How Not To Connect With Fans: Have Gilbert Gottfried Tell Them To 'Go F Yourself' For Listening To Music

from the yeah-that'll-work dept

Robert Ring was the first to send in the news that Victory Records apparently had ridiculously annoying comic Gilbert Gottfried film a video “message” to file sharers telling them to “go fuck yourself” and using some ridiculous arguments. He claims that the reason people file share is because they think that musicians are too rich. Of course, while this may be true for some folks, it’s actually not the reason most give for why they file share. And, then, of course, he goes off on a confused rant comparing tangible and scarce goods to music, and not understanding the difference between giving people a reason to pay you and demanding compensation. Then again, I would imagine that telling some of your biggest fans “go fuck yourself” is not exactly a good way to connect with them or to get them to want to give you any money in the future:

Of course, to make matters even more ridiculous, reader Metal Chris, who sent in a different version of the story, points out that Victory Records is famous in the industry for doing everything possible to avoid paying its bands (even beyond your typical RIAA accounting). Also, a looooong blog post from an ex-Victory Records VP made the rounds a few years ago, but apparently has been taken down in many places, which totally eviscerates the company’s CEO, and (as part of it), notes that he helped move money around to avoid paying its artists. After detailing various bands leaving the label, and threats of lawsuits over refusal to pay royalties, he claims that he was regularly asked at the end of the quarter to hide money, often totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars that were due to bands on the label. He claims the label’s boss, Tony Brummel, told him: “Fuck those guys, they’re not entitled to that money,” on a quarterly basis.

And this is the company that puts up the video above, pretending that it’s about helping musicians?

Filed Under: ,
Companies: victory records

Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “How Not To Connect With Fans: Have Gilbert Gottfried Tell Them To 'Go F Yourself' For Listening To Music”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
48 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

So somewhere, around some upscale conference room table, this conversation occurred:

Exec 1: Sales are down. How can we get fans to buy our music again?
Exec 2: Let’s film Gilbert Gottfried telling them to go fuck themselves!
Exec 1: Brilliant!

Also, they may have looked something like this:
http://www.davidduke.com/images/SouthParkJoozians.jpg

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Music Executive Intellect

GIS=???

For me the first thing that comes to mind is Geographic Information System but since you were talking about Google I suppose is something about that but I don’t know what.

Google I???? System/Search

This is just curiosity if I wanted to be a deliberate a-hole I guess I would point people to wiki to show them how much GIS there are, but the intent is not to be provocative just to clarify a simple curiosity that needed this much text to not come out as a prick or trying not to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis

Life is getting difficult.

Anonymous Coward says:

I worked for Victory Records on a music video where they agreed to one budget which we went into production on the first 50%, but the later payments never materialised. So we were vastly out of pocket on the video-but the video still went out on air.

Basically, they did ask us to work for free.

And go fuck yourself was about the level of conversation with them. The money that they screwed us on was worth several years of illegal downloading even at RIAA lost sale prices…

Karl (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Amazingly, they’re still at it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCyvw4w_yk

The video features men in black breaking down the doors of a suburban mom, because her kid has been downloading software. Do they actually think this will send any message other than “aim for the head?”

The end of the video has an appeal from Jeremiah Mondello, who (he says) was put in Federal prison for pirating software. In fact, he was selling pirated software commercially, and hacking into bank accounts to retrieve money, by using a Trojan virus to record keystrokes. Not exactly your typical teenage Torrent freak.

As a final bit of irony, the video is available on iTunes as a free download.

gadZooks says:

hm?

Did the parrot from Aladdin just insult me? He said I probably didn’t have a job, insinuating that I’m a looser. Then tells me to give him my lemonade because he’s been sitting in the hot sun all day? That would explain his sales pitch. I like the end especially, where after this icon of pop culture gets done insulting and patronizing me, the video says “Now send this to everyone you know”. It’s like they’re so used to just telling people what to do, what to think that they look up “viral video” aaaannd ACTION!

Ok, so I AM forwarding it to everyone I know, both of them. And, I’ll be sure to mash it up with that crotchety old singer from the insane clown posse who hates fresh faced kids with freckles.. or something like that. Just to let them know, He’s coming to take their cars and houses.

