given my reputation and the oversight of this site by certain interested parties: I buy music. A lot of it. I pay for it with actual money. I have removed myself personally from the P2P equation. I’ve gone straight.

Obviously, I have a lot of respect for artists. Antiquiet is irrefutable evidence of this. But that’s nothing new. A few years ago, with all the respect for artists in the world, I conducted myself exactly how many of our readers do: I downloaded quite often to sample, as I simply could not afford ‘blind buys,’ nor have I ever had a snowball’s chance in a microwave at simply kicking what can only be described as a hopeless addiction to good music.

All that’s really changed is that I can now afford to take a lot more chances, and I get a lot of music sent to me for free by publicists that want me to talk about it.

But let’s look at this behavior that’s supposedly ruining the music industry.

As many of our readers do now, once upon a time I downloaded, and with not the slightest bit of remorse; I would just look at piles of CDs, ticket stubs, and t-shirts I had spent countless last dollars on. I watched those piles grow exponentially when the number of bands I liked grew beyond the seven on the radio to the hundreds and ultimately thousands that could be found on MP3 trading forums. And that’s one bone of contention in the argument: Those who download say they directly, financially support artists they like (and might otherwise never have discovered) in one form or many others, with many examples handy.

But what if they don’t like what they downloaded, and they don’t purchase? Or what if they liked it just enough to keep it, but couldn’t quite afford to pay the $10 for what is essentially nothing more than a license they know no one’s ever going to check? Or maybe they can’t afford the $30 ticket that becomes $65 after “convenience fees.” These people are the alleged thieves. These are the people being blamed for the downfall of the industry.

In their defense, they say they only avoided a purchase that wasn’t going to happen anyway, and not buying is not exactly stealing. Maybe it is. Or maybe we have piles of research proving that they’re not harming anyone at all in any way, shape or form. Regardless, it’s a moot point. The people buying and the people stealing, by and large, they’re the same people. They’re the people that care enough about music to pay for it when they can, steal it when they can’t, and spread the word to others either way.

We’ve raised this point before, and it’s been questioned. It’s one of those things that’s hard to prove or accurately quantify. People say that they buy what they download and like, but do they really?

According to the RIAA, they do.

Allen has stood in staunch opposition to file-sharing recently, particularly against musicians who are for it – while claiming “I don’t want to promote a divide amongst artists.” In actuality, that’s precisely what she seems to be doing.

“I agree that file sharing is a huge and complicated problem for emerging artists, myself included, and for the future of music,” said Bat For Lashes’ Khan. “I will be taking the time to research this, but if you do have any meetings where we can all get together and discuss (the guy from Muse had some really good points we could take to government), then please let me know.” It’s a level-headed thought, but fails to acknowledge the fact that Kahn wouldn’t be nearly as successful as she is now had her career trajectory been entirely reliant upon her one recognizable single, Daniel.

I’ve personally spoken with dozens of musicians about this very issue, and there are some consistent trends I’ve noticed through all these conversations.

First: the artists who aren’t well-known are eager to get their music heard by anyone they can. They’re happy to be downloaded, traded, offered for free, because they need all the help they can get in standing out among the sea of white noise circulating the payola-laden airwaves.

Second: the more established artists who aren’t that concerned about illegal downloads are confident enough in their own talent and perseverance that they see the distribution benefit, and the increased likelihood that those downloading their songs will actually buy a ticket to their shows, which the artists generally get a much larger cut of.

It seems that those artists whose careers are dependent upon image and PR placement are crying out the loudest. It’s not hard to deduct why that could be.

Name recognition is two-thirds of the game, and the days of blind buys are forever gone. Record labels aren’t trusted anymore, because for more than half a century they’ve run rampant with overcharging fans and underpaying artists. The temple is crumbling, and for once, the music lover is reaping the benefit.

Sure, all music can’t be free, but a sour grapes blog by an artist with little to no artistic merit, who’s known just as much for her drunken stupors, drug binges and bratty behavior as anything she’s put down on wax doesn’t hold nearly as much water as someone with artistic longevity in the cards. New and exciting avenues of legitimate distribution are popping up left and right these days, and while we exist very much in a musical Wild West at the moment, an inferior industry prop whining about kids not buying her album is certainly not helping the cause.

