Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
from the an-artist's-perspective dept
Yesterday, we wrote about El-P (emcee/producer and co-founder of Definitive Jux records) and his positive reaction to the early leak of his upcoming album, Cancer4Cure. El-P showed up in the comments that evening, and after an email exchange this morning he posted this excellent longer reply and invited us to turn it into a guest post. Big thanks to El for getting involved and giving us a clearer picture of his stance on these issues.
First off, thanks to Leigh for emailing me today and thanks to everyone here for your ideas and comments. It’s clear he (and all of you) care about this subject. The truth is I really don’t fully know how I feel about it all and I’m not sure that I’m smart enough to fully tackle the subject. It’s tricky.
All I know is that I believe in operating within the realties that exist now and treating fans with respect within the context of those realties. I don’t agree with the draconian and aggressive manner in which the RIAA and others have reacted to those realities and I wont be caught trying to put band aids on cracks in the dam. I’d rather let that bitch flood and build a boat. That said, I cringe a bit when people disregard how tough it is for working musicians to deal with the new paradigm. Cut us some slack. It’s all relatively new and we are trying our best to navigate choppy waters.
I want to trust that if people like my music they will support me. My heart tells me that’s the case. I also know for a fact that many of the people that say they will support or even genuinely intend to may not, being that they have the finished product (or at least the most important piece of it) in their hands already. It’s just common sense.
So how do I feel? What’s the right way? Fuck if I know. But I’ll adapt and I’ll do it with respect and class and not kicking and screaming. There’s a hell of a lot I could say about both sides of this particular subject, but honestly does it matter? You all have formed your opinions on it already and in the end people like me are still out here trying to make a living no matter what those opinions are… right, wrong or in-between.
I will say (and this is a portion of what I wrote to Leigh today):
In these debates (no matter what venue) the artist almost always seems to be treated/viewed as a child. Either we don’t understand what’s good for us, can’t control what’s happening to us, can’t comprehend what’s bad for us or we are not wise enough to be grateful for what we are handed. It’s a debate that rages on almost exclusively without the input of the artist themselves.
And maybe thats how it needs to be. At the end of the day we are trying to make a living doing what we love and it’s on us to determine how we handle it. I’m not sure any artist owes any explanation to anyone about the nuances of that, and I’m not sure anyone else can really understand what it’s like as an artist to negotiate all this unless they deal with it in the same way. Everything takes on a different tone when paying your rent enters in to the debate. But don’t make the mistake of treating us condescendingly or with pity. I am not “begging” for anything by asking people to support by pre-ordering if they enjoy the record. I’m trying to solidify and encourage the relationship I have with the people who I make the music for in the context of today’s reality. Simple as that.
I for one am determined to make the realities of today’s music business work for me as best I can. I do not see the point in blaming the fans for a technological (and now cultural) reality that we all are involved in. They are my fans. They are my supporters. I think if I do my job and make something passionate and good then they’ll be motivated to engage with me. Between me and them I’m sure we can figure out how to give each other what we need so we can continue to have a relationship. I’m not too worried about it.
For now I think we are finally settling in to a decent place with it all. Of course if my record drops and I don’t sell shit I might end up with a bit of a different take on it all. I reserve that right, but I doubt it.
Anyway thanks for reading and thanks for taking the time to talk about all this. I’m going to drink some coffee and eat a bagel now. Also, my cat won’t stop meowing.
— best, el
Filed Under: cancer4cure, el-p
Comments on “Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship”
Inb4 “but…but…piracy!”
honesty
I really appreciate that he doesn’t say it’s okay for people to download his music, but understands it’s going to happen regardless of his feelings. He’s putting the onus on the fan to choose to support him, or not. I truly believe most fans will support the artists they like.
El, thanks for your comments.
I would have to say that you are pretty much dealing with the shit sandwich of piracy as best you can. But in the end, I think it’s clear that you know you are having to eat a lot of shit here to try to make a living.
Your attitude is wonderful, but it is to me incredibly demoralizing to see the position you are in. It’s incredibly hard for you to making a living as a musician when people are taking for free the very product you are trying to sell. You may not think you are begging, but in the end, that is really what you are doing. There is nothing left except hoping that you can convince people to pay you for what they already have for free.
Good luck with it. I wouldn’t wish the current situation on anyone.
“In these debates (no matter what venue) the artist almost always seems to be treated/viewed as a child. Either we don’t understand what’s good for us, can’t control what’s happening to us, can’t comprehend what’s bad for us or we are not wise enough to be grateful for what we are handed.”
How true, and it’s always been that way – reminds me of those old black and white clips from the early 60s of John Lennon and the other Beatles being interviewed, and the condescending way in which the reporters would speak to them – as though they were children.
I think you have a very clear perspective on reality. Anyone who would treat you as a child is a moron. In fact, admitting what you don’t know is a sign of exceptional maturity.
I do hope, and expect, that your fans will support you.
I also hope you spend some small bits of time you can afford lurking here so you can see the debate around these topics. Or even comment, or better yet … guest post again 🙂
I think you would see in the posts (comments are more dodgy) that artists that reject the idea of suing fans, and 1 copy = 1 lost sale are celebrated here as actually having a firm grasp on the sorts of things that they can understand / control / comprehend.
Thanks again for the post.
Love it
I don’t agree with the draconian and aggressive manner in which the RIAA and others have reacted to those realities and I wont be caught trying to put band aids on cracks in the dam. I’d rather let that bitch flood and build a boat. That said, I cringe a bit when people disregard how tough it is for working musicians to deal with the new paradigm. Cut us some slack. It’s all relatively new and we are trying our best to navigate choppy waters.
Well said. Just remember that the fans are also navigating these new tides. I think the recent breakout of kickstarter shows that most (or at least enough) people’s hearts are in the right place.
Re:
It’s incredibly hard…to making a living as a musician.
It’s hard to make a living as .
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Do you people run in shifts?
1 copy != 1 lost sale.
The vast majority of musicians have never made a living solely performing music, even if you add recording to that (which the music industry initially rejected violently — see player pianos … etc … Ad infinitum).
People seem to think El-P is talented and entertaining, and I wish him the best. He certainly comes off as sincere.
So … do subway buskers suffer more from piracy than obscurity?
So you can digitally copy the experience of a live performance?
The only shit sandwich here is the one you are serving which has 1 topping of 1 copy = 1 lost sale, and 1 topping of there used to be a golden age where the labels made every promising artist rich.
I wouldn’t wish your world view on anyone.
Oh … is shit sandwich the new shill phrase of the month?
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“Do you people run in shifts?
1 copy != 1 lost sale.
“
Perhaps the ultimate strawman. Can you please find me anywhere, anywhere, ever, anyone on the label side saying that.
It doesn’t exist. Don’t believe the hype, right?
“The only shit sandwich here is the one you are serving which has 1 topping of 1 copy = 1 lost sale,”
That is your flawed interpretation of things. Again, please point me to a single person on the label side saying that. It doesn’t exist.
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They don’t run in shifts, they run in shits!
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That’s because they’re on the labels side.
All the labels care about is money.
Herp derp.
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Oh, and look up the definition of strawman. Saying there’s nobody on the side against ours rooting for our side is an ultimate strawman.
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Pretty much every label study of losses to copying assume 1 copy = 1 lost sale.
I’m pretty sure you have access to them, so I’m not going to cite them.
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Oops … forgot … you didn’t reply to any other point.
FAIL.
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I would imagine the court cases where the copyright holders (namely the members of the major record labels) equate downloads to lost sales would count. It is in the public, legal record, after all.
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Sorry, the only fail here is you flat out assuming that people who download stuff don’t buy shit at all.
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Ooops. Disregard that. Thought the other AC replied.
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Sorry for too many posts, but you responded to 1 point.
I made 6 points, none of which you responded to.
That’s a pretty pathetic argument.
By the way … I’ll let the more research inclined here support this, but if I recall, the *AAs report each download as more than 1 lost sale. I could be wrong, but I am not wrong about the 1 lost sale equation.
Funny you call something you know you can not punch down a straw man.
You Will Be Fine
It is so nice to see you here, El-P.
Musicians are not children, they are independent business persons. The reason why they were formerly treated as children is because they signed abusive contracts with record labels. The labels then treated them badly, thus they ended up with child status. Arguments have been made that the abusive contracts were inevitable, but musicians need to step up and take responsibility. Signing an abusive contract is never a wise move. Seek alternatives.
The magic of the internet has now given musicians a way forward with a lot less pressure to sign an abusive contract. The peddlers of abusive contracts are as mad as hell about that, it is costing them money. Their shills comment here regularly, then the community calls them out. However, nobody is entitled to be the beneficiary of an abusive contract, no matter how long they may have been engaged in the practice.
The economics of infinite goods is difficult and counter-intuitive. Art is difficult, too. So artists have a learning curve. Here at Techdirt we aim to help artists find their way. The answer is the doctrine “Connect with Fans then give them a Reason to Buy”, abbreviated here as “CwF+RtB”. You are doing fine with connecting with fans. Now you need to give us real scarcities with reasons as to why we might buy them. Infinite goods are infinite and the price of them inevitably goes to zero. Shiny disks and concert tickets are just two of a whole universe of scarce goods possibilities. If you have fans who love you and you offer them reasonable things to buy, you cannot help but make money. There are many stories on Techdirt about artists who have followed the doctrine and succeeded.
We want you to succeed, but do it without violating our human rights and with giving us art that we want. Do not get misled by the erroneous arguments of the shills. They are not your friends. Your fans are your friends.
You Will Be Fine
His friends (who ever they are) pay him for his music.
I don’t know where to start, phew.
This idea that generations of intelligent, articulate and independent thinking musicians ALL signed ‘abusive’ contracts is beyond demeaning. I wouldn’t mind quite so much if I thought the majority of people who parroted this crap had ever had ANY experience of a record label. You believe the crap about abuse because it makes you feel better when you rip off ordinary musicians like EI-P.
In the end, the whole debacle is about freedom of choice.
If EI-P is ok with fans downloading his music before it’s released, that’s absolutely fine. If I’m not OK with that, you should respect my choice to continue to sell my music. If you don’t want to buy it, don’t take it against my wishes.
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“But don’t make the mistake of treating us condescendingly or with pity.”
Guess you can’t follow simple instructions, can you.
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not true. prove it.
You Will Be Fine
agreed. well put.
You Will Be Fine
Okay, 1) Why are you implying that in the act of accepting a leak, he’s not selling his music?
2) Piracy isn’t all black and white. Take this for example. I’d never heard of the band Nightwish before. I downloaded ((re: Pirated)) their latest album, Imaginaerum, to give it a listen. The next day, I went out and brought the 2-CD physical album, having to take busses all over town to find who had it in stock.
3) Anyone who signs with the RIAA or associated labels is in an abusive contract. If you don’t believe me, then point out ways I’m wrong, give citations.
4) I have never heard of El-P before now. If his album hadn’t leaked, I wouldn’t have even heard of him. Now I know he’s out there, and I feel like taking a look at some of his stuff, and maybe buying an album if I like it.
5) I respect both of your opinions, but I also have my own. Don’t knock it.
It's all relatively new and we are trying our best to navigate choppy waters.
Well for you maybe, but don’t put us all on the same technology inept side.
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Read any IFPI report. They try to complain about the one to one causation but it has been shit down repeatedly. If you want the best research about this, read “media piracy” from joe kataganis and his team. In it, he details exactly which studies have the 1-1 ratio.
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well el-p, I feel you man, but I hate to break it to you, you ain’t gettin’ paid from here on out unless you fight for it. these cats don’t believe you are owed anything for your work unless you sing for yer suppa every night. sad but true.
I understand your desire to be reasonable, to be fair, to want to focus on making the best music possible and getting paid for the consumption of that work and labor. but it’s not gonna happen.
haters are gonna hate and thieves are gonna steal. but what’s worse is that this isn’t about downloaders, it’s about the internet and tech corporate fat cats getting rich of your work (like google aint got enough dough, right?), and the pirate bay, and those cats…
so good luck to you man, but you look like road kill on the information superhighway to me.
You Will Be Fine
“3) Anyone who signs with the RIAA or associated labels is in an abusive contract. If you don’t believe me, then point out ways I’m wrong, give citations.”
here ya go:
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/
You Will Be Fine
no, your fans are the people who respect your work and pay for it.
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actually they do buy stuff, they buy video games which are harder to pirate, but not much music, which they can get for free. if there were any truth to your argument we would not be having this conversation.
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yeah, google doesn’t care about money at all… that’s why they are giving up cash and moving to a t-shirt economy cause it’s worked so well for music, they can’t pass it up!
http://themusicaldisconnect.blogspot.com/2012/01/google-announces-ads-free-just-buy-tee.html
You Will Be Fine
Way to reply to only one of my points.
Just because one isn’t as bad as the other, doesn’t mean it isn’t abusive.
And now, digging through the techdirt archives, here’s the reasons for my arguments.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120307/16295418031/kid-cudis-wzrd-debuts-no-3-despite-being-swept-under-rug-universal.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120302/03503317944/emi-sneakily-trying-to-pretend-many-its-artists-cant-reclaim-their-copyrights.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120228/17592017904/if-major-labels-are-all-about-helping-artists-why-do-we-keep-seeing-artists-calling-out-their-labels-screwing-them.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120209/17243617721/tunecore-riaa-has-become-part-problem-artists.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120208/01453517694/riaa-totally-out-touch-lashes-out-google-wikipedia-everyone-who-protested-sopapipa.shtml ((Bad for everyone, not just artists))
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/15060817494/busta-rhymes-backs-megaupload-says-record-labels-are-real-criminals.shtml
I’m sure I could find more, but I think I’ve made my point.
You Will Be Fine
“The magic of the internet has now given musicians a way forward with a lot less pressure to sign an abusive contract.”
yeah, the internet magic is awesome… no contracts, no payments, nothing… how is replacing on injustice with an even greater injustice progress?
labels pay artists tens of millions of dollars a year… how much is the pirate bay paying artists? oh, whats’ that? Nothing? The Pirate Bay pay’s artists nothing? Wow, Really?
