Will piracy kill off prog rock ? - Progressive Rock Music Forum

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Prog_Traveller View Drop Down

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 00:19

I wouldn't single out prog rock. If anything prog is immune to what goes on in the mainstream. Prog fans tend to be collectors and like the physical format and as such we want to pay for our music. I think it's pop music fans who don't take the music very seriously and don't think about paying for it and just take things for granted. They aren't collectors so they just download stuff for free.

Siloportem View Drop Down

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 02:56

stonebeard wrote:

If music it is popular it can be monetized and sold. Prog is really not popular. Fringe, even. There was a "physical release" bubble from the 40s-90s that made it possible to generate a whole lot of money from physical copies of music. Entirely unlike any enjoyment of music in thousands of years. We've moved past that into something entirely new. Through royalties and licensing artists can still make money, but those heady days of making insane cash for pressing and promoting a record seem to be long gone. Piracy helped, but with computers and the internet this was inevitable. And it can't be undone, even if it would be a good idea to do so. Time to strike out into the new way of doing things.

Imo piracy did a lot more than "help". There's a marketing trick: if you put a high price on a product people tend to think it's a good product. Otherwise it wouldn't be expensive.

Thanks to piracy people can get music for nothing. So the perceived value dropped and now scores of people are no longer willing to pay anything for music. Or only very little.

There was a time when even computer illiterates were using napster! I'm not saying the price was right during the bubble you describe. But piracy lowered the perceived value to practically $0 and how are they going to get it back up to a reasonable value?

That's why spotify is so cheap. They're just trying to make money from the people who aren't willing to pay any.

If the music industry would've acted sooner and created something like spotify or iTunes during the napster days then who knows what they could've charged. Even with the bad bandwidth you had back in those days.

Convenience was another thing that made piracy attractive. At least the legal services match that convenience now.

siLLy puPPy View Drop Down

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 08:19

Prog_Traveller wrote:

I wouldn't single out prog rock. If anything prog is immune to what goes on in the mainstream. Prog fans tend to be collectors and like the physical format and as such we want to pay for our music. I think it's pop music fans who don't take the music very seriously and don't think about paying for it and just take things for granted. They aren't collectors so they just download stuff for free.

Yep. In short, prog lovers tend to love the music enough to nurture it financially and savor it more. The music industry has without doubt changed because of piracy so it is a matter of adapting or dying but money can still be profitable its just that now the artist has to go the extra mile to attract the bees to the nectar. Take the new Mastodon album for example, how could you possibly not want that beautiful art? For whatever reason, the kiddies these days are buying lots of LPs instead of downloading.

I think market saturation in a world where everyone can make an album cheaply is more of a problem for an artist standing out in the crowd. Personally i think its exciting times in the music world

siLLy puPPy View Drop Down

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 08:20

Music can be profitable that is

Dean

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 11:10

Siloportem wrote:

Imo piracy did a lot more than "help". There's a marketing trick: if you put a high price on a product people tend to think it's a good product. Otherwise it wouldn't be expensive.

Thanks to piracy people can get music for nothing. So the perceived value dropped and now scores of people are no longer willing to pay anything for music. Or only very little.

That's why spotify is so cheap. They're just trying to make money from the people who aren't willing to pay any.

Convenience was another thing that made piracy attractive. At least the legal services match that convenience now.

Exactly, as I have said before, value & worth and price & cost are not the same. You can devalue the worth of something but that does not affect its cost.

The "bubble" is a fallacy. Before the 1940s there was no way of owning recorded music. You could not hear music on demand. If you wanted to hear music you paid a musician to play it for you. The argument is specious.

Everyone wants something for nothing. If they cannot get it for nothing then they want it cheap. The minimum price a business can charge for something is its cost. If it cost them nothing (piracy) then they can charge nothing, if it cost them something (recording business) then they have to charge something.

The value of an Album is not its cost. The value of an Album is determined by how much you want it. When the price of every Album is the same then we decide its value by choosing to buy it or not.

A Justine Beiber album has zero value to a Prog fan and a Yes album has no value to a Justine Beiber fan - they cost the same and they are priced the same but their value and worth is dependant upon who the buyer is. It does not matter to us as Prog fans how much a Label or a Pirate charges for a Justine Bieber album, we don't want it - they cannot even give it away to us (cite: the latest U2 album fiasco). The situation created by piracy is that the value of both albums is now worth the same for both fans. What "we" have decided is that the Yes album is worth as much to us as Prog fans as a Justine Bieber album is. Is that cool or what? [A: or what]

Music distribution exists to make money for someone. Bandcamp and Spotify are a business, they exist to make money for their owners, not the Labels and not the Artist. The less they can pay for the product they sell the less they can charge the consumer.

