what do you think about file sharing of music on the net.
 

i personally think it is a great way to make new contacts and spread the gospal of electronic music :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
i also think the people that probablly dont like it are worring about their royalties or the percentage they are sucking like a parasite from their host, if you cant get any money out of it which isnt what music creation is about, then you may as well gain a few new fans,im happy with that.
what the people think??
down with the chart topping mind conditioning majors and up with the real independant music.
maybe we could mention our favourite free mp3 hosting sites for independant musicians and build a list for the liberation of independant music and the mind numbed masses.

Its a reality, and a double edged sword with both dissadvantages and benefits for the artists.

:idea:

Re: what do you think about file sharing of music on the net
 

Well, if you pay your rent and eat with the money you get from music you really don't laugh relievedly.

But afterall, like mentioned above, there are pros & cons in mp3 sharing. I took a priviledge to add an option to the poll. The mp3 sharing networks are great way to preview records. Doubt if the new records of Hollowcell & The Toothless Aussie Boys is worth buying? Download it and listen to it and if you dig it, buy it.

Also the sharing networks offer a great tool to expand your music knowledge and taste. You can even find some really rare stuff that's actually impossible to find as a real thing.

Those two things are the pros of the sharing. They give benefits to consumers and the creators. The sharing becomes a problem only if the music is so dull that no-one is willing to pay for it. A good example of this is the paradox of modern music industry: Piracy losses are increasing al the time and they respond to it by creating more and more quickly produced easylistening music that pleases as many John Smiths as possible. It's kidna logical, but is John Smith willing to pay for music that's only "ok to listen at work"?

Re: what do you think about file sharing of music on the net
 

Hey! How did you know I have no teeth!? :D
Anyway....
I've been keeping it quiet, but I've made a progressive rock album just for you Juho.

I like to DL to demo new stuff (but it doesn't have to be illegally). Many artists now days put clips on their web-pages now days.
Concerning the artists that don't put demos for free online, I may grab a free copy from somewhere, but if it's something I really like, I'll buy it.

There are some records I will just buy blindly on past experience though - Gorrilaz was one recently.

thanks for updating the pole juho.i agree it is a good way to preview music and if you like it and respect it and want that artist to make more goood music then you should show that appreciation through a donation to their site or purchase some of their merchandise in a way that most of the money goes to them and not some middle man.
its a bit like busking and the whole world could be walking down your street.
but i do not agree with the bully boy tactics of some agencies who would like to lock people up for the sharing of music and information in this way.
the beatles made a lot of money and they only got something like 4pence from every album.so you can become well off with very small donations on a large scale ,but do we really need all these midddle men to sell us something we dont need and isnt worth very much with a very short shelf life?
and corporate fraud is at an all time high.....

Those first two choices are LOADED. I just said don't know.
I listen to a fair bit of free music and I think all of us here should be thinking of the next reason why some fans of what you do would pay money for it.

I just got a shuffle ipod and the iTunes store is fantastic if your a total newbie to the net. I has buy links everywhere, even when you import your 'free' music.

So you're trying to say that for an example mixermen, masterers, producers, session musicians, recording engineers, cover graphics artists, additional composers and writers don't deserve any pay?

Average musician sells quite different numbers than The Beatles.

I think you really don't have any idea who are these "middle men". When real musicians make a record there is more invovled than a teenager with a bad acne and Reason 2.5, like on trance scene. Hoho. But really, think who are getting paid for the record sales. The musician/artist itself gets majority of the pay by live shows - The rest of the musicians and other people invovled in making the record get paid only by the sales.

I'd like also add that if a record has a short life then it's the musician's fault. If a record can't take more than few listens then it's clearly a bad record.

