Members Terry Allan Hall Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 Pros? Cons? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members superiorparts Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 i dont download music, copy it to a disc, and sell it to make money off of it. most all the music i download is either a song that the band that i'm in is going to learn or making a break cd to play between sets when we are on the road. either way, i feel like i am advertising for the artists who wrote the music. sometimes i download a song that somebody tells me is great and if i like it i go buy the cd. i've played lots of songs that somebody has came up to me and said "what was the name of that song, i want to buy the cd". i guess the next step would be that we could not play cover songs. i realize that the record company and artists have lost some money on this but at least the artists have had to go out on the road more. kevin james www.monkeyboneband.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ratthedd Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 Copyright law allows you to xerox pages from books or magazines as long as you're using only part of the book/magazine for educatinoal purposes. In that regard I see no problem with downloading music in order to learn how to play a particular song. I'm not real keen on people who can afford to pay for CDs to download the entire CD and make copies for all their friends, but at the same time I'm not real keen on ercord companies charging $10+ for CDs that really only cost about $1 to make and distribute when the artist only gets a tiny percentage of the profit. If I had my own music available on CD I guess I wouldn't mind people sharing as long as I was still getting SOMETHING for my time and effort in creating the music. I fully understand that people are reluctant to pay for something they've never heard before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Timezarrow Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 For an aspiring artist, I think it makes sense to allow and encourage file-sharing of some of your music in order to get more exposure. At some point, though, you are going to want to get paid for recordings. One way to go about it is to have great packaging, pictures, lyrics, etc. on your cd's for sale that you can't get on a download. Once people like you, they are going to want to have the things that relate to the band, know more about it, etc. I might feel differently if I were ever to be hugely successful, but I think a certain amount of sharing is not bad even for the big acts. The problem is people want to calculate what they would make if they got paid for all the bootleg copies out there. Doesn't work that way - many people would not buy your stuff even if they couldn't get it any other way. For my part, though, I wouldn't want to be sharing or downloading anything that the artist didn't allow. I like the trend of some bands offering their live show recordings free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JBJ Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 despite the fact that no one is downloading my material at a loss to me i'm still totally against it. I do my job, i expect to get paid for it.... just because a musician doesn't pick up a wage slip every week and can make an absolute {censored}load doesnt mean they're not entitled to their proper cut. end of the day, if you go into a shop and decide 60p is too much for a can of coke, is it ok to stick it in your pocket and walk out without paying? didn't think so. a girl i work with who also works in a hairdressers was moaning the other day because the PRS sent them a letter saying they needed to pay a fee if they were going to have the radio on in the premises. Basically the radios equivelent to a television licenince. I pointed out that it;s a public place and the whole point of the prs is to make sure bands get the correct royalties from public broadcasts or at least as close as possible. to which she still moaned. i then pointed out that her boyfriend is a guitarist and i'm sure she wouldn't mind people not paying their due for his songs being played all day, to which she humbly decided to agree. as for my work. we've just got rid of the jukebox and started banging copied cd's into the stereo. now we have the mcps as well as the prs to worry about i've let them know i think it's bollocks and it's not because I'm a musician either. I've been brought up with the idea of doing an honest days work for an honest days pay. just because musicians do stuff we'd all love to do doesn't mean it's ok to take money from their pockets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Igneroid Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 I dont advocate stealing either and I have mixed feelings about this topic. "You have to define stealing". It definitly is stealing if you download a copy of a copyrighted material for free from some peer to peer site. Period. I agree with that point completly. But my definition of stealing is perhaps larger than others...I dunno... I think the record companies have brought this situation upon themselves to a degree by "stealing" from the young kids who want this or that particular song. They force the kids to pay exorbant "fees" to purchase a CD with one good song on it and a bunch of crap thrown in. There are getting to be more and more sites where you can download songs legally for a price and that is what I do. The record companies will whine when this system gets to be mainsteam because profits will suffer....and signed musicians are gonna have to work a little harder to come up with better tunes to keep sales/royalties up....they will whine too but in the end, the consumer will win .......for a while.......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JBJ Posted August 10, 2005 Members Share Posted August 10, 2005 ^ the bands write the songs, the producer (with some link to the label0 tries to say what goes onthe record and is usually what is more likely to sell. end of the day. the two groups with the out and out most disposable income are: teens and +30 year olds they can spend money on britney spears, good charlotte, dido and james blunt. student gypo's thinking they;r ehard done by and thus need to download band x and band y inevitably reduce band x and band y's sales and thus reudce label Z's want to sgn band X1 and y1 whereas label Q sign and put out dido 2 and frontstreet boys. not that i'm that bothere.d i buy records, i pa my way, i like alot of stuff that charts and alot of stuff that does't. your choice folks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members anothertxn Posted August 11, 2005 Members Share Posted August 11, 2005 Take it. Just come to the show. