massive
Bluelighter
tinrib said:
Yeah I have some ideas about how the music indusrty USED to work.ffs
-
Music Moderators: Shambles
"Ethics" of Downloading Music?
- Thread starter CDMills
- Start date
Yeah I have some ideas about how the music indusrty USED to work.ffs
tinrib
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2005
- Messages
- 2,493
massive said:
so then why the shitty "Yeah you can have a copy because your really cool, but we dont like you so you have to pay us.!" comment????
Music doesn'ty always just get sent out to the uber-elite, and I guess especially not in the case seuss mentioned........ You cant please everyone but that doesn't give anyone the right to do something at as a gross detriment to others. And so what if a DJ didn't get a free copy, boo hoo, there are hard working great DJ's who dont get promo's, the guys who play out week in week out in smaller local clubs, proper grafters who deserve more, but they do it for the love of the music and dont deserve free downloads that are crippling the industry and music they love.
Its become so standard to do this that peopel do it without thinking, we need to change the current 'norms' and look at ways of keeping the industry alive
massive
Bluelighter
^ maybe that was a shitty comment, but still i've got absolutely no sympaphy for a music industry where the artists get something like 10-15 % stake of *their product.
why the fuck would i want keep an industry like this alive? An industry that's been dicking artists and consumers alike for decades
why the fuck would i want keep an industry like this alive? An industry that's been dicking artists and consumers alike for decades
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
man that's not how it works at all.
when a car company releases a new car, they send lots of models out to car magazines and tv shows and journalists. they do test drives and tell people what it's like.
then they sell the car they've spent so much time and money working on. unless you know of any free cars???
when a record company releases a new record, they send copies out to people. it's kind of like active market research - feedback - and it's also a way of getting the music heard by a bigger audience. the clue is in the name, 'promo' - promotional.
they then sell the record they've spent so much time and money working on.
the difference is that i am willing to give my music to people who are nice, and no-one here steals new cars... doesn't that tell you something?
i totally agree.
man i wish i got promos but i'm not a big enough name :D somehow i would have thought filesharers would be in favour of free distributed music...
massive
Bluelighter
Just because they throw loads of money on a project doesnt make them intelligent- and doesnt garantee a quality product.
It tells me that thats a weak analogy; they are totally different products. Consumers view the music as a disposable product - which has a lot to do with labels flooding the market sub-par products, not for the love of music, but just to make a quick buck.
^ your inability to decouple seuss' example and your standardised notions of the big, bad music industry seems to be at the root of your confusion.
alasdair
alasdair
massive
Bluelighter
alasdairm said:
how about you decouple the example .... seriously the way you lick each others ass is really pathetic...
If you can't add substance to the thread then don't post.
massive
Bluelighter
^ And don't talk to me about the industry that you obviously don't know shit about; I've*seen a family friend cheated out of millions of dollars from shady industry characters.
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
no shit.
this has nothing to do with intelligence, that's completely irrelevant.
what constitutes 'throwing loads of money' for an independent small-scale record label simply cannot be compared to launching a fucking michael jackson album.
what i meant was that these people worked (you know, real full time jobs - promotion and label is separate), and saved, and made sacrifices to scrape together the money to put out an album, not because they want to get rich but because they love the music.
they're the fucking heroes in this particular sketch, fuck knows why you want them to be cast as villains!
if you really had experience of how fucked up the music 'industry' can be, then ffs why are you ripping on a small dedicated independent label which consists of two guys and an email address? lame man.
you can judge for yourself whether the products are sub par. i don't think the majority are and neither do the people who buy them. or, in fact, the people who download them...
...it's easy to criticise but hard to emulate. would you care to show us all how it's done?
i don't know how to make this more clear: most EDM artist albums will sell very few copies. no-one is making millions from dance music CD sales except fucking ministry of sound, ok?
massive
Bluelighter
dr seuss said:
Putting the big labels aside, the reason I'm ripping into the smaller labels is because when they start to start sell records they are in a small business,
and running a business has everything to do with intelligence
You can pass the buck all you want, but you have to question why - its taken over three off broadband internet access for the those labels to realise the effect filesharing is having on them.
dr seuss said:
it is easy to criticise, and if i had a stake i would be doing more
criticising.
