Step 1: Unyoke the Artists

October 18, 2007 12:37 PM

Five ways the music industry can prevent its own demise.
posted by Terminal Verbosity (52 comments total)

Nice article. Makes me want to write a song called "Music Tax, However Unlikely It May Be, Can Definitely Suck a Dick."

It would distribute that for free.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:49 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

I would choose to pay for that song, provided the price was based on popularity.
posted by arcticwoman at 12:52 PM on October 18, 2007

I would express my approval of that distribution method on public forums, then download the song via a p2p network.
posted by box at 12:54 PM on October 18, 2007 [4 favorites]

Curious that eMusic's model wasn't mentioned, with bundled DRM-free downloads that offer a significant discount to purchasers.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 12:55 PM on October 18, 2007

Wait, why do we want the music industry to prevent its demise?
posted by papercake at 12:56 PM on October 18, 2007 [8 favorites]

It's very, very simple.

If I buy a song or album, I want to be able to play any goodamn place I want be on it at home, work, my car or buddy's house. If you make this too difficult, I will alternate between stealing music and/or buying music from those who don't try to stop me from doing this.

If this bothers you, I strongly suggest you make it very easy for me to buy what I want, when I want and to play whereever I want.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:57 PM on October 18, 2007 [4 favorites]

Step 2: Give the music away for free
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:57 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Nthing papercake.

What I want is a "music industry" that puts damn near 100% of the money I pay for the music into the pockets of the actual artists who make the music.

Funny, I don't see anyone suggesting that.
posted by scrump at 12:58 PM on October 18, 2007 [9 favorites]

I will happily pay a music tax, as long as disbursments to individual artists are in no way, shape or form controlled by an industry group like the RIAA.

So what I'm saying is I will never happily pay a music tax.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:04 PM on October 18, 2007

Curious that eMusic's model wasn't mentioned, with bundled DRM-free downloads that offer a significant discount to purchasers.

I thought that was odd too. eMusic has a few really awesome features without the negatives other services package in. Heck, it keeps a list of all the stuff I've downloaded, and if I ever get a different computer I can just re-download them(something I'm pretty sure iTunes doesn't offer).
posted by drezdn at 1:06 PM on October 18, 2007

Actually a "Music Tax" would be a good idea if it were based on the concept of public financing of arts. Individuals would be required to pay a certain amount of their income as artistic patronage, and that money would be given out as grants by the government.

Another possibility would be that people chose what projects or groups of projects they want to fund. Obviously we'd have to make sure that they don't just fund their own shell projects, but that would be a more 'democratic' way to do it. The problem, of course is people would pick all sorts of crap to get funded, but that's what happens now anyway.

What's crazy, however, is the idea that the government should simply collect money and give it to the incumbent music industry so they can sit on their asses and do absolutly nothing. It would essentially just be theft.
posted by delmoi at 1:09 PM on October 18, 2007

Wait, why do we want the music industry to prevent its demise?

Wouldn't it be better to give the music directly to the artist, rather than the industry? I am picturing a big hat that each band/artist can self-tailor and then pass around. If you toss a dime into the hat when you like a song, chances are the artist will see more of the money than they would via the industry. And they could also sell replicas of the hat itself as merch.

Speaking of which, can anyone point me toward any data that lists what people have actually been paying for the Radiohead album?
posted by not_on_display at 1:09 PM on October 18, 2007

Wouldn't it be better to give the music directly to the artist
substitute "money" for "music". Fixed that for me.
posted by not_on_display at 1:11 PM on October 18, 2007

I paid five pounds for Radiohead's "In Rainbows" and felt like I'd stuck it to the man.

In essence, the album was free. I thought of the payment as more of a tribute.

If I'm willing to kick in $25 bucks every now and again to keep my favorite blogs with twelve readers alive, I'm willing to kick in $25 bucks every now and again to make sure that bands I like keep creating new music.

Also, while we're plugging free music sources, check out The Clash's Mick Jone's Carbon/Silicon project. He works with Tony James of Generation X/Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Similar to his better B.A.D. work and free, free, free.

Essentially, if the music is good, the free model and pay what you want models give them musicians a whole lot more power. Of course, that doesn't save the record companies, but it is good for music.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:12 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wait, why do we want the music industry to prevent its demise?

