[songsmith]

The Recording Industry Association of America is pressuring colleges like Penn State now to keep students from sharing music files on school computers. Many groups now plant bogus files on sites like Kazaa to discourage file-sharing.

My view is as such:
The music industry (meaning record companies) missed the boat. A few years ago, they could have changed their business models to match upcoming technologies, but they didn't. So screw 'em.
We used to have a system of radio stations that played lots of cool different stuff from all kinds of different artists. I remember hearing Kiss,AC/DC, The Bee Gees, P-funk, Cheech and Chong, and Jim Stafford all on one afternoon on an AM station in the 70's. Now stations are all owned by conglomo-corporations (except Q-94) and have a playlist of about 25 songs a day, from whichever record company could pony up the cash and or hookers to get the PD to play them. We get force-fed American Idols. So screw 'em.
Finally, record companies charge $15 to $20 for a CD that cost less than a dollar to make, and generally less than 1% of the take goes to the artist. I have personally spoken with an artist who has gone gold a number of times and has yet to make a dime from the record company. He, like so many, was smart enough to include a clause in his contract that guarantees him money from touring, and the record company tried to get that! He smartly agreed to not getting "touring support" money from them...not even posters or ticket-gimme's, the promoters do that anyway. That's how he gets paid, not from record sales. So, as they say, screw 'em.
I have downloaded maybe 5 or 600 songs in the last few years, and honestly, they make more money from me now than ever. I've discovered several atrtists I never would have taken a chance on if I had to pay. I have attended several shows by these cats, and bought the t-shirts and bumper stickers (merch is where the real $$$ is). I listen, decide if I like, and the ones I do like get my money...eventually. Not a multi-national corporation who shoves Justin Guarini down my gullet. SO SCREW 'EM!!------>JMS

[songsmith]

Whoops! Forgot to ask the question! So... how do YOU feel about file-sharing? On one hand, it IS copyright infringement, which could affect artists. On the other, it circumvents the record companies, who already only benefit stockholders, not artists. How do YOU see it?

[evenaswedrum]

I'm with ya... file sharing is the way to go.
I just read an article about Wilco, a band who released they're songs for free online and had an increase in sales.
Screw the major label corporate whores.
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"free thinkers are dangerous"

[Ron]

I think it's a big misconception that a lot of artists have that selling lots of records makes you lots of money. The real money is in touring and especially merchandise. Granted, it's a lot harder to play 5 nights a week than sit in your La-Z Boy and get a royalty check, but what fun is that?

I've heard of bands giving up their touring money in contracts to pay for their next album. How stupid. The record companies have been rip-off artists from the beginning, and there are bands, (such as Gwar), who promote everything themselves and make a great living.

With that said, the internet is a great place to get recognition, although it is tough to make an impression on sites like MP3.com that have soooo much CRAP it's unbelievable. From my experience about 25% of the stuff on MP3.com is even listenable. Hehe.

Technically, downloading songs is theft. But... I almost always download stuff that...
1. I already have on discs that are trashed or on vinyl. (Legal)
2. Is from a band that I've heard one song from, but that one song is not enough to make me go shell out $15 for the CD. If I like the band, I'll buy the CD.

Bands like Wilco are smart enough to realize that the record companies aren't operating with their best interest in mind, so they make their stuff free, develop a huge cult following, and make their money from touring, TV, magazines, and schwag. I think that's the future.

Now that the artists are starting to get smarter about the RIAA, the industry is cracking down on companies and schools. (Sort of like when the DEA needed some busts, and decided to squash the legal cannabis clubs in Ca., easy targets.) There were a few major corps that had servers on their networks loaded with tens of thousands of mp3s. The RIAA sued them for MILLIONS (number of MP3s X number of employees X cost per song).

Hopefully the industry will someday die (along with canned corporate radio) because it does not help any of us.

If I had a popular, established band and was approached about a recording contract, I'm really not sure if I'd take it. It would sort of be fun to go through all the schmoozing and then give them a big F-You.
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... and then the wheel fell off.

