You Can’t Download An Overused Phrase, But You Sure Can Try To Stomp It Out Of The Lexicon

“You can’t download the concert ticket,” Panic At The Disco drummer Spencer Smith told MTV News when he was talking about why the band’s live experience was how the band really gauged itself. In the era of torrenting and Sendspacing, people who are still hoping to make some sort of profit from music are looking at things that you can’t download as a way to bring back the “real” aspects of the artform–but in their quest for tangible objects, and not virtual experiences, they’re kind of overusing the whole “you can’t download” construction After the jump, a list of items that have fallen victim to this cliche, and probably will continue to until the Internet’s backbone gets fat enough to fit things like 12-inch slabs of vinyl or life-size replicas of 3 Doors Down through it or the entire industry collapses, whichever comes first.

A T-shirt. Fair enough. (I guess those people who have phototransfer-capable printers are a “technicality.”)

A surround-sound experience. But given that the “experience” involves that you listen to a 3 Doors Down live album, would you really want to?

“The band–or the sweaty fans in the front row, or the merch guy, or the sound tech.” The sound tech? Looks like someone knows their path to the land of backstage passes!

A smell. Oh, RealAroma, your time is coming, if only to help stop those who will give lazy quotes to newspapers.

A revolution and/or Motorbaby. As chief Motorbaby Sharon Middendorf proclaims in her song “You Can’t Download Me”:

In the defense of broadband-enabled people everywhere, um, isn’t she being a bit presumptuous?

(P.S.: “You can’t download a baby” is exempt from this, because it’s still funny.)

Panic At The Disco Measure Their Success With Live Shows: ‘You Can’t Download The Concert Ticket’ [MTV]