Where are our mp3?

^ You can find links to many such websites on my private homepage. Please submit any others that aren't already listed ... there are already 472 full songs available, and my goal is to reach 1,000.

This is going to be long, so...
I received the following email yesterday evening:

---
for steve (or someone at this mailbox)

First i want to apologize about my lack of english. Unfortunatly, there is
no person i could ask write now to transfer this letter to a proper english.
I've written it in hebrew, and translated to english by myself. In addition
to the bad english, spelling etc., when translating from hebrew to english,
the text could be very impolite. I dont mean to be impolite, or offend
anybody. I just want to make my points and hope you will listen and
consider the removal again.

Before some weeks, there was a change in ProgArchives: all mp3 became
streaming, rather than downloading. users unable to download it
anymore.
There was a little mess about that, peaple talked in forums about that. i
was estonished to realise that all your mp3 where completly removed,
and not apear at the site anymore.

I wrote to M@X from the site, and he told me that you asked for that
(cuneiform records/steve) .

I think it is wrong decision, because of several reasons:
You could find main reasons why it is useless in the forum "where are our
mp3" at ProgArchives, it apear on

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?
TID=12551&KW=our+mp3

so i wont give many details. to say shortly, the progressive fans are very
serious, feel responsible for their artists. many peaple purchase a lot of
CD's, some of them in huge amount (i so it at another formus). anyway
most of the peaple are at high level, well educated. much aware to the
complicate situation of the progressive music today. most of the peaple
do not want to abuse thier favorite artists and the record companies. as
for the RIO scene, it is even more so. (definatly true)

I dont know if you checked any statistics before you deside to remove
mp3, but i think that such as action will cause demage rather than good
things. I'll give details on it, first as a listener, second as a recommander.
as a listener, i'm quite new to the RIO scene. i want to discover as many
artists as i could, to know better this sub-genere. personally, when i want
to get femiliar with a band or artist, i "stream" the mp3 on the site, listen
to it several times. if i feel that the artist is good, the music is interesting,
and they have a lot to offer, i start thinking of purchase the CD. i,
personaly, for many reasons, do not purchase a lot of disks at short time,
but disks will alwayes be purchased.
until now, i used to skip every group or artist whose lack mp3 at the site.
i skip it even if the best recommandation was given. (via forums or
reviews). recommandation at such condition is no longer effective.

as a recommander, the situation is even worse. How can i recommand on
any of your artists, without feeling ridiculous because the mp3 are simply
not there? should i tell the progmates to look for it in kazaa or such?
should i send some of them my own mp3, without knowing if its legal or
not? or should i just give up the whole thing and won't tell anything about
my favorite artists? mp3 should be checked immediately after one gets
the recommandation, and inside the site, without need to go to find it
elsewhere. for example, i personally asked for progressive metal
recommandations, and got a lot of them. all relevant mp3's apears on
the site as well. why this accesibility will be just for prog-metal and not
for RIO? especialy your artists?

Do you want to send us to all those kazaa and such, and to illegaly
download? what if someone go to kazaa, because there is no other
choice, see the whole album there, and just download it all?
If you'll answer me - this is the situation today, peaple download whole
albums, my answer is: so what will you gain by removing the mp3? it
wont help you with your justified struggle with the illegal downloads. it
only makes it worse.

and what about the artists? i've read an interview with Mike Johnson from
Thinking Plague. I realized two things: your artists create museic without
any hope that they could leave form it. as he says " none of us could give
up daily jobs" (sorry for the bad qoute).
and another thing: they realy gratefull to the new possibilites of
distribution via internet, as he says:
I do think that this internet driven phenomenon is sustainable as long as
people want to hear music outside of the narrow range of corporate
owned pop music...the internet has allowed for a whole new level and
type of outreach to people seeking new and different music. These folks
have always been there, I believe, but until the internet came along there
was no effective way to reach people on a worldwide basis without the big
record deal"

well, it actually seems he didnt mean peaple would just READ about the
music...

finally, i have to express my personall feelings about that. as i said
before, i'm quite new to RIO scene. I discovered Thinking Plague, via
listening to their mp3 that apeared on the site. I recently purchased the
HOM album. I've found an amazing composition, a true masterpiece. so
original, unique, full of emotions, could show a new direction to the
whole progressive scene, not just RIO. I wanted that as many peaple as
possible, will exposed to this music. not just RIO fans. I realy felt that the
power of this composition goes beyond RIO scene.
I send a review to the site, which i worked very hard on. include translate
it to english, than transfer it to a proper english. a friend of mine helped
me with that, a friend who is not even known to prog music. I've done all
that, just to discover that the MP3 removed, maby even at the same day
when i passed the review. I can't describe my feelings than.