Good point.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 1:14 PM on October 18, 2007

easy peasy, charge .25 - .50 a song online DRM free. Make it cheap enough that "illegal" P2P has no real reason to exist. Electronic distribution cuts out so much of the overhead that a significant price cut is reasonable.
(and yeah, keep printing CDs at or below current cost).
A music store could hold it's entire collection and more in a machine the size of a pop machine, walk in, plug in your MP3 player, preview some stuff, select songs/albums you want, pay, upload, walk out. Make these machines robust enough and you can put them all over malls, airports, etc...
posted by edgeways at 1:17 PM on October 18, 2007

I think the free model may work for those that have decent name recognition, but not so much for those that are starting out. imo
posted by edgeways at 1:20 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

easy peasy, charge .25 - .50 a song online DRM free. Make it cheap enough that "illegal" P2P has no real reason to exist.

eMusic does this already, except without major label support. At the cheapest level (30 songs for $10), you're getting each song for $.33.

Amazon MP3 might be similar (I'm not sure on their pricing). Supposedly their DRM free tracks have caused Apple to drop the prices on their DRM free tracks.
posted by drezdn at 1:26 PM on October 18, 2007

Subscription is definitely the way to go. There's no money to be made in distributing music anymore but people will pay a reasonable monthly fee for convenience and premium features a la Cable and satellite radio. But there's a lot less money to be made in that model so until then the music executives are obligated to fight tooth and nail to stick to the current model. This is very much a salvage operation.
posted by nixerman at 1:47 PM on October 18, 2007

I got a free iTunes card from university and was excited to download a few tracks. To activate my iTunes account, I had to give them my credit card information. However, they wouldn't accept it. Why? Because I'm trying to access iTunes Australia (being that I live here) but my billing address is in Malaysia (it's linked to my dad's card).

As it is, anything beyond Top 40 doesn't reach Malaysia, many Internet companies (including PayPal) think Malaysia's full of scammers and so won't let us link our accounts to our bank accounts, CDs are expensive, bands hardly show up because of "threats of terrorism", music gets censored and banned.

Malaysia has one of the highest rates of piracy around the world. I wonder why.
posted by divabat at 2:03 PM on October 18, 2007

It would distribute that for free.

Or it would get the hose again.
posted by sveskemus at 2:05 PM on October 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

Make it cheap enough that "illegal" P2P has no real reason to exist.

That's only accomplished by free and reasonably ad-free. Even if it's 10c a track, one is basically paying for the inconvenience of putting in your credit card number.

Make it free but have more than banner ads, say interstitials, audio, or video, and it's more annoying than your favorite BitTorrent site.

Then, consider that if they can't even compete with your Mininova or your Pirate Bay, how the hell are they going to compete with invite-only trackers like Oink (no, I don't have invites) with no ads, megabyte/second downloads, and stringent quality restrictions? (Even Radiohead screwed this up - 160kbps CBR?)

Answer: Industries based on charging money for a copy of some bits are basically walking dead.

Some games companies have this figured out. You don't buy World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2 for the copy of the bits that make up the game, you buy them so you're allowed to play online.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 2:08 PM on October 18, 2007

The old aphorism says, It's hard to be a hooker in a college town full of horny coeds. (Cue outraged shrieks)

The reason the music industry is shrieking and trying to resist any transition is that all viable future models mostly drain money out of the system, primarily by cutting out the middle men and by drastically reducing the amount that customers pay for product.

For instance, "Give most of the money to the artists." Great idea -- unless you're one of the middle men who are getting most of the money now.

It's possible to make money distributing entertainment information online -- the porn industry has been doing it for years. But part of what makes it work is that all the price points are tuned down. The models are no-name. Almost all the photographers are, too. They're making a good living, but nobody's making $20 million per year.

The primary thing they realized is that in the era of easy distribution of digital copies, their entertainment product is a wasting asset. Its value begins to decay as soon as it is introduced. The only way to get subscribers to pay regularly is to produce new product on an ongoing basis.

