Links: Rap as poetry; labels as services; where are all the pirates?

 

• Music is more readily available than ever before, internet connections are faster, hard disks are bigger. Paul Rayson asks: Why aren’t people pirating furiously? Where are the supermassive music collections? He’s talking about record nerds like us here, by the way.

• Labels don’t really have a story about why they should even exist any more. The hip new thing is to call all the publishing dogsbody work “label services.”

• Byron was a poet, Jay-Z can’t be: academia’s marginalisation of black art. You’d think they’d be happier that poetry has basically won. (High school English teachers certainly are.) Poets’ records sell millions! Poets get the chicks! Poor kids want to be poets when they grow up! What was the win condition for poetry supposed to look like?

 

Off to see Dave Graney and Clare Moore tomorrow night!