Members wkoz Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 To make a long story short I'm the guitarist for an independent band who recently released our debut album digitally. We've received good press, airplay, interviews, positive reviews and have close to 15,000 hits to our website and have sold . . . only a dozen units through iTunes. This past week it was brought to my attention that if you google our cd you can find websites four to five pages deep that direct you to file hosting sites where you can download the cd for free. No one in the band has the desire to become rich and famous or has the delusions of being rock stars. We simply want to generate enough revenue to finance our next cd. Given the current environment, is music now a loss leader and if so, what other ways are there for a band to generate revenue and be self sufficient? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fatusstratus Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 The situation you are describing isn't really a loss leader. It's just plain old lost revenue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 3shiftgtr Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 ^^^this^^^ A loss leader is where a retailer takes a high value item and cuts prices to attract customers, then makes their money on a related item. Example: a grocer cuts prices on milk but raises them on cereal. In the indie music biz, most folks use the 'freemium' model that has been tossed about here ad infinitum. Give your music away to make money on 'brand' products like t-shirts etc (read: merch). Others use 'affiliate' marketing whereby you work real hard to get your music 'placed' in commercials, broadcasts, etc. which leads you to the hope of directing interested traffic to your product. An example of this is on MTV....when you are watching the latest episode of "pregnant teen {censored}ups" or whatever, you see at the bottom of the screen, while the music is played in the background, a "now playing" strip. Those are paid for. And usually work. Indies have local options. But 15k hits on your band's website ain't bad, tho. That means there is interest. The trick is to turn it into DIRECTED motivation. And it is a trick, cuz it don't always work, no matter the quality of the art. My opinion is simple: play the hat damn music. And sell the hat damn music. Gig after {censored}ing gig. Get on "local buzz" radio shows, talk to promoters and get warm up slots, network your ass off, play every where for who ever will listen. Get a customer list and work that thing. Eat ramen and bathe weekly. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted December 8, 2011 Moderators Share Posted December 8, 2011 The other part of this is: who is giving your music away for free without your permission? Find those websites and ask them to remove your copyrighted material from their site or pay you the $.99 you should be earning per dl... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dcodr Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 Daddymack is right. If someone is giving away your music without your permission they are stealing from you. Some artists are ok with this, a good example would be all the mixtapes that weezy and other artists put out. But in those situations, it was the artist giving away their music. Not someone else doing so without your permission. If you contact these sites and get no response or they refuse, you may need to get an attorney involved. If you belong to a PRO, could reach out to them as they have legal department that lives for this sort of thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 To make a long story short I'm the guitarist for an independent band who recently released our debut album digitally. We've received good press, airplay, interviews, positive reviews and have close to 15,000 hits to our website and have sold . . . only a dozen units through iTunes. This past week it was brought to my attention that if you google our cd you can find websites four to five pages deep that direct you to file hosting sites where you can download the cd for free. No one in the band has the desire to become rich and famous or has the delusions of being rock stars. We simply want to generate enough revenue to finance our next cd. Given the current environment, is music now a loss leader and if so, what other ways are there for a band to generate revenue and be self sufficient? Your post makes no sense. If you can't create promotion nobody knows that your band exists, either you make that happen, or you do as underlined. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members niceguy Posted December 12, 2011 Members Share Posted December 12, 2011 The other part of this is: who is giving your music away for free without your permission? Find those websites and ask them to remove your copyrighted material from their site or pay you the $.99 you should be earning per dl... I've actually tried this, and it doesn't work, unfortunately. And there's no one to report any of this to. The internet is lawless Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted December 12, 2011 Moderators Share Posted December 12, 2011 I've actually tried this, and it doesn't work, unfortunately. And there's no one to report any of this to. The internet is lawless not completely, as you discovered, there is a bulldog out there just aching for the chance to bite these jerks! https://www.riaa.com/reportpiracy.php?content_selector=report-piracy-online Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wkoz Posted December 13, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 13, 2011 not completely, as you discovered, there is a bulldog out there just aching for the chance to bite these jerks!https://www.riaa.com/reportpiracy.php?content_selector=report-piracy-online Thanks for this. At last count there were 30 sites posting links to file hosting sites. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted December 13, 2011 Moderators Share Posted December 13, 2011 report them all! the only way anyone benefits is if everyone does their due diligence! