LONDON – The Live 8 concert held on Saturday to raise awareness of the poverty problem in Africa has spurred an outbreak of activity on Internet file-sharing sites. Music Underground PLC, a web-based fanzine that tracks “non-sanctioned downloading activity” in the UK, reports that artists such as Pink Floyd, The Who, and Annie Lennox enjoyed surges of 1,343 percent, 863 percent, and 500 percent respectively in the number of times their songs were shared on Sunday July 3, the day after Live 8, compared to Sunday of the previous week.
“We won’t know for a while if Live 8 helped to eradicate poverty in Africa,” wrote Marley420, a staff writer for Music Underground PLC, “but we do know that artists who donated their time to Live 8 are also donating their music at an accelerated rate.”
Pink Floyd, whose much-heralded Live 8 reunion had all the sizzle of make-up sex between people who hadn’t spoken to one another in two decades, nevertheless saw their “Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd” doing a brisk “business” on Shareaza and Ares.
The Who, proclaiming for the umpteen millionth time since 1972 that they wouldn’t get fooled again, managed to fool a large number of music fans into downloading “Then and Now,” their sixteenth greatest hits compilation, from Azureus and LimeWire.
Who lead singer Roger Daltrey told off-line music magazine Mojo that he and remaining original band member Pete Townshend are working on a new greatest hits package that will feature a “never seen before” ordering of the fifteen songs found on every greatest hits compilation by The Who.
Annie Lennox, the reigning diva among eDonkey and BearShare users, was introduced at Live 8 by fellow pretty face Brad Pitt. “Annie captured the urgency, frustration, and hope underlying the concert more effectively than anyone,” wrote Marley420 in a quote he had downloaded from USA Today‘s website.
In comparison to the Live 8 bands’ increased popularity among file sharers, artists such as the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, who elected not to participate in Live 8, saw little if any increase in their popularity. Springsteen, it should be noted, enjoyed a brief spike in interest among IceDonkey users after his impromptu Ice Aid concert at Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport last Wednesday.
“Bruce rawked,” declared chess king Bobby Fischer, Iceland’s newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, who was working the night shift at the Tasty Freeze in Keflavik Airport when Springsteen’s plane touched down for refueling.
In related news, President George W. Bush likened the Iraqi war to the Boston Seed [sic] Party in a speech delivered in West Virginia on the Fourth of July. No one in the audience of unemployed parents of soldiers stationed in Iraq noticed the mistake.
© The fine fucking print: The editorial content on this page is fictional. It is presented for satirical and/or entertainment purposes only. We cannot be held responsible for the actions of anyone who takes this sort of shit seriously. We also do not wish to be held responsible for any copyrighted material that sneaked onto this page when we weren’t looking. If you can prove that anything on this page belongs rightfully to you, we will happily take it down and return the unused portion. No questions asked.
