Piracy

Slartibartfast wrote: lazland wrote: We've had this discussion a number of times, but it is always really interesting, and i will add my tuppence worth again. The vast majority of music i get these days is downloaded. However, i pay for every single one of them, legally, and above board. In fact, I've had a huge splurge recently on a pile of new stuff. I find streaming on stuff such as Last FM quite useful in order to try new stuff before I physically buy it. I never use bit torrent sites, for both moral and PC security issues. However, previous contributors have made reference to the old days of taping vinyl LPs amongst friends. Yep, guilty as charged. It's always happened, and, in reality, file sharing is really only a modern day equivalent of this. You will never really stop it, and, as ever, it is the moral stance of the user which decides the day. Since that last poll thread will now drop like a rock, I'll restate myself.  I don't think I'll ever warm up to them except for the occasional freebie.  I did a pay to download of Porcupine Tree's Futile.  Now that was worth it as it came with printable booklet art, just two sides, but at least it had a track listing, credits, etc.  I, of course made my own CD from it and put it in a case, even printed out a label for the CD.  I've done the freebie download of NIN's The Slip and had to get a hard copy.  I've done the name your own price download of In Rainbows, probably paid too much as again I went out and got a hard copy. Most of the taping I did of LPs were my own albums, although I did have a few copied to cassette from friends or the library. And I've bought more that a few used CDs and LPs.  But the majority of my stuff these days is new and original sale should have resulted in some artist compensation.  Also, I buy directly from the artist's web site whenever possible. I am no pirate though, arrgghh.

Same here. I have recently converted a pile of old vinyl to digital, but I've already paid over good money for that. As for the new stuff, all honestly paid for.

WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nathaniel607 wrote: When you think about it, buying a CD second hand is just as bad, if not worse, than dowloading illegaly. After all, if you buy second hand, you get the full-quality album, booklet etcetera. ... except that someone's already paid for it the first time around. There's a guaranteed sale behind the item, whereas wanton internet theft occurs dozens, hundreds and even thousands of times.

The point is, when you buy a second hand album, exactly £0 goes to the artist. I can sort of see your logic, but it doesn't really make much sense. It's not as if artists want you to sell it on. It doesn't do them any good (well, exept in the form of advertising, but that is achived during file-sharing as well).

Somebody's already paid for a downloading album the first time round - sure, it goes to more people, so I guess you could say it's worse, but if you imagine around 1/4 (just a random guess) of albums 10 years old have been sold on again, that's an artist losing 25% income! And there's no "but he might still buy it" about that.

Nathaniel607 wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nathaniel607 wrote: When you think about it, buying a CD second hand is just as bad, if not worse, than dowloading illegaly. After all, if you buy second hand, you get the full-quality album, booklet etcetera. ... except that someone's already paid for it the first time around. There's a guaranteed sale behind the item, whereas wanton internet theft occurs dozens, hundreds and even thousands of times. The point is, when you buy a second hand album, exactly £0 goes to the artist. I can sort of see your logic, but it doesn't really make much sense. It's not as if artists want you to sell it on. It doesn't do them any good (well, exept in the form of advertising, but that is achived during file-sharing as well). Somebody's already paid for a downloading album the first time round - sure, it goes to more people, so I guess you could say it's worse, but if you imagine around 1/4 (just a random guess) of albums 10 years old have been sold on again, that's an artist losing 25% income! And there's no "but he might still buy it" about that.

It's absolutely worse. Those are lost sales that were never made, whereas each used album is still purchased once beforehand.

WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nathaniel607 wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nathaniel607 wrote: When you think about it, buying a CD second hand is just as bad, if not worse, than dowloading illegaly. After all, if you buy second hand, you get the full-quality album, booklet etcetera. ... except that someone's already paid for it the first time around. There's a guaranteed sale behind the item, whereas wanton internet theft occurs dozens, hundreds and even thousands of times. The point is, when you buy a second hand album, exactly £0 goes to the artist. I can sort of see your logic, but it doesn't really make much sense. It's not as if artists want you to sell it on. It doesn't do them any good (well, exept in the form of advertising, but that is achived during file-sharing as well). Somebody's already paid for a downloading album the first time round - sure, it goes to more people, so I guess you could say it's worse, but if you imagine around 1/4 (just a random guess) of albums 10 years old have been sold on again, that's an artist losing 25% income! And there's no "but he might still buy it" about that. It's absolutely worse. Those are lost sales that were never made, whereas each used album is still purchased once beforehand.

Seriously? Someone's saying that AGAIN?

Gah.

Context = 50,000 albums sold, 100,000 illegally downloaded.