i agree any one that does an honest days work should be paid thats why we have organisations like mcps,ppl,. etc
and not many sell the amount of records that the beetles did

the middle men i speak of are the corporate fat rats at the top of the pile
who make the executive desicion to remix and re release saturday night by wigfield and then get paid 50 to 100 times more than the poor sucker they get in to perform the song and ruin any reputation they may have had previous through doing so.then they are cast onto the scrap heap next month after their 15 minutes is over.
hope there no wigfield fans in the house, just an example :oops:


when i said that
i wasnt joking. i think the internet has made or will make alot of these middle men surplus to requirement and enable the artst to reach the people at home and the independant lables able to compete on an semi even ground as the majors.
sure thing hc i think you cant fight the technology or its progression but can only work with it .eg offer a few free tunes on your site and ask that they buy the album to hear the rest or offer all tunes for free and ask that fans make a donation to help cover costs there are alot of honest people out there its hard to believe.... :twisted:
and it can work for example they have a bar in berlin that you walk into with no bar staff lots of tables and lots of drink you drink what you want and on the way out leave what you think you may owe.
if you dont play by the rules(pay what you owe) then the bar will have to close and no one can sit there and have a drink any more. :cry:
it also means if you make good music you get paid if not find another means of making money. but as i said money isnt the reason for making music ,and actually destaroys the natural creativity. :?

did you know that simon cowel (alledgedlly, since i have no actuall documentaion to support this and dont want to get sued)has been known to help out with quite alot of his artists releases, yeah he really cares and just loves to take part as a musician.
play the triangle hit in the track and forever get paid.a rough guess 10mil a hit, do this once a week and collective hours at work rounded off to 1 hour per month ,who needs a pension. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

They should be paid by the artist, who should be paid by whoever buys the music.

And they should therefore get quite different money than The Beatles.

I think gimpoid is talking more about the major labels where the middle men are not the producers/engineers/etc. but coporate suits who do fuck all. Middle men are by definition between the people involved in creating the music, i.e. the artists and engineers/producers, and the people buying the music.

The major label music industry rips everyone off, both artists and consumers.

I think that file sharing is shitty when people don't buy any music, but I download a lot of music. Then again I have over my life spent a stupid amount on music, with hundreds of cds and a wardrobe filled with vinyl. If I wasn't able to download this music there are heaps of albums I would never have heard of and never bought.

Quite frankly given the poor quality of a lot of releases, I'm not prepared to buy music without listening to the full album first, if it grabs my interest I'll buy it.

i think its perfectly fine as long as the artist gets paid.
gear cost money you know and we spend alot of time and afford writing and producing the music it will just be unfair for us to be giving it away for free.

Yeah, this is exactly right. Check this out:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Dont forget kiddies...

It's illegal!

But, I do occassionally hear a band on radio, think, "Hey, they sound cool", see what else they got to offer by DL another track, and then if I like them, I go out and buy the album.

I quite like actually owning a CD. It is something physical, that I can touch, and look at. Not a pile of numbers floating in digital wilderness. Not to mention MP3 quality is FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!! I have a hard time listening to that jumbled mess of "audio".

Give me 24/96 any day. Hell, give me 16/44.1 Its a whole lot better than the shit floating out there in P2P land.

Whatever.

:o

thats why so many producers and artists are settings up a dummy label and sell their stuff directly online in forms of wma and mp3.
the only bad point is that its hard to advertise yourself and set up gigs this way.
(usualy the record label take care of thos both).

Quality is probably the best reason (if any reason) to buy from major labels these days. Unfortunately money is the driving force with big companies (not only music companies), and articles like the one linked above shows how horrible it can be for the artist.

How about your experience Panopticon? I think I read somewhere on here you are making a fair bit of cash from music. What sort of deal do you have?

The RIAA vs The People

http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/

This would lead to a point in which the musician should be more an accountant than a musician. You can't even imagine the amount of paper war and work the financial things of that level require. Plus an individual musician probably can't get the crew as cheap as a major label does which leads to a point that the you don't get any more profits plus you'll have to focus on accounting instead of music. This is of course an extreme situation but very possible. World is not blad & white you know.

And they do get much less. What is the point in this? Every musician should get as much money as The Beatles?

So you want a world in which no-one thinks mostly one's own interest? A noble vision, it's like dreaming of a working socialist equal world. If the suit men don't fuck all then someone else does.

Yes they do and they are digging their own grave. I'll just sit and wait. But by boicoting all major label releases you also boicot the musicians and the other people working on the releases. Taking a bread from a poor musician just because you don't like the management taking a share.

There are funny phenomenas in the major label grave digging business. Good example is that excessive copy protection madness which starts to harm the consumers thus harming the business and the musicians. Yay for capitalism.

