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Man With Hat 
Collaborator
Jazz-Rock/Fusion/Canterbury Team
Joined: March 12 2005
Location: Neurotica
Status: Offline
Points: 166183
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 Posted: February 26 2013 at 18:52 |
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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.
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Dig me...But don't...Bury me
I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive
Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: February 26 2013 at 17:30 |
 dysoriented wrote:
@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. |
But we are not talking about downloading in general, or from mainstream artists and labels. All to often that particular genre of the music industry (especially the archaic and outmoded view of it that many people have) is used as justification for illegal downloading from all genres. There is no discernment by the illegal downloader, they don't care who the artist is signed to, they don't do a finance-check on the artist before downloading an album. We hear enough comments from bands signed to small labels, those that are self-released and those that actually own the labels that their albums are released on, to be fully aware that illegal downloading is pandemic and it hurts these small bands far more than it hurts the Mad Donna's and the Spruce Bringsteen's of this world.
The Wilson paragraph was not in response to what you were saying, it was a follow-on of the same train of thought bringing in a comment someone else made earlier along the same lines.
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dysoriented
Forum Groupie
Joined: February 24 2013
Location: BLIGHTY!
Status: Offline
Points: 56
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Posted: February 26 2013 at 14:20 |
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@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.
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Barbu
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 09 2005
Location: infinity
Status: Offline
Points: 30855
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Posted: February 26 2013 at 12:13 |
lazland wrote:
Barbu wrote:
lazland wrote:
Barbu wrote:
Downloaders beware :
 |
I am not in favour of downloading, but I am sorry, I regard this as being in the most ridiculous bad taste. Whatever else they are, rock artists are not victims in the same manner as the poor wretches who inhabited these shocking places. Also, although wrong, downloaders do not, I feel, warrant a gas chamber for their crimes. I am generally against censorship, but think it might be an idea if a friendly admin removed this |
Calm down, Dude! This is called cynical exaggeration. Now that's a crime. |
Well, nobody else seemed to be bothered apart from me, but, no, it is not cynical exaggeration. It is a tasteless way of making a crude point. I am, btw, perfectly calm, thank you. |
I can understand your indignation but you are clearly overreacting to this post. Now let the admins out of this, close your little eyes, and move on.
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Roland113
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 30 2008
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Status: Offline
Points: 3843
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Posted: February 26 2013 at 07:22 |
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.
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Dayvenkirq
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 25 2011
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Status: Offline
Points: 10970
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Posted: February 26 2013 at 02:43 |
If I didn't spend so much time listening to music for free, I probably wouldn't know what prog is, though the world still wouldn't collapse. I can already imagine myself being filthy-rich from making some serious progress in my "career" as a programmer ... after getting all those scholarships, putting more time into my academic and extracurricular efforts in order to get a much butter job.
No, wait,  ... game addiction would take care of that. *
* Note the excessive use of self-pity in my post.
Edited by Dayvenkirq - February 26 2013 at 02:48
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 23:38 |
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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.
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 23:05 |
Junges wrote:
I guess most of the people here come from Europe or the USA or have a good income. I wish they had experienced the reality of having no money at all to buy records. God, you guys buy it even without listening it first? That's what I call throwing money away. I think people should watch the Zeitgeist series to get an idea about money, business and stuff. But anyway.. won't discuss further. |
Well, you do get to listen to it on youtube or plenty other streaming services. You may have to wait for that as, unlike the leak, it may not be available before the release of the album. I live in India and any prog rock CD I buy is imported unless it is from a store. And even then, Western music CDs are already marked up much more, selling for nothing less than $10 whereas I have bought new CDs of Indian music for less than $2. If it is an album I cannot sample on youtube or any other way and it costs too much to ship, I simply won't, period. I think the problem is this irresistible urge to listen, that is what needs to be tackled. And that problem again has been aggravated by the internet whereby information about such music is widely disseminated. Life was simpler when I did not know of the existence of such bands in the first place, and could not have known. In any case, most albums are also sold as digital downloads these days, so that is a good way to save on shipping. The trouble is, of course, it doesn't seem 'worth it' when there's a leak waiting to be grabbed for free. 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.
