Music Downloads

I work in the music business and I need to say that illegal downloading is doing very bad things for our business. You're taking money out of people's pockets that work very hard for a living. Please stop.

 

I am in that biz, too, but he's asking about live (probably bootlegged) performances. That would take nothing out of your pocket since these would likely have never been released or are no longer part of any label's catalog.

Try Usenet.

RMX

 

While I feel for you, to be blunt, the music business needs to get used to it! It's not going to go away and only get worse. The industry just needs to adapt to that..

 

I don't think we ever need to get used to it. It's still stealing. I cannot walk into an art gallery and take a print or into a restaurant and grab some fries without paying. Darkalley is asking about rare live performances and I see no harm in that. But the industry is really feeling the effects of illegal downloading. Record sales are down yet the music is out there. I got a phone call today from someone who had sold 1.6 million on the 1st record and only 500k on the second even though in the rock market only Nickelback and Hinder got more airplay. Sorry to get off track.

 

I use iTunes...

 

Yes, try to take a camera into an art gallery, see what happens. It's the same thing.

Didn't mean to derail the thread, it just hits home with me. I can't get f'n paid because budgets are through the floor, due to people not buying albums/music anymore. It's my business, you know..

On that note, if there are rare live performances your looking for, that you can't legally buy anywhere else, I have no problem with that...

 

What do yall do now? Yall cant really stop it correct?

It seems as if illegal downloading is just getting bigger and bigger...

 

I use this site...

http://www.vinden.nl/?sttname=mp3&query=

 

Technically NOT a fair analogy.

Let's get down to brass tacks here. The industry has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the here and now. I also feel the industry at large is partially responsible for them problem anyway - I would point to elimination of the single as ground zero. Their early unwillingness to embrace cheap online music as another issue. There are lots of problems even today...DRM is one of them. Too much to get into so late, but there is no way to stop the inevitable. All I can say is "good luck".

The morality argument is kind of hard to swallow, especially coming from an industry largely viewed as immoral itself. Same goes for the movie industry.

RMX

 

Well they are trying to embrace it. Notice the success of Itunes? What the industry decided to do was market downloads in a way that works for the people.

Not sure how well it's working though..

I can tell you for sure the industry is going through a major change right now. Not just a change in format, but in the entire operation. This is way bigger than the switch from Vinyl to cassette/cd. All the behind the scenes stuff is changing a lot also.

 

The iTunes model could work better. Right now there are DRM issues which somewhat cripple the service, confound and frustrate people. The catalog is also too small (it's missing the Beatles among other things).

The distribution shift has gone from very tightly controlled to being controlled in part by people who own computers. There have been a lot of things wrong with the music industry and this just amplifies sentiment. No one feels sorry for them or the radio industry, either. That's just the way it's going down.

RMX

 

News reports been talking about the possibility of The Beatles showing up soon on iTunes now that Apple vs Apple is done.

Steve Jobs is quite keen to remove DRM from iTunes, who knows how far he will get with the powers-that-be in that endeavor.

 

www.RIAA.COM a very good reliable source

 

...and severely biased.

RMX

 

It's not just the Beatles, other major artists are missing from the catalog. Additionally, it's hundreds of quality regional recording artists who are NOT available to the gen. public via iTunes. I can get a lot of undiscovered music via the sharing sites. The RIAA wants nothing more than to see these disappear entirely. Remember, this was the organization that began suing eleven year-old girls and grandmothers for having MP3s on their computers. This is the same organization that tried to stop the sale of MP3 players. Draconian is the only way to describe the RIAA.

For an indie bands and indie upstart labels who just want to get their music out there, these sharing sites can be very useful.

I saw the whole Steve Jobs DRM thing the other day. How easy do you think it's going to be to get these labels to remove what little protection they have? The music industry has been afraid of its own shadow for half a decade now.

RMX

 

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

The Jobs thing..

 

Well in their "defense", they're just like any other organization/large corporation. When the money stops flowing, peoples heads start to roll...

 

Front page of the WSJ today, too.

RMX

 

Maybe you can answer, why are they making a three download limit on cd's? Once I buy a cd, why shouldn't I be able to cut as many custom cd's (with multiple artists) for my own use?

Have you ever thought that the reason cd purchases are down are due to the fact that the music (sic) they have been putting out just sucks. I HATE rap. I HATE pop. The first new artists cd's I have bought have been white stripes, radiohead, and a few others. One or two songs are the reason I bought them, the rest suck.

Put out better music, get better sales.

 

I think you can see there's been a serious decline in the quality of music as radio stations have been gobbled up by large media companies. I'm with you on this. Most of what you hear on the radio is the equivalent of musical fast food - it's good for like a minute.

I was a fan of rap for a while - way back when there was some musical balance in the world - but now all Top 40/pop really is is rap and little else. I can remember lots of styles co-existing on the radio at one point. That's gone. Worse, television shows and commercials trying to be "cool" insist on utilizing rap music for freaking everything now. Radio execs won't take a chance on anything else because they have bosses and shareholders to answer to. Payola does exist, it just isn't "payola" anymore...that dirty job is handled by third party "marketing" companies now.

The labels, radio and vehicles like MTV are so intertwined...you can probably understand why the RIAA is so afraid of losing control of the distribution model to downloading. Holy crap...people will actually have some say so. It's a total scam IMO. It's always been a crooked business and downloading disguised as hurting the "artists". Artists have earned the lion's share from touring. I remember Sarah McGlaghlan once saying she owed her label millions until her third album even though she had several hits in between.

Courtney Love did the math:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/

You know, you hear all this nonsense about acts starving or going broke and then you switch on "Cribs" and see some new rap artist showing off his new Gallardo. What a joke. The Wall Street Journal today said music sales are down 16% since 1999. 16%? LOL. Yeah, it's a real bust.

It's easy to run an MP3 through a program like Sound Forge and strip out the restrictions. No big deal there. Burn away.

Satellite radio really is a godsend in my opinion. Sorry if this sounds rambling. I'm trying to deal with some other things while I type this.

RMX

 

She can add and subtract?

 

No, but she can certainly divide certain...things...

RMX

 

I've heard of shotgun weddings before, but never of a shotgun divorce.

 

That stuff is usually owned by the label