TheDEA.org
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2003
- Messages
- 2,497
Why I Steal Music (and don't give a fuck what you or RIAA thinks):
Why I Steal Music (and don't give a fuck what you or RIAA thinks):
1. Because sometimes you hear an obscure song on the radio and just want to hear it again. File sharing allows me to listen to music that I enjoy...but don't enjoy enough/won't listen to enough to remotely justify buying the CD.
2. Because I got sick of buying hype. Now, let's have a show of hands: How many of you have NEVER shelled out (far too much) good money for a CD that seemed to have promise based on the heavy rotation single, but when you got it home it was mostly filler and crap? The music industry has made a living on this bait-and-switch game for decades, and I'm fucking tired of it. I deserve a damn good album for $15-20.
3. Because I'm tired of price fixing. Walk down the DVD aisle. What do you see? Price points all over the spectrum. I picked up a copy of Conan the Barbarian because, at $8, it provided value. I picked up a copy of the extended version of the Return of the King because, even at $27, it provided value. The movie industry prices their goods competitively. The music industry pretty much charges the same damn price for every CD, no matter how good or rotten, no matter how new or old. RIAA has grown accustomed to collusion, keeping prices as high as the market will bear instead of competing with each other for music lover's dollars. As a result, the industry has gotten (stayed?) slow, stupid, and wasteful. We don't need the recording industry in it's current form to exist at all. Let aspiring artists round up a few grand and rent some studio time, cut their own album, and sell it online.
4. Because it's a great way to find new artists/albums. What, your dozen local ClearChannel stations don't play obscure artists? Of course not. Thanks to file sharing, I have often simply plucked an album from thin air, based on nothing more than a weird band or album name...and liked it! And bought it! I swiped Moby's "Play" when it came out. It was interesting, so when "18" came out, I bought it, sight-unseen. The bloated brainless ticks that sit on the executive boards of the Big Five don't understand that there's more to album/artist promotion than just high dollar videos and bribing DJs. In fact, researchers who have analyzed P2P traffic found that there was reliably a sudden spike in file SHARING of a certain album BEFORE sales of the CD picked up. File sharing spreads the word.
5. Because the dog I had fed for so many years decided to bite the hand that fed it. RIAA runs around calling people like me criminals, saying we're destroying the music industry (when people like me were their best customers). They sue teenagers for tens of thousands of dollars over sharing the music on their computers. I refuse to buy new CDs from the big publishers these days. It's a personal boycott, but it's still going to damn well cost them thousands of dollars (perhaps tens of thousands in the long run.) If they want to treat their customers like criminals to be beaten into submission rather than catered to, I'll damn well spend my money elsewhere.
6. Because I would like to buy music online, I really would. But RIAA won't let me. Or rather, they'll let me buy 128 kbit tracks that are DRM'd to slave them only to Authorized players. Fuck that! Apple and the iTunes store can suck my hairy balls. I start buying music online when I can get loss-less with NO DRM...and not one minute before. The P2P networks are already littered with non-DRM music; it's just an insult to suggest that DRM is preventing anybody from downloading music.
That RIAA doesn't LIKE file sharing doesn't amount to a hot pile of steaming shit in my book. They only have an argument if they are actually losing substantial sales to file sharing, and I have yet to see any sort of research that supports the contention that file sharing has been a significant drain on sales. The 'self-evident truth' that an album copied is an album sale lost is as laughable as the 'self-evident truth' that if pot were legal we'd all turn into good-for-nothing addicts. (Quick quiz: Which program dominates the image editing industry? Photoshop. What's the most heavily copied image editing program in the world? Photoshop. Rampant piracy has enshrined the brand, making a bloody $600 program a household name, even though very few people have any real need of it. Copying is not necessarily an injury to a copyright holder.) The notion that making an unauthorized copy is simply 'stealing' is childish and simplistic.