So what would I prefer? Getting paid or not getting paid. I think I’d chose getting paid?
Hmmm… contracts you say? Where can I get a contract to get paid by the pirate bay and other sites operating illegally? Oh… what? There are no contracts?
Hahhahahaah I get it, that’ funnnny. You can’t have oppressive contracts if there are NO contracts! hahahaha! knee slapper…
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Fantastic execution, but, still, fuck you man.
You Will Be Fine
and so how do I get a contract with the pirate bay to get paid, could you please provide me with that link?
Uh yeah…
You Will Be Fine
Anyone who signs with the RIAA or associated labels is in an abusive contract. If you don’t believe me, then point out ways I’m wrong, give citations.
I dunno, maybe you can post the mental health records of David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Sting, Mick Fleetwood, Bruce Springsteen proving how crazy they were to sign a major label contract time and time and time again. And how disturbed they were to come to their senses one day only to realise they’d amassed millions of dollars and several mansions around the world.
I have never heard of El-P before now. If his album hadn’t leaked, I wouldn’t have even heard of him. Now I know he’s out there, and I feel like taking a look at some of his stuff, and maybe buying an album if I like it.
It seems to me you actually found out about him because people on a blog you go to are talking about him.
This is the dumb paradox we are supposed to swallow. The internet helps artists by people downloading their work against their wishes. While apparently the internet has no power to promote artists through thousands of people talking about those artists on thousands of blogs and forums.
You Will Be Fine
Wow, bringing up the ultimate strawman; something completely unrelated to the labels being asses.
I’m sure being a part of the RIAA is -great-, I’m /suuuuuuuuuuure/ that you guys can’t find /aaaaany/ other method that wont’ screw you over.
You Will Be Fine
You fail to respond to half of my points.
Wow.
You Will Be Fine
Also, see my post above that proves my point. If you aren’t uber successful, or do something that the labels don’t like, they -will- screw you over.
You Will Be Fine
news flash, you can’t have a contract dispute without a contract… the only point you’ve made is that artists actually get contracts and payments from labels. you’ve also made the point that they can audit the label, and because they have a contract they can move to resolve disputes, in the courts if necessary.
the same mechanism that makes every link you posted above possible, is the mechanism you are arguing to take away from artists, copyrights.
so when you can show me an artist contract with a pirate site like the pirate bay (and others), that offers better terms than labels, and pays on those terms, than you’ll have a point.
until than all you have is the usual BS…
You Will Be Fine
you got a link to where I can get a contract with the pirate bay? I’d like to see their terms and how well they treat artists. You got that right?
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really, could you cite that… because a 95% piracy rate still only equals a 60% drop in sales. So unless the IFPI think the business should be 20x’s bigger I think you are grossly confused on simple math.
every download does not equal a 1:1 lost sale, but every lost sale can be attributed to an illegal download. there’s a difference.
You Will Be Fine
Wow, bringing up the ultimate strawman; something completely unrelated to the labels being asses.
I’m sure being a part of the RIAA is -great-, I’m /suuuuuuuuuuure/ that you guys can’t find /aaaaany/ other method that wont’ screw you over.
Also, reposting your comment after it’s been thoroughly burned isn’t generally a smart idea.
You Will Be Fine
Who the fuck says I’m telling artists to make a contract with pirate sites? Are you delusional? The only BS is coming from you right now.
Try sites like kickstarter. Or, I dunno, monetize on youtube. Or, I dunno, go independent; sell your music without a third party via digital means.
I’m not saying it’s easy.
But it’s not like the record labels make it easy on you either.
Oh, and there are plenty of stories floating around about artists who don’t get paid royalties from labels. You just block ’em out of your mind because “Oh, artists can sue them. I don’t care that the labels fuck up their contracts all the time or screw with artists.”
Labels only care about two things.
Themselves.
And money.
The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
honesty
the evidence is just not there, even in radiohead’s experiment the majority of people (62%) downloaded their album without paying for it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9811013-7.html
so much for that theory…
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thank you. a well played concession.
You Will Be Fine
the truth that hurts is that you don’t have a point, you seem kinda riled up there… yer an angry fella aren’t ya?
when the pirate bay offers artists a contract and terms better than the labels you’ll have a point, until then you got a hand full of gooey stinky brown stuff.
there are NO contracts and payments to artists from pirate sites. the failure of your logic is to promote a greater injustice to replace a lessor one.
so where are all those contracts for artists to get paid from the pirate bay? where? let’s see those links? you got those? Huh? Where are they?
Oh yeah, pirate sites rip off artists so they they the pirate site can profit 100% and pay the artists ZERO, Nothing, Nadda, Zippo…
really man, why do you hate artists so much?
You Will Be Fine
No contract needed.
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120430/04432118703/dan-bulls-free-single-hits-charts.shtml
“Last week we wrote about Dan Bull’s experiment to release a song, “Sharing is Caring” for free via The Pirate Bay (and other sites) and to see if he could still get it to show up in various charts. As we discussed, it definitely was making its way onto the lists of Amazon UK’s top hip hop sales. And, on Sunday, the official UK charts came out — with Sharing is Caring coming in at number 9 on the Indie singles chart and number 35 on the RnB singles chart.”
You Will Be Fine
it’s not a strawman, if you are arguing about the injustice of labels, why don’t you just provide the links to the contracts and payments the pirate bay is offering to artists so we can all see how much more fair that is than a label contract where the artist actually get’s paid.
it’s your argument back up it up, don’t be weak and hide behind some bogus strawman claim, you’re smarter than that.
Where are the contracts and payments to artists from the pirate bay? Why do you hate artists so much? Why?
You Will Be Fine
Yer all “Pirate bay, pirate bay, PIRATE ARRR PIRATE”
You sound mightily intent that I’m somehow trying to connect this all to saying artists should go on pirate sites and allow themselves to have music shared? When I said -nothing- of the sort? You really -ARE- delusional.
Why do you hate rationality so much? Umad, bro? Or just trollin’?
You Will Be Fine
You’re offering a strawman.
” if you are arguing about the injustice of labels, why don’t you just provide the links to the contracts and payments the pirate bay is offering to artists” Has ZERO relevance to a damn thing I’ve said, and is completely out of left field.
It is *not* my argument. It’s the words you’re pulling out of your ass.
You Will Be Fine
of course not, Rolling Stone doesn’t provide contracts when promoting artists, but then again, Rolling Stone isn’t illegally exploiting artists against their will, violating copyright, and ripping off the artist for profit, the pirate bay is… that sounds like real oppression to me.
so where are all those contracts for all of those other THOUSANDS of artists? if the pirate bay is not afraid of the way they abuse artists why don’t they let them remove their material?
the real abuse and oppression is by the pirates who profit and pay artists NOTHING, EVER, not a single penny, while they the pirates continue to get richer and richer.
Where are those contracts and payments again? Oh, they don’t exist… yup, you got nuthin but BS.
You Will Be Fine
you want to make a point, provide those fair and non-oppressive contracts that pay artists from the pirate bay?
what? the pirate bay and other pirate site rip off artists 100% and don’t offer any kind of contract or payment? wow. crazy…
just provide a copy of those great artist friendly non-oppressive pirate contracts for artists that actually pay the artists, let’s have it.
let’s see how well artist are being treated by corporations profiting from the artists work without ANY contracts or payments.
Go ahead, provide those contracts.
You Will Be Fine
You wanna make a point, provide reference where I said anything about the pirate bay that wasn’t in direct response to your stupidity and pulling strawmen out of your ass.
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“Pretty much every label study of losses to copying assume 1 copy = 1 lost sale. “
Not true in the slightest. They do indicate that, if all pirate copies were sales, they would be X amount. Nobody specifically says that each pirated item is a lost sale, only that IF they were lost sales, they would be worth X.
It really isn’t the same thing. It’s a bad argument from those looking to belittle the recording industry and to deny what is going on.
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Jay, incorrect. As I mentioned above, it’s a question of “if every pirated copy was a lost sale, this is the value”. There is no direct statement that every pirated copy is a lost sale – at most, it’s a lost potential sale.
The thing is, we know that the recorded music industry dropped 60% in the Napster decade. You would have to be more than slightly daft not to accept that there is some causation here.
Well, daft or Mike Masnick.
You Will Be Fine
no, you fail to make a substantive argument, so you claim strawman. oh mommy, strawman, strawman, I can’t make a point, starwman, strawman… FAIL.
labels may be asses, but they are assess who provide contracts and pay artists. there are no contracts or payments to artists from pirate sites who profit 100% while paying the artists 0%
so your solution to one injustice is to create and promote an even larger injustice. sorry, that’s not a strawman, that’s just a poor argument on your part and you lose on those grounds.
the argument is coming from your mouth, so… you might want to watch you are putting your face if you think the argument is coming from my ass, lol.
You Will Be Fine
it’s all above. you can’t answer the point because you know you can’t.
there are no artists contracts with the pirate sites who profit 100% while paying the artists 0%
so are you now saying that pirate site should respect artists and remove any material the artist doesn’t want there? are you saying the pirate sites should offer contracts to artists that are more competitive than label contracts and that the pirate sites should honor those contracts?
pick a lie and stick to it already!
they are not your fans, they are not supporting you, they are stealing from you, if the culture is ok with stealing everything becasue they can, stop producing, then they can’t steal
You Will Be Fine
f you aren’t uber successful, or do something that the labels don’t like, they -will- screw you over.
And yet thousands of less than ‘uber successful’ artists work with labels all the time, releasing records, making money. I mean getting back to my original point, it’s just demeaning to the intelligence of the creative community to suggest even the majority of them (let alone all) blissfully signed abusive contracts, and so far haven’t complained other than a few well publicised moans.
You oh so want it to be true, so you just keep repeating it, hoping it will stick.
Ask any artist, any artist, almost all of them will tell you they’d prefer a record contract to widespread piracy – if it has to be a choice between the two.
You Will Be Fine
Wow, you’re taking this into whole new levels of territory. First, you can’t even cite a source, insisting it’s “ALL ABOVE ZOMG”, when it kinda… Isn’t. Direct quote pl0x.
I’m not going to try an defend an imaginary argument that you are flat out lying I said.
This isn’t even a strawman any more. It’s gotten stupider than that.
It’s a -chewbacca defence-.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChewbaccaDefense
You’re not even worth replying to from here on out.
You Will Be Fine
I never did say a thing about solutions other than “Kickstarter, youtube monetization, or going indie and offering MP3 downloads of your album at a cost”.
You really are desperate at this point, aren’t you?
Troll harder, kthnx.
I wont be caught trying to put band aids on cracks in the dam. I’d rather let that bitch flood and build a boat.
This deserves to be plastered all over the walls of Congress and every boardroom across the whole of the United States. Seriously.
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but what’s worse is that this isn’t about downloaders, it’s about the internet and tech corporate fat cats getting rich of your work
Nice rant, but you’re totally wrong. The “tech corporate fat cats” treat artists 100x better than record labels ever did, which is why the labels are running scared.
El-P, I’m glad you stopped by. Artists’ voices are always welcome here. But please do not listen to idiot shills like this guy, for everyone’s sake (especially yours).
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“You may not think you are begging, but in the end, that is really what you are doing. “
A lot of musicans are fan supported. I hope more and more are. There was a recent article on Amanda Palmer and she appears to be doing better with her fans than with her label. I know Marillion was a pioneer in asking fans for pre-orders and tour locations. I heard about them through their efforts to organize a tour and checked them out.
One of the falliacies is expecting every download to be a sale or lost sale. I’m going to have to look up who this is and their music to know if it is something I’m interested in. One thing confusing to me is why does anyone expect me to buy something before I’ve heard it.
Nearly 100% of what I’ve bought based on a 30-60 second sample, I’ve deleted. It wasn’t what I thought it was. Most of my all time favorites and must-have’s I discovered after I had listened to it for awhile. Good music can take time to grow. I like listening as a single, in context with the album and as part of a compliation. It can mean different things to me at different times.
I’m not going to buy just “to check it out”. Consider it advertising that’s better than playing on the radio. I also know that I do buy a lot more music when I can explore a wide variety to find what I like. The only way I have of discovering a new band or music is through the internet and transferred to disc or device so that I can actively listen.
Before the internet I bought zero. I kept to the same stuff that I had listened to for decades largley because I had no idea what I had been missing. When I run into friends now that are listening to decades old “hits” I try to explain there’s a lot more out there and it’s kind of hard to do because of this myth that music is dying, no money in it and everything comes from a major label or anything that’s worth listening to is on the radio / hit chart (which is rubbish).
Not everyone is going to like everything anymore than not everyone should make a living in the music business just because they want to.
I would like to make a living at being a visual artist and it’s a gamble. Do I expect to be paid everytime someone looks at my work? How do I handle it when someone buys something and in a few years resells it for much more money – why don’t I get a cut off that sale too (based on music major label laws)? Does any visual artist make a living (or even a profit) off of a gallery – and if not, why do they keep showing there?
I keep showing for exposure, i.e. promotion. One of the foundations of copyright law was to encourage new works – not to live off the old forever. If someone copies or reuses, it’s because I did something they liked, iconic maybe. But I’m going to try to do it even better next time and that’s where I want to make money – not on something old. I have to love what I do and have something to say or add if I expect to make a living at it. It has to be better than just “good”. It has to be great and really special. I would be doing it with or without money.
I tend to expect that of musicians too. They have to love it and have something unique that puts them above the rest. I am amazed (and a little scared) by how creative and talented the average person is. Sometimes I think the only divide is those that are professionals would do it anyway and can’t stop. The hobbiest has other priorities.
I want to see my stuff out there first. Then I’ll look at making a living from it. But I never want to feel entittled to make a living at it.
I haven’t read the first article, nor do I know who this is.
Re:
“thank you. a well played concession.”
I agree. He was short, sweet, and right to the heart of the matter.
honesty
the majority of people (62%) downloaded their album without paying for it.
You missed the second part of the headline: “Even with only a minority paying for the album, a former record industry executive estimates that Radiohead may not have done too badly.”
The number of people who don’t pay for an album means absolutely nothing. What matters is if more people paid than would have otherwise, and how much of that goes directly to the band.
