4 students sued by RIAA over music sites

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Rataxes: Quote: This is complete and utter faleshood. Total bollocks. Go check your information Rataxes.

Why isn't that a bloody great argument if I ever saw one! [img]smile.gif[/img] Care to dig up some proof of your own, showing that CD sales took a dramatic hit the year that Internet piracy became common? Or that it every year since that steadily has decreased in a far quicker rate than it did before the mp3 format was invented?[/QUOTE]Declining record sales coincide with the popularity of file sharing. The information is everywhere.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Rataxes: [QB]Here we go again about inmaterial vs material loss. Piracy doesn't compare very well at all with it, but even stealing a poster copy made of paper would be a more fair comparison.

Stealing a song is material loss. You take it from the owner without paying and that is material loss. It is like stealing food from a cafe.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Arledrian: Quote: Originally posted by Yorick: Mine too. Pure genius. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Have you heard of their track 'Lost You Somewhere' Hugh? If not, I hope you find the time to look out for it. I have it on 12'' and played it just yesterday - it's magic [img]smile.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]I haven't heard it! I'll keep an eye out for it.

[LordKathen]

6 posts in a row Yorick? *sheesh*

[lethoso]

Originally posted by Yorick: Declining record sales coincide with the popularity of file sharing. The information is everywhere.

musician guy with a different opinion

please take the time to read it yorick (and anyone else who is interested), from what i can see it is a very well researched site, i'd be interested to hear your opinion on it....

[Rataxes]

I already defined pop as music similar to the style of top 40 music. "Popular"

Then I was not talking about Pop.

There is an important word you seem to be ignoring. CHOICE. If an artist CHOOSES to give their music away online, it's not theft. If you take it, or pass it on, it's theft.

It might be theft (and I've never claimed it's not), but the simple fact is that even the illegal spreading of ones work on the Internet generates interest, interest which in the end can only be good for the artist.

I have given my music out online freely. Ask around here. Plenty have my songs and some have full albus that I certainly don't want money for. But do I support file sharing and mp3 trading? Definitely not. The difference is I have CHOSEN, your friends have CHOSEN, to follow a course of action.

One from the community and his friends band called The Amber Room did choose to share, but the work of my cousin's group was not deliberately shared on the Internet, at least not with their authorization.

In Deathkillers case, I hardly expect him to personally know the 80,000 artists he's stolen material from.

Ehr, quite right. I don't know 99.9% of all the artists on my mp3 list neither.

Now, take my own example. Just say everyone I gave my songs out to, shares my music with their friends, who share it with their friends. "Oh, we can't buy the CD, so it's cool" Why can't you buy a CD? 1.I have no money to mass produce a CD. 2.The record industry is rock bottom and hardly signing anyone in this environment. So if everyone who ever heard my music shared my songs, the album I've created the songs to work into becomes meaningless, and I don't make any revenue at all, to compensate for the time and financial investment it takes to create the songs.

It's plain wrong though. Did you read the articles that andrewas linked to? 34% bought more records since they started to share mp3's. Not even half as many, 15% bought less. People obviously don't think albums are meaningless since they still buy them even when they got the entire album on their computer. Albums represent something more than just the songs, buying it is a way of showing support for a band that you want to support, and it's also a collectors item. Did you know that Oasis most recent album was available on the net several months before it's release? I doubt there was a single hardcore Oasis fan who hadn't heard every single song on that album months before it's release. Just as little do I doubt that every single one of those fans went out and bought the album the instant it was released.

if I'm fine with that, that's my choice. However, I know many musicians who would, and are devasted by these things.How well is Anastasia doing? She lost untold amounts of single and album sales due to massive amounts of mp3 downloads of her hit. Her career is down the toilet. She is a phenomenal singer, and I challenge anyone to suggest that her career is bad because her product - singing and songs - are crap. She's an incredible singer and the songs are/were very strong.

You know many musicians who've outright claimed that Internet piracy ruined their career and have any proof of that?

I don't know what the case is where you live, but here, Anastacia's latest got nothing but crap reviews. Quite a few international reviews I've read bashed "Freak of Nature" pretty badly as well. I personally think Anastacia has one of the most irritating voices I've ever heard (it's unique, I'll give her that) and I find her music piss-poor, nearly unlistenable. I don't even know anyone who likes her.

Unfortunately, I've heard nothing about her album not being successful or her career going down the drain. Her album was at Nr. 1 for quite some time and it brought worldwide sales to approx. 15 million copies sold.

How about Eminem then? His entire album was also available on the net several months before it's release Still, "The Eminem Show" was one, if not the most successful album of the year. He clearly did not suffer much from internet piracy. How about Oasis? Their case is similar to Eminem's as I've already said, and "Heathen Chemistry" went on to spend two weeks on the Nr 1 spot in England, outsell their predecessor, and have two Nr 1 singles (one of them for several weeks!) and two Nr 2 singles. They clearly did not suffer from internet piracy either.

