Keith Urban Gets All Confused About Support For Downloading
After being voted favorite male artist at the People’s Choice Awards last month, during his acceptance speech Keith Urban showed why the people love him. Speaking of his music the star said: “I don’t even care if you download it illegally, give it to your friends, I really don’t care.” Just a month later he says he didn’t mean that at all.
Running since 1975, the People’s Choice Awards is an awards show which celebrates people and their achievements in popular culture.
At the 2010 event held in early January, Johnny Depp fought off Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, Robert Pattinson and Ryan Reynolds to be come Favorite Movie Actor, with Sandra Bullock triumphing in the Favorite Movie Actress category.
In music, Lady GaGa was awarded Favorite Pop Artist, with Favorite Female Artist going to Taylor Swift and Favorite Male Artist going to Keith Urban. During his acceptance speech, Urban had quite a surprise for his file-sharing fans.
After thanking people for voting, those watching the show at home and people who took the time to see him on tour, Urban gave credit to his fan club, Monkeyville, whose members work tirelessly to get his music out there.
“I don’t even care if you download it [my music] illegally, give it to your friends, I really don’t care,” said Urban. “I love the people to hear the music and come out and see us play live.”
It seems that Urban understands the positive influence the free download can have on his tour ticket sales. But speaking with Tennessean.com, Urban now says that his words came out all wrong.
“What I said came out nothing like I meant,” explained Urban. “I was referring to the old days when you’d buy a record, do a cassette tape and give it to your girlfriend, and then maybe she likes it and becomes a fan.”
That’ll be copying music and sharing it round then, just 1980′s style. Nevertheless, Urban is sure of his stance now.
“For the record, I absolutely care about my music not being taken for free,” he added. “But I love when people are passionate and want to turn friends on to music.”
Urban is on RIAA-member Capitol Records Nashville and they cannot have appreciated his comments one little bit, but apparently it was the show format that caused Urban to say something he didn’t mean.
“I’ve never done an awards show where they seem to let you talk infinitely,” he said. “I was waiting for the ‘wrap’ sign to come up, and it never came up.”
Urban’s speech was roughly 50 seconds long, so who knows what he would’ve endorsed if it had gone on for much longer.