In the end, it turns out that Radiohead made more from that record than from any record they put out on EMI. That’s really the only thing that matters… at least if you’re truly pro-artist.
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Hahahaha!
I’ll bet you wrote that all by yourself didn’t you, freakyleakydahboatasinky.
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Nice rant, but you’re totally wrong. The “tech corporate fat cats” treat artists 100x better than record labels ever did, which is why the labels are running scared.
Puuurleeese.
Keep dreaming.
Spotify pays artists way less than any label ever did.
You think I’m grateful to Google who post links to my work on pirate sites, then make some money from advertising off my loss.
Wake up and smell the coffee dude.
By the way, I’m an artist so thanks for the welcome invite to have my voice heard here.
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To some extent this is because many artist’s just want to create their art and have given up control to do that. It’s only been within the last two decades that artist can interact with their fans and publish / produce their own quality material.
One way to end the copyright battle is to stop signing away management and the business side of their career. You also have to remember that many labels make all sorts promises, shiny new things, big advances that they are selling. They also have a distribution network. It can be hard to turn down.
honesty
he number of people who don’t pay for an album means absolutely nothing. What matters is if more people paid than would have otherwise, and how much of that goes directly to the band.
You guys keep talking like no one can take advantage of the internet without the help of pirates.
Yeah, the internet is great. because of it I don’t need a label to reach fans. because of it I can publicise myself on blogs and forums. But because of pirates my music is taken against my wishes. If you were all doing us such a huge favour, the majority of musicians wouldn’t be complaining about it.
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every lost sale can be attributed to an illegal download.
This is a joke, right?
A “lost sale” is simply a consumer who decided not to buy your particular product, for any reason. That can’t be attributed solely to “illegal downloads” even in the wettest dreams of a lonely RIAA lobbyist.
Every potential customer who decides the price is too high is a “lost sale.” Every potential customer who can’t get the product because of regional restrictions is a “lost sale.” Every potential customer who won’t buy your product because of restrictive DRM is a “lost sale.” Every potential customer who decides to pay rent instead is a “lost sale.”
Most importantly of all, every potential customer who buys an MP3 instead of a CD is counted as a “lost sale” – at least if you’re talking about the drop in revenue to the recording industry post-2004.
Illegal downloads have very little to do with it.
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http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.se/2009/01/riaas-download-equals-lost-sale-theory.html
“……RIAA?s request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale. …..”
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http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.se/2009/01/riaas-download-equals-lost-sale-theory.html
“……RIAA?s request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale. …..”
You Will Be Fine
“and so how do I get a contract with the pirate bay to get paid, could you please provide me with that link? “
I’d like to know where the attitude came from that thinks anyone who is a musican / artist is entittled to be paid? Some people enjoy making music and would do it whether they got paid or not.
I’m not saying that no musicians should be paid. What I am saying is that it is a competitive field with a lot of extremely good people in it and a lot more people would like to do it as a profession, but that doesn’t mean they should all be successful or making money doing it.
A lot of people are actors or actresses. Do they all deserve to be in the movies?
Tell me why it’s apparently a fact that the RIAA doesn’t abuse artists in favour of money. I’m not saying it’s in the contracts, I’m saying that it -happens-. Contracts can be devilishly worded so that they can be twisted in favour of the other party.
I never said that piracy was an alternative. I’m arguing that it’s shades of grey, and that not every pirated copy is a lost sale, which the labels seem to drive into everything. In fact, labels argue that every pirated copy is worth much, much more than a single sale, to the point where they argue billions of dollars in damages, which, in my opinion, is bullshit. And, any -successful- lawsuits, all the money goes to the lawyers and the labels. Not the artists.
The solution to piracy is not attacking it. The solution is actually offering a service that’s up to date with technology.
I’m in NZ. I can’t view netflix. I can’t view hulu, or hulu plus. Where can I watch movies online? Where is a legal way to do that?
Oh, right.
I can’t.
Arbitrary licensing restrictions placed on by the folks at the MPAA/etc.
I can’t use Google Movies. I can’t watch TV shows through iTunes or buy season passes.
The only damn thing the industry does here is provide Steam. And guess how many steam games I own? Over a hundred. Because they’re reasonably priced, and readily available, without intrusive, clunky DRM that restricts customer rights.
I want to be served. And it’s just not happening. This is meerly an example.
If they offered Netflix here, with a decent selection? HELL YES I’d pay for it.
But, why stop there? Why not go further. You see, pirates are going to pirate, whether they like it or not. What’s to stop them from offering DRM-free copies of shows that you can download and store on your hardrive in formats like AVI, MKV and MP4? People would pay through the nose to get that privilege. Instead, the entertainment industry shoves it’s foot in the idea, accusing piracy of making them unable to do it. Do they not realise that if they don’t offer content in a similar way that pirates do, only paid, people would 100% use it?
Sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent here, but this is one of the things that really grinds my gears. They bitch about piracy so much, yet the obvious solution is right in their face, and they seem to think that suing people is a better alternative than innovating.
It’s a similar situation in the music industry. But the difference is, with stuff like iTunes? The music industry is farther along than the movie and TV industry. The web is world wide. Why can’t they take advantage of that?
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And don’t get me wrong. I don’t pirate often. I go to movies to see ones I like– I saw Transformers 3 twice, in 3D. I saw The Avengers in 3D.
I buy DVD’s. I buy CD’s. I buy games.
What bugs me is that they aren’t doing anything to solve the apparent problem that’s worth trying to pass draconian laws that shatter privacy and the first amendment.
You Will Be Fine
Show me a Walmart site or a radio station with a contract with a muscian.
P2P is a distribution system. It’s also exposure. Radio is dead. They aren’t comparable to a record label.
Why would anyone buy something they hadn’t heard before? There is a much greater chance of selling your music after someone hears it.
This whole thing sounds anti-competitive. It used to be the radio was the gateway with apx 50 singles making a rotation. There would be one song that stood out from the rest.
Now there are thousands easily available with a handful standing out from the rest. The odds got a lot worse for musicians. As a listener, I can sample regional and foreign markets in addition to traditional national and local acts. I can also sample unsigned or hobbyist musicians. That raises the bar.
As a consumer I like to think that talent will be rewarded over marketing and promotion. I know that’s not entirely true, but I think a no label, talented musician has a much better shot of making it now than they did 20 years ago. It also means that potential fans need to do a lot of sampling in order to find them.
What Pirate Bay offers is exposure to a potential market. People buy zero of what they haven’t been exposed to.
ttp://boingboing.net/2012/04/17/pirate-bays-promo-bay-fl.html
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Spotify pays artists way less than any label ever did.
Spotify isn’t a label. However, I *did* just see the details of a study done by someone *inside* the recording industry, showing that Spotify actually pays *significantly more than radio* when you compare on a per-play basis. And considering that’s what Spotify is really replacing, the evidence certainly suggests Spotify pays quite well.
honesty
“But because of pirates my music is taken against my wishes” I think the word is “copied” not “taken”; your music is still there, right where you left it.
“the majority of musicians wouldn’t be complaining about it” citation please? Guess what I can pull a “majority of musicians think that obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy” statement out of my arse too, based on all the musicians I know.
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Seriously dude? More money is going into the wider music industry now than ever, it’s just not going via the recording industry.
You Will Be Fine
Silly you thinking you need a contract to get paid.
The only one spewing complete BS here is you. Clearly you must work for a label because every post of yours has “contract” in it somewhere. Either that or you truly enjoy getting bent over the table for your regular flesh to flesh colonoscopy after signing away all your rights.
You Will Be Fine
“Ask any artist, any artist, almost all of them will tell you they’d prefer a record contract to widespread piracy – if it has to be a choice between the two.” aaand let’s have that citation again.
You’re a musician right? You’re selling your music right?
Where are you selling it? How are you selling it? Who are you even?
You obviously really care about this stuff, but here you are in a thread that hundreds of people are reading, and you’re not even linking back to your music site?
Here’s the thing, I’m a musician too. In two clicks you can go from my comment here to my bandcamp site where people can buy my music (this has happened a few times already when I’ve posted here).
But I’m not a great musician.
I’m ok and, thankfully, some people like my songs enough to support me and pay me some money to cover things like producing limited run CDs and paying my petrol to gigs and the like.
But I am not good enough to have been picked up by a label. That’s the way it is. Pre-internet I would have made the square root of fuck-all from my music – I know this, because that’s what’s happened.
Instead I’ve got many more people listening to our music, I can do gigs further afield (when I can pull my finger out of my arse and sort it out) and I’ve got people who’ll pay for downloads.
So a load of people have downloaded and listened to it for free?
You know what I say to them?
Woohoo! Enjoy! Hope to see you at a gig sometime!
honesty
That just sounds like the arguments people made against radio and still you people make money.
Everybody takes from the musician apparently except the musician OMG how musicians survive?
Also explain why you are different from a fashion designer that has no protections and still manage to make a living, how are you different from a carpenter that has no protections and still manages to make a living.
That you people don’t like to talk about it because it exposes, that nonsense you call it yours, your music is the one you perform, is the one you sell to others through your merch, it is not what others enjoy for free, that is a vector and can lead to other places but you don’t like that do you, in your little world everybody should pay only you, but that is not going to happen anymore.
You Will Be Fine
“So what would I prefer? Getting paid or not getting paid. I think I’d chose getting paid?”
See my post above, I’ve already made more money via the internet than I ever would have from a label.
Funnily enough, I choose getting paid as well.
Re:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2009/01/riaas-download-equals-lost-sale-theory.html
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120121/16551717500/jonathan-coulton-destroys-rationale-behind-megaupload-seizure-with-single-tweet-follows-up-with-epic-blog-post.shtml
honesty
From your poor choice of a link to attempt prove your point…
“Castle, who has represented singer Sheryl Crow and worked for A&M Records, said that the money-generating lifespan of an album can last as long as two years. It starts when an act releases a record and is extended when the performer goes on a concert tour.”
So tell me then, if 2 years is the “money-generating lifespan of an album”, how is it in anyway just for copyrights to extend 70 years after the death of the artist?
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And you are using Google assets to attack Google.
Have you paid them already?
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“Spotify pays artists way less than any label ever did.”
How much do Wal Mart, Sirius and ClearChannel pay them? You may as well start comparing apples to apples. Spotify are not, nor have ever claimed to be, a record label.
“You think I’m grateful to Google who post links to my work on pirate sites, then make some money from advertising off my loss.”
I’m sure they also point to the legal retailers selling your stuff as well, Do you also hate them for that, or are you sulking because you don’t think legal retailers pay you enough? Judging by your level of business sense and maturity displayed here, you’ve probably boycotted all legal retailers then whine when your music doesn’t sell. Hell, you don’t even know the difference between a record label and a radio station, so your business credentials are rather suspect…
“By the way, I’m an artist”
As ever, citation needed.
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Quote:
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2009/01/riaas-download-equals-lost-sale-theory.html
Happy now?
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No they actually file lawsuits claiming that crap and get bitch slapped in courts all over the world.
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Anything digital that’s comprised of 1s and 0s can be downloaded with the same ease. The only difference is how much hard drive space it will use and the actual time of the download.
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Since when people couldn’t get music for free?
I do remember radio putting “1 Hr non-stop music” what do you think that was for?
3M made a fortune in cassette tapes, nobody complained then.
Even today you can find all the crap you want for free and legally.
Are you going to stop putting music on VEVO?
So no, piracy is not really your problem nor is free, is your crazy entitlement mentality and laws that enables you to be that dense.
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Are you aware of the Pareto’s Rule?
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“They do indicate that, if all pirate copies were sales, they would be X amount. Nobody specifically says that each pirated item is a lost sale, only that IF they were lost sales, they would be worth X.”
Which is a strawman and an idiotic misdirection. If they’re fully aware that this will never happen, why are these figures even discussed?
Perhaps if these studies were based on realistic figures and not pie-in-the-sky unachievable figures, they would be taken more seriously? Perhaps start with an intellectually honest study that accepts that free downloads can have effects in the opposite direction (e.g. people buying copies and/or supporting artists in other ways after having listened to a pirated copy – and YES this does happen).
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Liar, the RIAA frequently file lawsuits claiming that all downloads are lost sales, along with their MPAA pals Jack Valenti that may be in hell by now and Chris Dodd.
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Well if the musicians didn’t act like spoiled brats they wouldn’t be treated condescendingly.
How condescending is to say “Look you don’t understand how hard it is to work as a musician”, everybody understand perfectly, everybody knows how hard it is to work, because everybody works or worked at some point so everyone understands how hard it is.
Which is why nobody is going to accept special treatment for any class of people, specially if it impinges on their own rights.
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“but every lost sale can be attributed to an illegal download. “
Bullshit. The last album sale a major label lost from me was the soundtrack to The Raid, which I wasn’t allowed to buy due to regional restrictions. I can cite other sales lost as a direct result of high pricing, low quality previews or tracks unavailable outside of an album package. None of these have anything to do with piracy.
You Will Be Fine
Do you need a contract to distribute music to your fans?
You Will Be Fine
Didn’t David Bowie dump his record label exactly because he was tired of getting screwed by them?
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,623107,00.html
McCartney I believe founded his on label did he not?
If I look around I am certain I can find Sting, stinging labels too.
You Will Be Fine
When was that any musician ever required a contract from fans to share anything?
You Will Be Fine
Of course they do, the brainwashed always will prefer the shackles instead of freedom, they don’t know how to live in a free world.
You Will Be Fine
Not really, fans are those who like something and look for it and get whatever they can get their hands on.
Recently though I don’t see crowds of people screaming or stalking musicians anymore do you?
There are no more superstars is there?
Keep threading on people and you will have your wishes come true.
You Will Be Fine
The no payments and contracts is for you to decide.
The IP laws that grant you certain monopolies is for the people to decide if they agree with it or not.
The internet will not help you with that.
You Will Be Fine
How open source people get contracts, when everybody is free to copy, distribute, modify and even sell without asking for permission to do anything?
How fashion people survive?
How McDonalds become one of the biggests restaurants business in the world?
How Coca-Cola managed?