I hope you will consider your decision again.
Please let me know.

Thank you for reading this long letter

Shirly

-----

Here is my reply which I wrote to Shirly. I think that perhaps everyone
should see it.


Hello Shirly

I appreciate your very nice letter and the fact that you took the time to
translate it from Hebrew to English. I definitely was easily able to
understand what you were trying to say.

I have already received one other letter about this - but that letter was
not very nice - so I would like to respond to your letter and to tell you
that you may post it on progarchives in the section
http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?
TID=12551&KW=our+mp3
or anywhere else.

That way I only have to write this letter one time.

1) We were NOT asked for permission to put the mp3's up on PA. There
was no permission requested from us, there was no copyright notice
about our materials and there was no link to OUR site so that if someone
DID want to buy something they heard, the could. There was only a link
to "Buy CDs from Doug Larson Imports". But Doug Larson does not carry
our CDs. Why is there a link to Doug Larson and not to Cuneiform?
Because Max is making money from Doug's advertising. In other words,
he is making money selling advertising by using our materials WITHOUT
our permisison to lure people to come to his site. This is utterly unfair
and utterly unethical, imo.

2) Not only did PA put some of our material up on their site, but when
they didn't have a CD to put a song up on their site, they then put on the
site "partner with PA; send us a mp3 by this band and we will put it on the
site". I found that an outrageous attitude for a 'legitimate' site.

3) As you suggested, I am reading the forum about where are our mp3's. I
am actually surprised that you think that my reading this would make me
change my mind about my decision. Reading these letters has convinced
me that I have done the correct thing. All everyone says is "I downloaded
them all" or "Record labels suck" or "I can steal it from Kazaa" or
"Streaming isn't good enough - I want to save it on my computer and my
mp3 player to listen to whenver I want to". In other words, everyone is
upset because now it they will have to buy these songs/albums that they
used to get for free or they will have to look harder for them, because, as
someone said "it isn't easy to find these things on Limewire". Why is it
not easy? The reason it is not easy to find them on Limewire is that we
sell so few copies of our releases that no one on those networks *has*
them for others to steal! Since our sales our so small, why should I
condone PA allowing people to download tracks for free?

4) Yes, I checked the statistics; the fact that thousands and thousands of
people had downloaded a 14 minute song from our Guapo album (25% of
the entire album!!) does not make me happy, when I have not been asked
for or given my permission about this.

5) In my opinion, I will not chase everyone to Kazaa or Limewire, because
these services do not have this type of music. And anyway, Kazaa is
definitely an illegal service. Everyone knows it is an illegal service. PA
wants to be a legal service, which is an admirable goal. But if they don't
want to be thought of as a 'bad site' by the record companies who make
the music featured on PA available, then they have to act legally. And if
people go to Kazaa, they go to Kazaa; I can not be a policeman to the
world and I can not stop people from going to illegal sites. But then
people who go to Kazaa or Limewire are forced to accept the fact that
they KNOW they are stealing this music and they can not pretend that
they are somehow getting it for free legitimately from a 'good' site like
PA. I am not happy that PA acted like they were legitimate and as if PA is
doing something to help this music when what it appears to me that they
are doing is using OUR music in an illegal way to sell advertising. That's
why I made them stop.

6) Mike Johnson of Thinking Plague is entitled to his opinion. But I paid
for the recording of his album and I pay him royalties every six months. If
everyone steals from Cuneiform Records, then there will be no more
Cuneiform Records and it will either mean that there will be no more
Thinking Plague or it will be that much harder for Thinking Plague (and
other bands like them ) to have their records released and to have the
promotional work that we do (at NO charge to the band) done for them so
that their records are reviewed in many magazines all over the world.
People may think that record labels are pigs or that we should all just die.
That's fine. I just hope that when that day happens and all the labels who
spend a lot of time and money releasing the music that the 'fans' here
claim to love and that sells very small numbers of copies are gone, that
these fans of the music are smart enough to realise why all these bands
stopped making records and playing concerts. Do you really think that
the bands that Cuneiform Records release could exist without us? I have
been releasing records for over 20 years. I have released over 225
albums; think about how many of them would have been released if I
hadn't put the my time, the time of my employees and our money into
these releases. Maybe everyone who likes to call us and other small,
hardworking labels "pigs" should think about that.

