Pirated again !

Yes but. 
This is the keyboard section, there are guitars, basses, saxes etc etc etc. 

When you spend a little bit of money like this and 40 years playing, you tend to want a bit of professional respect. Some money would be nice. Giving it away is acceptable for some, and not for others. 

Four years soldering below, incidentally. And about $30,000. 

What happens with Bandcamp (et al) is that people who can't be bothered to pay for streaming services elsewhere just use Bandcamp as a free radio station. They jump on it, find an artist and just play the music with no intention of buying the music. 

If you want to rip music off Bandcamp, it's pretty simple, you just use a ripper. 

I've been thinking about "just playing with other musicians" and an interesting alternative came up. My brother's just doing a short music piece (free of charge) for Amnesty International. I've got a friend who does free music for film and theatre projects. Actually, I've done some theatre project work before (and enjoyed it) so !! That seems to be the way to go. 

I don't mind giving it away for nothing, I do mind being ripped off. ;-)

It took one week to have my new album pirated. I know I wouldn't get any money from the site users but I just don't get why share a low-quality download link when anyone can stream it for free on Bandcamp with the same quality. Particularly when I work on this site that divulge music without infringing copyright, there's no excuse for this.

Edited by ForestFriend - January 12 2019 at 11:15

No crime meant there. Piracy platforms happen to provide the simpliest ways to discover music (typically obscure albums on which no sample is available to listen to on amazon / bandcamp etc), and they don't always call themselves by their name... Once again this doesn't prevent us from supporting whatever band would deliver "magic"

Edited by jayem - January 12 2019 at 08:14

Those pirates are definitely not fans, otherwise they'd at least contact the musicians and offer partnership etc. However, if we discover music that touches us on pirated website, won't there will be the same natural drive for us to go and look for a way to show appreciation and support the band, as if we did discover them in the CD store ?

I disagree that respecting a band means giving money, because there are lots of bands that obviously worked hard and play so well and deserve a lot of respect, but their vibes just don't fit to ours. 

Edited by jayem - January 11 2019 at 06:16

Unfortunately, everybody does at some point. 

Non musicians tend to think that musicians somehow enjoy playing gigs and that the point of a musician is to go on stage and be adored or famous or rich or whatever. 

The point of being a musician is to play music. Well, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, opinions vary and some musicians live for playing gigs, but a fair few don't. Also, there's a difference between "playing a gig" and "playing for an audience". It only takes a few rowdy or disinterested (or non existant) audiences for you to realise that it's not all beer and skittles playing live music. 

Anyway, yes, some people love playing gigs, some don't. The role of the audience is an interesting one. An audience tends to think that musicians are playing for them - actually, a lot of musicans are actually having much more fun playing amongst themselves. If you took the audience away but left the money, I think a fair proportion of musicians would have an equally good time. 

Because I've been playing music so long - 43 years (probably too long ! ;-) ) I've realised that I've completely forgotten how non musicians think. I was having a chat with a friend at the train station today who's never realised I play saxophone. "Is it difficult ? " she said. "No, it's really easy to learn the basics, but to actually learn how to play takes a lifetime", I replied. We started talking, she'd had three piano lessons, that was it. Knowing "not a lot about music", she thought that Lady Gaga was very talented and creative. Basically, it was like two people from different planets having a chat. I'm trying to nicely say "well, if you want to listen to something interesting and creative..... " then I think I'm going to suggest Thelonious Monk to her and it'll go whoosh over her head. 

So part of the problem I find is that non musicians have no real idea of what it takes to become a musician, and therefore don't value anything a musician produces, and they also think that they have an idea about what being a musician is all about as they've listened to lots of music and gone to gigs. 

Which is simply not the case. They don't seem to realise that they just have no real understanding. They have an opinion, great. But the internet seems to be showing up the fact that a lot of people value their opinions higher than expert knowledge - what they think they know is more important than the facts themselves and if you stop listening to those facts, you'll be in blissful ignorance. 

Anyway. I seem to have drifted into a "non musician versus musician" post, rather than a "piracy bad" post. Musicians will keep being pirated, and devalued, if non musicians fail to realise how much work and dedication goes into becoming a musician. It takes decades of hard, hard work to become good. With bands who are just starting up, yes, they'll keep producing music until they get totally disheartened by being ripped off, but they'll get disheartened before they mature and become good. End result, musicians jump ship. Don't assume that they won't just play amongst themselves, not every one of them needs or necessarily wants to do live music in front of an audience.