Do you know who Lily Allen is? I sure as hell don’t, nor do I care to know who she is. I mean, I know who she is now: she’s some musician who is against piracy. Good for her, great. Years from now, Future People will erect a statue of her and put it in the middle of New York harbor in order to honor her bravery. It’s the least we can do, right? Yeah, well, it seems Lily Alen isn’t just brave, but she’s also monumentally hypocritical. Again, good for her, I don’t care.

Eminem has a problem with Apple, and it has nothing to do with the company railroading Google with respect to the FCC. Anyhow, Eminem claims Apple sold 93 of his songs on the iTunes Store without the proper distribution rights, and so he wants a couple of dollars he feels he is owed. It comes out to around $2.5 million that Apple improperly made off Eminem.

Amie Street always made sense to me. The idea is to show demand for music via variable pricing. Songs start off free and move up in price (up to 98 cents) as more people buy them. I first wrote about them in 2006 when the founders were still living in a dorm at Brown University. In 2007 Amazon invested in the company.

It has come to my attention that the music industry now wants royalties for those 30-second clips of music you hear in iTunes. That, I think you’ll agree, is bullshit. Seeing as though we’re a solution-oriented blog here at CrunchGear, I want to offer a completely fool-proof way to save the music industry and put an end to the years and years of nonsense we’ve seen since Napster first was first released: let’s ban music. That’s right, let’s pass a law that says “the creation or performance of music, in any form, is hereby banned. Any violation of this law will be punishable by death.” Problem solved, let’s all play Hungry Hungry Hippos.

The following has very little to do with the actual headline.

A comment from earlier in the day sparked a bit of a conversation in the official CrunchGear chat room: what’s to stop someone from ditching the iTunes-iPod “universe” and switching to the Zune HD? (We’re all pretty keen on the Zune HD for whatever reason.) Those of you with iPhones are pretty much stuck using iTunes, but what’s to stop someone from saying, “You know, I’ve used an iPod in one form or another for the past five years, so I think I’m gonna try something new for a change.”? Let’s see what’s up.

Bose had some sort of official unveiling in New York earlier today, but I didn’t want to leave Matt and Doug manning the site all by themselves, so I didn’t attend. This is what I missed: the Bose SoundDock 10, a $599 (?!) iPhone/iPod dock that weighs some 19 pounds. It’s rather big, yes.

Apparently Sony Ericsson will change the way we all listen to music, forever. Let’s see… headphones or speakers, and my ears. That’s how I listen to music; maybe you guys do it differently.

It’s time for story Eight Million and Six-teen about how the record labels and the musicians they ostensibly represent no longer get on with each other. This time, we have a bit of a row developing over in the UK, where that proposed knock-people-off-the-Internet-for-file-sharing law is currently stirring division amongst the ranks. One on side, of course, you have the record labels who, in the year 2009, are still afraid of piracy destroying the music business (please note: that’s destroying the music business that made record label execs fat and happy; music hasn’t gone away, it’s merely changed, and change is death to the record label middle men), and on the other, the musicians who recognize that, you know, maybe suing the pants off your customers isn’t the best thing to do.

This is probably a question that the record labels should be asking, but I’ll ask it here anyway: how do you guys listen to music in 2009? On your iPhone (or whatever portable device, it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this here post)? On your computer while you surf your favorite Web sites? At the gym? Now, how many of you will sit in front of your computer, and devote 100 percent of your attention to the iTunes visualizer? Not too many of you, I’d venture to guess.

Did Apple swerve us, or are we just a bunch of nincompoops? (I vote for the latter.) So, so many people were expecting to see The Beatles finally show up to iTunes, if not the event itself, yesterday. Nearly 24 hours later, you’re still unable to buy “Help!” from Steve Jobs’ little store. Huge deal, or should we all just move on with our lives? And is the band making a mistake in ignoring the largest music store on Planet Earth?

Record label EMI, which holds the rights to the Beatles catalogue, says the band’s music will not be on iTunes starting tomorrow. (Not that that matters, of course.) It seems EMI is concerned about piracy. I wish I were joking. But then Sky News in the UK supposedly ran a story that said, yes, the Beatles will be available on iTunes starting tomorrow. Our take: chill out. After all, tomorrow is only a day away. We’ll all get the answer then.

Say what you will about Dr. Dre, but the man is a hip-hop legend. Say what you will about Lady Gaga, but she’s terrible. So you can either consider the fact that “Heartbeats by Lady Gaga” was just announced as one of two things: a callous cash grab, attempting to earn (?) more money while Lady Gaga is still popular, or… no, that’s the only reason these things exist.

Someone call LATFH. This is “Sonic Fabric,” and it’s made out of old cassette tape, um, tape. It’s 100 percent ridiculous, yes.

That blasted Apple event is on Wednesday, and in the interest of having fresh-but-not-really posts on this holiday weekend, here’s some interesting predictions I’ve stumbled upon. The highlight: say goodbye to the iPod classic.

Knowing you guys, you not only knew Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 leaked several days ago, but you grabbed it instantly, and gained some nice ratio buffer in the process. Oh, and you listened to it many times over (as have I). Good, great.

Well, they don’t have their own game, but at least the Rolling Stones have their own download pack. Guitar Hero just announced that the Stones have their own DLC pack, available starting today for 720 Microsoft Points (or $9).