Alternatively you could reward the behaviours you like to see and maybe companies will start to adopt those behaviours. Bit like training animals really...
I really don't know why I'm bothering with this but here goes:
"bunch of people who support an exploitation economy " - It's nice that you know so much about me, I guess all the music i've bought over the last 25 years probably does contribute to exploiting artists, but The Pirate Bay has sweet FA to do with that.
"you people are so clueless" - now I've tried to be polite throughout these discussions, is it too much to ask for that courtesy to be returned? Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't automatically make them wrong.
"how does that make you a hero?" - You ask this question twice, I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
"how is it that your solution to one injustice (labels) is an even greater injustice in piracy?" - Two things here (both of which we've state before): 1) Recognising that something happens is not the same as endorsing it. 2) This was originally an article about a band choosing to give away their content for free, where is the injustice exactly?
"just say you hate artists, don't believe they should be paid, and they you LIKE exploiting artists" - Why would I, or anyone else on this site, say those things when they're so blatantly not true? I'm a fairly cheeful soul, I don't hate anyone, much less a whole classification of people that (on a good day) I like to think I'm part of.
"YOU are not only ripping off artists yourself, but you are supporting an Exploitation Economy" - See my point above about the difference between recognition and endorsement.
So to go back to the discussion I was trying to have before your rant, where do you promote your music? How do you promote your music? And how does demonising the entire readership of a site that regularly posts about music help your sales?
"But for some reason, we're telling musicians how they can become successful full-time musicians because the label system is gone."
I think I see your point Suzanne, in that we appear to be setting a different level of expectation for musicians when compared to other artists.
I think that's true, for three main reasons:
1) The old model was sooooo bad for the majority of musicians that it's not that difficult to find a better way.
2) The barriers for entry are lower. The kit you need to get started is, in real terms, cheaper than it has ever been, as are the advertising and distribution tools.
3) I think it's a less polarised (and more enduring) market, the scale for "successful" ranges from selling a few albums here and there as a bonus to your hobby, right up to the Amanda Palmers / Jonathan Coultons who make a good living from it; it all depends on what you're trying to achieve. Compare that to, say, professional sports.
"and NO they don't work unless someone already HAD a career of someone else spending millions of dollars on them like Amanda Palmer, Radiohead and NIN... "
Hold on a moment, didn't you have a top 40 hit? So you've already got a fan-base that's big enough to get you onto the billboard chart (without the help of a label or the RIAA) but you can't work with that fanbase to make that work for you?
I'd be really curious to know exactly how you're trying these solutions, because a lot of people are making their way without anything like that kind of exposure.
"So you hate artists, don't believe they should have choices, and believe you should have the right to exploit them for profit"
This i just don't understand. There's a whole section of this site dedicated to case studies so that artists can see how they can make their choices to compete in the new environment. That doesn't sound like exploitation to me.
The unit cost of a digital file is effectively zero, funnily enough an open market will only ever accept a certain amount over the unit cost as a fair price. You can't roll back that technology, all you can do is find a way to compete in that market.
Your choice appears to be to ignore that reality.
For a moment there I thought you'd actually given it a shot, you know, maybe just given people a chance to listen to and assess your music, maybe even buy some.
Nope.
Why wouldn't you do this? How does not promoting your music help your sales?
"it is not a model that will work for everyone" - I think this point has been made about a gazillion times. There is no SINGLE new business model.
There are many, that's what's so great about it.
"The danger here is that local bands will never scale the cliff that record labels previously gave artists (like AFP) climbing gear for" - The real danger is that small acts continue to believe that their only opportunity is to sign-away their rights to the current label structure.
Each act is its own business and, accordingly, they need to find their own business models.
A lot of them will undoubtedly fail, but that happened before and will always happen in an open market. There is no glorious past to hark back to here, just a more flexible future that, at the least, allows artists to be directly in control of how they fail and how (and if) they have the wherewithal to take that into account and learn how to succeed.
"If you like the record you buy it. It's too easy for all concerned." I get sent more legal free music every day than I have time to listen to. You have to do more to stand out.
"What you think? You like a record you download it without paying and maybe buy a t-shirt, or I take you out for dinner next time I'm in town? Too complicated."
Too complicated for you maybe, but you don't get to make all the rules. It's a market, you have to have something more to bring to the table. Sorry about that, but that's how it is.
Give us a link to your stuff, you've put the effort in on this conversation, let us have a listen, maybe we'll like it, maybe we'll buy it, maybe we won't.
Since starting commenting on this thread I've had 8 downloads of my last album, 5 free, 3 paying. That's £15 in my account that wasn't there before. It could be in your account too.
I'd hope not to work a day job too, but that has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. Really it doesn't. I was working with a little local label for about 4 years, there was half a dozen bands/acts all "signed" on a straight 50-50 split of the profits.
But the label folded a couple of years ago. Why? Because they didn't have a business plan. They / we had lots of ideas about how to try and sell our product but at the time we still thought the product was little plastic discs sold at gigs to students.