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Matximus Posted December 16, 2011 Members Share Posted December 16, 2011 To make a long story short I'm the guitarist for an independent band who recently released our debut album digitally. We've received good press, airplay, interviews, positive reviews and have close to 15,000 hits to our website and have sold . . . only a dozen units through iTunes. This past week it was brought to my attention that if you google our cd you can find websites four to five pages deep that direct you to file hosting sites where you can download the cd for free. No one in the band has the desire to become rich and famous or has the delusions of being rock stars. We simply want to generate enough revenue to finance our next cd. Given the current environment, is music now a loss leader and if so, what other ways are there for a band to generate revenue and be self sufficient? I think you just gotta play live really really well and often. And if you do rock music - get out of it. It's dying. A rock outfit to today's music is akin to someone putting together a Big Band outfit to make a go of things in 1965. Bad idea. The economics of trying to entertain people with a guitar-and-drum act are terrible right now - it takes a lot of time & Money to put a band that deserves to be paid up on stage. It's a high-end endeavor - with the cost of the instruments and skill required to play them deftly. Problem is: People like Dance & Rap music with canned beats. The personality of the performer is front in center - the acumen of the people creating the music is beside the point. A DJ can show up with his Laptop or turntables or whatevs and press "on" and everyone is happy. Rock acts are like U.S. Manufacturers competing with China in the 70s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Muddslide Posted December 17, 2011 Members Share Posted December 17, 2011 In the indie music biz, most folks use the 'freemium' model that has been tossed about here ad infinitum. Give your music away to make money on 'brand' products like t-shirts etc (read: merch). Others use 'affiliate' marketing whereby you work real hard to get your music 'placed' in commercials, broadcasts, etc. which leads you to the hope of directing interested traffic to your product. An example of this is on MTV....when you are watching the latest episode of "pregnant teen {censored}ups" or whatever, you see at the bottom of the screen, while the music is played in the background, a "now playing" strip. Those are paid for. And usually work. Indies have local options. But 15k hits on your band's website ain't bad, tho. That means there is interest. The trick is to turn it into DIRECTED motivation. And it is a trick, cuz it don't always work, no matter the quality of the art. My opinion is simple: play the hat damn music. And sell the hat damn music. Gig after {censored}ing gig. Get on "local buzz" radio shows, talk to promoters and get warm up slots, network your ass off, play every where for who ever will listen. Get a customer list and work that thing. Eat ramen and bathe weekly. Good luck. OP, this will likely be the most valid, relevant and consice bit o' wisdom you receive on the subject. Well-spoken and good advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted December 17, 2011 Members Share Posted December 17, 2011 not completely, as you discovered, there is a bulldog out there just aching for the chance to bite these jerks!https://www.riaa.com/reportpiracy.php?content_selector=report-piracy-online Doesn't work. Hundreds if not thousand of our products are exchanged for free via the net, and many are total fake including cover art and by some crooks licenceed to iTunes and about 300 other online music retailers. Recently we found out that one crook made 1.2 million USD per year on iTunes alone with our products, iTunes had no clue of course, the cash is lost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted December 17, 2011 Members Share Posted December 17, 2011 A lot of the pirate sites are located in Russia, and move around when they get hassled (which is rare). There was one site that trumpeted its Winter NAMM coverage, to the extent where someone in my forum pointed to them and said "Look at their great NAMM coverage, why can't you guys do something as good?" So I took a look and...all of our videos had been downloaded from our YouTube channel, with a "brought to you by [not Harmony Central]" added at the beginning I directed the forumite to our YouTube channel if he wanted to see the videos before they started showing up on other sites... So yes, the internet is lawless. Every one of my books is available somewhere as a PDF. The most positive, honest net experience I've had are the tutorial videos I did that were sold via Cakewalk - people actually purchased them. I think this is for two reasons. First, they really liked the videos, and realized there wouldn't be more if I couldn't justify the time in doing them. This is a big deal. Music has been devalued so much, but instructional material hasn't been devalued as much. Another is that Cakewalk uses a very lenient copy protection system, and I think their users tend to be more respectful of intellectual property that's basically being handed to them with "we trust you, please show us we're not being stupid." But as alluded to above, I think the issue goes beyond piracy to a fundamental belief people have that you're PLAYING music, and therefore it's not work, and therefore compensation should be optional. All of those concepts are, of course, entirely wrong. But I think the RIAA could help us a lot by emphasizing that if you don't support people, they don't produce. Their "don't steal, it's wrong" is an attempt to appeal to an abstract concept, whereas "pony up, or the music goes away" perhaps has a more tangible appeal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wkoz Posted December 18, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 18, 2011 Interesting article on Piracy for those who are interested. The root of it should come as no surprise - it's profit driven utilizing pirated music, film, tv shows etc to generate traffic to their websites to ultimately sell advertising. http://popuppirates.com/?p=1249 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fatusstratus Posted December 20, 2011 Members Share Posted December 20, 2011 I don't think it's the whole story...I mean she just discounts a major segment Let’s begin with the sites that serve as the lynchpin for today’s online pirates. No, I’m not going to talk about Pirate Bay or other notorious P2P (peer to peer) sites. No need for that. Looks like she's mainly from the film/tv/video world and I think she's not too plugged into the P2P side of things. Consumers are all about convenience, and it’s not particularly convenient to download torrents and reconfigure the numerous file parts in order to view a movie You can totally get feature films as a single file (not that extraction is hard these days with compression applications like 7-zip -- but single file is extremely common), torrenting SW is very easy to use these days and the sites aren't hard to navigate. Then there's the good ole sneaker net once files get transferred. With music it might be even moreso (CD ripping is super easy and stream ripping ain't much harder) with friends swapping entire external drives of music. I think she's dismissing P2P in too cavalier a fashion to strengthen the theme of her article. Think about this: about 1997, US copyright law got changed so that "for commercial advantage" was no longer a required factor for the infringement to be criminal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted December 21, 2011 Moderators Share Posted December 21, 2011 and the solution to this is not to go after the pirates...but to go after the advertisers! Once the $ is out of the equation, there is no point in stealing the music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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