Throwaway Download Culture

True the actual downloading incurs no cost, but the music cost something to make.

meatal wrote: Also I was thinking, every time I go to a restaurant and finish eating a meal and then think the meal was not good or just OK, should I pay for it???

That is not the same thing at all. Downloading an album incurs no costs for the musicians and label. A restaurant has to pay for the food and preparation.

meatal wrote: Also I was thinking, every time I go to a restaurant and finish eating a meal and then think the meal was not good or just OK, should I pay for it???

I don't Henry

Just an appropriate analogy.  If I don't pay for my music, why should I pay for my TV if I possess the knowledge to pirate it? 

Don't like the Wall, eh?   Hmmmm....gonna have to work on you about that

Steve Wilson's bitterness about downloading really irritates me. The Wall starts off pretty strongly, if one is really bored by In the Flesh then one probably shouldn't waste time with the rest of the album, it isn't even very good...

Edited by Henry Plainview - October 01 2009 at 18:43

I love how just believing people should pay for what they take is "holier than thou" to you Claude. 

Fantastic

Kim? wrote: In my opinion, this is not any good if it does not give me the whole album. I want the overall feel of an album. And also, what is the difference between me downloading an album, and then buying it, and me listening to some tracks on myspace the buying it, or the opposite. I've got the impression that the fact that it is illegal is just a dormant law, at least here in Norway.

as quoted from Bob Lefsetz' lefsetz email newsletter of October 1,2009". this is his conclusion after a run through of the sales ending 09/27/09 (see the whole thing at :
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2009/10/01/sales-week-ending-92709/)

"CONCLUSION

No one seems to realize you can't get rich anymore.

You can't sell enough albums, you can't sell enough high-priced tickets.

The music industry is functioning like it's still the 1990s when a revolution has taken place.

It's not about stopping P2P theft, that won't make album sales go up dramatically.  The public just doesn't care.  Who could, about manufactured crap or stuff that's too hip for almost anybody's room.

And they may never care, not for years.

So it's back to the bunker.

Yes, you've got to be in it for the music.  You've got to love to play.  You can't want to become rich, because even a Top Forty hit generates little cash.  It's about having a career.  But those with careers are not flying private and buying Lamborghinis unless they made it in the seventies.  And no one wants to overpay to see those dudes one more time.

Major labels have fired the worker bees.  It would be like Facebook being run by an overpaid Mark Zuckerberg, and him alone.  But these big tech companies have tons of infrastructure.  There's no infrastructure at a major anymore.

And with a tech company it's all about scale.  Can it grow?

The majors are anti-scale.  It's how can we cut enough overhead and get enough rights so we can still pay our presidents millions?  This is a recipe for the future?

And the formerly brain dead touring industry can't see there's a problem.  Used to be the agents and promoters lived on the backs of the record companies.  The labels spent to build stars that people wanted to see.  Now, the labels don't have that kind of money, albums don't sell well enough, hell, they want some of that touring industry money themselves!

So what does the touring industry do?  Raise prices!

But the audience has had enough.  And they don't want to see new bands, why should they?  It's more fun to play games on your iPhone, cruise for dates on Craigslist, which is positively free.

If the money is coming back, music has to drive the culture.  Going to the show must be a monthly occurrence, not a once a year event.

Breaking bands takes a long time.   Oh, you can try a short cut, with a hit single, but that doesn't generate a career.

So, the turning point has come.  Everybody in it for the money is experiencing his last hurrah.  Finally, the stage is set for new players, doing it only for the music, to rebuild the industry.  Because there's just not enough money in it for the old powers to continue to reign.  And only interested in the biggest sellers, who don't sell crap anymore, they're leaving a ton of crumbs on the table.

Majors should get out of new music production, they do it poorly, the risk to reward ratio is horrible.  They should just be catalog houses.  When will they admit this to themselves?

Live Nation's problems are worse.  There are no stars to fill their buildings.  A merger with Ticketmaster brings talent, but does one expect Irving to just hand over acts on bad terms?  And those ancient acts can't sell tickets like they used to.

