If early review copies are to be sent out then each copy needs to be encoded with a unique signature to enable record labels to trace the source of leaks. Of course removing that signature is not beyond the wit of man or the capabilities of software, but multiple signatures (and even subtle alteration of the music itself) would aid tractability and enable some very high-profile name them and shame them actions to be taken against the perpetrators.

 

 

Sadly the attitude of down-loaders to leaked albums is the very attitude we "proggers" have to downloaded albums in general (as expressed in the posts in this thread), just viewed from the opposite direction - they are not physical objects. I don't beleive it is possible to correct this wrong-thinking of those who download illegal copies of albums (or software in general), they know it is theft whether they are willing to admit it or not, they just don't care even if they do not believe it is a victimless crime. Some may even be stupid enough to argue this in public.

 

 

 

and which arrived late last week.

 

Worth every single, hard earned penny IMO !!!

 

Hopefully helps pay towards to his hors d'oeuvres !

 And People who like Physical copy's of there Music  CD of Vinyl will buy and pay for it

The technology is here the genie out the bottle and he ent going back in.

Rant over and out! 

 

Dean wrote: I don't beleive it is possible to correct this wrong-thinking of those who download illegal copies of albums ...,   they know it is theft whether they are willing to admit it or not,     they just don't care even if they do not believe it is a victimless crime.

This makes me wonder, is there any sort of upward trend in concert attendance from the 1970's up to now? Is my theory accurate?

No, but there's been a pretty hefty price increase for the tickets themselves.  There was a time when tickets didn't cost a hundred bucks.

i'm curious about this statement.  i find that i'm more invested with an album when i have the physical product rather than the itunes download.  that being said, i've been burned many many times, as i'm sure some of you have.  there's lots of bad music and we can get ourselves excited and then just totally be let down.  i think people that download wouldn't have bought the record in the first place.  those that are fans will buy the thing.  wilson makes his living off of limited editions that fans lap up in seconds.  

as for touring, i'm not sure if that makes any money.  lots of bands break even with that.  at the same time, if you really need to check something out before buying we now have spotify etc.  and when the artist is not on there, like steven, then there's usually clips on youtube, itunes etc.  

good rant!  there are artists who are impossible to download...Van Morrison is one.  he has some company scour the web constantly.  

the other issue wish the death of CDs is that stuff's going out of print and the only option is a legal download.  talk about missing artwork etc.  it's a bit of a nightmare. 

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

 

This has nothing to do with the generation gap. It is everything to do with Artists rights, which you have arbitrarily decided are not worth a damn.

I am also not a guilty party regarding D/L's because A) - I hate CD's, especially some un-labelled, disposable wafer with nothing to read and no cover/booklet with it. B) - I always wait patiently for a vinyl release of an album coz I rarely bother with CD's (I miss out on a lot but I can live with that.......). 

There's a difference with art and sh*t - Art (S.W.'s case) should be of value and genuinely appreciated, usually by an artist that deserves to get a least some profit.  And sh*t (let's just say Black Eyed Peas) who couldn't give a toss that millions d/l their songs, as long as they are getting their name out there (disposable, generic sh*t, worthless pus) and they get rich regardless.................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bZ4_XdOg8" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bZ4_XdOg8

Other point: Not all people can afford to buy everything they like. Shouldn't they have the right to listen music for free? Or to listen music at all? I have really a lot of albums in mp3 and I don't buy them because I don't like them enough to buy. But.. in the majority's opinion.. we should buy everything to "support" the artists. How much money do you think he makes just touring? God.. if it was an underground band it would be all right, but Steven Wilson...

 No. And No.

 

You have no "right" to music.

 

Whatever makes you think that you do?

Then delete them. If you don't like them enough to buy them then delete them.

 

Not as much as you think he does.

 

What gives you the "right" to demand that he performs for you like some trained monkey? Just so he can earn enough money to finance the albums you download for free?

 

"Well Mr Record Company I'm not going to pay for this album of music but I insist that your monkey boy dances for me at my earliest convenience!"

 

And were do you draw the line? At what point does an underground band start earning enough money to justfy your stealing their music? Are you some latter day Robin Hood that buys from bands that are not successful and only steals from the rich? Or do you just steal their albums anyway on the assumption that they'll be big enough one day to earn some money touring?

 

 

The amount of music that's readily available at the click of a button is a blessing that comes at the price of a sin. For true music lovers, this isn't too much of an issue, because their willing to dish out the bucks on the artists that they love and are willing to support, because the product is usually better quality, and they like supporting an artist. Wilson can bitch and moan about how people steal his music and how he can't eat, and he has a right to, but he should be even more grateful that he's one of the view honest musicians who's able to make a living doing what he loves because he has the overwhelming support from the fans who are willing to buy his $80 double vinyl blue ray photography book edition. He's a lucky a man.

There, I've said my piece.

Thank you for being so frank and not trying to justify your actions with stupid excuses.

 

 

Floydian42 wrote: Wilson himself is a great example, as most of his music was probably found through filesharing means. This file sharing turned into fans, who went out to his concerts (which makes more money than the records anyway) and a lot of those people became bigger fans who are now willing to buy the CD's.

i think what's going to happen is that folks will make music as a part time thing.  if they get heard and build a buzz, then they can maintain a paying audience like radiohead or these kickstarter bands.  

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?

I'd like to hear your rationalization of this thought, or perhaps some statistics.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

No, wait,  ... game addiction would take care of that. *

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.

 

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. I hate MP3's because of the poor quality.

 

As for the people saying CD's are utter crap, I suggest you buy a decent CD player. I have a good amplifier, a good CD player, and a good record table. The sound of the vinyl is only marginally better than that of the CD at best, and sometimes it's quite alot worse (has alot to do with the quality of print ofc). CD's sound great, I am not complaining about them in the least.

 

 

you are right ofcourse. I meant newly released CD's. I should've been more specific. As a citizen of the Netherlands, we have no Amazon here, so I am not too familiar with their prices. I do know that our local shops filling in the niche that amazon fills most over the world do have their sales, but new CD's usually fall in the 16,95/21,95 price range, which is very expensive imo

This time I decided to hold off, and buy it at my semi-local (next city over, 20+ miles away) mom n' pop record store, which has a good selection of metal, and some prog.

My area is getting socked in by heavy snow since yesterday, I won't be able to buy the new Steven Wilson + the new Stratovarius until maybe next week