Fiona=+=Apple

Fiona Apple has been found by the internet after a 6 year exodus! Her never released album, “Extraordinary Machine” got on the internet, some DJ in Seattle has been playing the full album and people are gushing over it. I haven’t heard it yet, but from what I can tell, it’s good; some fans are demanding that Sony release the album. The online campaign is at Free Fiona and they’re getting press on MTV and Rolling Stone. The cool thing here is that music is making an end run around the corporate music industry’s barriers and the public is getting activist about music (they’re fighting for the sake of this music). A similar thing worked for Wilco, maybe it’ll work for Fiona.

What’s kind of interesting is that the internet becomes a testing ground for how good music is – when it or the story is good enough, people motivate and might actually be politically effective. It’s bottom up and the middlemen are becoming less and less irrelevant.

In similar spirit, Business Week and the Economist have just printed articles about how restricting filesharing is making it worse for technological innovation in light of the Grokster case. Grokster is the most important case to deal with online rights and will draw a line between what part of technology will continue to progress and the part of technology that will flounder in copyright purgatory. A big, big shout out to Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, rapper Chuck D, and songwriter Janis Ian who are the few musicians who are siding with Grokster because they say all this music exploration on the net has brought them new customers. The Consumer Electronics Association is holding a rally on the steps of the Supreme Court on on Tuesday at 9AM. DC people – do you have a reason to be there?