Why do you believe you are entitled to a monopoly that is so out of reality is now threatening democracy itself?
You Will Be Fine
“Getting paid or not getting paid”
False dichotomy, which not only assumes that using TPB will not get you paid, but that using traditional methods will. History is full of people with different experiences than the outcomes you assume…
“Where can I get a contract to get paid by the pirate bay and other sites operating illegally?”
Why do you think you need a contract to get paid by a system offering you free advertising?
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>if the culture is ok with stealing everything becasue they can, stop producing, then they can’t steal
No, then they create instead of throwing a tantrum like you.
You Will Be Fine
But you guys don’t even want to pay once.
OK, let’s talk copyright, but you can’t negotiate copyright while you’re taking the product without paying for it.. not even once.
Everyone on your list gets paid at least once.
Are fashion items free, is coca cola free, the happy meal?
So why should records be free?
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+1. I may disagree with El-P on where his outlook is, but I can absolutely appreciate the why. A well-thought assessment of what may be needed in the copyright arena.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: being a human being and explaining why you’re unhappy with things is a lot better than demonizing the opposition in opening negotiations.
You Will Be Fine
” If I’m not OK with that, you should respect my choice to continue to sell my music. If you don’t want to buy it, don’t take it against my wishes.”
All I can say to that is, don’t be so anonymous AC. Tell us who you are so we can happily avoid paying you or listening to your music.
You Will Be Fine
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I don’t want to buy his music, but until he outs his identity, I can’t be sure I’m not buying it.
Begging for money from “fans” isn’t begging? Another Techdirt head scratcher.
Same could be said of the fans
In these debates (no matter what venue) the artist almost always seems to be treated/viewed as a child. Either we don’t understand what’s good for us, can’t control what’s happening to us, can’t comprehend what’s bad for us or we are not wise enough to be grateful for what we are handed. It’s a debate that rages on almost exclusively without the input of the artist themselves
This same thing could be said about how the fans/public are treated. The copyright industry is doing their best to turn the public into criminals and locking down content for forever minus a day. We get rootkits, DRM, FBI warnings, license servers that may or may not be up when we play our video games and so on. All this for people who actually paid for their content. As for the pirates, well they circumvent all this stuff so it is of no bother to them.
The artists are on the other side of the equation and often have little to no control over the situation as well. So what we are stuck with are the middlemen making a lot of noise trying to exert control over the rest of us. So what needs to happen? The middlemen need to be eliminated. They are quickly becoming unnecessary overhead and yet they have all the power. This needs to end.
Hopefully what you will find here is not a bunch of freetards and pirates, but people who are fully willing to pay for content and Mike advocating ways for artists to make money through smarter, modern business models.
BTW, thanks for stopping by, it is always nice to hear from someone on the other side of the equation.
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>> even in the wettest dreams of a lonely RIAA lobbyist.
+1
honesty
the evidence is just not there, even in radiohead’s experiment the majority of people (62%) downloaded their album without paying for it.
And of those quite a few probably downloaded the album without listening to it (doen that a few times – even for things I have paid for)
and how many of those 62% would have paid if that was forced on them?
The point is never how many paople downloaded and didn’t pay. The only point is those who did pay and how much they paid.
I would regard anyone who received the amount of money Radiohead received for the amount of work they did and then proceeded to whine about the people who didn’t pay as an ungrateful idiot.
honesty
But because of pirates my music is taken against my wishes.
Change your wishes then – because that is the thing you CAN change.
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actually they do buy stuff, they buy video games which are harder to pirate, but not much music, which they can get for free.
Then the solution is to create music for video games then.
Seriously you need to accept that videogames have created a new option for entertainment spending – and that was always going to reduce the market for music, with or without piracy.
You Will Be Fine
Oh, it’s probably safe that you’re in no danger of buying it, it’s likely to be *so* obscure… and he’s lapping up every RIAA ‘promise’ that he’ll make it big… some day. if it weren’t for those pesky pirates!
You Will Be Fine
To all those saying “well why doesnt pirate bay give contracts to artists, if their sooo much better then media company’s, whahh whahh wahh”, which i might add, was started by some twat here, putting words in another commenters mouth, which is usually a sign of someone who values their own opinion above all else, truth honesty and betterment optional, but not required.
But back to my point, where is pirate bay gonna get this “mony” to pay artists?
What do you think would happen if pirate bay started a business model in order to earn “this cash” which they will be paying to the artists?
I tell you what will happen, more direct intervention and cock blocking by those in the same business, and then the inevitable techdirt whiners
” YOU SEE, bunch of thiefs making money of media company PROPERTIES, i was right always have been, in your face, freeterds”
While convienintly ignoring the reason behind it, and the “in your face” FACT, that these actions would create a direct competitor, in this case superior competitor in regards to delivery, to those that are trying to bash, shame, and creating laws to make it legal to essentially destroy competition
In a nut shell, to those particular techdirt commenters putting words in other peoples mouths in order to BASH, and that IS what their goal is, i say
“Fuck Y’all, kool aid drinking, motherfckers”
Stay stale, and rot, metaphysically speaking
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The thing is, we know that the recorded music industry dropped 60% in the Napster decade. You would have to be more than slightly daft not to accept that there is some causation here.
No – there is only correlation – and here are some other correlated things
1) The cost of CD’s stays high – despite the fact that evryone knows they now cost pennies to make.
2) My generation have completed the process of replacing their vinyl with CD. I stopped buying CDs duriing that period – apart from purchases made direct from the artist at concerts.
The piracy hypothesis is not required to explain the figures.
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A lot of musicans are fan supported. I hope more and more are.
Actually all musicians are fan supported – and always have been – with the notable exception of a few gentlemen of independent means – such as Henry VIII.
You Will Be Fine
then point out ways I’m wrong, give citations.”
here ya go:
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post /
Well actually the title says it all – “worse than the old boss” already implies that the old boss was bad – so you haven’t made your point – you’ve undermined it!
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Basically yes, if you define infringing as ‘stealing’ then yes, as a whole society seems to be ok with that. Just like as a whole, society tolerates limited speeding.
Notice that actual stealing, i.e. shoplifting, isn’t tolerated – but people still make concessions to its effects.
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Asking for money isn’t begging. But by some definitions, putting a shiny plastic disc in a storefront is ‘begging’ someone to buy it.
You Will Be Fine
I dunno, maybe you can post the mental health records of David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Sting, Mick Fleetwood, Bruce Springsteen proving how crazy they were to sign a major label contract time and time and time again.
You cite artists who had long enough careers to survive the first contract. Once you are an established artist the deals are better because they know you can always walk away and get a better deal somewhere else.
Those artists you mention will have had a 2% royalty on their first deal (information supplied by Pete Townsend of The Who).
Richard Branson built a huge company on the basis of offering a better deal than the established labels – according to economic and business theory that should not be possible if those deals were already fair.
honesty
“and how many of those 62% would have paid if that was forced on them?”
…and the other factor people who whine about this tend to ignore – how many downloaded for free, listened *then* decided to pay? IIRC there was no way to simply donate, so paying for another copy would have meant downloading a “paid” copy on top of the “free” copy, thus skewing the statistics.
Among the many assumptions made in this by the pro-label folks, the idea that someone may obtain an album for free, and then are guaranteed to never, ever pay a penny later on down the line is one of the silliest. It’s not only ridiculous, but it betrays an utter lack of understand of how people actually consume music.
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I’m going to buy his album because of that quote. No joke.
Screw your fans...
Your cat needs love!
You Will Be Fine
But you guys don’t even want to pay once.
Who ever said that?
honesty
I paid fairly little for the download and purchased the physical disc when it came out. I wonder how many of the 62% went out and bought the physical afterward? Essentially that throws your theory out with the trash.
You Will Be Fine
Take a read at the comments, remember DeeLite? Well the singer replied and said that Lowery’s claims of 30%+ royalties were unheard-of in her circles. 12% was more realistic so she says.
I would not make the assumption that because Lowery claims the good ‘ol days were good and now sucks (the rest of his article(s) were mostly a rant and were built off the concept that you have to sell copies to make money, along with some anti-tech company banter with wrong assumptions for his rant).
Re:
So if you are an artists, why don’t you tell us who you are?
Since you are AC, and that reply was to freaky, why would you think the response was a welcome to you?
The labels well documented abuse of artists should be undeniable at this point.
Hating on Google? Really? A search engine?
Re:
Artists that say the every pirate just tells them to sell tshirts are dumb. They have proven that they have not read a damn thing. Look more into the articles of CwF+RtB. RtB does not say “sell tshirts and you’ll do fine.”
You want to be taken seriously? Stop cherrypicking a piece of the argument and extrapolating that premise to the entire argument, thus providing yourself with a strawman fallcy.
Instead read all presented premises and the actual argument presented. Otherwise expect backlash when you complain “you just want us to sell tshirts and give our music away” which isn’t want anyone here suggested.
You Will Be Fine
Is the Pirate Bay taking ownership of their rights? No.
Is the Pirate Bay charging them fees for distribution? No.
Is the Pirate Bay providing them with an advance which they must fully recoup otherwise the artist has to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying back the advance? No.
Is the Pirate Bay making money off of the artist and charging them for services (but not paying for said service with the money they already made)? No.
Is the Pirate Bay’s income supporting the FREE distribution mechanism for any artist to disperse (or fans or enemies or people who just want to share and do care or don’t care) via ads but charging the artists nothing more? Yes.
Is the Pirate Bay loaded with money and charging users fees, in addition to ad-revenue, and raking in the cash? No (see the damn court case – proven they ain’t got the cash IFPI said they did).
So when you have a free service, that is free to you, should you be paid in addition to being provided a free distribution service? NO!
You Will Be Fine
We’ll provide a link when you provide a link that the Pirate Bay charges YOU for services provided.
Re:
95% to 60%? Citation needed (with actual valid math, not numbers pulled out of one’s backside, ie: IFPI).
You Will Be Fine
As usual the AC’s completely miss the point. There is no crappy contract. Its called free distribution and exposure. Key work there being free. I will take that over all my cash going to the Rubes at the RIAA everyday of the week.
Nigel
honesty
How much did they make compared to previous label supported releases again?
Re:
“Nice rant, but you’re totally wrong. The “tech corporate fat cats” treat artists 100x better than record labels ever did, which is why the labels are running scared.”
That’s fantastic news, just show me that contract and terms from the Pirate Bay is issuing artists, and how much they are paying and we can compare that to a record label contract.
Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to show me the contract artists are getting from the Pirate Bay? Uh what? The Pirate Bay actually makes 100% of the money and pays the artists 0% of the money… oh, yeah, that’s definitely 100xs better… for The Pirate Bay…
Re:
Spotify is NOT replacing radio. Radio wasn’t on demand. Spotify is actually launching an internet radio service to compete with Pandora. Man, you guys don’t even understand the most basic concepts do you?
Pandora = Radio. Spotify = Retail Subscription. Pandora = Win. Spotify = Fail.
Spotify is a disaster for artists, which is why many of them are leaving the service. Spotify in a panic is now launching a Pandora like service so that 1) no one can opt out (due to it being like radio and not retail) and 2) so they can grow a subscriber base to (hopefully) migrate to the on demand (not radio) service.
Pitching Spotify’s on demand service as a replacement for radio is an outright lie. Terrestrial radio is still the #1 driver for music sales. Spotify cannibalizes music sales.
You really need to educate yourself. Actually I’m sure you already know all this, it’s just in your interest to not tell the truth.
Re:
Getting busted for price fixing and having a new platform that allows indie musicians to functionally compete had nothing to do with it at all.
/sarc
Re:
hating on tech companies taking 100% of the money and paying the artists 0%. where are the contracts for artists to get paid from piracy?
tell you what, when google starts sharing the ad revenue with the artists they are monetizing advertising against on pirate sites you’ll have a point, until than you have the usual BS.
let’s just see how fair these artists contracts are from the pirate bay? Oh, what’s that? The pirate bay does not give artists contracts or payments? FAIL.
You Will Be Fine
Rolling Stone had the power, back in the day, to give artists a huge burst of publicity and sales via their articles, or the complete opposite. The masses followed like sheep.
So they could indeed hurt the artists careers!
honesty
Radiohead could only have made more because EMI invested millions and millions of dollars into the band being “Radiohead.”
For the bands without the support of millions in corporate financing there is no upshot. More music is stolen than purchased and if every band had no label, the numbers would not grow. Ask all the hobbyists on Tunecore making an average of $277 a year. Wow, that’s a living. That will pay the rent.
FAIL.
honesty
says you. the wild west wasn’t wild forever and neither will the internet be. boo hoo.
Re:
And the price fixing had nothing to do with that.
Nor the fact that people were replacing worn out vinyl and stretched/chewed cassette tapes.
The devil is in the details and the only people will the full demographical information containing proof that new sales were dropping before Napster and people were replacing old, previous purchased formats are the labels. The same companies who won’t ever let that cat out of the bag because they know it would discredit their so-called studies. All we have are samples that prove such. No mass collection.
Want that proof? Indict the labels and subpoena their financial and data records.
You Will Be Fine
Go re-read the articles on the court case against The Pirate Bay and see for yourself they DO NOT HAVE PROFITS! They barely earn a living! And many legitimate uses/content is shared through the Pirate Bay.
Get off it, you sound like Lowery and his anti-Google/Apple rant.
honesty
no, the point is the OP in this thread asserted, “I truly believe most fans will support the artists they like.”
that is not true as 62% of Radiohead FANS paid nothing for the bands album when the band gave them a choice to pay, or not. So this argument is FALSE.
you can move the goal posts, and you can change the conversation, but the fact remains the assertion that “fans will support the artists they like” is absolutely false if given the choice to obtain the album for free, even if illegally so.
FAIL, Next…
Re:
Spotify DOES less!
Does Spotify provide advances? Marketing? Take control of copyrights? Hinder artist creativity? No!
So why the hell should Spotify pay the artist more?
honesty
“I wonder how many of the 62% went out and bought the physical afterward? Essentially that throws your theory out with the trash.”
no, there’s no data to support that claim. what data we do have is that 62% of the bands FANS decided not to pay the band for their album.