But that cuts the very heart out of the entire star system as it currently exists in music and movies. Actors and musicians are aiming for huge wins. The distribution companies think of their product as capital investments, which can be milked for revenue for decades. That mindset is what needs to be shattered -- but it won't be easy, because there isn't any place for big studios in any viable economic model. There isn't any place for record distribution chains. The RIAA members are looking extinction in the face, and they don't want to die.

Can't say I blame them for that, but there's little they can do about it.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:16 PM on October 18, 2007

In ten years time they are going to use it as syonym for fucking something up badly.

As in: Fuck dude, you really music-industried your car huh.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 2:21 PM on October 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

Speaking of which, can anyone point me toward any data that lists what people have actually been paying for the Radiohead album?

In an interview with their management published in Billboard today, they say that the average is around 4 pounds/8 dollars.

To date, representatives for the band have remained tight-lipped on the sales performance of the studio set. Edge downplayed as "exaggerated" reports that "In Rainbows" had shifted more than 1.2 million copies, but admitted the average price paid was "probably pretty close" to £4 ($8).

"We haven't analyzed the data yet," he explains. "The servers are still functioning on delivering the records to people. When that calms down a bit, we will have a moment to analyze and drag the data off. "

So they may share the data eventually. We'll see.
posted by jokeefe at 2:30 PM on October 18, 2007

Perhaps it's worth asking: do artists even need the music industry anymore?
posted by c*r at 2:33 PM on October 18, 2007

This magnatune thing's kinda neat if you're into the sort of music they offer.
posted by TeatimeGrommit at 2:44 PM on October 18, 2007

I wish the music industry would just go away.

And I say that as a DJ and as someone has friends that are songwriters/producers.

The 'recording industry' are parasites.
posted by empath at 2:51 PM on October 18, 2007

"Almost all the photographers are, too."

This is not actually true. Most of the photographers are fairly well known in photography circles, just not to the general public. I mean, Richard Kern's the guy who shot the Barely Legal masthead girl whose photo runs every month.

"Perhaps it's worth asking: do artists even need the music industry anymore?"

Kind of. Mostly because the tautology of the music business only assures that musicians are good at making music (and sometimes not even that). They aren't, for example, necessarily good at booking shows or recording songs or managing distribution or retail or setting up websites, or any of the other ancillary tasks that you have to do in order to make money as a musician.
It's pretty much the idea of specialization. But the music industry has moved beyond seeing itself as an ancillary and necessary accoutrement to musicians and confused its managerial and executive acumen with being first movers.
SCDB's essentially right, that this is what's going to have to die, and that's what's scary for a lot of execs. Instead of being important people primarily through their investment capital, they're going to lose out as that capital becomes less important, and they're going to particularly lose out on things like the current model, where the artist doesn't keep their rights after paying back the loan that created them.
There's also a fundamental disconnect in terms of the resolution of this music and the amount of attention anything can be given—one way to make the physical object more important is to increase its quality, but the ability of bands to craft music that takes advantage of that complexity is limited.
Something else that's happening is that music is losing its place as one of the leading points in the pantheon of mediated entertainment, similar to how authors have declined since the heyday of the early 20th century. What I'd expect is a model that emphasizes yeoman musicians at the expense of massive "stars," and those "stars" will increasingly have to offer a multi-media experience in order to be paid massive salaries.
posted by klangklangston at 2:58 PM on October 18, 2007

I very much like the idea of artist giving away their music for free and getting their returns on things like live performances and merchandise. The problem is, that while big name musicians, like Prince and NIN, can get away with this, smaller bands don't have the name recognition to drive people to them without some kind of mechanism to get them heard.

This, unfortunately, is the purpose that music industry serves. They get musicians radio play, and that pushes everything else. The linked article is interesting, but the real nail in the coffin for the music industry will be a universally embraced system by which artists can self promote and actually be heard.
posted by quin at 3:07 PM on October 18, 2007