Edited by rogerthat - February 25 2013 at 23:05
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 22:56 |
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.
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Manuel
Forum Senior Member
Joined: March 09 2007
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 13481
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 20:16 |
Dean wrote:
Junges wrote:
I guess most of the people here come from Europe or the USA or have a good income. I wish they had experienced the reality of having no money at all to buy records. God, you guys buy it even without listening it first? That's what I call throwing money away. I think people should watch the Zeitgeist series to get an idea about money, business and stuff. But anyway.. won't discuss further. |
Sorry but that is still no justification for illegally downloading music. This isn't the same as stealing food because you are starving. While you're using you PC on the internet to download music to your mp3 player and recommending middle-class agitpop documentaries you might want to ease off on the poor boy sob story. |
I agree with this. No matter what the justification is, or how much money the artist already have, or if he/she knows that people will download ilegal copies, still, if the music is intended for sale, and you get download it illegally, still is not the right thing to do.
I grew up in Central America, and it was hard to find progressive music, you could only buy it as an import album, which made it very expensive, so I know what is to want to have an album and not be able to afford it, but that does not mean it's right to get illegal copies, nor any justification will make it right.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 19:18 |
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.
Anyone who believes Steven Wilson does not receive advances and royalty cheques from Roadrunner, KScope and Burning Shed are probably very much mistaken, especially since he owns Headphone Dust and could release all those albums himself and take a huge percentage. However, he is wise enough and sharp enough to know a good deal when he sees one. As I recall the only label that does not pay him is Delirium because he was generous enough to sign over all rights to his early albums in gratitude for the support they gave him in the beginning of his career.
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dysoriented
Forum Groupie
Joined: February 24 2013
Location: BLIGHTY!
Status: Offline
Points: 56
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 18:51 |
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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)
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 18:45 |
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.
When mommy catches junior with his hand stuck in the cookie jar she takes it away from him and puts it on a high shelf out of his reach. When junior wants a cookie he now has to ask mommy very nicely, and instead of junior filling his pockets with cookies she hands him just one (and only if he's been a very good boy).
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.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 17:17 |
Junges wrote:
I guess most of the people here come from Europe or the USA or have a good income. I wish they had experienced the reality of having no money at all to buy records. God, you guys buy it even without listening it first? That's what I call throwing money away. I think people should watch the Zeitgeist series to get an idea about money, business and stuff. But anyway.. won't discuss further. |
Sorry but that is still no justification for illegally downloading music. This isn't the same as stealing food because you are starving. While you're using you PC on the internet to download music to your mp3 player and recommending middle-class agitpop documentaries you might want to ease off on the poor boy sob story.
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lazland
Prog Reviewer
Joined: October 28 2008
Location: Wales
Status: Offline
Points: 13892
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 17:08 |
Barbu wrote:
lazland wrote:
Barbu wrote:
Downloaders beware :
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I am not in favour of downloading, but I am sorry, I regard this as being in the most ridiculous bad taste. Whatever else they are, rock artists are not victims in the same manner as the poor wretches who inhabited these shocking places. Also, although wrong, downloaders do not, I feel, warrant a gas chamber for their crimes. I am generally against censorship, but think it might be an idea if a friendly admin removed this |
Calm down, Dude! This is called cynical exaggeration. Now that's a crime. |
Well, nobody else seemed to be bothered apart from me, but, no, it is not cynical exaggeration. It is a tasteless way of making a crude point.
I am, btw, perfectly calm, thank you.
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Enhance your life. Get down to www.lazland.org
Now also broadcasting on www.progzilla.com Every Saturday, 4.00 p.m. UK time!
