Saatchi & Saatchi Sao Paulo designed these grotesque ads for Universal Music, in which bloody gobbets of rock-n-roller are captioned with "Stop Destroying the Band You Like: Say No to Music Piracy."
This from a record company that deducts "breakage" (the percentage of vinyl LPs broken between the factory and the record store) from its musicians' digital music royalties; where they routinely ran off-books third-shift pressings to produce CDs that were fraudulently sold without any royalties at all being paid to the band; and who trouser the vast majority of streaming music royalties.
As Mike Masnick points out this makes the IT Crowd's "You wouldn't steal a car" ad look tame by comparison.
We've discussed this before many times: piracy is not an education problem. No matter how much "educating" the industry does, it's not going to change the fact that people like to get their content more conveniently. Apparently that message hasn't gotten through, so the industry keeps ramping up the ridiculousness of each campaign.
Universal Music's Anti-Piracy Ads Even Crazier Than You Can Imagine [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]