Don't talk to me about intellectual property rights, either. The point of copyright and patent law was NEVER to provide absolute control over your creative works. Rather, copyright and patent exist ONLY to provide motivation to create by protecting you from unfair competition. You have a right not to have some asshole selling a copy of your work in competition with you. That's all.
Really, no self-respecting music fan downloads a 128 kbit MP3 from their favorite band, without liner notes or cover art, just because they're greedy and selfish. They do it because they can't afford as much music as they WANT to buy, so they buy some and download some. Or they download to test-listen to new music.
And what the hell is wrong with that?
Why I Steal Music (and don't give a fuck what you or RIAA thinks):
1. Because sometimes you hear an obscure song on the radio and just want to hear it again. File sharing allows me to listen to music that I enjoy...but don't enjoy enough/won't listen to enough to remotely justify buying the CD.
2. Because I got sick of buying hype. Now, let's have a show of hands: How many of you have NEVER shelled out (far too much) good money for a CD that seemed to have promise based on the heavy rotation single, but when you got it home it was mostly filler and crap? The music industry has made a living on this bait-and-switch game for decades, and I'm fucking tired of it. I deserve a damn good album for $15-20.
3. Because I'm tired of price fixing. Walk down the DVD aisle. What do you see? Price points all over the spectrum. I picked up a copy of Conan the Barbarian because, at $8, it provided value. I picked up a copy of the extended version of the Return of the King because, even at $27, it provided value. The movie industry prices their goods competitively. The music industry pretty much charges the same damn price for every CD, no matter how good or rotten, no matter how new or old. RIAA has grown accustomed to collusion, keeping prices as high as the market will bear instead of competing with each other for music lover's dollars. As a result, the industry has gotten (stayed?) slow, stupid, and wasteful. We don't need the recording industry in it's current form to exist at all. Let aspiring artists round up a few grand and rent some studio time, cut their own album, and sell it online.
4. Because it's a great way to find new artists/albums. What, your dozen local ClearChannel stations don't play obscure artists? Of course not. Thanks to file sharing, I have often simply plucked an album from thin air, based on nothing more than a weird band or album name...and liked it! And bought it! I swiped Moby's "Play" when it came out. It was interesting, so when "18" came out, I bought it, sight-unseen. The bloated brainless ticks that sit on the executive boards of the Big Five don't understand that there's more to album/artist promotion than just high dollar videos and bribing DJs. In fact, researchers who have analyzed P2P traffic found that there was reliably a sudden spike in file SHARING of a certain album BEFORE sales of the CD picked up. File sharing spreads the word.
5. Because the dog I had fed for so many years decided to bite the hand that fed it. RIAA runs around calling people like me criminals, saying we're destroying the music industry (when people like me were their best customers). They sue teenagers for tens of thousands of dollars over sharing the music on their computers. I refuse to buy new CDs from the big publishers these days. It's a personal boycott, but it's still going to damn well cost them thousands of dollars (perhaps tens of thousands in the long run.) If they want to treat their customers like criminals to be beaten into submission rather than catered to, I'll damn well spend my money elsewhere.
6. Because I would like to buy music online, I really would. But RIAA won't let me. Or rather, they'll let me buy 128 kbit tracks that are DRM'd to slave them only to Authorized players. Fuck that! Apple and the iTunes store can suck my hairy balls. I start buying music online when I can get loss-less with NO DRM...and not one minute before. The P2P networks are already littered with non-DRM music; it's just an insult to suggest that DRM is preventing anybody from downloading music.
That RIAA doesn't LIKE file sharing doesn't amount to a hot pile of steaming shit in my book. They only have an argument if they are actually losing substantial sales to file sharing, and I have yet to see any sort of research that supports the contention that file sharing has been a significant drain on sales. The 'self-evident truth' that an album copied is an album sale lost is as laughable as the 'self-evident truth' that if pot were legal we'd all turn into good-for-nothing addicts. (Quick quiz: Which program dominates the image editing industry? Photoshop. What's the most heavily copied image editing program in the world? Photoshop. Rampant piracy has enshrined the brand, making a bloody $600 program a household name, even though very few people have any real need of it. Copying is not necessarily an injury to a copyright holder.) The notion that making an unauthorized copy is simply 'stealing' is childish and simplistic.
