Is Crazy Frog a plague on the 'traditional' music industry? - GlobeAndMail
|Yes, this is the same Crazy Frog Axel F song that has just reached No. 1 on the British pop singles chart. This is the first time a cellphone ringtone has crossed into the mainstream music charts. Much has been made, in the British press, of the fact that the ditty has outsold the new single by Coldplay by nearly four to one -- as if that should surprise anyone.
The recording was the soundtrack to a hilarious animated video of a mad frog, made by another Swede called Erik Wernquist, which is where the frog title comes from. The manic shrieking noise was marketed as a ringtone by a company called Jamba. It has made more money than any other ringtone in history. Then the electronic DJ duo called Bass Bumpers made the arrangement of the engine sounds over the Axel F tune.
The tension this story causes in record company boardrooms can be best summed up by great punk impresario Malcolm McLaren, who was quoted as saying "Listen to this song and you can hear the death knell of the traditional music industry." His apocalyptic utterance is not necessarily gloomy; all he's saying is that the music industry will have to become something else. It will have to become responsive to a world in which anyone can make and distribute music almost entirely for free, and in which I can download several megabytes of music on to, I don't know, my camera. |
via GlobeAndMail
The recording was the soundtrack to a hilarious animated video of a mad frog, made by another Swede called Erik Wernquist, which is where the frog title comes from. The manic shrieking noise was marketed as a ringtone by a company called Jamba. It has made more money than any other ringtone in history. Then the electronic DJ duo called Bass Bumpers made the arrangement of the engine sounds over the Axel F tune.
The tension this story causes in record company boardrooms can be best summed up by great punk impresario Malcolm McLaren, who was quoted as saying "Listen to this song and you can hear the death knell of the traditional music industry." His apocalyptic utterance is not necessarily gloomy; all he's saying is that the music industry will have to become something else. It will have to become responsive to a world in which anyone can make and distribute music almost entirely for free, and in which I can download several megabytes of music on to, I don't know, my camera. |
via GlobeAndMail
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