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Junges
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 19 2006
Location: Brazil
Status: Offline
Points: 646
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 16:37 |
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I guess most of the people here come from Europe or the USA or have a good income. I wish they had experienced the reality of having no money at all to buy records. God, you guys buy it even without listening it first? That's what I call throwing money away. I think people should watch the Zeitgeist series to get an idea about money, business and stuff. But anyway.. won't discuss further.
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Metalmarsh89
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 15 2013
Location: Oregon, USA
Status: Offline
Points: 2673
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 16:27 |
Roland113 wrote:
Metalmarsh89 wrote:
Finnforest wrote:
There's no debate
here, no grey area. You can either steal
someone's work, then try 20 different angles to justify your thievery,
or, you save your money and purchase your stuff at the offered price.
One choice is right, one borders on a****le territory. And if you think otherwise, then you'll be perfectly accepting
and happy when someone steals something of value from you, from your
home, your car, your computer. If you agree you wouldn't mind being
ripped off, then I can at least give you points for consistency. Because, hey, that guy who took your Ipod couldn't afford to buy one! Should he be denied the ability to have one? |
I think you're missing a point here. Any time an artist records and releases a CD, he does so knowing that there are going to be thousands of illegal downloads. Any artist who doesn't think it can/will happen would be have to be pretty naive. It would be much more comparable to going into the grocery store and leaving your car windows down with a computer or ipod sitting in plain sight. You'd be a fool to think it would be safe. I'm not saying that it's the musicians' fault, more that these are very unfortunate circumstances we live in, because unlike the grocer, musicians don't have the option of rolling the windows up.
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I'm sorry, but your analogy doesn't stack up. Leaving your windows open at a grocery store is stupid. Loosing the ability to make a living at a career you've worked your entire life on perfecting because the rules have changed so dramatically during the course of that career is heartbreaking.
Here's a better analogy, you open a grocery store, invest in the infrastructure, pay for all of the food that you need to sell and have it nice and cleaned up and ready for the grand opening. Then a guy with a home garden down the street has too many tomatoes so he gives them away. At this point, your store is emptied out by a horde of people happy to take away your food for free using the justification that 'the guy down the street is giving his away, why should I pay for yours, besides, look at all of the free publicity that you're getting, I'll tell everyone that your food is fantastic.' Sure, there are going to be a few people that pay for the food out of appreciation. Again, I use the term heartbreaking because the artists keep opening new grocery stores with each new album that they put out. |
Not quite right I don't think, but I get what you're saying.
On one hand, I empathize with Steve Wilson, because things are being wrongfully taken from him. On the other hand, i empathize (not as strongly) with the people who are looking for a way to get free music because it isn't in their means to afford it. The whole leaking idea bothers me though, because it is another sign of the masses' lack of patience and undeserving sense of entitlement. I completely disagree with those people who do download this music before release, and yet complain about the quality or the musician's tour schedule and ticket prices, or many other things they shouldn't have the right to complain about.
I guess we just have to take the bad with the good when it comes to the internet.
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Roland113
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 30 2008
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Status: Offline
Points: 3843
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 15:44 |
Metalmarsh89 wrote:
Finnforest wrote:
There's no debate
here, no grey area. You can either steal
someone's work, then try 20 different angles to justify your thievery,
or, you save your money and purchase your stuff at the offered price.
One choice is right, one borders on a****le territory. And if you think otherwise, then you'll be perfectly accepting
and happy when someone steals something of value from you, from your
home, your car, your computer. If you agree you wouldn't mind being
ripped off, then I can at least give you points for consistency. Because, hey, that guy who took your Ipod couldn't afford to buy one! Should he be denied the ability to have one? |
I think you're missing a point here. Any time an artist records and releases a CD, he does so knowing that there are going to be thousands of illegal downloads. Any artist who doesn't think it can/will happen would be have to be pretty naive. It would be much more comparable to going into the grocery store and leaving your car windows down with a computer or ipod sitting in plain sight. You'd be a fool to think it would be safe. I'm not saying that it's the musicians' fault, more that these are very unfortunate circumstances we live in, because unlike the grocer, musicians don't have the option of rolling the windows up.
