Piracy

The illegal distribution or copying of recordings , books etc. It is much more than that, it is CRIMINAL. the millions who do it without blinking an eye , steal from artists but cry crocodile tears when someone breaks into their houses and take their stuff. progbands don't have top 10 hits , so they are hurt the most by unlawful piracy .

Yeah, and with these illegal songs on PA the record sales must have dropped! Don't make me laugh.

Every marked with lack of innovation dies down. We've now entered the information age in which people need a reason to buy things. The music industry has wasted it's opportunity to get the masses really interested in quality music. Instead nowadays 70% believes there's nothing more then a pop-song.

If the music industry would bring back high quality music and introduce it to the masses and made the packaging worthwhile this would not be a problem.

I really don't care if people copy and distribute pop or rapp , nobody wants to hear or discus it in 10 years time. I'm talking about rock music. 2 weeks after the release of Glasshammer's "IF" I found a download on the web. There is nothing the music industry can do, close the illegal sites down and they appear somewhere else - impossible !

cphil wrote: I really don't care if people copy and distribute pop or rapp , nobody wants to hear or discus it in 10 years time. I'm talking about rock music. 2 weeks after the release of Glasshammer's "IF" I found a download on the web. There is nothing the music industry can do, close the illegal sites down and they appear somewhere else - impossible !

The two biggest mistakes the music industry ever did was to charge an insane amount of money for a CD. In the UK, the price of a CD was once close to £ 15 whereas the record labels got close to £ 9 when selling it to the record stores. It cost at most £ 2 to manufacture and pay the band for each album. Not even drug dealers operated with that type of profit margins.  

But probably their biggest mistake was going digital instead of staying analog. That opened up the can of worm we are seeing today. And you are right; the situation is impossible for everyone involved. The only solution is to force the listener to pay for every time they listen to an album by keeping the album as the property of the artist/record label and then stream it down each listener through servers and the operating system on their computers. That is the only viable solution to free music. 

Edited by toroddfuglesteg - October 23 2010 at 06:00

Trouserpress wrote: Yarr.

cphil wrote: I really don't care if people copy and distribute pop or rapp , nobody wants to hear or discus it in 10 years time. I'm talking about rock music. 2 weeks after the release of Glasshammer's "IF" I found a download on the web. There is nothing the music industry can do, close the illegal sites down and they appear somewhere else - impossible !

How many bands can unequivacly say they've been ruined by Piracy? I think it's around "0". Marillion released some albums using the people who bought it to fund it. This pretty much proves it's possible. I saw a documentry recently where a member of Marillion was on a panel which were against a new law being passed in the UK. Basically a sort of anti-anti piracy (well, you couldn't say that they're pro-piracy). Devin Townsend has been quoted saying things like "if you want to download my music, download it. The important thing is that you hear it".

I think that people who winge about piracy stealing all their moniez are usually the record companies - you don't hear it that often from bands. I think sometimes it can get out of hand usually with mid-range bands (big enough so that someone has uploaded their album, just small enough so it can damage them a bit), but I am of the opinion that only a small percent of these downloads are lost profits. Usually, if a band makes a really good album, they will be rewarded thusly. Obviously, there'll be a couple of cases where bands just fail through no fault of their own, but usually, it can be tied to lack of advertising, or lack of quality.

To be honest, I think the ultimate proof that piracy isn't that big of a deal is the fact that there are LOADS and LOADS of bands around at the moment. The amount of bands around doesn't seem to have changed since piracy become "easy".

You have to remember, piracy's been around for longer than you might think. I recomend you read this article about previous reactions;

http://www.cracked.com/article_18513_5-insane-file-sharing-panics-from-before-internet.html

The people who have a real right to whine about piracy are independant game makes. The makers of Machinarium did a study that showed the 85-95% of all of the owners of their game were pirates. Can many bands show statistics even nearing that insane level? I don't think so. So what did the makers of Machinarium do about it? They put the game on sale for 75% less and sold 17,000 copies in a week.

Lots of people are still buying music.

Check out these articles;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86009/study-pirates-buy-10-times-more-music-than-they-steal/

These studies seem to suggest a lot of pirates are just music fans who can't afford all the music they want. So yeah, pirates buy the most music. Piracy IS NOT going to kill the music industry.

Well, that's that rant over.

I think he means devalue as in one doesn't appreciate the music as much if it's free.

Snow Dog wrote: I think he means devalue as in one doesn't appreciate the music as much if it's free.

Yeah, I suppose thats a pretty fair point. If you're not paying for it, it probably won't like it as much. But then again, how many people loved "Part the Second"? And also, doesn't that point also apply if you have loads of disposable income?

I dunno. There's no way to prove it, really. If you get an album as a gift, does it seem crappier? Well, I think all my points still stand.

@SouthSideoftheSky

Well, I'm not promoting piracy. I think that certainly, if you can afford it, you should always buy music. But I'm just addressing the whole over-reaction to the consequences of file-sharing. I do think it's morally wrong, though.



Edited by Nathaniel607 - October 23 2010 at 07:01

I heard that it's rare in the metal community for a band to be full-time musicians. You usually need another job to support the music-making. Sometimes it's a good thing because you get to write about a wider range of topics. Iron Maiden's singer once worked as a plane pilot or something, which helped him write "Aces High" (a song about airplanes). That's cool.

Not that Iron Maiden needed the money. The singer simply wanted to be a plane pilot, I believe.

Edit: I looked it up, and it turns out the song was not written by a plane pilot. Nevermind.

Also, instead of asking people not to download, I encourage people to upload. I admire YouTube users who upload rare live footage and music videos and interviews and such. Those things are usually not available for sale, so upload them all you can!
It's also cool to be able to watch Rush Live in Rio whenever, wherever, on YouTube, without the need for a DVD or a DVD player.
Imagine if every song was available on YouTube. I'd like to see that happen.


(I edited it several times, just in case it's in violation of the rules)


Edited by paganinio - October 23 2010 at 07:46

paganinio wrote:   cphil wrote: I really don't care if people copy and distribute pop or rapp  !nobody wants to hear or discus it in 10 years time Revolver by The Beatles is a pop album. Let's all downlaod  it, quick!

Edited by Tony R - October 23 2010 at 10:03