Article:  |
A Musician's Take on File Sharing, DRM, and Copyleft Licensing | |
| Subject: | Mp3 Helps, the record industy hurt themselves | |
| Date: | 2003-07-27 13:58:08 | |
| From: | anonymous2 | |
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Response to: Mp3 Helps, the record industy hurt themselves
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I feel like I was locked in a shell before I really got online and into P2P. I thought I knew what music I was "in to". damn, was I wrong. I just had no idea of the vast selection of music types and artists that were making good music this whole time...and I was locked into what I heard on the radio or with friends-what an incredibly slow way to find new music. I've never bought more CD's than after I discovered Napster (then morpheus, then Kazaa) because I ran out of music to buy! I had already bought what I liked, and rarely found new music to purchase. Once I got online and searching I would find similar artists-or collaborations (that I had not heard of before), so I could go and check out these other artists and Holy Hell!...what a great way to discover a whole new world of music-and even better, it's right at your fingertips. No more wasting money on a CD you've only heard one song from, now we can listen to the songs before we buy it.
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Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.
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from John, an unsigned artist
2003-08-01 11:30:30 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
nor do i plan to get signed by a major label. i'm glad that most people are of the mind set that artists should be paid for the work they do. i was not impressed by the post where someone told a working musician to get off his ass and do more shows a week when he was already doing 4-5 shows a week. there's a guy doing it himself, puting out good music, gigging, and trying to provide his fans with a good sounding product. please support that. most people do, from what i've read.
anyone who thinks music should be free is just wrong. it will never be, not because I SAY so, but because of the constitutional rights of copyright given to creators of art and science. if you want things to keep progressing, we've got to support innovative minds.
labels are desperate, they're going down. they're signing deals that have as much as 50% royalties to the artist!!!! not that that's not the way it should have been since the beginning, but that's where it's going. i think we'll see more of our artist friend out there working the scene themselves with their own exclusive label. however, all those people who said that bands should tour to get money, who do you think fronts the money for tour support? THE LABEL. ticket prices are going up becaues labels don't have money to put towards touring. so pretty soon everyone will be bitching about that, too. so artists will start to loose more money there. then the only thing people will do is steal music. there's got to be money going to the artists somehow.
look at it this way--i'll utilize the benefits of file sharing to illustrate...you live in california and you find a great band in florida, "gator inflator", over file sharing. but you don't pay for the music because you're going to support them by seeing one of their shows. meanwhile, gator inflator is on their own label, doing REALLY well, pulling in about 300,000. each guy of this 4 piece band pulls in about 75,000 a year. now do you think that if the labels are weary of sending bands on tour since it's not a big money maker that four dudes from florida are going to embark on a nationwide tour with the anticipation that they'll turn a profit? it will rarely happen. it's great that they got their exposure to you, but it's really a shame that you, as a fan, stole their music when you could have bought it for $.80-1.00.
my main concern is people who think music should be free. artists work as hard as anyone else with the added stress of risk. if they know that their stuff is good and that they have a big audience and fan base, but the money is not coming in, how long do you think they will stay in the business (ESPECIALLY if it's their own)? don't steal candy, don't steal cars, don't steal music--support the artists you listen to...i know i could use it!
check out mp3.com/ushers. there's free downloads, and if you like those you can order our old cd for $5 and the new one for $8. later all!
1st of all, the exact same record labels in NY and elsewhere that are complaining about file sharing, and the artists losing money are the same ones that aren't giving a crap about bootleggers, and never have. I could walk a "couple of blocks" away from any major record label in Manhattan and go find any CD of any artist at a table on the street corner. But yet they're saying their serious about piracy? Doesn't seem that way to me.
2nd, technology wise, this theory about MP3s doesn't wash for me. For 1 thing, in just the US alone, not everyone owns a PC, maybe about 35% or little more at best. 2nd, at least about 75% of US citizens are still using 56k connections, not DSL or Cable. So what does this mean? Well here's the deal. I don't know anyone that goes online downloading whole albums, especially not with a 56k connection. No one has that much time in the day with a 56k connection, and that's assuming that you can even get a full connection rate of 56k, 9 out of 10 you won't.
If by chance you did find an entire album of an artist, no one in their right mind would download that file, not just because of the speed problems, but also because you know that each song wouldn't be encoded with the better bit rate quality, because that would increase file size, which is the whole purpose of having MP3's in the first place.
People aren't downloading albums, their downloading singles. And sure, artists don't get paid for downloads, which I feel evey artist is entitled to their money for their labor, but myself, as well as many others that have expressed their opnioins on this forum are tired of spending hard earned money for an album, just to take it home and hear "maybe" 2 "average" tracks. And it really pisses me off because I'm a producer. I've had many people in the industry that have told me my tracks are "major level", but because I don't have a name for myself, like "Baybface", "Timbaland", "BT", "Neptunes", I'm not even considered for some projects. THen I listen to their tracks and it's like "They got paid $50k - $200k for that song?" Yeah, right.
Again, my example just takes into acct. the way things are here in the US, but everybody in the world doesn't have a PC, yet even with all of the bootlegs, explain to me how a rapper named "50 Cent" sold over 800,000 units in a week if people aren't buying albums? THe RIAA is half right, people aren't buying albums, just not crappy ones.