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I'm sorry, but your analogy doesn't stack up. Leaving your windows open at a grocery store is stupid. Loosing the ability to make a living at a career you've worked your entire life on perfecting because the rules have changed so dramatically during the course of that career is heartbreaking.
Here's a better analogy, you open a grocery store, invest in the infrastructure, pay for all of the food that you need to sell and have it nice and cleaned up and ready for the grand opening. Then a guy with a home garden down the street has too many tomatoes so he gives them away. At this point, your store is emptied out by a horde of people happy to take away your food for free using the justification that 'the guy down the street is giving his away, why should I pay for yours, besides, look at all of the free publicity that you're getting, I'll tell everyone that your food is fantastic.' Sure, there are going to be a few people that pay for the food out of appreciation. Again, I use the term heartbreaking because the artists keep opening new grocery stores with each new album that they put out.
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OzzProg
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 02 2008
Location: Quebec
Status: Offline
Points: 540
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 15:40 |
Hawkwise wrote:
People who download music in this way were never going to buy the album in the first place so no money is really lost to the artist as they would never of bought it anyway . |
I'd like to hear your rationalization of this thought, or perhaps some statistics.
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Roland113
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 30 2008
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Status: Offline
Points: 3843
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Posted: February 25 2013 at 15:32 |
infandous wrote:
Finnforest wrote:
My two cents....
When you can't afford to buy something/anything, I guess there are two general choices.
a. I'll just steal it.
b. I'll save up my dough for a while and when I can afford it, I'll buy it.
Choice
"b" is what was pretty common when I was a kid, silly us, we didn't sit
around crafting sob stories about why we should get free music,
man....We didn't whine about "those rich guys", who incidentally probably worked very hard for what they have. We just had a little patience and eventually we managed to save
up and buy some music, books, whatever....
There's no debate
here, no grey area. You can either steal
someone's work, then try 20 different angles to justify your thievery,
or, you save your money and purchase your stuff at the offered price.
One choice is right, one borders on a****le territory. And if you think otherwise, then you'll be perfectly accepting
and happy when someone steals something of value from you, from your
home, your car, your computer. If you agree you wouldn't mind being
ripped off, then I can at least give you points for consistency. Because, hey, that guy who took your Ipod couldn't afford to buy one! Should he be denied the ability to have one?
Last
there are TONS of free music choices out there people can stream with
permission. The idea that people who can't afford to buy music "will have no music to enjoy" is as daft as any comment I've read in this forum in years.
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This completely sums up my feelings on the issue.
I'd like to point out that even though I had friends record LP's onto cassette for me when I was younger, and never bought the physical album myself in many cases (until later, when I was more financially secure and wanted to replace those old tapes with better sounding CD's) , they were not copied a billion times and given out to everyone on the planet. The same principal applies to library books. You simply can't compare tape trading (which in many cases was condoned and even encouraged by bands, as such trading was almost always of live shows that were not officially released in any capacity) to downloading torrents.
I was excited when I first saw all the music on Napster back in the late 90's (before I gave much thought to the legality of it). My excitement wasn't, however, about getting free music, it was about being able to hear and sample music I was potentially interested in buying. Nowadays that is quite easy to do LEGALLY, so I don't really see how anyone can justify downloading pirated music. Many prog bands offer ENTIRE albums for streaming at their web sites so for the most part the excuses being offered here are complete BS.
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Gus brings up a great point here that has been mostly missed. There is a third option to the bullet points that you point out Jim (and you did reference it later on in your post) . There are numerous legal methods of listening to the music, Spotify for one comes to mind. Yes, it's only a pittance, but artists do receive royalties when their music is streamed on Spotify. It's at least a compromise between the download culture and the artists that try to support themselves.
Also, other random responses:
Junges wrote:
Shouldn't they have the right to listen music for free?
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No, that's like going to a craft fair and saying 'oh look, this handcrafted jar of jelly is nice, shouldn't I have the right to have it merely because it exists.
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