A Record Label That Embraces BitTorrent

from the good-for-them dept

Wed, Dec 31st 2008 12:08pm — Mike Masnick

While the major record labels still insist that BitTorrent and any sort of file sharing is evil and needs to be wiped out, it's great to see some indie record labels fully embracing how BitTorrent is actually a much cheaper and much more efficient distribution and marketing tool. Take, for example, Open Your Eyes Records, who not only embraces BitTorrent, but has now teamed up with one BitTorrent tracker, What.cd, to distribute all new tracks that way. Even though for many readers here this doesn't need to be repeated, this is (once again) more evidence that BitTorrent and BitTorrent trackers have plenty of legitimate purposes -- and the efforts to shut them down completely are quite short sighted.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: bittorrent, record labels
Companies: open your eyes records

17 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2008 @ 1:27pm

I have not read any comments to date that say BTs should be removed from the face of the earth, but only that they are being grossly misused by those persons who could care less about copyright law.

The availablity of BT notwithstanding, I am still leery of downloading files from unknown persons sharing such files. I still much prefer downloading from the "horse's mouth", so to speak.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- horse's something, 31 Dec 2008 @ 1:32pm
  
  Re:
  and that's exactly what this label is doing - letting you bittorrent their content directly from them
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- jonnyq, 31 Dec 2008 @ 1:58pm
  
  Re:
  torrents can be hashed. As long as you set up your program to check the hash after the files are downloaded and you download the .torrent file from the "horse's mouth", there's no way a malicious person could inject something evil into the download.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- CobaltQube, 31 Dec 2008 @ 2:56pm
  
  Re: Horses Mouth
  Anon Cow...
  
  You could take a minute to learn about BT and you will see how your last comment is just uneducated..
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Aru, 4 Jan 2009 @ 12:46am
    
    Re: Re: Horses Mouth
    I was gonna flame him for that but you handled it so eloquently that i am @ a loss for words.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Jason, 31 Dec 2008 @ 3:15pm
  
  Re:
  Well the same encryption technology that is used to verify which horse's mouth you're getting your files from is also used to verify that you're getting the right file over a torrent.
  
  No difference really.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Greg, 31 Dec 2008 @ 1:31pm

Artits
Now to find out if that label has any artists I want to listen to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2008 @ 1:43pm
  
  Re: Artits
  umm..that should be Artists. That's what I get for doing this at work during a phone call.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
antonius, 31 Dec 2008 @ 1:44pm

can i bit-torrent them back a picture of a spider in payment for service rendered?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tamara, 31 Dec 2008 @ 5:03pm

I have a friend who just released a CD. It's available in the shops and on iTunes/Amazon, etc. There's 7 tracks on the CD, and she's released 5 of the tracks onto BitTorrent to expose her music to people. In the torrent, there is the 5 songs + a text file asking people if they liked the music to buy her CD. The link she put into the text file is different to the buy link that is on her website so she can get some idea on how many purchased from the torrent(of course some people downloading the torrent would still go through the main site rather than the direct link to the purchase page). Around 75% of the people that purchased music through the links on her site are from the torrent tracker. Of course some people buying online would go directly to iTunes/Amazon, but she can't track where they came from.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- mike allen, 1 Jan 2009 @ 2:09am
  
  Re:
  perhaps a link would be usefull.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Jan 2009 @ 8:23am

When I use "straight from the horse's mouth" I mean to signify that as a downloader I would want some way of ascertaining that the named file is in fact the file authorized for release by the content creator.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I am not aware of anything that prevents others from placing identically named files in a share folder, which files contain a "bit more" than just the original file. It is this "bit more" that is my cause for concern.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Chronno S. Trigger, 2 Jan 2009 @ 7:41am
  
  Re:
  Try it. You will find that it will error out and will not allow you to upload it.
  
  I have problems inserting files that I know are the exact files that I'm downloading (so I don't have to download them again but can still seed them). Unless the torrent program sees exactly what it expects to see it will just error out.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Aru, 4 Jan 2009 @ 12:49am
  
  Re:
  @ anon cow
  
  Shared folder? Really dude. Go google it or something. Wiki's got pretty decent info on how bit torrent works.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 4 Jan 2009 @ 4:52pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Perhaps you can enlighten me about how a file is made available to others besides placement in some form of a repository such as a folder on an uploader's computer.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eric Stone, 2 Jan 2009 @ 5:34am

Thanks!
Thank you for the kind words everyone. As co-owner and operator of the label, I really appreciate the nod from you all and the recognition of our efforts. Although not exactly fiscally sound, our approach has done wonders to raise the profile of the band I Call Fives, and has already turned into quite a few opportunities that would otherwise have been missed.

Thanks again,
Eric Stone
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
David, 2 Jan 2009 @ 10:30am

Robert Fripp/Discipline Global Mobile
Its good to see anyone embrace the future and have some success. So here is to continued success to Open Your Eyes Records.

Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame has been using an internet/bit torrent based model for years. Under his Discipline Global Mobile label, he has been providing live Crimson concert recordings as well as recordings from other artists for sale.

https://www.dgmlive.com/archive.htm

It's quite a back catalog of live recordings, if you have ever seen a Crimson show, odds are that you might find it here.

DGM came about after Fripp, like most artist, sustained years of abuse at the hands of traditional labels. The intent of DGM as a label as well as Fripp's perceived successes and failures in the venture are described in the about DGM section.

http://www.dgmlive.com/about.htm

It sounds like he half has it right with embracing the internet but he has not figured out the promotional value part.

Perhaps this is where someone like Mike could introduce himself and show the other possibilities for successful business models in the internet age.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]