Don't talk to me about intellectual property rights, either. The point of copyright and patent law was NEVER to provide absolute control over your creative works. Rather, copyright and patent exist ONLY to provide motivation to create by protecting you from unfair competition. You have a right not to have some asshole selling a copy of your work in competition with you. That's all.
Really, no self-respecting music fan downloads a 128 kbit MP3 from their favorite band, without liner notes or cover art, just because they're greedy and selfish. They do it because they can't afford as much music as they WANT to buy, so they buy some and download some. Or they download to test-listen to new music.
And what the hell is wrong with that?
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
Re: Why I Steal Music (and don't give a fuck what you or RIAA thinks):
this is a good point - one of the best aspects of downloading music.
a question tho: what did you do before downloading? waited, watched, finally got your hands on a friend's copy or bought one in a 2nd hand shop... at least that's what my experiences consisted of. the world didn't live in silence for fear of being able to find tunes...
the financial thing is less convincing; either you like it enough to buy it or you don't. don't like driving your shitty honda? then buy a ferrari; no-one steals a ferrari because they'd like to use one occasionally but can't afford it...
with the online databases and rare internet record stores around, you can find anything...
don't buy shitty cds then!
in all seriousness; reverse it. how many times have you bought a CD that was on sale, or in a 2nd hand shop, then realise actually it's one of your favourite cds ever? how many times have you spent 20 on a CD and played it every week for years?
there is shit out there - vote with your wallet, don't buy it. you 'deserve' a damn good album? fine - buy one!
i 'deserve' a lear jet but i haven't got one and i don't sneak onto coach class AA flights...
or to put it another way: i went without buying CDs for 18months to buy studio equipment to make music. i DESERVE to be able to continue making music, yeah?
when aspiring artists do what you suggest, their albums are available for download before they hit the shops. you think any major download contributors actually check the financial status of the labels before ripping a CD? sadly not: timewarner will still make huge profits this year but hundreds of independent record labels - which aren't involved in price-fixing - will fold. who's losing? not the evil big label bosses...
further, price-fixing isn't so much of an issue in the EDM scene... especially with online shops.
this much i agree with. which is why a lot of artists do 'release' low-qual stuff before album launches... i totally agree with you here.
the RIAA do appear to be a bunch of assholes.
but hey - don't fuck over the little people who give their life & soul; take the RIAA on :D
FLAC, other lossless formats are around... with the proper digi-d/load sites you really can't tell the difference between a mastered CD (which is often butchered anyway) and the file.
indeed. but there is a more subtle point; artists are losing out. they are; that's all there is to it. like i said, people will pay $15 to get into a club to see a DJ play someone's music for a few hours but won't shell out $10 to buy the artist's CD.
it's not as simple as 'stealing'; perhaps like 'not getting paid to do your job'. do you work for free?
hang on, i don't get it: you have a right not to have some asshole selling a copy of your work in competition with you, but you have NO right not to have some asshole give your work away for free?
???
TheDEA.org said:
this is a good point - one of the best aspects of downloading music.
a question tho: what did you do before downloading? waited, watched, finally got your hands on a friend's copy or bought one in a 2nd hand shop... at least that's what my experiences consisted of. the world didn't live in silence for fear of being able to find tunes...
the financial thing is less convincing; either you like it enough to buy it or you don't. don't like driving your shitty honda? then buy a ferrari; no-one steals a ferrari because they'd like to use one occasionally but can't afford it...
with the online databases and rare internet record stores around, you can find anything...
don't buy shitty cds then!
in all seriousness; reverse it. how many times have you bought a CD that was on sale, or in a 2nd hand shop, then realise actually it's one of your favourite cds ever? how many times have you spent 20 on a CD and played it every week for years?