Theonlycooltim I'm having a hard time understanding your logic. What if the hunt for RIAA blood hurt the artists? What about the artists who are starting out? (as recently mentioned) Who's going to do their promotions and fund their concerts? Maybe other corporations will fill the gap in the form of endorsements and bookings and then artists are going to start whoring out themselves shamelessly just to make ends meet. Then before you know it, BAM, RIAA reincarnate only leaner, meaner, more subtle and all the more entrenched. Who knows.
As for you other point, you continuously have to pay to play and an online role playing game. And you can play while offline in TF2 but you still paid for "a bit of bytes" as you put it. While downloading video games makes sense, It's absurd if you still have to pay to play it online. So that's not the analogy you were looking for I think. You want free, but driving business innovation should be good for everybody involved not just one person's greed.
posted by Student of Man at 3:10 PM on October 18, 2007

Theonlycooltim I'm having a hard time understanding your logic. What if the hunt for RIAA blood hurt the artists? What about the artists who are starting out? (as recently mentioned) Who's going to do their promotions and fund their concerts?
posted by Student of Man at 3:10 PM on October 18 [+] [!]

Show me a city and I'll show you an indie music scene. There is no shortage of people willing to promote, fund, host, and devour concerts. If anything the RIAA has a stranglehold on the market via television/radio and is preventing the massive indie scene that lurks underneath the MSM from being appreciated.
posted by mek at 3:52 PM on October 18, 2007

I have no problem paying for my music, musicians have to eat and pay those bills, too. The prices of both CDs and concerts (to be fair, ticket scalpers are part of this problem) are ridiculous. But when you have a music label, they are the middleman, and they take a fair share, driving up the prices.

I have another problem with the free model -- it assumes that the musician will just have concerts to make up for the shortfall, but what if the artist can't (age, disability, social phobia) or doesn't want to keep doing the concert circuit? Some singers have a great voice, but they can't pack in concert halls. They don't have the charisma; so I guess they'd be screwed by that business model.

I like iTunes, but the "unbundling" of albums does take a lot of artistic control away from the artists. I liked albums -- when they were done in a certain way, it would be a fascinating piece of art -- from the title, to the cover to the songs which were arranged in a certain order for a certain reason.

The problems are numerous -- how do artists get the publicity they need to find the audience who'll appreciate them? How can they distribute and record their music at a reasonable price? How do they build a following without being at the mercy of a label?

So whatever new model emerges, I hope it's one that takes both the artist and the listeners into consideration and gives both a certain degree and balance of control. Artists need to be able a decent living from what they do and not be exploited, and the listeners shouldn't be gouged just because they want to buy the music or go to a concert.

The online models are almost great, I just think some tweaking is in order.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:17 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Student of Man: I'm not considering what's best for anyone, just what I think will happen. And that is that people will tend less and less to pay (through money or ads) when at best the whole experience will equal the illegal music sharing experience.

When I bought TF2, I effectively paid for a CD-Key, although Valve has technologically advanced beyond putting numbers on a piece of paper and having you type them in. My payment allows me to access Valve's master servers and authenticate with the Anti-Cheat system. World of Warcraft is subscription, but to use another Blizzard game, Warcraft III is not subscription - and people buy it not for the mass-produced bits that form the game, but for the CD-Key that lets you use Battle.net.

I guess CD-Keys or Valve's Steam stuff are bits too, but they are unique bits, which lose their usefulness when duplicated.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:17 PM on October 18, 2007

Oh, and another thing: This post is pretty damn thin. How many times have we seen about the exact same info on the declining Music Industry? This is too little for anyone who doesn't know, and just more chaff for anyone who does.
posted by klangklangston at 4:18 PM on October 18, 2007

Faster ways to access music have been made. No one model is better than any other. Each music maker, and each music listener, will decide for themselves what works best for them.

The important thing is that musicians can go directly to their audiences now. They no longer need the music industry to make sure the music gets out there.

It boils down to this: If you want to get your music through the music industry, pay their toll. As topheavy as they are, they built that road so they could get everything from Abba to ZZ-Top in your hands. They deserve the toll, if you use their virtual route to get your music.

If you can get the music another way, take that route, and kiss route 66 goodbye. The RIAA is Route 66. It's as simple as that. They can rant and wail all they want, but the interstate has been paved. People have passed them by. A few decades from now there will be wistful documentaries that bemoan what we have lost, and life will go on.
posted by ZachsMind at 4:43 PM on October 18, 2007

I walked past Tower Records in Manners Mall the other day. It was once filled with excited and confused teenagers filling their lives with musical feeling.