[cicannabis]

I want an "open source", which means I can get any piece of info on any subject at anytime. The process towards this achievment began with services like mirc, napster, winmx, kaaza, etc. Oysterhead(Les of Primus, Trey of phish, and Stewart of the police) allow taping with hand held devices at there shows if you purchase a special ticket. The situation, i believe, is moving in the right direction for me. Keep stealing there(major label corporate whores) music and keep giving yours away and i think it will all work out.
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What good fortune for those in power that people do not think. - Adolf Hitler

[JayBird]

I've already posted my views about this over on the "Poll" section on the Rockpage. It basically started with the whole Metallica vs. Napster thing. If you didn't see what I wrote I'll revamp it again. Music sharing is great. It's the cassette dubbing of this generation. Why don't people bitch about that? It's basically the same damn thing. One person has the album and copy after copy get dubbed. I dare someone to tell me that they've NEVER dubbed a cassette. Also for those artists who are bitching about file sharing being wrong...they are idiots. Like it was noted earlier...CDs cost us nearly $20...it cost less than a BUCK to producce. Who is getting all this money? Greedy music execs...not the artist. The artists make their riches off of touring and merch. Well lets think about this...Little Johnny Music Stealer dowloads an album from Kazaa. Little Johnny thinks to himself...good album(an album that the artist isn't making much off of), maybe i'll go see this band once they come around. Little Johnny pays $50 for a ticket to see this "Music Stollen" band. Basiclaly, what I'm say is this...that kid would not have bought the CD at $20, he downloads it from Kazaa, likes what he hears, goes to concert, makes the band money. Maybe the kid even buys a t-shirt($25). So now the band just made $75(minus the production and worker costs) and the now have free advertising from the kid wearing the shirt. How can any band be pissed about this. On the other hand if Little Johnny bought that same CD and it turns out to be crap. Then he just got taken like the millions of others who also found the CD to be crap...crap that cost them all $20. This is our source of "buyer beware". It's like driving a car before you buy it. Or looking at a house before you buy it.

Moral: Music sharing is the best damn thing to happen to the music world...screw the sitting behind the computer, fancy office, air conditioned, suit and tie wearing, corporate america music exec. They aren't busting their ass sweating day in and day out. For the bands who don't like the file sharing...wake up...half the wolrd wouldn't know who you were if it wasn't for music sharing on a computer. It's free advertising and marketing for your band...probably a hell of a lot more than those crummy execs will do for your band!
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The Louder We All Play, The Harder It Is To Stay Unnoticed.

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[Hal]

File sharing is nothing but beneficial to artists. I listen to all kinds of music. I personally would have never bought a Madonna album but have downloaded some of her music. From this downloaded music, I have purchased some of her albums for my nieces who are big fans. Case in point:: I wouldn't have bought shit from her if I wouldn't have previewed it myself first.

Another example. I recenlty downloaded the song Hollow from Backstreet Law's website. I heard a lot about this band and was recommended to check them out. I liked the song and decided to round up the crew and head to 4D's. I was blown away. Bought their CD. 2 nights later they played at the Castle Pub in Ebensburg so we all went again. Bought a t-shirt and saw them twice in the same weekend. I probably would have seen the band perform eventually, but the song Hollow convinced me to see them sooner. Great band, gotta check them out.

I agree with songsmith that the record companies missed their chance with the new technologies of today. There may have been a happy medium but that is long gone. SO SCREW EM!!

[RobTheDrummer]

Cool thread, this is a major accomplishment...everyone agrees as well as myself!!!

But you know what really bugs me about the music industry? I don't like how MTV and record companies ruined music. Music is all about image now, it's not about music. Too many people watch MTV because there are hot chicks. When was the last time you heard..that's a good tune? It's always- did you see so and so's video? Most of the stuff anymore takes minimal talent and writers write tunes for these so called "stars." What the hell happened? It's called Greed! But hey, greed is what makes the world run...but did they have to ruin music in the process???

[songsmith]

I like the cassette-dubbing reference. That's how underground bands in the 80's generally became popular. That's how I discovered Metallica, Motley, and countless others. It's also how my old rock band gathered steam. We did our studio project, and each of us got a first-generation copy. Our stuff was never commercially "released," but we got a copy to local radio,where it got played by good folks like FeightRob and Jim Price. Suddenly everybody wanted a copy, and even though I seldom made copies for friends, the ones that were "out there" got dubbed a bunch of times, until I heard one of our songs playing on a radio station in York, and I had never sent them a tape, but they were playing a scratchy dub anyway because they had requests. (The REAL lesson there was make sure radio has a good copy of their own!) I never made a dime off the recording, but it paid the band's rent indirectly, through the increased booking traffic. And that was 13 years ago, before file-sharing. Heaven only knows what a good band could accomplish now.----->JMS

[BDR]

It's always been my view that recording at this level of things is an investment -- a band expense. Write the music, save the money, record the music, press the discs and then pass them out. I've always thought if you ask people to buy your music at the "club scene" level, you're taking a risk that not everyone will hear your stuff. Not everyone will fork over even $5 but anyone will take a free one. I guarantee that anyone who gets a free CD will pop it in at least once. When they do, you win. Same with merchandise. I think it'll profit up-and-coming bands more in the long run to give out T-shirts and bumper stickers. Get that name out, that Web address, that music. You'll know when it's time to start charging for stuff.

