Day and Night Digital | Irish Independent

With the World Cup just two weeks away and Ireland not present, we’ve been lucky enough to not have to endure a World Cup song sung by bland lifestyle-peddlers The Script. But there’s still some merit to football-themed songs (Put Em’ Under Pressure is a classic of course) and Irish digital label Indiecater recognises this.

Indiecater have spent a year putting together their World Cup compilation: Fast Forward together. 32 bands from across the world were asked to write a song about a country participating in the tournament in South Africa. The result is eight groups with four teams each with songs by artists like The Very Most, The Dirty 9s, Grand Pocket Orchestra, At Last An Atlas, Hunter-Gatherer, Spirit Spine and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. The entire compilation can be streamed or downloaded for €5 at http://www.indiecater.com.

Meanwhile, music bloggers continue to bare the brunt of the music industry ambivalence towards their operations. After the IMRO licence situation in Ireland last month, Google is at it again – deleting the popular Scottish music blog The Pop Cop from its Blogger service. Jason who ran the site also runs the Music Alliance Pact (MAP) project wrote about the situation on http://musicalliancepact.blogspot.com.

Jason received a DMCA violation notice that alleged he was infringing on copyright law on a two-year old post which contained two songs from the I’m Not There soundtrack. It was the fourth violation he had received in three years. The tracks were removed when the first violation was received in 2008 but the notices continued to be sent. As a result, Google shut down the blog and has not allowed Jason access to three years of his archives. Three years of work just gone. Jason is asking people to email asking Google to allow him to access his content.

“It feels like I’ve popped out to the shops to buy a loaf of bread and come home to discover the locks on my front door have been changed,” says Jason. “However, my possessions are still inside and I want them back before they get torched.”

Jason also points out that Google have not told him specifically which posts violated their terms of service so he has no way of defending himself, nor have they currently responded to his emails. Fellow Scotsmen, Franz Ferdinand tweeted their support for The Pop Cop expressing their disappointment in its untimely demise.