FAIL.
honesty
They made more because they EMI had already spent millions making them “Radiohead.” Why don’t you show me an example of this model working for a band that wasn’t built on millions of dollars of promotion and marketing money?
Go ahead, let’s see that LIST of artists? You know like all the artists on Tunecore making an average of $2179 per year.
Wow, That’s success!
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/042511tunecore#dLuDbcK_0fMVeNKJf4N0QQ
Re:
That’s fantastic news, just show me that contract and terms from the Pirate Bay is issuing artists, and how much they are paying and we can compare that to a record label contract.
First, the Pirate Bay isn’t a label. Second, the Pirate Bay isn’t distributing music, they are pointing to where music is being distributed, and third, Pirate Bay is not the tech corporate fat cats.
You complain because nobody else understands what is going on here, but it is quite clear that you sir, are the clueless one.
But keep thrusting your fist in the air. Eventually you’ll stop the world, or get struck by lightening.
honesty
You mean like there is no data to prove piracy is harmful either?
Shocking.
Re:
Spotify pays artists way less than any label ever did.
But they pay more than terrestrial radio, which is their closest analog equivalent.
You think I’m grateful to Google who post links to my work on pirate sites, then make some money from advertising off my loss.
You think Google posts links to your work on pirate sites? That’s utterly ridiculous. Not even the rabid Google haters claim this.
And none of the big “pirate sites” use Adwords. I’m sure there are a few that slip through the cracks, but almost none of Google’s profits come from them.
On the other hand, if you’re a YouTube partner, most people can make more money from YouTube videos than they ever could from traditional media companies. (Not hard, since the amount of money most artists make from traditional media companies is zero.)
Besides, “tech corporate fat cats” don’t just include Google and Spotify. It also includes iTunes (which pays much more directly to artists than labels ever did), Amazon, SoundCloud, CD Baby, Tunecore, etc.
Re:
no cherry picking. simple logic. by telling artist the money is in t-shirts and touring, you are admitting there is no money for artists in the cyber/digital/online economy. that is self evident. if it needs further explaining I can’t help you.
also, forcing artists to make money from touring and merchandising is a step BACKWARDS. It’s not innovation to take a 40 year leap BACKWARDS. So much for your argument of innovation when the best thing you can offer is sending artists BACKWARDS 40 years.
if the online models were truly innovative they wouldn’t need to illegally exploit artists and creators to get the models to work. the models would work with innovative new content.
So where are all those bands and movies being financed by the pirate bay and other pirate sites? how come these guys have a business model ONLY when they can monetize the work and labor of someone else?
Even Google’s Chief Economist knows you are WRONG…
honesty
You do understand that according to observations of the real world only 20% or less would at any given time pay for it anyways right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
There go educate yourself so you don’t look so dumb when talking out of your ass.
honesty
After copyrights ends 🙂
Re:
OK, so Spotify is a retailer rather than a radio station. That still doesn’t make them a label nor a substitute for a label, which was your original claim.
Are you capable of presenting an argument without strawmen, misdirections and outright lies? Can you even keep up the same argument without moving goalposts every time you’re shown to be wrong? It really doesn’t look like it to me…
“Pitching Spotify’s on demand service as a replacement for radio is an outright lie. “
No, it’s not. That’s what I use it for, and I suspect a great many other people as well. For many people, it’s also a replacement for PIRACY (it’s usually far quicker and easier to stream a Spotify album than download a torrent of the album). That means people who would normally pirate actually pay for their content. Why do you oppose this?
“Spotify is a disaster for artists”
Citation needed. A few indie labels leaving doesn’t prove this, especially since most of those labels seem to have had the same panics over other services (e.g. eMusic).
At least provide a citation for how artists (not labels) get less from Spotify than they did from labels, because all the figures I’ve seen suggest the opposite…
“Spotify in a panic is now launching a Pandora like service”
Huh? Sorry if I’m not sure what the hell you’re blathering on about here, not least because unlike Pandora, I’m actually permitted to use Spotify. Care to explain?
“Terrestrial radio is still the #1 driver for music sales.”
Citation needed.
“Spotify cannibalizes music sales. “
Citation needed.
“You really need to educate yourself.”
Oh yes, everybody else is wrong apart from you, yet you fail to present even a shred of proof for your own claims. I wonder why…
Re:
Did you pay royalties for the people who enable you to be a musician like the software people, hardware manufacturers, car manufacturers, farmers and so forth?
No, why should Google has to pay anything to you then?
They don’t use anything from you, their job is to index the web and they do that and you want a cut?
That is why don’t feel sorry for you people.
Pirates should take it all and give nothing because you guys are not worth anything.
Re:
“No they actually file lawsuits claiming that crap and get bitch slapped in courts all over the world.”
looks to me like it was Jaime Thomas and Joel Tenenbaum who got bitch slapped. Even a Harvard Law Prof couldn’t argue effectively against the illegal exploitation of artists work without consent or compensation.
FAIL.
honesty
Ask all the hobbyists on Tunecore making an average of $277 a year. Wow, that’s a living. That will pay the rent.
Um. And how much do you think hobbyist musicians were making before Tunecore? Were they better off selling hand-burned CDs to the crowd of twenty people at the local bar?
honesty
The wild west wasn’t a progressive event while the internet has been.
Then again, we all know you’re just afraid of change.
You Will Be Fine
I take pride in possibly being the one to introduce you to Nightwish. I know I mentioned Imaginaerum a while back on here (specifically here), and it feels good to introduce people to things they end up liking. If it was just independent discovery, then kudos on finding such a great album/band 🙂
Re:
One of the recent developments I’ve noticed in the ACs’ loosening grip on reality is that now they’re flailing out against anybody in the tech sector, regardless of their actual role. They seem to be trying to apply the same expectations on the likes of Spotify and Tunecore as they would a record label, even though they do completely different things. They whine about Amazon and Apple not doing the same things as a traditional book publisher, despite the fact they don’t claim to. They whine that Kickstarter don’t get directly involved in the businesses they help fund, even though that’s not their aim nor their remit.
They’re increasingly not even addressing reality at this point. It’s pathetic, but it makes countering their “points” a lot easier…
Re:
If anyone’s giving Google lots of advertising money, it’s the major labels, not Pirate Bay. You are the FAIL.
And Google offers lots of ways for artists to share ad revenue. Make a video of your song and put it on Youtube, and you can share ad revenue. It’s pretty simple, and doesn’t require any middleman recording industry.
Re:
“At least provide a citation for how artists (not labels) get less from Spotify than they did from labels”
The last word there should have been radio stations…
Re:
“But keep thrusting your fist in the air. Eventually you’ll stop the world, or get struck by lightening.”
I’m always reminded of this, and he’s just as effective:
http://images.wikia.com/simpsons/images/b/b1/Hi.jpg
You Will Be Fine
Is the Pirate Bay paying artists anything. NO.
Is the Pirate Bay respecting artists. NO.
Is the Pirate Bay sharing the profit with artists. NO.
The pirate bay is NOT a free service, nor does it provide the artists with any service. The Pirate Bay is a FOR PROFIT company making 100% of the money and paying artists 0%.
If anything you are saying is true, than why not let the artists decide for themselves? Hmmm… probably because the pirate bay has no business without illegally exploiting artists and keeping 100% of the money… that number again is the pirate bay keeping 100% of the money and paying artists ZERO percent.
FAIL.
honesty
You do realize there are a bunch of ways to support an artist right? Radiohead routinely sells out HUGE concerts. And the 62% figure from their experiment does not take into account anyone who also went out and bought the album at a record store or from somewhere online. Pre-release sales of that album beat their previous album, which was not available for free. The vinyl edition was also the top-selling vinyl album of the year.
Radiohead is doing just fine. Their fans are rabidly supporting them. You can’t just pluck one figure and claim that it proves it’s “FALSE” that people want to support artists.
honesty
Hmmm…there is this girl called Bibber have you heard of him?
She started on the internet I believe.
There are a lot more people though that are making 6 figures just on Youtube alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_YouTube_personalities
honesty
Here’s a response from Jeff Price, head of Tunecore, on that:
You Will Be Fine
what’s desperate is the attempt to justify the wrong doing of the pirate bay who make 100% of the money and pay artists 0%.
that’s ZERO money paid to artists. ZERO.
That’s desperate indeed that a business model is sooooo bad, that it requires ripping off artists 100% so that they can make their MILLIONS.
Labels Pay Artists. Pirates Don’t.
honesty
Yeah it was a huge success, which is precisely why Radiohead chose not to repeat the experiment when they released King Of Limbs.
honesty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charice_Pempengco
Got a gig on Glee and started on Youtube LoL
honesty
I read that as 62% of the people who would have never bought my album are now listening to it. That’s much better than having a bunch of people NOT listen to my music.
How does El-P expect me to become a fan? Because of his clever name? I have to hear the music first. The first goal is to get the music into everyone’s ears. If radio’s not going to do it for you, what are your options.
Artists complain about people downloading for free, but they have no qualms about people watching their video for free (which is actually much more work to produce), or streaming the music for free, or hearing it on the radio for free. From the fan’s point of view – what’s the difference?
Re:
and uhm, labels actually pay the artists, and pirates actually don’t. so when it comes time to pay the rent, it’s better to get paid.
but what’s worse is, if an artist doesn’t sign to a label, they still can’t get paid from pirates (who are making 100% of the money)
so you are asking artists to not get paid, so that they can have no hope of getting paid for the consumption of their music.
asking artists to tour and sell t-shirts is an outright admission that there is no money for musicians in the online economy, and further more, it’s a step backwards of about 40-50 years… that’s how artists did it before the internet and you want them to go backwards not forwards.
of course anyone can put an album up via tunecore, but the average tunecore artist is only making $179 a year…
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/042511tunecore#dLuDbcK_0fMVeNKJf4N0QQ
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Fantastic execution, but, still, fuck you man.
honesty
The point, Marcus, is that the potential of such “DIY” services, as a replacement for label support, have been routinely overblown. If you support art and artists, then ultimately you do want some of them to have the chance to make an okay living from their work. For now, the label system is helping artists do that far more than Tunecore or the battery of “DIY” services.
honesty
Oh snap…apparently Itunes pays less per song download to artists than Tunecore…
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2011/111103labelpays
I guess Tunecore is not all so bad.
honesty
and guess which gig is actually paying the bills? youtube or glee? hmmm, let me guess… Glee.
same with beiber, is youtube paying the bills or interscope records. hmmm, let me guess… Interscope Records.
pick a lie and stick to it.
you are just pointing out how youtube can’t support artists and they need to get real gigs that really pay. thanks for making the point so clear.
honesty
The difference is whether or not your consumption is licensed. You can choose to be aware of that reality or ignore it. Your choice.
Re:
Oh google leaked it to drive hits to their search engine. That makes plenty of sense
honesty
“You guys keep talking like no one can take advantage of the internet without the help of pirates.”
No, we’re talking like no one needs to put a lot of effort into eliminating piracy in order to take advantage of the internet.
Re:
wow, just wow, what a great work of delusion fiction.
pretty much everything you’ve posted is dead wrong, but here’s one biggie…
“Terrestrial radio is still the #1 driver for music sales.”
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/12/active-vs-passive-fans-why-radio-tv-still-rank-tops-for-music-discovery-best-of-hypebot.html
Spotify is NOTHING like radio. Radio sells records, Spotify cannibalizes sales.
http://www.tested.com/news/news/3194-music-distributor-pulls-200-small-labels-from-spotify-and-rdio/
“A recent study conducted by NPD Group and NARM found that streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio are detrimental to the sales of individual pieces of music. “
http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120207mccartney
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120113vanhalen
http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2011-12-13/the-black-keys-discuss-their-controversial-spotify-decision/
honesty
In the end you have to consider basic economic maths. The money the labels pay doesn’t come from them – it comes from fans. Fans only have a limited amount of disposable income. They will spend that on music whatever the system. Taking the middlemen out of the equation can only mean lore money for musicians. One side effect is that now we have a larger number of musicians making less money each. There are winners and losers from this – but overall musicians are winners.
Re:
Its replacing radio, just because its replacing radio does not mean it can not add more features than radio had. Pandora is radio on the internet, Spotify is the next evolution. Why is it so hard for you people to realize that technology moves forward? Also subscription is not required for spotify.
Re:
Well why don’t you make your own radio then and stop leeching off of the work of others than you get all the money?
Oh that is right you can’t do it, you depend on others and you don’t want to pay them.
honesty
“for now”
So you recognize that the shift is underway, and inevitable. That’s good enough for me. The rest is just arguing about where exactly in that process we are.
Re:
why is the tech sector so worried about what artists think? why not just keep on illegally exploiting artists work and profiting in the millions just as they have for the past decade? I don’t see why you should even care. carry on, just keep ripping off artists, and just keep doing it worse than any label ever did… yup, tech are the good guys, screwing artists in new and inventive ways the labels weren’t smart enough to do… yup, it takes a different kind of self entitled selfishness to screw artists in a way that only tech companies and engineers could dream up.
carry on, just keep ripping off artists, that always ends well. you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.
Re:
Tell you what when you understand what a search engine does we can talk because you just sound like an idiot when you say Google monetize artists and forget that Google actually monetizes everybody and it is legal to do so they broke no law, but you seem to think that indexing your shitty crap is somewhat different and should get a cut?
Blood sucking leech that is what you are.
The Pirate Bay is not a label either so why should they have the need for a contract, further since they are not the ones doing the sharing why are they responsible? because they didn’t block something you wanted it censored?
honesty
exactly, it worked out so well they chose NOT to do it again.
FAIL.
Re:
radio wasn’t on demand. radio sold records.
spotify is on demand. spotify does not sell records.
also, there’s no “discovery” on spotify. radio exposed artists, but people go to spotify to hear what they already know.
honesty
“what data we do have is that 62% of the bands FANS decided not to pay the band for their album.”
No, the data we have is that 62% of albums were acquired without payment. That does not necessarily translate to 62% of fans getting it without payment. For one thing, a person can download an album and then buy it if they like it, contributing to both slices of the pie chart. Then there’s the people who hadn’t heard of the band before, and so at the time of downloading could not be considered fans.