there is shit out there - vote with your wallet, don't buy it. you 'deserve' a damn good album? fine - buy one!
i 'deserve' a lear jet but i haven't got one and i don't sneak onto coach class AA flights...
or to put it another way: i went without buying CDs for 18months to buy studio equipment to make music. i DESERVE to be able to continue making music, yeah?
when aspiring artists do what you suggest, their albums are available for download before they hit the shops. you think any major download contributors actually check the financial status of the labels before ripping a CD? sadly not: timewarner will still make huge profits this year but hundreds of independent record labels - which aren't involved in price-fixing - will fold. who's losing? not the evil big label bosses...
further, price-fixing isn't so much of an issue in the EDM scene... especially with online shops.
this much i agree with. which is why a lot of artists do 'release' low-qual stuff before album launches... i totally agree with you here.
the RIAA do appear to be a bunch of assholes.
but hey - don't fuck over the little people who give their life & soul; take the RIAA on :D
FLAC, other lossless formats are around... with the proper digi-d/load sites you really can't tell the difference between a mastered CD (which is often butchered anyway) and the file.
indeed. but there is a more subtle point; artists are losing out. they are; that's all there is to it. like i said, people will pay $15 to get into a club to see a DJ play someone's music for a few hours but won't shell out $10 to buy the artist's CD.
it's not as simple as 'stealing'; perhaps like 'not getting paid to do your job'. do you work for free?
hang on, i don't get it: you have a right not to have some asshole selling a copy of your work in competition with you, but you have NO right not to have some asshole give your work away for free?
???
FunkyAlfonzo
Bluelighter
How about this statement :
I downloaded the gorillaz new album because I don't like paying virgin records 16.99 for many reasons, including: it's way too much money, it's not garaunteed to be worth owning by any means, it's an outdated medium, the artist won't get much of the cash anyway - the people who will are the same people who fill my head with pop SHIT all day due to their mass-marketing of mass-appeal BULLSHIT
I DIDN'T download the new boards of canada album (even though it's not out yet, it's available). I didn't for a number of reasons including: they are not very big and they deserve my money, I can go to bleep.com and listen to all sections of all the tracks before I buy it; when I do buy it, the files are mine to do what I want with them and they even have things like traktor edit points in them, the album will cost 7.99 and I know that a good portion of that will go to the artist and the rest will go towards promoting more warp records artists in the appropriate places and the appropriate ways, I can be assured of a fair amount of quality from the recording etc etc etc.
I also DID download gutbucket's mp3s. I did this for different reasons again: I only heard of them due to missing out on their gig and I wanted to know what they are like. I managed to get hold of a few songs and they were fucking brilliant, so I bought the CD directly from them over the internet for less than 8 quid.
Who has lost out due to my downloading and who have gained from it?
The 'ethics' of downloading are: be ethical about your downloading. Don't use the points in this thread to think that you are sticking it to the man by never paying for anything - think about it and stick it to whoever you need to stick it to and fund the people who you think deserve your support.
I downloaded the gorillaz new album because I don't like paying virgin records 16.99 for many reasons, including: it's way too much money, it's not garaunteed to be worth owning by any means, it's an outdated medium, the artist won't get much of the cash anyway - the people who will are the same people who fill my head with pop SHIT all day due to their mass-marketing of mass-appeal BULLSHIT
I DIDN'T download the new boards of canada album (even though it's not out yet, it's available). I didn't for a number of reasons including: they are not very big and they deserve my money, I can go to bleep.com and listen to all sections of all the tracks before I buy it; when I do buy it, the files are mine to do what I want with them and they even have things like traktor edit points in them, the album will cost 7.99 and I know that a good portion of that will go to the artist and the rest will go towards promoting more warp records artists in the appropriate places and the appropriate ways, I can be assured of a fair amount of quality from the recording etc etc etc.
I also DID download gutbucket's mp3s. I did this for different reasons again: I only heard of them due to missing out on their gig and I wanted to know what they are like. I managed to get hold of a few songs and they were fucking brilliant, so I bought the CD directly from them over the internet for less than 8 quid.