The kids have gone now leaving only old men - buying Paul Simon and Sting albums. It was depressing.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 4:58 PM on October 18, 2007

You think that's depressing? I could be one of those guys buying Paul Simon or Sting, and you're calling me old. =P
posted by ZachsMind at 5:09 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

You think that's depressing? All Tower Records stores closed about a year ago.
posted by klangklangston at 5:30 PM on October 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

The basic flaw in these schemes (except free) is that income for the artist depends on unit sales. We believe that this is normal and natural, when in fact it's a phenomenon that's only about a hundred years old. Artists managed to survive before music became an "object" which could be sold like cheese.

Music isn't consumed like cheese. No, it pretty much lasts forever now. How many times might one recording be "consumed"? Once it's made, music can go on and on without restriction.

So the industry created these artificial restrictions, and they try to enforce them, but this will never work until the day they manage to have decoder chips implanted in our heads. Still we listeners have been trained to believe that music should be paid for one unit at a time. It's ridiculous!

So how do I think music should be paid for? Well, if you hear music that convinces you that you want to hear more from an artist, why not pay the artist directly? It's very easy for a few thousand people to support one person just by sending them some money every year. It's almost like a subscription to the artist.

Listen to my music. For free. It's actually an investment of your time and effort, and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to do it. The music is my advertising. It's free.

Then understand that I have rejected the unit sales model of paying for music. If you like my catalogue and want to keep me in business in the future, send me some coin. It's simple, it's direct and it works.

Unit sales is great for millions of sales, worthless for less. Sponsorship works best for the more unusual music. Just where it's needed most, I think.
posted by Liv Pooleside at 5:40 PM on October 18, 2007

The essential core of the problem - for musicians - is not the internet as such, it's the whole recordings and canned music thing. Before we had recordings which could easily be played in public, there were a lot of gigs out there to be had. Musicians who were of a reasonable standard simply went out and got the work which was there at every bar, club or dance. For example, Ron Simmons, the jazz trumpet player whose autobiography at jazzprofessional.com seems alas to be temporarily down, talks about musicians gathering at Denmark Street in London on a Monday morning to get their gigs for the week as recently as the fifties.

Those days are, of course gone and I'm not arguing against recording itself, as that would be idiocy. At the same time, almost everyone apart from a gilded few is scratching around, and the very short-lived recording sales boom that has created the bloated and stupid RIAA-led industry as we know it is now over apart from the actual dying. Meanwhile, how the hell is a musician who no-one has ever heard of - like many of us here - supposed to compete with the likes of Radiohead? We're all giving our mp3s away for free now, but Radiohead get to trade on the vast marketing budget they previously had at their disposal and massive fanbase generated as a result. Sure, there are odd success stories here and there about unknowns genuinely using the internet to get word of mouth sufficient to build a career but what is the model for the rest of us?

There has to be a solution that involves something reasonable in between pennies and millions. Nothing in the linked article seems to quite be it yet. And - worst of all - I still meet people willing to take the RIAA-style industry shilling while it still exists. Because - if they are lucky - their faces get put on billboards on every street corner. For a week. And they sell CDs. They can take the Radiohead route later.
posted by motty at 6:18 PM on October 18, 2007

I walked past Tower Records in Manners Mall the other day. It was once filled with excited and confused teenagers filling their lives with musical feeling.

The kids have gone now leaving only old men

But c'mon, that's a lousy store and they're not even trying anymore (try to find their 'new releases' section). Heck, they don't even bother to sweep out the rubbish that the cruel, cruel Wellington winds blow into their store.

The kids are all up at Slow Boat or Real Groovy or SmokeCDs.com or Amazon. (Or, of course, downloading).
posted by Infinite Jest at 6:43 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Funny, I haven't seen any comments from old people. Such as I have become. We baby boomers are becoming news inasmuch as we are about to fuck over all the younger workers by drawing SS funds from the hardy youngsters.

BUT...on this relatively minor point: as a 55-yr old with a demanding day job (teaching), I have no interest in Internet music downloading. I played music for a living for a long time, and I just like to buy a couple of CD's a month and listen to them in my living room. I do not like earbuds/headphones.

Am I the only one?