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sventvkg Posted August 11, 2005 Members Share Posted August 11, 2005 I don't know...I would like to get some $$ for my music..I've been lucky with sales but I have to say there are MANY MANY people who got my CD's from friends who could have easily paid for it..And this is a CD these people enjoy and listen to. They think nothing of burning a copy for all their friends and go on their merry way..It's mildly annoying since they come to the shows spend money in the bar or buy food, have a good time get entertained by me and I end up not even selling a CD to them because someone else burned it...I would say I've lost out hundreds of sales because of this...I was toying with the Idea of not making another CD or just doing a cheap one that I include in a DVD that I would make from then on instead..At least people are still buying DVD's and there is a perceived value to them...I've come to look at my CD's as giveaways that are basically promotion.....I can see the end of me making them in favor of DVD's happening soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noisewave Posted August 11, 2005 Members Share Posted August 11, 2005 since I've been able to download full albums and preview before I decide to spend 25 bucks I've bought more music. if I download it and don't like I delete. downloading is also great since a lot of what I like isn't available locally and has to be orderedin. as far as my own music goes....share away! the more exposure the better and it usually transfers to more people at shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members no tone Posted August 12, 2005 Members Share Posted August 12, 2005 file sharing is the newest way, but it's all been done and it's not going away. I vaguely recall a big stink in the industry in the 80's over dual cassette decks? (can't even find those anymore) I believe they wanted a levy on blank cassettes -much like cd's and dvd's now I've always looked at it this way -buy the CD and you support the record company/distibution chain. This is not to say I don't buy the stuff I think is good, it just means I'm not giving much to the band when I do so. -see the band live and you support the band. While you're there, buy a t-shirt too my $.02 YMMV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members noisewave Posted August 13, 2005 Members Share Posted August 13, 2005 in canada we pay a levy on all blank media. it came in to effect when recordable vcrs and cassette decks were killing the music and film industries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Sir Don Posted August 15, 2005 Members Share Posted August 15, 2005 Interesting article by Janis Ian here called "Fallout: follow up to the internet debacle." http://www.janisian.com/articles.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Blackwatch Posted August 15, 2005 Members Share Posted August 15, 2005 That's a great article Don, I've recomended it many times for this subject. Whether or not you think it's right or not to download , It kills me when the record companies use it as the scapegoat as to why the're not selling as much as before. The're not selling as much because the product they are turning out is for the most part CRAP. IMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members XamendedX Posted August 15, 2005 Members Share Posted August 15, 2005 if it wan't for file sharing/downloading, no one would know who we were and the only ones at our shows would be friends, and friends of friends... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Narcosynthesis Posted August 15, 2005 Members Share Posted August 15, 2005 filesharing and copying cds has its good and bad points... i work on the idea that if i like somehting, i buy the real cd, if i dont, no loss to anyonefor example, friends have got cds which they have loved, so they have made a copy for me to have a listen to, if i like it enough to listen to it more than once or twice (to get an idea of the band) i will go out and buy it in the shops, if i dont like it it just gets shelved, and no real loss to anyone (as i probably wouldnt havebought it in the first place)same goes for filesharing, there have been bands i have downloaded an album of (to get a proper idea, not just get stuck with a couple of the good/horrible songs) and enjoys, so i have gone out to buy the album i downloaded and more, so those bands have benefitted from me downloading music i just always prefer to own the real thing, with the real disk and artwork and liner notes and so on, and also because of the moral factor, downloading is theft, if it is somehting i would listen to again i will pay for it, if it isnt it gets deleted (i could listen to an album at a friends or so on instead) there are always the few who abuse this, and just download all the music they want and never pay for a thing, and that is a problem one thing that amuses me is copy protection on cds, all it does is annoy the legit listeners, for the people who make a living off piracy, they will always find a way apst any protection (if it can be listened to it can be copied...) but people like me get annoyed with it, for example the copy protection stopped me recording my copy of radioheads hail to the theif to my computer, to listen to on my walkman, annoying and pointless. the extra bit to the story is the fact to get it on my walkman, i ripped all the songs using another programme, burned them to a blank disk and uploaded that... so the protection only stopped me doing something harmless, and to get around that i had to do what it is supposed to stop...any copy protection can be gotten around, it is only the normal people who it gets in the way of... David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Badside Posted August 15, 2005 Members Share Posted August 15, 2005 I can't really be against downloading as, like most musician, I discovered music in my teens mostly by sharing tapes with friends. And as a guitarist in a cover band, I'm really not interested in buying the CD for each song I have to learn. What I don't like about music downloading however is that it shifts the focus towards the singles and that is a bad thing. People who don't buy albums only know the songs on the radio and only download those songs, which sometimes aren't reflective of the artist's work. An album is made to be listened as a whole! From beginning to the end, not just skipping to the 3:30 hooky songs. For example, I recently bought Green Day's American Idiot, and there are some really great songs in there which I would've never heard of if I hadn't bought the CD! The singles are stuff for the kids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Timezarrow Posted August 15, 2005 Members Share Posted August 15, 2005 Hmmm . . . what I don't see here are the opinions of the guy who started the thread. And I know he has them! TAH? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Terry Allan Hall Posted August 17, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 Originally posted by Timezarrow Hmmm . . . what I don't see here are the opinions of the guy who started the thread. And I know he has them! TAH? Well, I was just waiting to see what my "peeps" were thinking before climbing onto my own soapbox... But since ya asked.... I can honestly say that filesharing has done me a lot of good and (probably) no harm. Since I put up a website, I've sold an average of 12 CDs and 7 cassettes each week just from the site (in addition to what I sell at my gigs and the few I sell (on consignment) in other venues - one health food store seems to sell about 5 CDs a week, but most others sell only a couple a month, on the average)... And, as XamendedX and noisewave point out, most of our $$$ comes from gigs, so CDs/cassettes/Tshirts/other "swag" are just a little extra income, but a great advertising tool! The article by Janis Ian that Sir Don linked explains it a lot better, IMHO, than I can and I hope it's been read by all! BTW, has anyone else ever noticed that cassettes sell better in small towns and CDs sell better in larger towns? Any theories on that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.