But there’s new news to report. Of course we wish it included word on when you can get your hands on an actual song or album, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to sink your fat beaks into.

There have been two promo videos posted since the in-studio clip of Nobody Loves Me And Neither Do I; one featuring more studio footage, set to Elephants…

…and more recently, an animated clip set to Scumbag Blues:

And even more exciting than that, there are a bunch of tour dates, for North America…

10/01 Stubb’s / Austin, TX (ACL Pre-Party)
10/02 Austin City Limits / Austin, TX (Replacing Lily Allen)
10/05 War Memorial / Nashville, TN
10/06 LC Pavilion / Columbus, OH
10/08 The Fillmore / Columbus, OH
10/09 The Sound Academy / Toronto, ON
10/11 House Of Blues / Boston, MA
10/12 The Electric Factory / Philadelphia, PA
10/14 9:30 Club / Washington, DC

…and the UK:

12/10 Pavilions / Plymouth, England
12/11 Guildhall / Portsmouth, England
12/13 Empress Ballroom / Blackpool, England
12/14 O2 Academy / Birmingham, England
12/15 O2 Academy / Edinburgh, Scotland
12/17 HMV Hammersmith Apollo / London, England

Public onsale starts September 5th for the North American shows, and September 4th for the UK shows. For more details, head to the band’s new tour page.

We’ll be in Austin to cover the first two shows of the tour. Stay tuned.

P.S. We’ve been updating our TCV live bootlegs YouTube playlist. Check it out.

Of course, it would later be brought to light that Boyle had been desperately trying to capture this audience for eons, ever since she was not exceptionally good looking nor exceptionally ugly. Her abilities hadn’t evolved much over the years, but the anti-makeover brought on by the aging process ironically provided her with a gimmick that empowered her to become more YouTube-famous than the Chocolate Rain dude, to the tune of 60 million views.

We could have been “those guys” and talked shit, but we just ignored it. We had way cooler stuff to talk about anyway, I’m sure.

But an artist I’ve always dug hit the nail on the head the other night, and I felt the need to say amen. Lily Allen started off by calling Boyle “overrated” on Twitter. When pressed, she elaborated:  “I thought her timing was off, no control, and I don’t think she has an amazing voice.” I completely agree with that, almost as much as I agree with the following and final defense of her opinion: “Yes, she can sing, but it’s not about talent with her is it? She seems like a lovely lady but if it’s about talent, that Shaheen kid should win.”

Thank you Lily, for saying it.

I caught her live show on one of her first trips through the states, and everything checked out there as well. Alright, Still got a lot of play that summer around my house. A similar album by a guy named Jamie T called Panic Prevention picked up where that one left off early last year, but ever since I’ve been waiting for Lily Allen’s sophomore effort, hoping it would show the growth you’d expect from someone who’s got some real talent. That follow-up, entitled It’s Not Me, It’s You, hit shelves today. And it delivers.

The disc’s first two tracks had previously slipped out via MySpace (along with an amazing cover of Britney Spears’ Womanizer). I have to admit that the latter of the two, lead single The Fear, is an even more effective ditty on the uncensored album, with some very well-delivered four letter words. The former, Everyone’s At It, would have been (and may be someday) just as hot on the radio, begging to be remixed into a hundred different extended club bangers with a chorus that wears out hard.

There are a few songs- namely 22 and Who’d Have Known- that show a more advanced level of pop song construction. It reassures us that Lily hasn’t been sitting on her laurels or Googling herself (excessively, anyway) in the downtime since her debut. She’s been on the job, honing her craft.

It’s Not You, It’s Me closes with one of the most characteristically Lily tracks to come to be. He Wasn’t There is playful, combative, bitter and sweet all at once. And it’s that perfect balance of fun and fight- that somehow aggressive innocence- that makes it hard to not dig Lily Allen.

It’s Not Me, It’s You
February 10, 2009
Capitol

1. Everyone’s At It
2. The Fear
3. Not Fair
4. 22
5. I Could Say
6. Back To The Start
7. Never Gonna Happen
8. Fuck You
9. Who’d Have Known
10. Chinese
11. Him
12. He Wasn’t There