I'm probably even more pissed off then you younger 'Net users at the incredible greedheadedness of the recording industry, especially given my sympathy to my musician bretheren/sisteren.

WHY didn't they start selling CD's at ten bucks twenty years ago? Stupid question, I guess, but it could have been a brilliant answer to the new technology dropped in the industry's laps.
posted by kozad at 7:21 PM on October 18, 2007

delmoi wrote: Actually a "Music Tax" would be a good idea if it were based on the concept of public financing of arts. Individuals would be required to pay a certain amount of their income as artistic patronage, and that money would be given out as grants by the government.

OH NO.

NO


OH GOD NO

Jesus tapdancing Christ, I believe in the power of socialism but that is completely insane. Do you really want a "US Department of Music" run by the Bush Administration? Can you even imagine the horrors that would be unleashed upon the world? America would be flooded with Toby Keith in days.

It makes me wonder why PBS hasn't already gone the same route.
posted by Avenger at 8:06 PM on October 18, 2007

Turning the military-industrial complex into the music-industrial complex - sounds like an improvement.

Imagine smart-albums, that can be dropped from 15,000ft but be accurate to within about a metre or so.

Although it wouldn't work too well on public transport.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 8:48 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Alexandra Kitty writes "Artists need to be able a decent living from what they do and not be exploited"

There's the rub though isn't it. Why should artists be entitled to a decent living for producing art and where do you draw the qualifying line? Is aunt nellie's water colour a week of her house entitle her to a decent living? How about the freak biting the heads off of chickens? Or a guy painting a couple vertical stripes on a canvas? Should he be able to retire on that?
posted by Mitheral at 1:34 AM on October 19, 2007

BUT...on this relatively minor point: as a 55-yr old with a demanding day job (teaching), I have no interest in Internet music downloading.

It's like this: You have more extra cash then extra time, so it makes sense to use cash rather than time to get your music. You're definitely not the only one fitting into that. The problem that music is facing is that their primary market and demographic, young people, are traditionally time rich and cash poor. It makes more sense for them to use time rather than cash to get what they want, if they can.

So they do.
posted by Arturus at 8:05 AM on October 19, 2007

"WHY didn't they start selling CD's at ten bucks twenty years ago? Stupid question, I guess, but it could have been a brilliant answer to the new technology dropped in the industry's laps."

Because they were able to charge artists a $3 "new technology" fee against royalties. Which is still part of the standard contract.

Although, if you put out vinyl, you get hit with a higher "packaging" fee (just like if you want a bigger booklet).
posted by klangklangston at 8:05 AM on October 19, 2007

@ Mitheral: "There's the rub though isn't it. Why should artists be entitled to a decent living for producing art and where do you draw the qualifying line? Is aunt nellie's water colour a week of her house entitle her to a decent living? How about the freak biting the heads off of chickens? Or a guy painting a couple vertical stripes on a canvas? Should he be able to retire on that?"

Why shouldn't artists be entitled to make a living at what they do, even if it's unconventional? Why are we going to discriminate against them? Then why should teachers make a decent living? Why should doctors? Why should the sales clerk or the janitor or the policeman or the nurse? We could argue until the end of time about fine lines in the sand. The bottom line is for as far back as anyone can remember, people liked music enough to patronize it. And that's what counts.

The point is people listen to their music -- so those artists have something people want, and yes, if the circus geek can make a living at it, then more power to her for it. Who am I to judge? And then the animal rights people can make their living picketing her act, and the journalists covering that little skirmish can make their living covering the story, too. God bless the modern world.
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 10:02 AM on October 19, 2007

Hey all the power to artists to charge all the market will bear, if they can convince people to give them money great. I was questioning the "need" part which implied to me that collectively we should be making sure that artists make money.
posted by Mitheral at 11:59 AM on October 19, 2007

Alexander Kitty If at all possible don't use the @username. Talking @ people is rude.

This is a pet hate, and a compulsion for me to point out.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 12:08 PM on October 19, 2007

Thanks for the tip on Carbon/Silicon, Joey Michaels. Mick Jones' voice is welcome again in my ears and head!

(Rad bald head he has now, too!)
posted by humannaire at 4:48 PM on October 19, 2007