The only reason I can keep making my own music is because I'm able to make a record by myself. If I was a singer/songwriter who couldn't produce, engineer or play a number of instruments, I'd be screwed. Unable to realise my artistic vision, and unable to create music I love.

Yeah, and...? No one can make music on their own if they don't master a number of instruments and don't know how to engineer or produce it. You can't blame that on the Internet though, that was a problem long before the word internet piracy was invented. I don't see how internet piracy can possibly hurt anyone who can't create the music in the first place. The "artistic vision" needs to be realised before it can actually be spread on the net.

Actually radio and television are the easiest ways to reach out to large numbers of people.

Right, record a song, make a video and try to make MTV2 show it on a regular basis, piece of cake right? I doubt you'll have much luck at a radio station either, unless you make your own radio station and air it on the net.

Yeah sure, if you actually DO get them to show it, the odds are astronomical though, then you'll have a greater chance of becoming successful. The easiest and most surefire way of reaching out with your music though, is the Internet.

Secondly, public interest is the best thing an artist can get?? Er no.. the ability to create a work is the best thing an artist can get. mp3 sharing will rob recording artists and producers, the ability to realise their artistic vision.

Once again I'm dumbstruck. How can Internet piracy possibly rob you of your ability to create music? The bloody music has to be created before it can be pirated, no?

More and more brilliant and gifted composer/producers are moving into advertising, where they create works of utter beauty, crammed into 30 seconds, and rejected en-masse by advertising companies. I'm serious. I have heard music that is incredible that will never see hte light of day, because it's a thirty second rejected ad. Yet the gifted protege HAS to do this if they want to make serious money off their craft. Think of all the albums and songs that MIGHT be made by such genius'. You will never hear them.

You lost me, where does Internet piracy come into the picture here?

Music fans share Mp3's? Hardly.

They do, trust me.

Declining record sales coincide with the popularity of file sharing. The information is everywhere.

It doesn't coincide though. Record sales were dropping before Internet piracy became commonplace. The year 2002, CD sales have been dropping at a constant rate in Germany for the past five years, that's since 1997. You know when Napster was released for public use in it's current P2P format? Early 1999. CD sales had been dropping at a constant rate in Germany for two years before Internet piracy broke out from the very small underground communities of hardcore computer nerds. Even if that isn't the case in all countries, NO statistics show that Internet piracy had a major impact on record sales the year it became commonplace. NO statistics showed any dramatic or out-of-place drops that year.

Record prices sky-rocketing the past few years is the main reason why CD sales have dropped. Go around and ask people in the street if they buy as many records now as they used to, ask why if they say no. I bet the vast majority will say that they simply cost too much now a days. I'm not very old and even I remember a time when CD's didn't cost much more than half of what they cost today. Of course people are more reluctant to buy records today when they have to shell out almost twice as much money for it!

Stealing a song is material loss. You take it from the owner without paying and that is material loss. It is like stealing food from a cafe.

A material loss means that the material is actually lost once it's taken. If someone makes a copy of your song and takes it, you still have the original song don't you? It's just not possible to compare material things such as money or coffee mugs, to songs. If you record an album and 80 000 people swipe it off the net, you're no worse off than if those 80 000 people had never even cared about your record. If I steal 80 000 bucks from you though, you're going to be 80 000 bucks short, you're going to be a lot worse off than if I hadn't bothered with the money in the first place.

[ 04-14-2003, 05:39 AM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]

[Gnarf]

You are kidding yourself if you think you're a fan of a band and stealing their work.

I beg you to differ. I'd say I'm a fan of Deftones. I've bought all their albums and their DVD, seen'em live once (the only concert they've done in my country, with no age-limit). I've also downloaded music videos for some of the songs and some live stuff. Therefore, you don't think of me as a fan? Would I've been any more of a fan if I've never seen some of their videos?

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Yorick: Actually radio and television are the easiest ways to reach out to large numbers of people.

Yorick, over the past year alone, I've bought over 150 (!) CD's; 90% of it music by artists who've hardly had any exposure or none at all on radio and tv, and which I've only bought or even knew its existence of because I was able to hear samples and familiarize myself with the sound of said music on the Internet beforehand... There are no radiostations or music channels in my country I actually enjoy anymore, as while my taste became more "adventurous", the airplay lists on these stations and channels unfortunately didn't, quite the opposite actually. I've literally limited myself to listening to music from CD's and the occasional mp3 of bands I'd like to check out. While many of my mp3s are legal, in a way that I've downloaded them from certain sites where the artists themselves have given permission for their music to be placed, there is still a lot of music which I have obtained through the regular p2p-channels, not knowing the position of the artists on file-sharing, mostly with the purpose of satisfying my curiosity and to decide whether to buy the official CD or not... Sometimes the "illegal Internet circuit" is the only way for me to even hear certain artists' music, and I personally treat it more as a substitute for radio and tv, since I've lost patience and interest with those years ago.