Who has lost out due to my downloading and who have gained from it?
The 'ethics' of downloading are: be ethical about your downloading. Don't use the points in this thread to think that you are sticking it to the man by never paying for anything - think about it and stick it to whoever you need to stick it to and fund the people who you think deserve your support.
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
you may have just saved 4 pages of thread right there
physix
Bluelight Crew
who the hell brought this thread back frlom the dead?
AuralAssassin
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2005
- Messages
- 267
I have no problem with ME sharing my music. I DO have a problem with OTHER people's music being STOLEN.
There's a fine line, and 7 billion dollars in losses ain't exactly chump change!
There's a fine line, and 7 billion dollars in losses ain't exactly chump change!
Kataklysm
Bluelighter
It's not a loss if you never had it in the first place...
What the music industry doesn't understand is this:
Music fans have, and always will, BUY music. I am a music fan, and I buy music every week. I also download music, a lot of music, more than I could ever afford. The record labels are not losing sales to me, because I don't buy every album I like, I only buy albums that I want to own.
That's the thing that really gets me. Isn't it in the artists best interest to be heard by a wider audience? You'd think so.... what about all the artists I'd never heard of before? I do a lot of my research on discogs and slsk, I dig around and find music that I never would of heard otherwise, and then, if it's my kind of thing, I will look into purchasing a copy, on CD, 12", or digitally.
In my eyes, I am the kind of consumer that is good for the music industry, I'm enthusiastic, I dig around constantly and I buy what I can.
I'm sorry if some artists and record labels have a problem with that, but I don't see it.
What the music industry doesn't understand is this:
Music fans have, and always will, BUY music. I am a music fan, and I buy music every week. I also download music, a lot of music, more than I could ever afford. The record labels are not losing sales to me, because I don't buy every album I like, I only buy albums that I want to own.
That's the thing that really gets me. Isn't it in the artists best interest to be heard by a wider audience? You'd think so.... what about all the artists I'd never heard of before? I do a lot of my research on discogs and slsk, I dig around and find music that I never would of heard otherwise, and then, if it's my kind of thing, I will look into purchasing a copy, on CD, 12", or digitally.
In my eyes, I am the kind of consumer that is good for the music industry, I'm enthusiastic, I dig around constantly and I buy what I can.
I'm sorry if some artists and record labels have a problem with that, but I don't see it.
Originally posted by Kataklysm
It's not a loss if you never had it in the first place...
It's not a loss if you never had it in the first place...
you buy a lottery ticket. the jackpot is $18M. your numbers come up. you can't find the ticket so you don't get your $18M.
who cares? not you - because it's not a loss if you never had it in the first place...
Originally posted by Kataklysm
I am the kind of consumer that is good for the music industry...
I am the kind of consumer that is good for the music industry...
this is not aimed at you (obviously i don't know you) but it's more of a generalised comment.
i believe there are people like this but their number is small. i believe there are a huge number of people who tell themselves they're "good for the music industry" so they can sleep at night.
alasdair
Kataklysm
Bluelighter
good points.
I still advocate supporting your artists, I enjoy handing over $20 for a CD or record I know I'm going to love for a long time. I like to have the sleevenotes and artwork. But I'm not prepared to pay for every half-decent tune that comes around, I seek and listen and find and then buy the good ones.
I still advocate supporting your artists, I enjoy handing over $20 for a CD or record I know I'm going to love for a long time. I like to have the sleevenotes and artwork. But I'm not prepared to pay for every half-decent tune that comes around, I seek and listen and find and then buy the good ones.
dr seuss
Bluelight Crew
what you mention in your last paragraph is really one of the internet's best aspects in terms of music imo...
perhaps if there was a 64k mp3 database of all tracks, then it would be better - people could find, & listen to, various tracks before buying decent versions.
perhaps if there was a 64k mp3 database of all tracks, then it would be better - people could find, & listen to, various tracks before buying decent versions.