So, that's all for now. Again, I appreciate your writing. But we will NOT be
authorizing PA to put MP3's up anytime without Max addressing these
issues and without our full knowledge and participation in what he wants
to do with mp3s in the future.

Thank you

Steve
Cuneiform Records

Edited by MrCuneiform

Whether or not the members agree with the content, this seems to me like a well reasoned and sincere response.

Thanks for sharing it with us Steve.

blacc wrote: you're trying to convince us that you care a lot about the bands unselfishly. You say that you do promotional work without charge the band etc. Why don't you admit that you care mostly about the money the band brings you and that's the reason you promote them?

Hang on, hang on, hang on! You're suggesting that someone who cares mostly about the money would run a record label specialising in obscure prog?!?

No, but nor are you if you download their music

Stop bitchin' about the mp3's... and being lazy; if you had more than 1 neuron cells in your head you would be smart enough to check out the band websites which usually carry a few free mp3s, many of them full, and sometimes there are even much more sound clips than here in progarchives.

For example, how about some THINKING PLAGUE songs somebody was crying over?
http://cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/thinking.html

Yes, they are RealAudio, but they are still full songs (at least I think so, looking at the lengths of clips) or just slightly edited - should give you the idea of the music..

The CuneiForm website has samples also from all the other bands on their collection, usually 1-2 full songs from every single album... the site btw. is http://cuneiformrecords.com/ , it can be nicely found out from the URL of Thinking Plague pages, but bands usually have their own websites in a different address, so I think it would be nice to add the URL of the site of the record label aswell, whether there were any audio clips or not. These mp3/realaudio/windows media files are in the proper context, controlled by their legitime owners; they can select with which song to advertise their product, and there's no third parties making money with their products (just like the case seems to be with progarchives) - another example of inproper context would be if progarchives was some kind of drugs/pornography related site hosting free prog mp3s without permission - they have the right to select with which they want to be associated... honestly, we're not really talking about Sony-BMG, Universal or some crap-sh*t big-business music-killing and culture-bashing companies, but tiny, independent labels publishing obscure material and really living on the edge...

Seventh Records has an even wider collection of MAGMA songs (than this site) in their Web Radio....
http://www.seventhrecords.com/NAVI/framebas.html

So, the record companies are in fact taken advantage of Internet, but because people are so blinded by the opportunities of P2P and sites like this - which are more helpful to obscure bands from dead labels (or owned by big corporate labels who haven't even thinked about reissues).

Yes, I know that you (and I aswell) are passionate with this kind of music, but give up the emotions for a while and think rationally.


Edited by Tussu-urku - April 27 2006 at 12:38

Few words for Cuneiform

 

Although I've heard fans calling some big prog artists all sorts of names, like idiot and moron, until now I haven’t heard anyone saying anything bad about labels releasing prog, quiet contrary. I also have nothing but sympathy and respect to those people who help create the music I love so much.

 

Nevertheless I found above post excessively aggressive and inappropriate reply to polite and very legitimate complain is appalling. Unfortunately you didn’t red or pay attention to a main point of most of the posts on this subject.

 

1. It is necessary to hear the music before buying it.

 

2. There is no way samples on PA could diminish album sales.

 

3. Samples in fact sell music.  

 

Also:

a) If PA makes money by advertising your product, that should not be your concern. What next, should we ask permission for mentioning a band?

a) Immoral organization (system) can not hold anyone morally responsible for actions directed against that system. Robin Hood was never a bad guy although he was a criminal. Stealing songs from rotten corporation is a good deed. Kazza is better then WB.

 

Now what have you gained with your actions? Huge increase in sales I guess. Or rather upsetting a decent people and turning them against yourself.

 

With respect,

Keep chamber-rocking

 

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OK, my post is a seriously overdued but I only just came across this topic.