noisemonkey

NEWS: Protests Planned As Music Industry Criticised For Appalling Music Writing Conditions

Campaigners this week called for an immediate boycott of all music, after reports leaked of the poor conditions surrounding the music writing process.

“Artists have always hated being asked in interviews where they get their song ideas from,” said campaigner Timothy Wardrobe, “But increasingly that’s because the answer is ‘an offshore sweatshop’.”

Last month several hundred factory workers (rumoured to be working on the next Coldplay single) were injured when a defective stadium-sized chorus collapsed. The factory - located in the Chinese province of Ling Xiaoyu - writes music and lyrics for hundreds of western artists, with an output of almost five songs a day. Campaigners have denounced the poor working conditions.

“I denounce the poor working conditions,” said campaigner Timothy Wardrobe, returning for his hat, “Don’t believe what anyone tells you - these songs don’t write themselves. It’s backbreaking and dangerous work. Lots of sharp objects, molten metal, and tiny fiddly bits with tweezers trying to get the verses to rhyme. These poor workers suffer from crippling ear disorders, repetitive chorus strain injuries, and last year alone there were more than twenty fatal cases of Bieber Fever. It has to stop. Full stop. Exclamation mark.”

Although offshore music-writing is a relatively recent development the industry has long been criticised for the methods it employs to keep song production output high. In the 1980s record producers Stock Aitken & Waterman (previously a maritime law firm) bought a Sheffield warehouse for use in mass-writing popular songs. Although financially successful for a time, their so-called ‘Hit Factory’ was forced to close after the work force complained about all the hitting.

FIVE FUN FACTS: The Beach Boys

1. The Beach Boys took their name after a prison break and chase by the police led to them falling into an experimental particle accelerator. The accident molecularly bonded them with sand and granted them shape-shifting sand abilities and powerful vocal harmonies.  
2. Early records such as Surfin’ Uncle, Surfin’ Surfin’ Surfin’ Surfin’ Surfin’, and Literally Everybody Is Surfin’ Right Now were recorded in a surfin’ powered recording studio off the coast of California. Twelve sound engineers died in surfin’ related accidents.  
3. During the 1960s band leader Brian Wilson suffered from a debilitating addiction to trifle that inspired him to create songs with delicately layered harmonies.  
4. It would be nice if we were older.  
5. The album cover for Pet Sounds features the band members dressed as goats, being fed by goats dressed as Beach Boys. 

NEWS: CD Sales To Reach Negative Figures Within Decade

New calculations made on the back of a beer mat estimate that at the current linear rate of decline, sales of CDs (‘compacted diskettes’) will be negative within the decade. Rather than selling CDs the music industry will be receiving millions of CDs each year and will struggle to find somewhere to keep them all.

A number of initiatives were tested for boosting CD sales in 2011:

• Albums were put on sale in newsagents disguised as packets of crisps.
• Classic albums were re-issued bundled with 10 to 20 inferior albums.
• CDs were made 500% larger, to make them easier for consumers to find.

The initiatives do not appear to have halted the decline and some in the music industry have resigned themselves to the inevitability of negative sales.

“We’re preparing to find space on our shelves for millions of CDs,” said music industry spokesman Timothy Wardrobe, “My wife is not going to be happy.”

No reliable sales figures exist for music downloads since they are nearly invisible to the naked eye, and therefore too small to reliably count. MiniDiscs saw impressive results, with annual sales doubling to nearly 10 sold*.

* SOURCE: Bloke down the pub. Margin of error = 10 MiniDiscs.

NEWS: December 31st Sees Release Of 10 Best Albums Of 2011, Press Retractions

The last day of 2011 saw the simultaneous release of ten albums that were deemed to be so excellent that the press were forced to re-think their previous ‘Top 10 Albums Of The Year’ lists and print retractions. The previous winners are also now being criticised for rushing out their albums in order to knock off work early.

“We gave it the full 365 days, working right up to New Year’s Eve. The extra time was invaluable in crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s,” said Gavin Doorhandle, lead-singer with The All-New Beatles, “If you don’t do that then your lyrics end up full of l’s.”

With the December 31st releases knocking all other albums out of the ‘Top 10’ lists, the situation has been likened to ‘The Tortoise And The Hare’ - a local Sussex pub that always does its best business on New Year’s Eve.

Inaccurate Top 10 Albums Of The Year 2011 have been published since back in November, but have now been returned for pulping. The Press Complaints Commission is  investigating if the public have been deliberately misled. The music press have collectively been left with egg on their faces due to an unrelated entertaining incident involving escaped chickens. They were also pretty embarrassed about having to retract their Top 10 lists.

“We messed up. We jumped the gun, but unfortunately misjudged said jump and fell face first into a pit full of guns and got completely covered in guns. The guns are all tangled in our hair and everything. Plus, I think we’re mostly allergic to guns,” explained Timothy Wardrobe, spokesman for The Ghost Of Melody Maker, “In our defence - we, ummm, thought that 2011 was, errrrm, a metric year and that it had finished weeks ago?”

The Press Complaints Commission are unlikely to accept this excuse, since it has been well publicised that the UK government’s new cost-saving 10-month metric year only comes into force in 2015.