But it turns out that students aren't buying little plastic discs anymore. (well, for the most part, turns out that if you make them a bit special then they will - but I only really discovered this afterwards).
I digress again, apologies.
The "choice" never got taken away from me, the market shifted and the choice was never there. We were too slow to realise that.
So yes, I'm a hobbyist, as are an absolute shed-load of other musicians who've worked out that there's a democratisation of the music market coming.
The barriers to entry are constantly lowering, more people competing for the same pot (at best, more realistically a shrinking pot when you factor in video games), that means fewer stars and, yes, fewer professionals.
No-one is entitled to be successful, and no-one is entitled to be immune from the effects of change. You can try and adapt or try and fight it, but there's coming up to 3 billion people on the internet now and I'd rather be friends with them than fighting them.
Ok, click the case studies link at the top and have a read.
Here's the thing, piracy or no piracy, selling little plastic discs is a shrinking market. An increasing number of people don't even own CD players anymore so you're effectively creating an infinitely abundant product.
And you're doing it in an environment where the barriers for entry and being constantly lowered and the competition is getting more fierce.
If your product isn't selling, or the market isn't there, you have to find a product or a market that is.
Seriously, read the case studies.
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: Re: Re: Re: Re: Music doesn't trigger huge payouts
Suzanne, I think that's one of the key things here, the sheer number of musicians now producing quality content.
In the last 20 years the costs of recording have plummeted, software, hardware, instruments, the lot. You can now produce something in your bedroom to a higher standard than many of the labels were kicking out in the 70s and early 80s.
The thing that hasn't got cheaper is time or expertise. Sometimes your biggest recording cost is actually going to be the time of a decent producer, and you'll pay that, because that skill can be the differentiator.
This is the new challenge for musicians, there's so much really good stuff out there, finding the great stuff is that much harder.
But as a musician and customer, I reckon that's a pretty good challenge to have.
"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.
"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!
"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.
That's right Bob, because we're all a bunch of freeloaders who never pay for anything.
Perhaps if the publishers had figured out a few ways to keep some relevance people would be willing to pay for it, but in their rush to the bottom even the broadsheets are just re-hashing agency feed that I can get direct from Reuters.
There are still plenty of opportunities for these companies to add value into the chain (and therefore earn something for that value) but if all they're doing is aggregating news feeds and providing politically-biased opinion then they're not providing a service I'm willing to pay for.
Hence I don't sign up to their apps or read their content.
On the post: Thank Twitter For Standing Up For User Rights
Re: How pathetically naive and stupid
On the post: Counting Crows Distributes Songs And More Via BitTorrent
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But, but ... Piracy!
"bunch of people who support an exploitation economy " - It's nice that you know so much about me, I guess all the music i've bought over the last 25 years probably does contribute to exploiting artists, but The Pirate Bay has sweet FA to do with that.
"you people are so clueless" - now I've tried to be polite throughout these discussions, is it too much to ask for that courtesy to be returned? Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't automatically make them wrong.
"how does that make you a hero?" - You ask this question twice, I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
"how is it that your solution to one injustice (labels) is an even greater injustice in piracy?" - Two things here (both of which we've state before): 1) Recognising that something happens is not the same as endorsing it. 2) This was originally an article about a band choosing to give away their content for free, where is the injustice exactly?
"just say you hate artists, don't believe they should be paid, and they you LIKE exploiting artists" - Why would I, or anyone else on this site, say those things when they're so blatantly not true? I'm a fairly cheeful soul, I don't hate anyone, much less a whole classification of people that (on a good day) I like to think I'm part of.
"YOU are not only ripping off artists yourself, but you are supporting an Exploitation Economy" - See my point above about the difference between recognition and endorsement.
So to go back to the discussion I was trying to have before your rant, where do you promote your music? How do you promote your music? And how does demonising the entire readership of a site that regularly posts about music help your sales?
On the post: Thank Twitter For Standing Up For User Rights
Re: Re: Re: A great idea, but ...
On the post: Musicians Realizing They Don't Need Major Labels Anymore
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Celebrity Mentality
I think I see your point Suzanne, in that we appear to be setting a different level of expectation for musicians when compared to other artists.
I think that's true, for three main reasons:
1) The old model was sooooo bad for the majority of musicians that it's not that difficult to find a better way.
2) The barriers for entry are lower. The kit you need to get started is, in real terms, cheaper than it has ever been, as are the advertising and distribution tools.
3) I think it's a less polarised (and more enduring) market, the scale for "successful" ranges from selling a few albums here and there as a bonus to your hobby, right up to the Amanda Palmers / Jonathan Coultons who make a good living from it; it all depends on what you're trying to achieve. Compare that to, say, professional sports.
On the post: UK ISPs Are Already Planning To Offer Porn Filters -- So Who Needs New Legislation?
Re: Re:
On the post: Counting Crows Distributes Songs And More Via BitTorrent
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hold on a moment, didn't you have a top 40 hit? So you've already got a fan-base that's big enough to get you onto the billboard chart (without the help of a label or the RIAA) but you can't work with that fanbase to make that work for you?