And even discounting those, you’re still getting mad at the fact that that number of people didn’t buy the album. I can’t begin to count the number of albums that I haven’t bought; whether or not I’ve listened to them doesn’t have any financial effect on the artist.
Re:
How exactly is the tech sector ripping off artists in any way?
The ones apparently doing the ripping off are artists not tech, and talking about ripping off those same artists should be more concerned with their own support platforms(i.e. labels) which are infamous for doing exactly that.
As for pirates, well I hope they continue to rip you off, from today till the end of times, because that is exactly what you people deserve.
honesty
the wild west wasn’t wild forever, and neither will the internet be, so “for now” there is lawlessness, but it won’t be that way forever. so yes, I’m good with where we are at “for now” as you realize the current path is unsustainable for the tech industry illegally exploiting artists without consent or compensation.
You Will Be Fine
Better safe than sorry… I have a *lot* of obscure music I’ve bought, especially in my eMusic & DJing days. But, I agree, it’s more likely that he’s just an outright failure and attacking the wrong target in his rage.
Re:
truth hurts.
honesty
I never got a license to rip off music from the radio was that bad?
I never got a license for listening to radio is that illegal?
I never got a license to play VEVO is the legal?
You Will Be Fine
Copyright: the right to make copies.
“So why should records be free”
They shouldn’t, there is physical stuff in a record.
A digital copy, however, doesn’t cost a darn thing.
Kickstarter is successful because it moves things to commission model, where you get paid (once) up front and anything else is gravy. This is also the model for work for hire, but that will lock you out of your own work.
The commission model is very likely to be the future of copyright industries.
Picture this, a new artist makes a work on the side and releases it while asking for donations so they can spend more time making future works. Once they have a decent fan base and have proven themselves, they make a transition to crowd funding sources and full time artistry.
Before you go saying that someone can’t make a living that way, I’d encourage you to check out some of the more popular webcomics. It generally takes a few years, but the donations eventually reach a point where they can quit any other job they have and go full-time artist. There is no onus on anyone to ever pay beyond understanding that paying means the artist keeps making art, and that is actually sufficient.
No, you won’t strike it big going down this road, but you also won’t have to play by the rules of a corporate entity or worry about being dropped or scammed. There is no big leap of faith, as you just need to get a small sample out there every so often to start attracting fans, and you’ll have a solid metric to judge the transition.
It is harder for established artists to make the transition, but most already have the fan base and it is more finding the way to make the connection that is difficult. Kickstarter and social media tend to work pretty well though. I’d recommend advertising a social media outlet of choice if you’re going to make the jump over, and then doing an event to introduce the donate button.
In short, you’re still watching the water and the dam, when El P has specifically stated that he’s looking to build a boat. He wants to talk with a carpenter, you’re directing him to masons.
Re:
the pirate bay pays artists ZERO money. ZERO. they are illegally exploiting the artists work without consent or compensation. if they have such a great model either 1) let the artist decide to participate or not, and/or 2) pay the artist.
your right the pirate bay is not a record label. record labels PAY artists. the pirate bay keeps 100% of the money for themselves. uh, yeah, that’s fair. 100% Greed.
honesty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiohead
Apparently they did it in 2011 more than once.
https://www.youtube.com/user/radiohead
Further the first song on their Youtube channel tells people to go download a copy on their website LoL
You Will Be Fine
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2003/09/12/how-record-labels-exploit-bands/
Hey, TPB sounds better than this:
“For instance, if the artists grosses $3 million dollars, that translates to $750,000 of profit for the record label. How much does a band member get? $4031.25.
But not really. Because the band is also $14,000 in debt to the record company. So for a deal which gave the label $750,000 profit, the band profits approximately $5,000. Put another way, after all expenses are accounted for, and everyone but the band and the label has been paid, of the remaining money 99.4% is paid to the label; the remainder is paid to the artists.”
Re:
” actually they do buy stuff, they buy video games which are harder to pirate, “
You’re either joking, or really, REALLY stupid.
You Will Be Fine
good for you drew, you get to make choices for yourself, you don’t get to make choices for other artists. if you don’t mind me asking, how much have you gotten paid from the pirate bay, and, uhm… I don’t suppose you work a day job do you?
hmmmmm….
Re:
A blog? Are you fucking kidding me?
Come on. The quote is “in space” with all of the context around it removed. Are you fucking kidding me? Even Mike wouldn’t cherry pick that bad!
honesty
Further, lets be clear here – the number of albums owned by people is increasing, not decreasing (the MP3 generation) – yet the sales of recorded music are 60% lower than they were pre-MP3.
One can very easily draw a conclusion that, the arrival of MP3s and piracy have directly lead to the falling recorded music sales.
It would seem that the numbers correlate very nicely here. Denying it is pretty much admitting you don’t want to see anything that blows up your pro-piracy views.
Re:
I’m always reminded of this
Perfect! Gonna have to store that somewhere.
Re:
Terrestrial radio LoL
Don’t know for who, because it certainly isn’t where I discover anything.
Now about Spotify, you crazy person the study apparently is saying all streaming services are bad for musicians and so is Pandora since it is a streaming service, what an idiot you are.
You Will Be Fine
The Pirate Bay doesn’t make the decisions either, the users do. The Pirate Bay just offers a way to find torrents, just as Google offers a way to find domain names. The difference is that The Pirate Bay has gone out of its way to try and help artists with promotions.
Yep, definitely a horrible wretched hive of scum and villainy there. /s
Tor is an internet protocol. The Pirate Bay is a search engine. Go after the host of the infringing tracker, for there is the distributor.
You Will Be Fine
Lol, wow really?
So anyone who is a musician should have instant success?
You should really read this http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2003/09/12/how-record-labels-exploit-bands/
as it explores the awesomeness of how labels screw over artists for money.
honesty
Liar, the only thing 60% below is the sales of plastic discs, digital venues not included.
Do you even read the RIAA reports?
Re:
You don’t like to read do you?
It is a court case filled by the RIAA you can go get the court records those are public.
You Will Be Fine
Don’t forget too that the Pirate Bay is offering free marketing to up and coming artists.
Labels don’t do that.
Re:
So what?
The Pirate Bay does not exploit the artists, users do.
You Will Be Fine
notice how he is pointedly ignoring Drew, who IS a working musician. My money is on the AC not being any sort of musician at all.
/ also demands proof
honesty
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that a lot of people downloaded the album without paying. I just find it unlikely that the full 62% could be attributed to fans deciding that they didn’t ever want to pay for it.
honesty
The tech people don’t depend you artists for sales, you do know that don’t you?
honesty
Monopolies end and so will copyright, boo hoo.
Re:
Pirates are the only people who care others don’t even bother looking up some musician let alone pay for it.
honesty
Lets correlate, plot the graph of digital sales along with the physical sales and see what it happens.
Also plot the piracy numbers that keep growing.
Further plot mark the dates of the “education campaign” in the US and see how well it lines up with the decline in sales.
You Will Be Fine
The thing is he is not making a choice for anyone.
The public has made that choice for you already and you don’t get a say in it, just like people don’t get a seat on the committees.
You Will Be Fine
That is the point stupid, everybody even open source gets paid and they let everybody copy it freely, so if they can why can’t you?
Re:
You have obviously never used spotify if you think there is no discovery. I can see what my friends and acquaintances listen to and check that out. I can search for playlists with bands I like. I find tons of new music on spotify.
radio wasn’t on demand. Right like I said services evolve.
spotify does not sell records. My credit card statements say otherwise.
honesty
Correction, 62% of PEOPLE downloaded it didn’t pay.
What percentage of the 62% were fans? Citation needed.
What percentage of the 62% purchased the album physically or purchased the album by downloading it again, paying for it this time?
What percentage of the 62% purchased other material from Radiohead?
You do not have the answers and you cannot assume, because you want to produce an argument, what you have no evidence for.
And when supplied evidence from IFPI is mathematically impossible, their studies lose credibility.
honesty
Citation needed for YOUR claim!
Right, no data for that either!!!
People downloaded, not necessarily fans.
Simple logic for you: Sheep have four legs, but not all four legged animals are sheep.
honesty
“that is true as 62% of the people who downloaded a free Radiohead album paid nothing for the bands album when the band gave them a choice to pay or not. But all of their fans paid for it and they made more money then they did on any label record they released so this statement is TRUE.”
FTFY
Not to mention that each download was probably not a unique person. You also don’t know how many people that never bought a radiohead album before bought that one.
honesty
Now you’re changing your argument in an attempt to win a losing argument – true sign of a argumentative, but misinformed individual.
honesty
typing things in caps does not suddenly make them true. It does make you look like a moron though.
honesty
The Internet is also in no way, shape or form even close to the Wild West. It’s completely ridiculous to compare the two.
Re:
He likes other people to do the work for him, I guess he works for a label.
Re:
Your either a troll or just very very very stupid and naive
Thanks
First thank you El for your input and thoughts, it helps to show the real people affected are the artist (and all the talk by both sides seems to leave this out).
Just so you know by doing this I have now heard of you and will check out your album, and if I like it I will purchase it, if not I wish you success (and I may still buy it to support you because you spoke out reasonably and intellengently and should be rewarded for it in a time when so few do).
You Will Be Fine
Yep, I get to make the choice for myself, but when it comes to material being released back into the public domain, that choice appears to be only at the behest of the legacy industry players. Funny that.
But I digress.
Yes, I choose to accept how the world is working and use that to my advantage. Not accepting this doesn’t seem like a good solution to me, let me know how it works out for you.
As to the Pirate Bay, dude, I would love to be significant enough to figure on the Pirate Bay. That would tell me that people actually liked my music enough to consider sharing it.
But it one of my friends lends a copy of my album to a friend of theirs (and they take a copy) i don’t expect them to pay me either…
I appreciate that there’s a lot of stuff on this thread and you probably haven’t read my previous post, so I’ll clarify. I’m an average musician. That’s all. So yes, I work a day job, I will always work a day job. In the label model that’s all that would be open to me. In the new model I can get a few fans and a few contributions from across the globe that both helps me cover a few costs but also gives me a nice little boost about what I do.
Re:
“of course anyone can put an album up via tunecore, but the average tunecore artist is only making $179 a year”
Yes when anyone can put an album up the average an artist makes goes down. I can upload myself farting on a snare drum it won’t sell but it can be on there. It brings down the average of the talented acts that do make money. Also these are acts that did not have access to this revenue stream before. Going from 0 a year to 179 a year is a 80 bazillion % increase.
Also every time you say that the average goes down. At least keep your bullshit straight.
Re:
1) Wrong assumption, still strawman with the “tshirt and touring” argument and the denial that copies can’t earn money
2) Wrong understanding, copies do not ALWAYS equate to money – meaning you can’t say that selling copies is guaranteed income because it isn’t – which does NOT mean you cannot sell copies, just means you can’t guarantee it will be income
3) Exploitation? Talk to Billy Corgan about that, no one exploited artists more than the labels
4) Pirate Bay does NOT make enough money to provide FREE distribution AND advances to artists — can you stop insisting otherwise?
5) “How come these guys have a business model ONLY when they can monetize the work and labour of someone else” — that’s EXACTLY what a label does!
The work of the artist, producer, mixer, marketing people, etc… – they monetize the work and labour of someone else – provide a loan (and ARE PAID BACK so don’t hand me that “unrecouped loss” funded by successful acts) which is akin to your bank lending you $50000 for your dream store you want to open, of which you have to pay for the tellers and loan officers who worked with you, pay for storage of your information in the banking system, and the bank takes all your revenue and gives you back a small portion, from which you have to pay back the $50000. But you can’t buy any merchandise to sell because you didn’t earn a profit despite selling everything in the store, so you have to get another loan for $20000 to buy stock. Now you’re in debt to them $70000 and they take all your revenue and give you a pittance.
Don’t you get it? The Pirate Bay is not a bank lending you money and taking your revenue. The Pirate Bay provides the roads to your store so people can find you and your stock. And it is free, you didn’t have to pay for those roads to be installed.
You want to compete with free? Give THEM A REASON TO BUY and THEY WILL!!!! Otherwise the downloaders who never would have bought anyhow will listen to you in the background while they play Wii (which they PAID for – that is the money they COULD have paid to you if you gave them more of a reason than “I recorded this”).
The real problem is competition now exists amongst the entertainment industry members. It’s no longer movies and music. It’s movies/music/video games (no longer a fringe group – but instead mainstream!!!!)/social networks etc.. some people pay for some they don’t.
Who is going to pay for music if they don’t feel they get anything from it and would rather play video games free on Facebook while chatting with friends?
What is their incentive to purchase the music? If they are a fan, that’s the incentive.
You have NO idea who was a fan and who was not, neither does Radiohead or EMI. So cut the “62% fan” bullshit.
You Will Be Fine
This guy has to be a troll. I can’t believe anyone can be so stupid, so bad at having a rational discussion, so horrible at following the thread of conversation and constantly reaching for strawmen without doing it on purpose.
Do people like this really exist? Is this level of pigheaded stupidity real? Even the labels know it isn’t really about piracy its about control of the market. This guy…this guy can’t be for real.
Re:
thats pretty funny, considering spotify is alot like youtube, and I have bought alot of music due to youtube music videos (user made) that featured songs from a band i had never even heard of.
I even imported a few pieces from the EU because nobody sold them on this side of the pond.
I also know many people who use “internet radio” or “streaming music” services and just set it to random so they can hear new stuff, one of my friends has bought thousands of songs thanks to services like slacker radio and spotify….
Your lies also suggest you cant find new music via torrents, and funny enough, I have found alot of what I have bought over the years via torrents as well, because I was able to find it free at good quality and try it….
to this day, I will que up some random stuff thats popular and give it a listen, if I like it, I buy it(on cd, never buy mp3’s or aac files, quality sucks compared to a good flac rip.)
honesty
No your wrong. No one uses google search or any google product unless its to steal content from artists. Without artists to leech from they would be poor.
/sarc
You Will Be Fine
Is the Pirate Bay CHARGING the artists anything? NO and they are not OFFERING anything beyond distribution for free.