But that's just my opinion...

r:>)
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That's what she said.

[songsmith]

Do bands still use those black & white 8x10 promo glossies? My old rock band handed those things out by the thousands until a bunch of kids saw me handing piles of them to bandmembers to give to club and business contacts, and offered a buck apiece for them. We actually made more money selling those 8x10's (and autographing them for free) that night than playing. You'd probably never get away with that now.
We let a guy tape us with a plain old camcorder at a few shows and he made up his own "video" with scene cuts, and little interviews and all, and spliced it all together on a Radio Shack video switcher box with graphics and titles from his Commodore 64 computer. He dubbed them off one at a time on store-bought blank VHS tapes with a couple of VCR's and sold 200 of the damn things! I never thought he'd ever sell even one, we just let him because we liked him. I guess we sort of gave those away...
Seriously, knowing that those songs went from dubbing deck to dubbing deck because they were WANTED was a very satisfying thing for me as a writer. I felt that it meant people weren't led by marketing to listen, they just liked the songs. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I'd have chosen a different line of work, so whether people paid for the songs was immaterial to me. I feel I've gotten back way better stuff than money, all because we gave it away.
Don't get me wrong, selling your CD is NOT a bad thing, and has it's own satisfaction in that people have just parted with their scratchola for something YOU created. A disc comes with artwork and liner notes and the sense that a fan now has a hard copy of the art, and that's cool, too. But we all seem to agree that file-sharing is a great resource for bands, and that record corporations no longer really have a purpose outside of promotion you can do yourself on a smaller, more efficient basis.---->JMS

[FatVin]

The real issues here are distribution and money. The artists want Distribution. As a muscian and songwriter, I want as many people as possible to hear my music as possible, but that takes money. It takes money anyway you slice it, wether I invest in software and hardware and record in my home or I go to a studio to record, it still takes money.

Back in the old days the kind of equipment you needed to record with any quality cost tens even hundreds of thousands of dollars, so an artist had to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to use all that expensive gear, it was that simple and in those days the only place you could get that kind of scratch was from a record company.

At the time it made sense, The record label fronted you recording money and you paid them back with sales and they helped you do that by getting your records in the stores and sending out on tour fronting you even more money for you to pay them back, a really good system if you happen to be the record company, it's a bit like share cropping. The artist never gets too far ahead of the curve.

Now you can make a quality recording with a relatively small investment, a few mikes and some effects racks and a good set of software and you can sound as good as any studio, but here's the catch you can't get the distribution you need. so you have a choice, get it pressed with one of a number of independant pressing companies, i,e, discmakers and sell it out of the back your car and hopefully make enough back to pay for the pressing or CDR it, and take your chances that the cd wont play on this machine or that and sell it, or file swap and hope to get back your investment in increased gig traffic

The problem with file swapping is that while it's cool to know somebody in russia downloaded your tune, it's not really gonna help you book a gig in Central PA. so at some point you gonna have to deal with a record label. You're gonna have to get those CD's in the stores, file swapping can help you get to that point but sooner or later, you're gonna want national and even international distribution and a record label, even if it's a smaller indy label, already has the pipeline in place.

Here's the good news, the industry is changing, slowly but there is change and more coming. My favorite is the P & D. It's a pressing and distribution deal. I deliver a CD fully mixed and mastered and ready to ship, the record label presses it, distributes it and promotes it (gets it on radio, in movie soundtracks, etc) this is a smaller investment for the label so they get a smaller piece of the profits. Indy labels are easier to start and operate now because what used to require hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars can be done now for tens of thousands so structuring a deal that is at least more fair to both parites is easier.

They can't stop file swapping, I don't care how many suits they file or laws they pass, just like they couldn't stop cassette dubbing but there will always be record companies and they must always be dealt with, it's unrealistic to think you can get national and international distribution with out giving somebody a piece of the action, even CDbaby.com has fees.

The record industry is changing because it must and ultimately it will be the suits who benefit, not the fans, not the artists but the money men cause that's the way the world works, but in these interesting times you can carve out a piece for you and yours so you can go back and record your latest tune, take it out on the road and make your money from mechandise, and gigs like muscians have been doing since Edison invented the thing. I want to play my music and I want as many people as possible to hear it, anything that futhers that cause is good.