Me wrote: But, if there was no file sharing, they still might only have sold 55,000. The other 45,000 might only have it because it's free. In fact, they may have only sold 40,000 thanks to losing the sales caused by the people who got it for free telling their friends about it.

we all have different opinions, morals about this situation.

I have downloaded albums by many bands including bands i found out in this site. 
why?
because it's the only way i could find out if I was going to like the music before spending 16$ on a CD that it would be possible that i wouldn't like it. i grew tired of buying CD's and then when listening to them i would cry in pain for spending the money on crappy music.

what did i do?

mahavishnujoel wrote: we all have different opinions, morals about this situation. I have downloaded albums by many bands including bands i found out in this site.  why? because it's the only way i could find out if I was going to like the music before spending 16$ on a CD that it would be possible that i wouldn't like it. i grew tired of buying CD's and then when listening to them i would cry in pain for spending the money on crappy music. what did i do? i downloaded albums from bands that people recommended or that i read about. the ones i liked i bought them (yes, genesis king crimson, magma, ayreon, dream theater, rush, etc...) the ones i didn't like i erased them. does that make me a pirate??? i don't thinks so... i don't have a wooden leg or a big black eye patch just my opinion who suffers?  certainly not the artist nor me  why? i discover new bands almost every day if the artist does good music i buy it with a smile on my face if the artist does a crappy job i press delete and save big money... my two cents forgive my English it's not my first language peace

Have you checked your shoulder for a parrot matey?

Catcher10 wrote: And for them to block all CD's from ability to upload....mehh...it will never stop.

It used to be difficult early on to convert CD ( as in wav) to mp3.  I have two multimedia Iron Maiden CDs which cannot be converted to mp3 ( I prefer converting with a real player because Itunes takes too long) but which can be ripped to Itunes (from where I can listen to them wherever I carry my laptop).  The record labels are probably not going back to that under pressure from the electronics or software industry. 

The legal position anyhow is very clear, there is no point debating on it.   At a larger level, it is however not the only problem faced by the music industry.  20-30 years back, you did not have such a huge variety of computer games or internet forums to keep you distracted, so with fewer avenues to pass time, some people would have spent some time (and in turn money) on music.  Now, they don't have to, so unless you really like music, there are always other things to do.  I know that people I used to discuss music with a few years back are now too occupied with work to follow the scene. The other big issue is distribution. Since I have never been abroad, I can't comment on how things are over there, but even well known titles can be difficult to get in India.  I have to spend a lot of money to acquire prog CDs (because, barring bands like JT, most of them are not available here and have to be ordered online with exorbitant shipping).  I do, but how many would do that? Do you reasonably expect many people to do that?

For how long are labels and artists going to live in this utopian dream world and keep ranting about downloading and doing nothing about the problem?  If album CDs are not available as easily as groceries in a supermarket store, this problem will persist, that's all.  As someone pointed out once, it's actually costlier and more inconvenient to order directly through the artist. I meant to order both Gentle Giant DVDs directly from the band but instead went through CD universe where I saved at least $10 a DVD.   If you don't reach out to the audience, most won't be interested in following music (which is why eventually most people 'settle down' and lose touch with it) and the few who want to would be frustrated in their efforts.   And then, Steven Wilson will write songs ranting about the IPod generation 'coz he has nothing better to do.

DARRRR, PARROT!

Many people try to rationalize their illegal file sharing activities by saying that they only use it to sample the albums so they can find out whether they want to buy them. Well, this might have made sense ten, or even five years ago. But today? Most artists offer samples on their homepage, or on their myspace profile. When you go to Amazon.com or eMusic.com and an album is available there, you can listen to 30 second samples of each song, taken not from the beginning of each track but from interesting parts, and you can listen to those samples consecutively. This gives you a very good impression of what you're going to get. If you now say "nah, I need to listen to the whole album repeatedly before I'm able to make a decision" my response is: This kind of usage requires that you buy the album. The artist(s) worked very hard to make it, and its purpose, its intended usage is for people to listen to it. If you want to do that, you need to PAY THEM. The 30 second samples, or full samples of some tracks - those are what you are supposed to listen to before you make the decision. If those aren't enough to convince you, then you should move on to other albums.

Mike, the legal principle of what you say cannot be questioned but you don't appreciate what would happen, especially given how scattered the music scene is today and how many bands and artists there are, if everybody just moved on to another artist. That would only disadvantage smaller bands even more.  This is basically what I asked in my earlier post: do labels and artist want to talk about the legalities or are they interested in addressing the larger issue?  Maybe the time is ripe to admit that in the present scenario, smaller bands can only post their music on myspace and perform live in the hope of gradually building more mileage and cannot hope to subsist only on album sales?