While I agree that in the end it's the artists' call whether they want their music to be shared or not (the most vocal anti-mp3 artists are mostly major label acts like Metallica, Dr. Dre and Eminem, whose music I couldn't care less about, btw ), I don't think the sales of most artists are really that much worse off than in the pre-Napsterperiod; except perhaps for the (major label) artists who used to have the monopoly (yes, the monopoly) on reaching people through the media, as more people are now looking beyond the music spoonfed to them on MTV and the likes, and are more eager to develop a taste not based on expensive videoclips or massive airplay nowadays. The variety of music offered nowadays is bigger than ever, also partly thanks to the Internet; and consumers have become a lot more exclusive with their tastes, more difficult for the major record labels to fathom and play in...

And what these major record companies did as their answer to the file-swapping and decline in sales was buy even more airplay (or at least that was the case here in the Netherlands, as all even remotely "adventurous" (indie)music was bullied off the airwaves, in favour of more boring uniformity), litterally stuffing their artists (like Anastacia, for instance) in the faces of their target audience. But if a song is played once an hour on all major radiostations for months and months in a row, they shouldn't be surprised when it loses its appeal, and people refrain from buying the CD... With this overexposure, they're literally treating even some of their best and sincerest artists as mere disposables, making songs lose their exclusiveness and getting the exact opposite effect of what they wanted. Because when music loses too much of its exclusiveness, I think the target audience will be more eager to download rather than buying that music; I can see why especially the major record companies are not all too happy about p2p-filesharing programs.
And I actually think the aversion towards "popular" music is bigger than it ever was; not necessarily because it's that much worse than in previous decades, but because of that very same overexposure and the existence of easier acquirable alternatives which sound more exclusive and fresher.

And maybe it's mostly based on personal observations (I occasionally lurk at the Matador messageboard and other independent record labels' sites), but I believe most of the indie labels who didn't have any of the media exposure in the pre-mp3 period don't really seem to mind file-swapping that much; as for them it only means that while their artists mostly had to rely on mouth-to-mouth-recommendations, people nowadays actually have a chance to listen to their artists' music as well, making it a worthy substitute for the lack of radio/tv airplay which the major record companies always seemed to control. Publicity-wise, file-swapping has helped these artists getting heard by more people than could ever have been the case in a world without mp3s; and as the nature of their music is a lot more exclusive than those being crammed down people's throats on radio and tv (even if only because of the difference in exposure), people who like artists of both categories equally much are also more eager to buy a CD of the lesser known artist than pay up to $24 dollars-ish (that's the current new-price for most major record label CD's in my country nowadays in the "major" record stores, about 21-23 Euro ) for a CD of the latter. Heck, let's forget about the difference in exclusivity and quality for a minute and look at the difference in prices; I've ordered a lot of my CD's from US based indielabels, and even taking the 6-8 dollars for shipping into account, even then I'm most of the time cheaper off than buying major artists' music here in a Dutch store; you may think CD prices are high in your country, but in The Netherlands, in many stores they're insane.

But anyways... Taking into account I'm an active user of p2p-programs and also taking into account how I deal with those obtained mp3s (namely use them as samples to decide whether to buy the CD or not, a tactic which ended up in me buying more than 150 CD's in less than a year's time), am I a thief as well by your definition?
Because personally, I'd rather blame p2p-software for making me buy more CD's than for the opposite.

[ 04-14-2003, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Sir Kenyth]

Originally posted by Yorick: Quote: Originally posted by Sir Kenyth: Yorick, you and I just have a different perspective is all. You (rightly) have passion for your art and see it much more deeply. I'm just a lowly consumer, but as a group, we support your art. You have to take into account our needs and wishes whether or not you like them.

No I don't. Only if I want to enter the marketplace and sell product do I have to take consumer needs into account. Otherwise I can compose, write and record to please myself.[/QUOTE]Then why are you concerned with profits or lack thereof, regardless of cause? I thought the consumer market impact of mp3 and digital file transfer was the basis for this thread. No?

[Sir Kenyth]

I want to clarify that I'm not into file sharing anymore. I played with it a little when Napster first came out. I buy CD's mostly used, online, and from Columbia House now. I have a collection of over 100. I think that it's true the younger crowd is buying less music because of file sharing and CD burners. I'm not sure that it's any more than it used to be due to tape recorders with enhanced features for dubbing. Young folks have limited cash anyway. Also, let's not forget that the economy is down right now and has been sliding for some years. The first expenses to go in any budget is entertainment. I think that a lot of the lower income group isn't buying music at all right now. I know my income earning loss has contributed to me buying very little music lately, and the stuff I do buy I don't pay full price. A frugal attitude toward controllable expenses is the norm right now I think. That surely has to hurt the music industry badly (among others). Console and computer games are also competing more with music these days too. Free time is always a limited asset. The more you do of one recreational thing, the less you'll do of the others. To blame this downturn soley on file sharing is too simplistic.

[ 04-14-2003, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Sir Kenyth ]