In pressuring universities, the RIAA is bringing attention to something they know will bring them more profit, they made a fuss about cassettes and used Cd sales and now file swapping, the more they sqwak, the more people do it and eventually it leads to even more sales for the RIAA, and they know it. but all that actvity also leads to changes in the way they do business, now is the time to take advantage, so stay current, stay brave, and stay tuned because more changes are on the way.

The best things in life are free
but you can leave that to the birds and bees
gimme money, that's what I want

money wont get everything it true
but what it won't get I can't use
I want money, that's what I want
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Blooz to Youz

[Ron]

The big difference between file sharing and cassette duping is sound quality.

The RIAA didn't seem to care as much about cassette duping because it was an analog copy which degraded the sound quality to such a degree that it was definitely noticible, even with just one copy. With digital formats, you can easily make copies which are exact duplicates of the original.

The company I work for engineered a high definition digital TV card for PCs about 2 years ago. The card could record the digital signal, and as a result, our customer had to have us add an encryption algorithm so that the people who bought the cards couldn't take the files from one machine and play them on another. In the golden days of VCR this wasn't a problem because even copies made on the best VCRs were still visibly degraded from the original.

Like Vin said, the digital age is going to change the industry, and one reason is because digital copies are exactly the same as the originals, and that changes things from a legal standpoint.
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... and then the wheel fell off.

[DennySD]

This is my first post, and I figured what better than to start with something I have strong convictions about.

This website is, for the most part, full of actual musicians who write real songs and are obviously about the music, not the money. Of course we all want to get paid for what we do, but we'd still be doing it even if it only entailed a three-person fan base, two of whom are relatives. And I'm pretty sure I can say that's why there has yet to be a dissent in this thread. The Internet, File Transfer and P2P programs get my music to people who otherwise would not give me the time of day. It doesn't bother me that I'm giving songs to John Doe in Nowheresville, PA because if I can turn him on to what I'm doing, that may just be what he needs to say "Hey, these guys aren't on the radio! But I like it? Wow." And then Mr. Doe procedes to try to come to a show and maybe even purchace a shirt or even, god willing, a CD. All because he got onto a website or KaZaA or the like and casually "stole" music from me.

I can then speak to this from the other point of view, that being the fan. I can't begin to name the non-mainstream bands whose CDs I've bought after discovering them on KaZaA or Direct Connect. Built to Spill, Wilco, Maroon5, Dispatch, and Modest Mouse are a few that come to mind. Without these programs I'd probably have bought another Matchbox20 album. The record companies are still screwing me (the fan) and the artist over like always, but at least now I'm directing my money towards whom I feel is deserving of it, not whom MTV feels is.

I guess I haven't said anything that hasn't already been said, so I'll stop now; but I believe I made my point. I wish someone here would disagree just to get across the point of how absurd this persecution of file sharing is. Record companies always have and always will be a necessary evil for any serious recording artist, and file sharing isn't going to change that. So let our music be.

[FatVin]

DennySD wrote:

[Zerohdefects]

Industries do not like file sharing because they lose money on CD sales. Bands hardly make crap on CD sales, they usually make their money on Merch, shows, et cetera. Unless they get HUGE sales, they can only get like 10 cents a cd or something closs.

The RIAA is in action to get money that they lost, to fill their greedy ass pockets with.

Is DLing wrong? Very. Is it the same as borrowing your friends CD and copying it? No, you don't know the person you are getting the music from

In essence though, it is the same thing, and people were not arrested for that.

What about the whole movie thing? Buy a VCR and a DVD player, record your DVDs to VHS. No one would question it once. Or VHS to VHS, or what about cassettes?

I think this whole RIAA thing is a big bunch of shit to be honest.

[Bert|Evil]

Wow, you guys nailed most of my points!! Especially the cassette and Metallica references.


Keep in mind that law is not a science at all, so who knows what we'll end up with. Napster got busted simply because they had a centralized database, and you don't have that with P2P. Those lawyers who invest their time into Internet law suggest that the Internet should have its own code of law simply because it contains a capital "I", which, in their argument, is no different that "England" or "Pittsburgh". Besides, most bands only make 13% to 20% off of record sales, and that's why they tour and sell T-shirts.

My solution: End the legal system as we know it in order to introduce a code that actually progresses society. This, in turn, will force the lawyers to move to Canada. We can bring back Hammurabi Law until then.
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www.capitalistpig.com

[Primates]

i concur. but good luck walking into an office screaming "I WANT THIS SHIT FOR FREE". it dont work. people want to much for free. if i busted my ass on a record and someone stole it id be pissed. but if im not gettin the money from the record any way. sure take it.
but i believe not only RIAA needs a reality check. MPIAA needs one as well. lots of things need to be changed...especially in cnetral PA. stay sic. later

[bassist_25]