Help us fight piracy

I know this is an explosive topic and I don't intend for this to turn in to a flame war on this board, but myself and other artists and labels have 2 sites going www.myspace.com/progagainstpirates and progagainstpirates.blogspot.com where we are working on a campaign of education on the dangers of illegal downloading, both to the artists you enjoy and to yourself based on current laws that can see you liable for millions of dollars in damages.  

If you're a musician and want to put your name to our list, just let me know, if nothing else, come and get involved in the debate.

I never liked the whole Napster thing (various reasons:bad sound quality, ripping off musicians etc) so I didn't participate. At least one of my friends who was very enthusiastic about it ended up owing a couple thousand dollars.

as Stonas said

you can't be gung ho for either side because neither are completely right

on one hand you have people who hoard music and don't give a second thought to pay for any of it
on the other you have 40 minute albums for sale for defunct bands for 17 dollars

clearly the industry needs to reshape itself on a large scale and it isn't going to happen quickly

I definitely understand what you mean
its a tough battle though to be sure

The stealing is not the issue, the impact of it is

one problem with this is that while larger labels complain about the stealing (which doesn't have too much an impact on them, lets face it, the four main labels are HUGE) and no one pays attention but smaller labels and artists definitely feel the impact a lot more

for example, I had read a response from Toby Driver of Kayo Dot with a similar complaint, and he pays most of the price of his music and does it for the MUSIC, and yet if no one supports him/the rest of the band there will BE no more new albums by them. I post on another message board, and the collective responses seemed to fall into two categories: those who thought he was being whiny and completely disregarded it and said they'd never buy the album no matter how much they liked it, and those who enjoyed it and bought it when it was possible for them to.  (I own both Choirs of the Eye and Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue if you were wondering )
Another complaint I've noticed people having is that a lot of people feel that a "short sample" doesn't give a feel for the whole album. As a prog rock fan, I can understand this perhaps there is more of a future in the way of streaming entire albums on myspace pages etc....The Mars Volta, Muse, and Coheed and Cambria have recently implemented this with their latest albums and it's a practice that I genuinely like.

edit: I'm not proposing these as solutions, just trying to give another perspective to work with


Edited by heyitsthatguy - January 28 2008 at 23:20

I agree with Stonebeard, 40 dollars is a lot for a cd and what about downloading and then buying. I gladly spend hard earned money on prog musicians hard work. Downloading is a way for a person to get to know the music and then I would hope they would be the album and support the musician.

Stonebeard - you are falling in to the same trap that most people use to justify illegally downloading albums.  Albums cost on average $15.  You can hear plenty of samples on the bands or labels pages or myspace pages, for my label in particular you can hear the entire songs up to 3 times on www.mindawn.com - as for myself, when I bought music, I'd buy a whole CD based on one song I heard that I liked.  Since there are legal ways to sample plenty of the album to make a purchase decision (needing to hear a whole album a dozen times before making a decision is not valid).  Since 95% of downloads do NOT convert to sales, the whole "I'll buy it after I listen" argument is almost totally invalid.

BigBoss wrote: Stonebeard - you are falling in to the same trap that most people use to justify illegally downloading albums.  Albums cost on average $15.  You can hear plenty of samples on the bands or labels pages or myspace pages, for my label in particular you can hear the entire songs up to 3 times on www.mindawn.com - as for myself, when I bought music, I'd buy a whole CD based on one song I heard that I liked.  Since there are legal ways to sample plenty of the album to make a purchase decision (needing to hear a whole album a dozen times before making a decision is not valid).  Since 95% of downloads do NOT convert to sales, the whole "I'll buy it after I listen" argument is almost totally invalid.

For most people who don't care about the music as much as I do, then it can be counted as a loss. But I am constantly expanding my musical horizons, especially to the 60s and 70s, and not many obscure bands from then have myspace pages. Also, the music is likely expensive, more so than I and many others are willing to pay unless it's a surefire, guarantee, love it like a son masterpiece.

Yes, but you have to ask yourself this question (in a hypothetical scenario)....

Someone downloads an album from an artist (whether they replace it is irrelevant). Suppose we count this unequivocally as stealing, but they felt there was no other way to fully understand what kind of music the artist made and whether or not they would enjoy it. They do enjoy it, and buy 3 more albums from the artist.

Would you rather have had that person not stolen that album and not bought 3 more, or do the ends justify the means?

You might find this program to be of note in this discussion:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3261591.ece