In Finland a group of members of the Parliment gave a christmas present for the Minister of Culture: A copyprotected CD and a mp3 player with a card that urges to immident actions to get the contents of the CD in the mp3 player until the New Year which means ramming the new copyright law through next week.

lol this kind of funny stuff can only happen in finland. :D

This is possible without the behemoth which is the major label recording industry at the moment. The paperwork is huge because the recording business has made it that way, plenty of small businesses exist without having to be part of some massive conglomorate, why can't the music industry work similarly?

The original point was that the Beatles made a fortune from only getting a few p per record sold, so if artists got a higher percentage of the actual sales they could make a living without having to sell massive quatities. It is only that the majotrs rip off artists so badly at the moment that it means that artists have to sell huge numbers of albums to make a living. Did you read that link to Steve Albini looking at the numbers and who makes what?

My point is that the middlemen are taking a far bigger slice of the pie than they deserve, not that they shouldn't exist at all.

I agree that they are digging their own grave, and I'm not condoning downloading music and not buying it, though I will refuse to buy music from major labels. At the same time I don't really listen to music from major labels as most of it is not to my tastes.

I'm pretty sure we are thinking the same thing here :)

At least in Finland the state collects and takes care of taxing, not the music industry. ?hih. When you pay salaries to musicians, mixermen, etc, you're an employer, which means you'll have to be an entrepeneur which leads into a taxation hell and to seventh level of Dante's recepit inferno. Running a small business is not an easy task. Loads of work with the financial things.

Wouldn't it be nice if you would get more pay for an average factory work so you wouldn't have to work extra shifts to get some money left after living costs. Life is like a flower bed: There is no flowers without manure and dirt. Totally equal business and market is total utopia. It's just a thing one has to accept. As long as humans are running the system there will be greedy bastards. But remember kids that the big music industry bullies are not the only one's cooping more than they need. for example think of Paul McCartney - Why none of you whine why he haven't spend his millions to support new music and musicians even he can burn 100 pounds in bright flame each minute and he would still have money left when he dies? Greed folks, greed. If the big bullies don't take the extra then someone else does. I'm not saying that the modern music industry is great, but don't bite the hand that feeds your fellows.

A bad contract is a bad contract.

Everyone takes a far bigger slice if they can. If you take a hundred people in a big hall with a huge box in the middle filled with 20 euro notes and put up a sign declaring "One note per person", what do you think does everyone walk out with one note in their hand? Of course they do, except they have their pockets and shirts filled with notes.

But not buying it because of the label is really just doing damage to the artists. Buy the record, damn it! I bet my arm that you wear clothes that has one promille of the sales income spent to the salaries of the people actually making them and I also bet that the profits of almost everything you have bought is unfairly shared. Still you don't seem to make a number of it. We live in a rotten globalised world in which silly itty-bitty fraction of people get all the profits excluding the itty-bitty fraction that goes to the other people. Unfair world.

What is this? A peace pipe of some sort! I fart in your peace pipe's general direction!

well at least we all agree on 1 thing

I didn't knew trance producers could be super rich demi gods. Oh well, the days, the days.

i didnt mention trance i dont make trance and i wouldnt listen to trance in my spare time either. but if i do decide to that means i will never be super rich or make it at all? and according to you some spotty teenager at home who makes trance using reason is also less a musician, im sure that could offend alot of people in this forum.

do you have to be so anal juho this thread probablly would have stoped ages ago or could have possiblly even been inormative for quote all the kiddies out there end quote. instead of being some verbal and musical industrtry knowledge show of strength .
how did you become a mod anyway i ythink it may have gone to your head.

Oh well, then you have a manager for your band and if you are big enough an accountant and so on. Maybe a few bands get together to share these people who do the boring stuff, but they should be answering to the bands as they are the reason these people have jobs. The major labels have got this all messed up so that the bands who should have the power and a say in how they do things have no power and get fucked over as much as the label possibly can.

So you think that we should just give up and never try to make anything better? And I'd bite that major label hand given the chance. There is no way I'd sign a major label contract even if I was talented enough to get offered a contract.

But that is all the major labels offer. So fuck them, I'm not supporting a business that behaves like that.

Not me, but I guess if everyone does it we should just give up and go with the flow eh?

