Then “Piracy” Became Normal Life

From Jeff Tucker on the Mises blog:

A reader sends this from Tennessean (August 5, 2011 – Cindy Watts; no link I can find):

In the spirit of his Get Closer 2011 World Tour… Keith Urban says that fans’ using their cellphones to photograph and record his shows is just another way for everyone to – as his tour title and latest album proclaim – get closer.

“When you look at what the hand-held phone has become in our lifestyle, it’s so much more than a phone now,” he says. It’s almost a portal in our hands. It’s almost a portal in our hands. It’s how we access and communicate and find out about things in the world. It makes perfect sense for someone who has a camera phone in the audience to be filming it and putting it up online.”

But how far technology – and the touring music industry – has progressed in the past several years isn’t lost on the singer, either.

“When you think about it, it wasn’t that many years ago when it was absolutely no cameras allowed, and now you can film away,” he says with a chuckle. “I look at it and think the Grateful Dead were way ahead of their time allowing people to do bootleg recordings of their concerts. They understood back then that the more you can bring people into the concert experience, even it if is online, the more it’s attracting people to come see the real thing.”