And what rights are they not respecting? Infringement by pointing PEOPLE (the subclass could be fans and another subclass could be non-fans who just want music numbers because that’s impressive to chicks).
The Pirate Bay is not a free service? Citation needed on that one. Since when does the Pirate Bay send bills to artists for distributing their work?
How much money does the Pirate Bay make? The court case proved they make barely enough to survive.
Who gives a shit if they are for profit, their profits are covering the costs of free distribution! Yes free to any artist who wants to.
True, some don’t want it and they are lucked out because people (some might be instantiated objects of the sub-people class known as “fans”, or in Java, class Fans extends People) share. But those sharing who ARE fans or who WOULD NOW BECOME fans WILL pay if they feel to do so.
Again it does NOT matter if the Pirate Bay is for profit, they use their profits to pay for their service, which is NOT charged to the users. If it were, then you could have a point, but since TPB does NOT charge for the service, it is NOT a requirement that they PAY artists for their FREE service.
And quite with the “FAIL” bullshit, you sound like a damn kid. Grow up. Attempting to sound witty when you argue does not improve your chances of winning an argument.
And again, TPB IS free and DOES provide a service – it’s called exposure and distribution, and many artists ARE taking advantage of that.
Re:
2 and 5000 hell of a batting average there.. FAIL
You Will Be Fine
Tell that to members of The Band.
Free is the right price for music
Raise it, and people will simply find a more fan-friendly artist to listen to.
honesty
No, artists who go in half-assed get little. Artists who let go of the “old days” mentality and give it all they got, work with people who are marketers and managers who are NOT out to maximize profits, will do well and do.
Look at what artists really do when they succeed. And don’t forget, just because you can sing and play a guitar does NOT mean people feel your creative efforts are worth paying for!
Right now ANYONE can release music or art online, but NOT anyone will be able to earn a living at it. This is NO different from the days before the web when the Gatekeepers (labels/movie studios) decided what was exposed and what was not.
So here ANYONE can release and EVERYONE WHO DOES HAS A FAIR CHANCE! But does NOT mean that everyone who releases will be a success.
Why are major label big earners losing some cash, competition! There’s more art being created and more forms of entertainment (especially since video games went mainstream). That’s why there’s less money for people, but there’s still enough for people to earn a living.
You won’t be rich, but you CAN earn a living.
Caveat: you are NOT entitled to earn a living, you have to have created something people want!!! There’s no gatekeeper. If people don’t want your material or only a few do, you won’t be fileshared much either, so blaming piracy for being unpopular is NOT a means of dealing with the situation.
But that’s what we have. “Oh I suck but if I was with a label I’d have more money than Google will give me.” Sorry but if you’re not popular now, you would not even be on a label or you’d be dropped for not being profitable. And then without the internet, you would not even be heard!!! that’s ZERO chance of exposure or income!
That’s reality. Not a whole lot has changed except you have to do more yourself and you don’t have a gatekeeper preventing you from trying and failing. 20 yrs ago you would not even be given that chance. Don’t forget that!!!
Re:
first, pirate bay isnt a lable, they arent even a distributor, they are for all intents and perpouses free advertising directing to downloads of various forms of content.
honesty
It’s the AC moron playbook: make false/unsupportable accusations and claims, change the subject when challenged, when finally cornered act like a 3 year old throwing a hissy fit, throw out random insults and then disappear to the next thread to do the same again.
It’s stupid, but I fear there’s more than one person actually sticking to this tactic, which is as pathetic as it is counter-productive, but there you go…
honesty
Are you kidding? Nobody needs a license to consume media. When did I sign an agreement to listen to 80s hits at my grocery store?
Re:
I can tell whoever designed this blog hates the tech industry, that must be why they decided to make such an ugly looking blog and post it on blogspot which is owned by google. Way to stick it to google by using their products…
honesty
because the lables need to have perpetual control incase like a few rare acts, the music will sell later.
its not right that they cant have over a hundred year monopoly on anything and everything they paid somebody else to create(or bought the rights to)
You Will Be Fine
“We want you to succeed, but do it without violating our human rights and with giving us art that we want.”
You’ve got that right. All Black Eyed Peas albums are major human rights violations and should be prosecuted accordingly.
Re:
This is why nuanced argument is lost on most shills, they never notice the “devil in the details” approach that most people on Techdirt look into. Instead, they can’t support their arguments so they must try to inundate people.
Active vs Passive
I am doubting that the study is as nuanced as need be. In it, it says that 80% of the people considered active find new music from people they’re fans of. This begs the question of how does a respondent become a fan via the study? I doubt they’ve asked that question but maybe you can point to the answer for me.
Spotify is NOTHING like radio. Radio sells records, Spotify cannibalizes sales.
What’s amazing is how you’ve stated this assertion but can’t notice what has occurred in the interim. Spotify is its own platform. And seeing as Mike already posted about how they’re making more money, they don’t seem to be cannibalizing sales, they’re just learning how to make better toys for artists.
A recent study conducted by NPD Group and NARM found that streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio are detrimental to the sales of individual pieces of music.
Key caveat. Individual, as in singular. Such as CDs and tapes. The unbundling of the CD has been going strong since that Napster days.
But still, just this one aspect may be occurring but that doesn’t mean artists aren’t making money.
honesty
ouch, that must burn….
Re:
“wow, just wow, what a great work of delusion fiction. “
What? Me asking for citations and giving an example of my own personal Spotify usage to back me up? Which claims exactly are delusional?
Reality = delusion to you it seems, explains a lot, but at least you’ve provided multiple citations instead of just the insults this time. Let’s have a look…
Hypebot link: some commentary on a study (which I don’t seem to be able to access with paying for it). The NPD link itself says the following:
“AM/FM radio and family/friends/coworkers are the most common avenues for discovery, and discovery via online radio and Web videos were also important for the most active music fans. “
So, while they’re still the major drivers, but are being complemented and/or replaced by other media. So, while what you say is technically true – for how long? It also doesn’t address Spotify specifically, and doesn’t mention the scope of the study. I’d assume US only from how it’s discussed, so I’ll take that with a pinch of salt, especially since Spotify would have been available for less than 4 months in the US before the study was published.
Realistic conclusion: doesn’t say a damn thing about Spotify, and you’re an asshole for calling me a liar when I related my own usage of the service. I’d expect the next study to find major changes since Spotify became mainstream in the US and beyond.
Tested.com link: says exactly what I asked you not to use as a crutch (some labels, mostly affiliated with each other have pulled out). It’s an opinion piece on the news that some labels pulled out, but doesn’t address anything I asked you to cite. Some LABELS are unhappy with Spotify (and Rdio)’s rates. That doesn’t mean that ARTISTS (as per your initial claim) are suffering. It also doesn’t prove a damn thing about your claim that Spotify cannibalises sales other than that some legacy players are scared of that. Well, duh….
Realistic conclusion: you’ve got nothing.
..and oh dear, the last bunch of idiocy:
1st link – says nothing about why the albums were pulled. Also states “That of course encompasses Spotify, though a representative emailed Digital Music News on Wednesday morning to clarify that removals on Spotify actually happened in 2010.”, when Spotify was a hell of a lot smaller than it is now.
2nd link – Has sod all to do with whether sales are being affected, as it notes that an exclusive period had ended with iTunes and that was causing the delay. Also states “The label screwed up”. Also ends with this: “Updated, Saturday, 4:15 pm PCT: The track has now been reinstated on Spotify.”. Also states that Amazon sales were affected by the same action. Is this what you consider evidence of your claims, because it actually states the exact opposite?
3rd link: An opinion from a band, so nothing binding and nothing to show which data they’re basing this on. There’s more there than in your other links, but this an opinion, and realistically means nothing more than the opinions of those who are there and happy with the service without additional data.
Realistic conclusion – you’re talking out of your ass again. You provided 2 links that have nothing to do with what you were claiming, and one that’s an opinion at best.
Do you have any REAL DATA to back your assertions up? Thought not… back to our regularly scheduled service where AC pretends that Spotify is a record label and personally attacks those who point out he’s wrong…
honesty
another point is, how many downloads from the didnt pay catagory where record lable people downloading to scew the numbers and try and drive radiohead back into the “right” way to do things?
dont tell me that the lables dont do stuff like this, because they have been caught at it quite a few times, having their reps seed stuff just so they can send dmca notices out or even sue people….pretty dishonest if you ask me….
Re:
I love the fact that you people use the examples of LEGAL service to attack people now. Guess what, if you assholes had licensed legal services 15 years ago when people first demanded it, you wouldn’t be in this mess!
“carry on, just keep ripping off artists,”
Like I proven to you and your ilk many, many times, I’ll continue to consume music legally. Then I’ll laugh my ass off because your ultimate failure could have been avoided if you’d listened to people like me telling you what they want. Instead, you attacked us as “pirates” when we tried telling you how to take our money. You refused my money, sorry, it’s your own fault.
honesty
I always wondered why do people not understand that Google does more with their products than the recording industry did in the 50 years of business contracts that screwed over artists…
Now I get it. They are just too damned ignorant of the argument that Google helps a lot more than the recording industry.
honesty
One could make those assumptions. they would be totally wrong, for reasons explained to you and those like you many, many times.
“It would seem that the numbers correlate very nicely here.”
It also correlates to people buying singles instead of albums. Also to the rise in popularity in DVD sales. Also to the rise of videogame sales. Also to the rise in the price of gasoline in the US. Also to the unemployment rate. Also to the availability of hybrid cars and the rise in smartphones leading to planking, probably.
“It would seem that the numbers correlate very nicely here.”
Everything looks like a nail to a hammer owner. That doesn’t mean you can make my TV work by smashing it with a hammer.
You Will Be Fine
The voices in his head. Definitely not the words are actually typing here, as usual…
You Will Be Fine
“Labels Pay Artists. Pirates Don’t.”
You realize that pirates are consumers/customers right? They are actually the only way labels or artists make money. But suing and condescending and insulting them is surely your best way to get them to support you.
honesty
im sure they are paid well to spread FUD, i mean if EA is doing it, you can sure bet that the MAFIAA are doing it.
honesty
Google had 0 dollars 30 years ago. The music industry made X% of money spent in America 30 years ago.
Now the music industry only makes Y% and google makes billions. Therefore any difference between y% and x% is money google steals from the record labels.
Of course ignore all the other new options for entertainment that are taking money use to spend on music. Because if people couldn’t get free music they wouldn’t buy these other things because they NEED music. The fucking NEED our content they are shitty pop music junkies. We spend millions on marketing getting them to need this content. No way someone could just play video games all the time without playing their pirated Bibier cds.
/retard
I imagine its some kind of broken logic like that. Works for any *woe is me, piracy!* industry.
You Will Be Fine
and… the math for the pirate is even more simple:
Pirate Bay 100%
Artist 0%
FAIL.
Re:
posted real data, provide your real data.
citations please.
again:
“Terrestrial radio is still the #1 driver for music sales.”
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/12/active-vs-passive-fans-why-radio-tv-still-rank-tops- for-music-discovery-best-of-hypebot.html
Spotify is NOTHING like radio. Radio sells records, Spotify cannibalizes sales.
http://www.tested.com/news/news/3194-music-distributor-pulls-200-small-labels-from-spotify-and-r dio/
“A recent study conducted by NPD Group and NARM found that streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio are detrimental to the sales of individual pieces of music. “
You Will Be Fine
That’s because the pirate bay is not making an investment in the artist besides free marketing…then again, logic is definitely not your proudest moment.
You Will Be Fine
Again, even more simple:
Fees to Pirate Bay by artists or users for distribution service: 0%
Therefor, percentage of operating revenue delivered to users or artists for using the service free of charge: 0%
Hence, profits to Pirate Bay: 100%
NOTE: a company that keeps 100% of its profits does not necessarily mean they are rich, case and point, The Pirate Bay.
honesty
I don’t think you are correct in saying that people own more albums. A lot of people buy tracks, not albums. They buy the one or two songs they like for a couple bucks and avoid the filler that most albums are full of.
The advent of MP3s made unbundling possible for the consumer so there is a correlation to that and declining sales, but not for the reasons you were implying.
Re:
“evidence that suing fans and promotion of draconian laws and enforcement, along with alienation of consumers, ignorance to economics of disposable income, Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, concepts of competition, concepts of monopolistic control and price fixing” all detrimental to an even greater extent than Spotify or RDio to the sales of individual pieces of music.
None as detrimental as quality and obscurity.
And you don’t graduate from obscurity with the help of terrestrial radio, playing pre-approved play-lists (supported via payola).
BTW, citing two articles, one which refers to the second as the source of information, really doesn’t count as two separate points.
That’s the same as “John says Elvis is alive” and “Chris says John says Elvis is alive” counting as two separate sources, which they do not.
Re:
If El-P does continue to get paid without “fighting for it” and singing for his supper every night, are you going to publicly eat crow and advocate copyright reform, or are you just going to continue to stand under the bridge and shout at every passerby that artists and everyone else in the music is starving on the streets because of piracy?
Re:
Of course spotify pays less then the record labels
the record label take a cut of the revenue spotify pays. Hijacking most of the money that should go to the artist.
Drop the record companies from the equation and spotify pays way more then the record labels for the same licensed rights.
Re:
If spotify is really that harmful then no label would be on there. It wouldn’t just be a bunch of indie wub wub bands pulling out it would be the majors.
“the Spotify model is adding, and will continue to add, huge value to the music industry. Right now we have already convinced millions of consumers to pay for music again, to move away from downloading illegally and therefore generate real revenue for the music business.
In addition, ?revenue per stream? totally misses the point when considering the value generated by Spotify. The relevant metrics are: 1) how many people are being monetized by Spotify; 2) who these people are (usually young people previously on pirate services which generate nothing for artists and rightsholders); and 3) how much revenue per user Spotify generates for rightsholders.”
We can all quote shit its fun isn’t it?
“Home Taping Is Killing Music” Look I qouted someone saying radio would be the death of music. I guess that means its true right?
“Phonographs and Player Pianos Will Kill Music!”
The sky, the sky is falling!