I'd be really curious to know exactly how you're trying these solutions, because a lot of people are making their way without anything like that kind of exposure.
"So you hate artists, don't believe they should have choices, and believe you should have the right to exploit them for profit"
This i just don't understand. There's a whole section of this site dedicated to case studies so that artists can see how they can make their choices to compete in the new environment. That doesn't sound like exploitation to me.
The unit cost of a digital file is effectively zero, funnily enough an open market will only ever accept a certain amount over the unit cost as a fair price. You can't roll back that technology, all you can do is find a way to compete in that market.
Your choice appears to be to ignore that reality.
On the post: Counting Crows Distributes Songs And More Via BitTorrent
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But, but ... Piracy!
Nope.
Why wouldn't you do this? How does not promoting your music help your sales?
On the post: Musicians Realizing They Don't Need Major Labels Anymore
but, but...
Think that should give the usual trolls their prompts...
On the post: It's Amazing The Lengths 'Music Supporters' Will Go To In Trying To Trash Success Stories
Re: "The danger"
There are many, that's what's so great about it.
"The danger here is that local bands will never scale the cliff that record labels previously gave artists (like AFP) climbing gear for" - The real danger is that small acts continue to believe that their only opportunity is to sign-away their rights to the current label structure.
Each act is its own business and, accordingly, they need to find their own business models.
A lot of them will undoubtedly fail, but that happened before and will always happen in an open market. There is no glorious past to hark back to here, just a more flexible future that, at the least, allows artists to be directly in control of how they fail and how (and if) they have the wherewithal to take that into account and learn how to succeed.
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question
"What you think? You like a record you download it without paying and maybe buy a t-shirt, or I take you out for dinner next time I'm in town? Too complicated."
Too complicated for you maybe, but you don't get to make all the rules. It's a market, you have to have something more to bring to the table. Sorry about that, but that's how it is.
Give us a link to your stuff, you've put the effort in on this conversation, let us have a listen, maybe we'll like it, maybe we'll buy it, maybe we won't.
Since starting commenting on this thread I've had 8 downloads of my last album, 5 free, 3 paying. That's £15 in my account that wasn't there before. It could be in your account too.
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You Will Be Fine
But the label folded a couple of years ago. Why? Because they didn't have a business plan. They / we had lots of ideas about how to try and sell our product but at the time we still thought the product was little plastic discs sold at gigs to students.
But it turns out that students aren't buying little plastic discs anymore. (well, for the most part, turns out that if you make them a bit special then they will - but I only really discovered this afterwards).
I digress again, apologies.
The "choice" never got taken away from me, the market shifted and the choice was never there. We were too slow to realise that.
So yes, I'm a hobbyist, as are an absolute shed-load of other musicians who've worked out that there's a democratisation of the music market coming.
The barriers to entry are constantly lowering, more people competing for the same pot (at best, more realistically a shrinking pot when you factor in video games), that means fewer stars and, yes, fewer professionals.
No-one is entitled to be successful, and no-one is entitled to be immune from the effects of change. You can try and adapt or try and fight it, but there's coming up to 3 billion people on the internet now and I'd rather be friends with them than fighting them.
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hate?
Here's the thing, piracy or no piracy, selling little plastic discs is a shrinking market. An increasing number of people don't even own CD players anymore so you're effectively creating an infinitely abundant product.
And you're doing it in an environment where the barriers for entry and being constantly lowered and the competition is getting more fierce.
If your product isn't selling, or the market isn't there, you have to find a product or a market that is.
Seriously, read the case studies.
On the post: Blog Fight Devolves Into Legal Nastygrams
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: You Will Be Fine
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.
On the post: No Record Label, But Amanda Palmer Raises Over $100k In Just Six Hours On Kickstarter
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Music doesn't trigger huge payouts
In the last 20 years the costs of recording have plummeted, software, hardware, instruments, the lot. You can now produce something in your bedroom to a higher standard than many of the labels were kicking out in the 70s and early 80s.
The thing that hasn't got cheaper is time or expertise. Sometimes your biggest recording cost is actually going to be the time of a decent producer, and you'll pay that, because that skill can be the differentiator.
This is the new challenge for musicians, there's so much really good stuff out there, finding the great stuff is that much harder.
But as a musician and customer, I reckon that's a pretty good challenge to have.
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: You Will Be Fine
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.
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You Will Be Fine
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!
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Asking Fans For Support Isn't Begging, It's Solidifying Our Relationship
Re: Re: Re: Re: honesty
"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.
On the post: Social Reader Apps: Better Than Paywalls, But Still Walls
Re: Re: Where's Bob?
Perhaps if the publishers had figured out a few ways to keep some relevance people would be willing to pay for it, but in their rush to the bottom even the broadsheets are just re-hashing agency feed that I can get direct from Reuters.
There are still plenty of opportunities for these companies to add value into the chain (and therefore earn something for that value) but if all they're doing is aggregating news feeds and providing politically-biased opinion then they're not providing a service I'm willing to pay for.
Hence I don't sign up to their apps or read their content.
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