Steven Wilson begging in Facebook

Sumdeus wrote: aah, some more honest and sincere observations, lovely!

Here's another: Your less than convincing display of umbrage is like the stroppy pout of a four year-old kid with their hand stuck in a cookie jar.  

I said your justifications for illegal downloading were pathetic and extremely silly excuses because that is what they are - I'll not line them up and shoot them down one by one because others' have already done that, suffice to say that their stance is the same as mine so feel free to accuse me of being on a high horse like you did with Karl, but while you're down there looking up at us, fetch a bucket and shovel because you're knee-deep in horse manure.

 

However, your "Library" example did make me genuinely laugh out loud - that is the daftest analogy I've seen on this subject for a while now, unless of course your bookshelves are groaning from the weight of 10,000 stolen library books that you failed to return to the library under the legal lending-contract you signed them out under - I would expect the late return fines for those would buy a lot of CDs.

dysoriented wrote: I don't really agree with downloading however, I know a thing or two about industry. Your CD gets sold to a record shop for six pound something, then in order to pay the staff at the record shop, and maintain the place or whatever they put the price up depending on how well they think it will sell. For a major artist they might put another ten pounds or so on there because they know people will pay for it... The artist doesn't actually see much of the money once the record company have taken their cut (the artist has signed a contract and agreed to let the guy at the top with way more money to their name take a fat percentage of what really should be all for the artist!!!!!!) I guess what I'm trying to say here is, they don't make a lot off CDs anyway, Steven Wilson sadly won't sell as much as what's in the mainstream. It's a shame, but while you think you're supporting the artist by buying, most of the time you're just supporting a guy in a suit with a business to run. (I don't download albums, I prefer to give the artist the 4% or whatever it is)

That is not an accurate description of how it works. In a fringe genre such as Progressive Rock most artists either self-release or are signed to independent labels, they do not operate under the old-skool big-label mainstream model, they cannot. In those cases the artist does see a fair percentage from each CD sale - the idea that the artist never earns money from CD sales is not true. In the old days the artist was given an advance. Many saw this as a gift from the label to spend on having a good time, but it wasn't it was an advance on sales, or more accurately an advance on royalties - essentially a loan that was to be paid-off by the royalties they earnt from selling albums. If the album sold a lots then the advance would be paid off and the royalty cheques would start arriving, if it didn't then the advance would remain as a debt and the artist would not see any royalties. Unfortunately most recording contracts were biased in the record labels favour because artists were all to eager to sign them, and more often than not if the album did sell well the company would employ clever accountants to ensure the advance was never paid off. But that was then, this is now.

Dean wrote: Roger asked why the record companies haven't used technology to put the cookie jar out of reach, and they are. It's called Cloud Storage and they are busily working away on selling us this new cookie jar as the thing we really want more than anything in the whole world ever. This cannot happen overnight, they have to socially engineer it so we adopt this new cookie jar willingly and completely. It started with ebooks, and now it's happening with software (apps and OSs) - not only do we not have physical copies of our software, we don't own or control the installation and updating of that software - it is streamed direct to our hardware and can be removed just as easily - and there is nothing we can do about it because we bought into the idea. And music will go the same way - we will store our music in the new cookie jar and merrily use it every day and before you know it they won't be selling CDs anymore, the pressing plants that make them by the million will all close down. Everything will be "download" that you don't actually download anymore - it just gets shuffled from virtual store to virtual personal cookie jar in the Cloud - this file that you once downloaded will never touch your PC. So when you want to listen to the music you have paid for 'mommy' will stream it from cloud cookie jar onto our PCs and music players (and only if you've been very good).   Sounds like science fiction? Not any more it doesn't.

That does sound like a very good way to work around the problem.   I believe there is a particular HP laptop model which is sold with 100 or so songs loaded for free.  But none of these can be transferred out of the laptop.   Yeah, this means the end of the physical medium but perhaps that is the price the audience has to pay for not respecting the rights of the artist.  Moving onto a medium where we won't REALLY own the album and only be able to access it whenever we need to. 

There are two full length tracks uploaded on youtube by kscope records.   And also clips from the recording of two other tracks.  I THINK that gives enough to go by for anybody who wants to make a decision whether or not to buy the album.   This is not like sampling 2 minutes of a single track and taking a risk to buy the album, you can choose to proceed only if you really like both the full length tracks.  You can't insist on the entire album being available for you to listen for free endlessly on an Ipod before you make up your mind, for if they did, why would you want to buy.  

rogerthat wrote: What if there were no illegal downloads?  What would you do?  You'd prioritize and purchase and listen to a fewer no. of albums in a year and probably end up encouraging local bands more because it'd be cheaper than ordering a Steven Wilson album.

@Dean, my point was more that industry takes more than the artist does anyway, I wasn't knocking Steven Wilson in any way! Obviously progressive rock has it's own niche, and doesn't quite operate in the same way. I was talking about downloading as a blanket term.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Wilson. I doubt a couple/a hundred/whatever sales will really deprive him of lunch. I don't agree with downloading illegally but this just seems more like a ploy for sympathy.

Not that I download anything of course, so my opinion on this matter isn't really relevant.

Steven Wilson is right. We are living in an odd time where there are loads of new methods to acquire music (amongst other things), but hardly any new laws to deal with this. From an artists perspective, this is theft, purely and simply. Since the law is clearly lacking, there is not a thing he can do about this but resort to Facebook (am I the only one here finding it ironic that SW is on facebook btw?) and appeal to the consciense of potential buyers/downloaders.

jverweij wrote: There is one thing that I would like to say about the other side of the argument, and that is that CD's are ridiculously expensive. This is nothing new, they always have been, but I can't help but feel that if the price of a CD was cut in half, we might not be having this discussion. That being said, I own about 400 progCD's, and about 150 progLP's.

Not always true. You do know that Amazon is a great place for finding sweet deals, right? I've just purchased three Fairport Convention albums for $4-5 a pop. That is not expensive. Best Buy is another place for great deals (that's how I got Rush's CoS and AFTK for $5 a pop), though I'm not sure if you have Best Buy in the Netherlands.

I am with SW on this but I make decent money and can afford to buy CD's. Plus I absolutely loath Itunes. I work on a computer all day and know my way around.  But getting that piece of garbage to do what you want is so infuriating, I just about give up. I know there are other ways to get music on my MP3 player but when you got two kids bugging you to help them get their Justin Bieber on their ipod, don't get me started. I like CD's and don't mind hauling them around in my car and putting them into my CD player.

The biggest thing that I struggle with in this debate is no one acknowledges the business model that is the music business.  Thousands of bands trying to make a living at it and so few ever make any real money.  SW is talented enough and savvy enough to make decent money, but I am positive that if we saw his bank statement, no one would  consider him rich.  So what about Colin Edwin? If SW is not rich making his living playing music, how do you think his off and on bass player is getting by? No song writing credits, sporadic touring, a very small slice of CD sales. Does he have a day job? Wealthy family? Huge sales of his last album that few people heard of? Studio player?  I don't know.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for musicians who go into the biz with high hopes but are oblivious to the true economics and the very long shot that they will be comfortable pursuing it. Do they have medical insurance? Retirement plans? Rainy day funds? Is it fun being away from home for months at a time touring? Touring that you have to do in order to feed yourself. Just thinking about the whole issue and seeing reports of people stealing their product and there is very little chance that anything can ever be done about it is depressing. What are they gonna do? Call the local constable? Tell them to go arrest some guy half way around the world who stole 10 bucks worth of 1's and zero's? The whole thing is sad.