I don’t get this. Nobody put a gun to the head of Feist or Laurie Anderson or Chromeo. They signed away their free speech voluntarily. They wanted to sign it. They were happy to sign it.

cameronr:

This is a fantastic Op-Ed. You should read it but here are a few lines that were either clever or very funny:

But this is a music blog, right? So why am I blathering on about bob-sledding and homeless dudes, and not telling you about Vampire Weekend’s apartment?

And…

Also: I like Feist. Every time I go to Zellers I hear her song. It reminds me of going to the store to buy batteries, but instead buying licorice.

And…

It’s kind of immaterial though: neither propaganda, nor deeply subversive art won’t stop us from, in the foreseeable future, cracking a can of cola/Pabst while loading up our cool, individualized playlists that reflect our life-style identification.

And…

They can respond to the mounting criticism of this clause by publicly removing this inane restriction, or they can remain mute, high up in their glass towers, silently and joylessly holding their contracts to their chests, secure in the knowledge that they suckered a few independent bands to sign a piece of paper that insures that these aforementioned bands cannot criticize their gala event — an event so imminently meaningful and central to our collective notion of “the world” that it contains, at its core, a ritual where grown men and women dressed in full-body spandex hurtle down an icy downhill track strapped to an ice-sled.