Will piracy kill off prog rock ?

If Spotify doesn't pay the labels then the labels will withdraw their products from the Spotify catalogue. It is prudent business sense for Spotify to pay the labels. If the label doesn't pay the artist then the artist will.... damn, we're back in the 1970s again. So much for artist liberation.

Dean wrote: If Spotify doesn't pay the labels then the labels will withdraw their products from the Spotify catalogue. It is prudent business sense for Spotify to pay the labels. If the label doesn't pay the artist then the artist will.... damn, we're back in the 1970s again. So much for artist liberation. Spotify is radio on demand, there is nothing magic about it, it is not a public service, it is not about the artist or making money for the artist, it is a business made to make money for its owners.  The same is true of Bandcamp and Soundcloud, they are not a public service, nor are they about the artist, they are a record label with none of the responsibility and none of the overheads, they are a business made to make money for their owners.

Musicians don't need record labels anymore.
Any artist needs to sell enormous amounts of cd's to end up with a profit as their income initially goes back to the record label to pay off their advance.

btw: I once missed a vacation because I didn't have enough money to go as I spent it all on Miles Davis box-sets, I discovered Miles though file sharing.
I discovered the Flower Kings also that way, now I have a not-yet-complete-but-I'm-getting-there cd-collection.
And as every independent study into file sharing shows: people who do a lot of file sharing spend more money on the material they share than people who don't share (those people are not interested).

There's piracy out there (and it's been around for a while), right? There's still prog out there, right? I'm not seeing anything killing off prog so far. Then again, how do you define "killing off"?

chopper wrote: Piracy has been around as long as prog - there have been bootlegs available for years and digital piracy has been around for a while as well and it hasn't killed it off so far. Home taping didn't kill music as far as I remember either. It doesn't help - I know for a fact that prog bands do lose a lot of sales from people uploading CDs and DVDs but I guess it has to be balanced against the number of people who may buy CDs after hearing an illegal download.

There you go.

Meltdowner wrote: It's the society that needs to change; I lost count of how many times I heard: "You're stupid. Why do you buy music when you can get it for free?". Even a policeman said that to me once, they should give the example in the first place.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - September 23 2014 at 12:59

moshkito wrote: Guldbamsen wrote: Most people downloading prog albums do not buy them afterwards. Even so called  "fans" of x band do this, and as a result of this fewer records are sold. ...   If this is the case, it is sad indeed, and one reason to kill it. However, I doubt it. The same story existed 40 years ago, and Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, and Beatles and Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan did just fine, thank you!

The Cloud will get hacked eventually and then the sky will fall, too much weight for those fluffy things to hold.

As some have stated, not an issue for me as I buy physical versions.

Prog will go on...

I believe the exact opposite is happening. With more piracy, artists don't have the expectation of money, therefore don't design their music to make money. They can be more honest to themselves as artists if they don't aim to please everyone.

I used to believe, or perhaps convince myself, that prog will move through piracy without losing too much because the listeners prize owning the proper artwork, as it's such a trademark of the genre. Who wouldn't want to be able to look at that wonderful art in their own hands? Mostly that was coming from older listeners who have spent much their lives buying physical products, but sadly, many people (especially younger ones) just don't care, they feel they have the right to simply take it for nothing.

Sadly, just looking at a fairly `well-known' piracy site right now (not going to name any names and send people off there), and I can see some latest releases from even fairly obscure prog related artists have, in some cases, been downloaded HUNDREDS of time. Hundreds of sales that band will never see.

To me, buying an actual CD or LP is simply part of the deal...I want to see a physical product for my money, look at a nice collection on my shelves, thumb through the CD booklets, glance over the LP sleeves, etc. I grew up in a time when there was no downloading, so if you wanted it, you had to lay down your cash. I cannot believe people simply want to amass a massive collection of data on a f**king computer.

Crap, I'm rambling...can't string coherent thoughts on the subject together!