I do try to avoid bastard companies of all sorts, major record labels just make it easy as their product is rarely something I want ;)

Okay it's on then. Let's fight :twisted:

There it is... A manager. An equal to the frightening suit man and Mr.Unfair share.

Bands getting together to share economic resources and employees is called a label.

As I said a bad contract is a bad contract. If you're stupid enough to sign a contract that's bad for you then it's your own personal tear. Don't hit the session musicians, damn it!

I don't think we should just sit down. I mean we shouldn't eat our fellow men's bread. The major labels are going down by themselves. Let's just make sure that the musicians and other crew working on those labels make a living.

If you find a good band on a big label, you automatically assume they have a bad contract? If they have a bad contract and you don't buy the record just because of the label the band is even more deep shit.

No-one does take extra. Never... Some how it jsut happens. Has to be the elves then.

Why don't you avoid instead of trying to avoid?

Tshihihii. The tradition goes on. I have done field research for years...

I'm not anal. I'm just waking people up from time to time. Yesmen culture is bad for people. By the way this has become informative when I've brought up a different opinion with good arguments which creates discussion. Thread stopping is not a good sign. A thread stopping short means that the subject is banal and totally trivial which causes no interest. A fellow musicians living is not a trivial thing so I'd be really concerned if this thread would have died in few posts.

We have our little traditions here. Hoho. Enjoying the forum requires adapting a filtering method that turns most of the crap around here to sarcasm, humour and satire.

If people start to sleep, I'll wake them up. It's good for the forum, you'll see.

Oh oh, seems like Juho is trying to be the main reason for more forum members leaving.

What's the total so far Juho?

Hey! I'm just trying to get some discussion here!

Three or four. I'm not sure.

Pff - I am with HC on this one..Trance totally kicks Progressive Rock Jazz Fusion ass!

I like those dreamy pad sounds and a arp supersaw-sound!

So much for the stereotype - Im nearly 40 and am a trance producer (among other things).

Yes - I use Reason v3 on occasion, but rarely use it for trance - it has much better uses and its synths dont sound nearly as good as a virus or a v-synth, and I prefer the drum sounds of my roland v-drum kit and motif es.

I record rather than program most of what I do, treating the studio more like a live rig (but I dont play live). Most of my drums Ive recorded from my v-drum kit and then tweaked/quantised etc as needed, but I like to keep things a little real - even with trance too much quantise or programming can kill it.

Yes - of course I use arps alot, but prefer to play and record them as well rather than just draw in the chord patterns (im crap at prgramming music basically) and the odd f*ckup produces many happy accidents :)


Sorry if that trashes the spotty oik stereotype - personally I dont think the average spotty brat understands the point - they have never been stressed enough to need to loose themselves in it, nor have they ever experienced the big rave parties, or the big clubs and the atmosphere of those gigs. Spotty oiks might be able to do techno, acid, but not trance. 8)

Why has the thread died. G??!

Let me start it again by saying TRANCE SUCKS!!!!!!!!! :lol:

Hoho. But why anyone doesn't comment the main issue. Did everybody went to sit in a basement to cry or something?

guilty! :roll:

I would be a hypocrite if I said I have never done this, but I don't see the harm in trying before you buy. Some may come back and say check out the 30sec clips on itunes and such, but i have been had by a few of those clips. THey will play the intro or sllow section for a clip, and when I go out and buy the album the song ends up being some heavy metal thrashing shit instead of what I was looking for in the preview.
Not oo mention CD prices are on the rie again for no reason. Back in the early 90's they were at $18.99 a pop. Once the file-sharing (napster) revolution hit they dropped down to $9.99. Now the record industry is doing no better than it was a few years ago and cd prices are now up to $13.99.

I am caught at a crossroads. I want to support the artist, but dont want to pay an arm and a leg for a cd. Also dont want to give the record execs my money. In a "ideal" world I would prefer to buy the album and pay $$ off of the artists website. Fuckin record labels! Anyways. . . . .

My opinion. Good and Bad

Bad for obvious reasons :(

Good for finding new music and learning, try before you buy and all that.

I admit that I use p2p networks to download music Ive heard about or recomended by friends, or whilst browsing www.discogs.com and having found something interesting.

But of course I do buy whatever I want afterwards, for me its just a massive source of audio demo clips ;)
I dont like the sound of mp3's either, so anything i like will be bought on CD 8)