Holy f**k.  While everybody's been focusing on people stealing the music, the whole business imploded.  The album model has been destroyed.  You're better off selling one hit single on iTunes and having no album!  The concept of a hit driving fans to hear the other nine tracks is laughable.  People know the rest is crap.  They've learned this over decades.  It will take years to convince them otherwise.  But you've got to start with great music, that's the only way out of this.  And there's just not enough of it.  Because the industry is leaving the consumer out of the equation.  Labels sell to radio and indies are so busy trying to look hip, most people don't pay attention.  A sorry state of affairs, but not terminal.  Just like Facebook eclipsed MySpace almost instantly, music could be revived again.  But not by Rupert Murdoch and those f**ks at MySpace, they're too old wave, but by innovators.  You might decry Twitter, but there's more action there than there is on this chart.  Twitter is everything music used to be...immediate, thrilling, satisfying, educational...and you could be a part of it!  Interscope doesn't care about fans, it cares about lifestyle, that of its executives, and the fans know it.  I don't see Jimmy inviting Black Eyed Peas fans into the building to romp and participate.  It's us versus them in the music business whereas online we're all in it together, the customer is truly king.

History has wiped the landscape clean.  We're at the dawn of a new age.  Thank f**king god."

progkidjoel wrote: J-Man wrote: Qboyy007 wrote: J-Man wrote: Wow, I can't believe I've never saw this debate. My thoughts on downloading are actually NOT negative.I don't fileshare online much, but I don't see much of a problem with it anyway, being that you don't abuse it. Whenever I do burn a disc from a friend, if I like the album I almost always buy it. I don't use it as much more than a sampler. When I get an album from the library, I do burn myself a copy, but if I like it, I buy it and if I don't like it, I don't buy it. I only use stuff like this for sampling reasons, or for out-of-print albums.With that said, I only support it when it's not abused. There are so many people that will download everything and never buy it whether they like it or not. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem ith people downloading an album and then buying it if they like it afterwards.Just my two cents.-Jeff Yea, this brings up another question to ponder. Is borrowing a CD from a friend or family member also considered stealing? Its essentially the same thing as using a fileshare. Hell, one could argue that even youtubing music is the same as filesharing. Yeah, it could be considered "stealing", but here's how I look at it; there are two types of people. People who love music and are dedicated to the bands they love, and people who like a song or two every now and again, but can really care less.The people who love music will usually buy the album after "stealing" it. If I like an album that I copy from a friend, I'll always buy it.The people who can care less, about music, well.... They aren't big consumers anyway. Who cares if they get a song every now and again? Also, these people are always buying from the big groups. The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, and NSync don't need (or deserve) any more money than they already have, and these people are fare weathered fans anyway.Sure there are people that are exceptions, but that's how I look at it.-Jeff I do the same thing as you about buying albums - My friend burnt me a PROTEST THE HERO album, and I've since bought both of them and ordered their DVD. The thing is, the friend who burnt me the disc, had illegally downloaded that album. I don't download, unless its legal, and even then, usually only if its free. But some examples of downloading which were important to me are on the Marillion site - They offer free sample album MP3 or CD packages, and they'll even mail them to you for no cost whatsoever. This discourages illegal downloading, because you can get it for free, easier. I agree with what alot of people said about the natural progression of music storing media, although I think it'll be a sad day when CD's go out of production. -Joel

Yeah that'll definitely suck.

sealchan wrote: ...I skipped the middle pages on this thread...   I think that with the advent of music delivered digitally we will want to embrace that and solve the problems that this brings (particularly piracy).  Anything that reduces physical resource consumption and material waste is probably a good thing, even a necessary thing.    Music came without art work for centuries so certainly it can be appreciated without it.  But I also think that there is no reason to abandon it, only good reasons for cultivating it.  As our media playing technology develops there should be room made for re-introducing the artwork and other types of information (song lyrics, musician and studio credits, etc) into the purchased song or album.  Windows Media Player, as one of the commonly used programs to play digital music, needs to make improvements in facilitating this aspect.  But an industry standard may need to be developed in order for Microsoft to put effort into this.  In fact, with the transition of music to a digital format this should open up the range of visual art created for music to such things as simple animation and/or song queued galleries, etc.  Again the players out there with any color graphics capability will need a standard set for doing this...perhaps, a knockdown or something derived from the DVD format which has its video and audio components.   Another development that I see as necessary in the various digital music players is that although randomization is valuable, there needs to be a way to serially link songs that are separate files but are meant to be heard one after another.  That way we can listen to the "Abbey Road medley" properly and still have this come up as a "surprise" when we set our player to randomize songs.  Again this would require a new industry standard for the digital music file.  This feature might also help encourage artists to continue to compose music in collections (albums) rather than just single songs.    Probably there are already those out there advocating, developing and otherwise working on these new standards.  Anyone hear know anything about this?