• I’m still going OMFG from the news, not even 24 hours after hearing about it. 
• Last night I was trying to digest in my mind both the news about Morning Musume’s impending American debut (Up-Front Works confirmed it themselves last night) and continue planning for my wedding next June (my fiancee and I just put the deposit on the hall last night, as a matter of fact). 
• Then Vee calls. The two of us, about 15 years apart in age and with birthdays right next to each other, proceeded to continue fangirling (ok, in my case, fanboying) about the news for much of the conversation. 
• Vee then dropped a very important question: “What songs are they going to play?” We started speculating on the set list: “Love Machine” obviously has to be there; “Resonant Blue”, “Egao YES Nude” and “Mikan” were also mentioned, Vee kind of hoped “Onna ni Sachi Are” wouldn’t be on the set list as she didn’t think it went well live… that kind of thing. I’m sure speculation about the set list will continue up until the day of the concert. 
• Typical procedure for anime convention headlining acts, according to Vee who has been to quite a few, is for the headlining act to perform on Saturday, which means that if this procedure holds for Anime Expo 2009, that Morning Musume will be making their American performing debut on Independence Day – an almost appropriate date for such a milestone, reminiscent of one of the early milestone events in punk rock – Independence Day 1976, when the Ramones made their English debut. Members of the Sex Pistols, Clash, and many other first-wave British punk bands were said to be in the audience that night. 
• JapanFiles.com is going to have Morning Musume’s back catalog, starting with the release of “Naichai Kamo”, available for legal download. No word on when or whether tactile copies will be available like they’ve done with HANGRY&ANGRY’s EP. 

Yes, this is a repost of something I wrote for MotokoAoyama.com v2.0 in October of 2007. Over a year later, this mentality has yet to fade away, according to some comments I saw today from essential brother Tim “Napalm” Stegall on his blog and from the owner of HearJapan.com. So, with a few minor corrections and updates, here’s that same article coming right back at you here at TGML. 

The October 2007 ruling – admittedly, a somewhat controversial and questionable one – against a Minnesota woman accused by the RIAA of using Kazaa to file share songs (over $9,200 a song for 24 songs was the “judgment”) seems to have riled up a certain segment of the music-listening populace. That particular part of the populace believes that recorded music should NEVER be paid for.

Excuse me?

The typical refrain from these people. “Don’t pay for recorded music – download it for free instead. If you want to support an artist, go see their live shows and buy a T-shirt from them.”

Wonderful utopian fantasy, huh? Do these people get their food and utilities for free? How about the computer that they use to download music? Can any rational person reading this say TOTAL AND COMPLETE COPOUT? If they turn around and claim they can’t afford 99 cents for a fucking legal download, but have DSL or cable internet and a nice laptop, I highly doubt giving 99 cents to Apple or Amazon is going to put them in the poorhouse. 

“But, dude,” these people will say, “iTunes sucks. They have that DRM shit in their music files.”

Hey, dude – been watching the news or reading the paper lately? Apple stopped using DRM as of last week (and honestly, the DRM didn’t really bother me). And even if they didn’t, AmazonMP3.com has been selling DRM-free music since they debuted their service last year. The DRM excuse is now debunked. 

“But, dude,” these people will say, “it doesn’t matter – the artists don’t get paid by the labels anyway.” or “The artists have enough money.”

Oh, now you want to talk money, huh? Well, here’s a real-life economy lesson:
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