As far as your love of terrestrial radio, did you actually read the study, or even the press release? https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_111110
It doesn’t paint the picture you think it does.
Re:
“?Committed? consumers are the youngest group, with a mean age of 32 (20 percent are age 13 to 17; 42 percent are 18 to 35). They represent 10 percent of all consumers who listened to or purchased music within the prior three months. ?Committed? consumers also account for 46 percent of per-capita spending on music, and they are the most engaged consumers in the report. While they use a variety of discovery sources ? including radio, video, streaming, and movies ? they also value ownership, and they are the most open to discovering new artists. They find their current means to discover new music is good, but still wonder if they are missing something.”
The larger groups who get their “new” music from radio, don’t buy much music and prefer “new” music from familiar bands. You are talking about old people who find out on the radio that one of the three artists they still listen to released a new album.
The smaller groups spend the majority of the money. And they do their discovery on new media. But hey skew the data and try to make it look like the sky is green and your ass is clean. Maybe you’ll even buy your own bullshit.
Re:
“posted real data, provide your real data. “
No you posted bad interpretations of real data. Try reading the real data and/or posting it. You will find your weak argument is even weaker.
honesty
an how many of those people had not heard radio head and simple gave them a try because the content is free.
you might want to read the statement you are responding too
I truly believe most fans will support the artists they like.
people who haven’t decided if they like the band yet are not fans.
They won’t be fans until the next album.
Oh and btw radio head now has all those people on their mailing list.
And they made more money selling those new fans tickets/merchandise/old albums/ pushing them to their youtube videos and collecting ad payments/ then they would have made selling them the album at full price given the standard record deals.
Re:
Haha, you never do your research do you?
“[The reason] why this is so debated is that is it is a perceptional issue,” added Edgar Berger, president and CEO, international, Sony Music Entertainment, who also spoke at the Digital Music Report launch. “Obviously, for streaming you get way less then you get for a download, but it streams so often and for such a long period then in the long run actually the money might be higher and it’s incremental.”
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/record-labels/rob-wells-universal-music-s-global-digital-1005968752.story
Re:
Oh yeah and your study was published in Nov 11. So it was being conducted as spotify was launching in the US. You mean a few month old service wans’t number 1 all ready? It must be a failure.
Re:
I really, desperately hope the music industry gets all the regulation you want, just so that you have to live through the hell that it would be.
If you’re an artist and you’re not making the money you want to, I’ll give you a hint- The problem isn’t the mean internet people taking your money away. Either not enough people know who you are, or you’re music is shitty. Given that you’re not even advertising who you are in this thread, where thousands of people would see your name and, even if they despise you, might take a moment to listen to your work, I’d bet the answer is that you’re just absolutely terrible at promoting yourself. So, you can work on the problem you can solve (promoting yourself better) or you can yell angrily into the night that your life should be handled for you and everything should be simple and easy for artists.
Go ahead, try out both solutions, come back and tell me which one works better…
Re:
No because no matter how much money he makes they will say “He would have made so much more without piracy.”
Re:
You’d think for someone all about the artist getting paid, he’d buck up and acknowledge that the labels take too much money and do not give enough to the artists…as demonstrated by his spotify rant.
Re:
Even if your claim about there being no money for artists online were true, why do you feel they are entitled to continue having X% of their income be derived from selling copies of their work (and/or selling at a particular price point)? Talk about being stuck in the past. It is not my job, as a consumer, to ensure that artist revenue sources remain within certain proportions to each other!
honesty
Why do you jump to the conclusion that it is inevitable? How do you know this to be true? You don’t. So, right there we have identified a key leap in logic on your part. No one knows how things will shake out, or if they ever will. Hence, the wisdom of entrusting artists with the right to decide the best course for themselves, whatever that may be. If labels are as awful as some people here make them out to be, well, obviously artists would gradually (or perhaps abruptly) cease to partner with them. Artists aren’t stupid.
But that hasn’t happened. Just ask A$AP Rocky or Azalea Banks or Bon Iver or Neon Indian or Best Coast. They are choosing the label. Just because you perceive one change or another occurring (and clearly we are observing a massive amount of change in many directions) doesn’t mean you can reasonably extrapolate it to some binary extreme that happens to be convenient for your argument. It just isn’t sound reasoning.
Question
I’m a songwriter. Just wondering how I, and all the other behind the scenes types who create the content that drives 99% of p2p traffic, get paid? We don’t gig (been there, done that), sell CD’s or T shirts, we license music to those who do.
Just checked today’s top 10 search results for mp3raid, where my songs are always found, making $ for everybody w every click-everybody but me of course.
Interesting that all are either from a major label, or an “indie” financed and distributed by a major. Bet the same is true for most p2p’d movies. If the labels and studios are so hated, why, in 2012, are they still responsible for the creations everybody, especially p2p’rs wants?
honesty
You’re trying to argue a “chicken and egg” situation in which it isn’t. Glee may pay the bills now, but without Youtube, and “flagrant copyright infringement”, there would have been no role on Glee.
Re:
Repeating the same links you already posted – and I discredited with no actual defense from you – is hardly a compelling tactic.
“Spotify is NOTHING like radio. Radio sells records, Spotify cannibalizes sales.”
Unproven, and my personal experiences prove you a liar. If you think you have data that alters this, cite it. DATA not summaries on whatever random site you dredged up on Google, not “oh I know someone else who uses it differently”. Evidence.
“”A recent study conducted by NPD Group and NARM found that streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio are detrimental to the sales of individual pieces of music. “
A study which, conveniently, is unavailable to support these claims without payment. Especially if it only covers the US market, where Spotify could hardly have been available for more than a month or 2 before the study was undertaken – and so any such study would be questionable with regards to Spotify’s effect..
Also a claim which is NOT stated on the actual NPD site (in fact, Spotify’s name doesn’t even get mentioned). The above you posted is an opinion of a blogger, and only present in the headline. Spotify is not mentioned anywhere else on that page.
Again, if you have more information (preferably a full copy of the study itself), cite it.
Also, stop posting back to others’ opinion blogs as evidence. Isn’t that what you attack people here for when they link to Mike’s previous articles? I suggest you start by reading beyond the headlines in stories, preferably looking at the linked primary sources as well.
honesty
Don’t get it twisted. Was referring to the much ballyhooed pay-what-you-want scheme — which they indeed did not repeat for King of Limbs. They returned to setting their own price for downloads.
honesty
Actually…
http://www.app.com/article/20091231/NEWS/91228067/In-digital-age-musicians-flourish-without-major-labels
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/business/businesstruth/the_disrupters/3568130/Artists-Without-a-label.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-schmitt/rethinking-the-music-busi_b_857434.html
These are all examples of change in motion.
Besides, the Rolling Stones, Nine Inch Nails and quite a few other bands have given up on labels because they have been screwed in one way or another.
With that in mind, think of things this way…
If a newer band signs with a record company and incurs debt, but no success they end up paying back that debt yet if they attempt to market themselves their own way, even if they fail they will probably not accrue the same amount of debt (considering the free advertising avenues available) and still retain the rights to their music.
Question
It is interesting. It is because many, many people would prefer to continue to get things for free and wrap their entitlement in digital utopian rhetoric than confront the obvious fact that they are choosing to illegally exploit you (and other like you) for your labor and creativity. As Peter Sunde himself said, “If I want it I take it.” In most cases, I believe it is as simple as that. Instant gratification.
Re:
In this world YOU are the person responsible for promoting YOUR own work. And you can use The Pirate Bay for promoting your own work, and then offer links for people to easily pay you.
But of course, in your worldview, they are all out to get you, and you wouldn’t dream of using free stuff to promote your art, would you?
Question
It’s easy to make something valuable when you control the ebb and flow of the product as well as when to flood the market with cookie cutter bands and when to try to release quality music.
Question
Are you retarded? You do know that “instant gratification” is something big corporation use to sell their products?
Why do you think we have “fast food” and Itunes, so people can get what they want right away.
The labels cater to this mentality, then when they can’t control it, they whine.
honesty
I am a data point. So suck on that!
honesty
Put another way 38% of Radiohead fans paid up on the initial download. We have no way of quantifing what the number who paid after the download and listening to the album paid which would then bring that number up.
All in all your argument is pointless unless you can do a direct comparison between what Radiohead made of sales of that record even using your numbers and what they would have been paid by EMI for moving a similar number of records. Until you can do that your figures and arguments mean nothing.
Keep in mind that Radiohead isn’t universally loved or liked and that a significant number of people who weren’t fans downloaded for nothing, listened to it then deleted it, found that they really did like the band and paid later. How many of those downloads were people who just heard about what they were doing said “why not, I’ve got nothing to lose” and made up a large proportion of that 62%. The curiosity factor. Let’s posit 20% of that number and now you’re approaching a different situation where nearly half the downloads were paid for up front. Remembering that Radiohead took that into account with the option to buy now pay later built into the offer.
If I take the number of records I never bought but had access to, one way or another, compared to what I did buy in the days before the Internet I’d say it’s more than half of them I listened to so, in effect, I pirated that music because the owner of the LP/CD/Whatever let me listen more than once or loaned it to me because I said I was curious about the artists. A fairly common practice back in those dark ages. Actually it still is commonplace. Therefore I MUST be a pirate by your definition in that the artist never got paid for what I temporarily had in my possession and listened to before returning it.
On the other hand I did buy more than 40% of the recordings I was loaned before returning them. Which must mean I became a FAN by your definition because they were loaned to me.
This was long before the wasteland of the 1990’s and early part of this century where it was commonplace to slap down money on a CD and end up with something that had one decent song on it. Not at all unusual there either.
(Tangential question…was it the label or the artist trying to rip me off?)
Acts that I know and that I’m a FAN of I always buy, often before any listen. Fan, of course, is the short form of Fanatic so that does mean I’ll support them even if “free” is available. I’m not alone there either.
The OC, as you call him is actually right. FANS will support him. The curious might after listening to the cut or CD as a whole but those who have no interest will never pay for his stuff no matter what. They can download from pirate sites, borrow the CD from a friend burn their own copy but they will never pay. The same way it’s always been.
The only FAIL here is you and your black and white (and angry) world.
The artist who guest posted here will SUCCEED. Just because you claim to be a musician doesn’t mean you’ll succeed or make a living off music. That never was or ever will be the case. Like everyone else in this would you’re gonna have to work at it. Recording contract or not.
honesty
Your last paragraph is convoluted. In theory, any number of things could happen, sure. and I am all for better profit margins for artists. But you haven’t even approached debunking my point that many many artists continue to partner with labels of their own choice. And there are now new opportunities for artists to do what Amanda Palmer is doing or what NIN did and I think that is fantastic, but it is no excuse for piracy — at all. Why celebrate one choice of the artist to cut ties with a label, and not the other choice to partner with one? If the artist isn’t the good guy here, who is? (don’t say “the internet”)
You Will Be Fine
house of cards, falling:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,829124,00.html
Re:
I suggest you actually get educated on the facts and stop talking in circles.
Where are the contracts from The Pirate Bay that pay artists any money?
citation please.
here’s the score:
The Pirate Bay = 100% of the Artists Money
Artists on Pirate Bay = 0% of the Artists Money
FAIL.
You Will Be Fine
when google releases all of their source as open let me know, in the meantime watch the patent lawsuits.
honesty
I wasn’t debunking the fact that some artists choose to side with labels…how would I even debunk that. I linked articles explaining that some musicians have found success without a label to back them up. Frankly, a lot of them are happier collecting more profits than the ones they received from signing on with a label (they’re all living proof that you can be screwed by a label).
Also, I never advocated piracy, I merely addressed one portion of your argument.
And as for the last paragraph, that was meant to emphasize the fact that doing things your own way incurs much less loss than going with a system that puts you into debt.
Question
Yes and we have laws to restrain our worst impulses, when they are determined to be violating the legal rights of others. Fast food and iTunes are lawful and consensual. Labels are in business to make money for themselves and artists can partner with them or not. The labels have legal rights to what they produce (otherwise they wouldn’t garner any investment capital). Which is worse, a label with perfectly legal rights “whining” when their rights are being ignored, or a consumer who is knowingly exploiting another person’s legal rights “whining” when they are told they can’t do it as much as they would like?
You are not entitled to unlicensed content. Deal with it.
Re:
DOH! here’s what artists get paid for streaming… DIRECT…
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/streaming-price-index-123111/
Question
Every legitimate business controls the “ebb and flow” of the product under the law. That’s what businesses do.
Re:
here’s the math for those of you at home keeping score:
The Pirate Bay = 100% of the Artist Money
The Artist on TPB = 0% of the Artist Money
yes, that is called a rip off.
why are you defending a proven illegal business? just blocked in the UK by the way… more to come, house of card, falling… enjoy your post sopa victory lap…
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/74996.html
Re:
…and finally the last tactic of the idiot – move the goalposts and personally attack people instead of admitting to your lies.
Perhaps you can tell me where I mentioned TPB in all this? What any of your rant has anything to do with what I posted? Moron.
honesty
you might want to look up the definition of the word fan
because you obviously don’t know what the word means.
62% of the people who were offered the choice to pay nothing
took that choice. You still haven’t proven that every single person who downloaded the album was a fan.
Just like everyone who listens to the radio is not a fan of every single band played on that radio.
There is a difference between down loaders and fans.
Just like there is a difference between radio listeners and fans.
Question
No one said Itunes and fast are not lawful, but the mentality of the average consumer is when I want something, I want it now.
Why not cater to that, provide consumers what they want when they want. You may say that denotes entitlement, but…I’d feel pretty entitled if it was my money being invested into something I was unsure of.
Yes, labels do have the right to what they produce and they also have the right to whine about things. They also apparently have the right to screw their artists out of royalties when it suits their needs (http://gizmodo.com/352762/riaa-wants-to-cut-artist-royalties-to-9-apple-wants-them-at-4-artists-just-want-to-eat). And sue people. Attempt to strip copyrights from their artists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA). Sue people who did not even pirate music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_group_efforts_against_file_sharing).
Sorry, but I could care less how piracy affects the labels considering that they take most of the earnings of the artists.