What phase are these pre-seniors going through? I’ve lost track… they do know that the worst era of online file sharing has passed, and that most of the people that are willing to pay, are. Those that are still downloading are doing so because they either cant afford it, or would have gotten it illegally even if it were on CD.

DandonTRJ (profile) says:

Victory Records is synonymous with band mistreatment in the alternative music community. They sign tons of groups, but give them no promotion unless they break out, then proceed to screw them on the financials. Hawthorne Heights left on the worst of terms, being told they owed the label a million bucks after selling hundreds of thousands of records. Atreyu phoned in a Greatest Hits album just to finish out their contract with the label and bail. Alumni like Thursday, Bayside, and Taking Back Sunday all have choice words about Brummel. One of the label’s biggest remaining moneymakers (Silverstein) just left, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their latest cash cow (A Day To Remember) ends up leaving in a year or two as well. Bizarrely, Brummel’s new strategy seems to be picking up random nu-metal bands who lost relevance years ago [Ill Nino, Taproot, etc]. We’ll see how that works out for him, I guess.

Anonymous Coward says:

Oh the remixes opportunities on this video 🙂

“Go to anybody and ask them to pay you one time, they probably be ok with it, now go there and ask them to pay again and what you will hear is F#$% YOU!, you can try with other people too and they all will tell you the same thing”

“Go to people on the street and say they have to pay to listen to radio, they will tell you F$%& YOU in no uncertain terms”

“Go to a store and steal something, what you get is a $100 fine, copy music and you get a million dollar, now ask people what they will tell that guy suing everyone, that is right F#$% YOU!”

“What we are dealing here is a bunch of real thieves that think raping the public is ok, for them I say F$%& YOU”

“There is no work involved in reproducing sounds that needs to be paid every time, if that was true everybody would be asking to get paid. Would you pay your plumber guy if you reproduced his work in your home? If the plumber tried to force you to pay him what would you say? Alright or F$%& YOU!” I know what I say to that guy 😉

Oh it is just endless fun one can have with this clip, this one is pure gold for remixers.

Ben says:

You talkin' to me?

I have to say that I don’t particularly like being told to go fuck myself, or to go to McDonald’s.

It’s always a little scary how people try to argue that a different opinion (that there’s nothing wrong with downloading mp3s, for example) is not just wrong but *immoral*. In this case because it’s the same as stealing. Not believing in God is not just wrong, it’s immoral because it led to things like Nazi-ism and communist Russia. Accepting gay marriage is not just wrong, it’s immoral because the bible says so. Once you’ve painted your opponents views as immoral, you’ve made them Evil, basically. Can’t we disagree without resorting to that?

Anonymous Coward says:

I can make burgers that taste just like McDonald’s at home (no ammonia though, I try to buy beef without e-coli so I don’t need to feed my guests poison to keep them healthy). Do I now have to pay McDonald’s?

I can also make an exact replica of a song at home for free. Recipes are not covered by copyright, so the analogy falls apart legally and logically.

Of course, when you are wealthy, you stop caring about art because you love money.

Anonymous Coward says:

I think they manufacture victims

Someone should make a rebuttal using the artists who work hard, and don’t get paid as a club to beat labels about the head neck and face. It would go something like this:

“We see less than 1/5 of the minuscule revenue from MP3 sales as CD sales. The labels have no significant overhead no supply chain, no distribution cost, no manufacturing costs, not even bandwidth! So why are we getting robbed blind by these guys who are trying to convince you that they’re the victim? You tell us.”

Anonymous Coward says:

Victory Records are scam artists. That’s what they mean by getting more money for the artists… They don’t mean musicians, they mean they need more money for the scam artists like Brummel.

Music has evolved into a free medium. I don’t see what any of this propaganda does to address that at all. Is the music boogeyman under my bed gonna get me if I don’t pay them some money? Please…

Hey Victory Records: Go FVCK YOURSELVES!

Karl (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Speaking as a card-carrying member of the Perverts and Freaks club, I can tell you that he’s neither.

In fact, he tried to show up to our last meeting, but we kicked him out after he started reading Garrison Keillor stories in that annoying voice of his. He even did it once with a parrot on his shoulder, but we weren’t convinced.

Besides, everyone knows he ripped off his best material from Jackie Martling.

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...