It is worth remembering that piracy is also a business, it exists to make money. Napster existed to make money for its owners, Megaupload existed to make money for its owners.

Labels work like this:

A1. a Label pays for research and development (the Advance, the studio, the artwork)
A2. a Label pays for raw materials (the packaging, the CD disc and case)
A3. a Label pays for those raw materials to be processed (the glass-master)
A4. a Label pays for the manufacture of the developed product using the processed raw materials (production)
A5. a Label pays for the marketing and promotion of that manufactured product (marketing)
A6. a Label pays for the distribution and deployment of that marketed product (distribution)
A7. a Label earns money from the sale of that product (retail)
A8. a Label deducts the money paid in stages A1,A2,A3,A4,A5 and A6 from the money earned in A7
A9 .a Label calls the remainder "profit"

Pirates used to work like this:

B1. a pirate steals the product (A6) from a Label (theft)
B2. a pirate pays for the raw materials (the packaging, the CDR disc and case)
B3. a pirate pays for the manufacture of the stolen product using the raw materials
B4. a pirate sells the product at a cheaper price because he hasn't paid for A1, A3, A5 or A6
B5. a pirate deducts the money paid in B2 and B3 from the money earned in B4
B6. a pirate calls the remainder "profit"
B7. a Label does not recoup the money spent in A1,A2,A3,A4,A5 and A6
B8. a Label makes less "profit"

Pirates now work like this:

C1. a pirate steals the product (A6) from a Label (theft)
C2. a pirate offers the stolen product as a free download
C3. a pirate earns money from the advertising space he puts on the download page
C4. a pirate calls all the money he earns "profit"
C5. a Label does not recoup the money spent in A1,A2,A3,A4,A5 and A6
C6. a Label makes even less "profit" than in B8

Freeloaders works like this:

D1. a freeloader steals the product (A6) from a Label (theft) or a Pirate (hijack)
D2. a freeloader offers the stolen product as a free download
D3. a freeloader earns no money
D4. a freeloader does not make a "profit"
D5. a Label does not recoup the money spent in A1,A2,A3,A4,A5 and A6
D6. a Label makes even less "profit" than in C6

From this we can make several observations:

1. the pirate and the freeloader are dependant upon the Label .
2. the pirate and the freeloader do not pay for the Album to be recorded or produced so they can charge less than the Label.
3. the pirate and the freeloader have smaller overheads so can charge less than the Label.
4. the Label cares about how many copies of each Album they sell - a million copies of one Album makes them money, a thousand copies of a thousand Albums does not and one copy each of a million Albums does not.
5. the pirate and the freeloader do not care how many copies of each Album they sell - they can sell million copies of one Album or one copy each of a million Albums - the earning (and cost) is the same. (This is also true of Bandcamp and Spotify).
6. the pirate and the freeloader don't need to make money so can charge little or nothing for the product.
7. if the Label cannot make a profit then it will cease to be a Label
8. if the Label does not exist then pirate and freeloader have nothing new to "sell".

Piracy is not confined to the selling of albums, it is also involved in live music so even there the Artist has no protection. Fake tickets and ticket touts are piracy - the less than subtle difference is demand. Tickets are a limited resource so the pirate has no need to under-cut the promoter/Artist, they can charge more, the value to the consumer is more than the ticket cost, hence the price is higher.

Pirates and freeloaders are parasitical, they are dependant upon the host to survive even if that is detrimental to the host to the point where it can no longer survive. When the host is dead it will move on to a new host, that new host will be (and already is) the Artist. The pirate and the freeloader makes no distinction between a Label and an Artist, they are only concerned with the product, not where it came from. If piracy will kill the Labels then it will also ultimately kill the Artist. Nothing about this is a good thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the sake of completemess, this is how Bandcamp works:

E1. an Artist pays for the production of an Album.
E2. an Artist "pays" for the promotion and marketing of an Album.
E3. Bandcamp does not pay for the production or marketing of anything except Bandcamp.
E4. Bandcamp allows every Artist to stream and sell their Album.
E5. Bandcamp allows every Artist to sell merchandise.
E6. Bandcamp takes a percentage (15%) of every album, T-shirt, button and poster sold.

1. Bandcamp has (almost) 1 million artists and to date has paid-out $83million to those Artists.
2. This means that (in theory) on average each artist makes $83...
or to put it another way: if $83 million is 85% of the total number of sales then each artist averages less than 10 albums sold.
3. In reality high-selling artists get a bigger percentage of the sales so that $83 million is not divided equally.
4. In reality high-selling artists sell more than 10 albums by several magnitudes (i.e., powers of 10).
5. In reality those high-selling artists were selling high (by Bandcamp standards) before they moved to Bandcamp.
6. In reality the average number of albums sold per artist is a lot less than 10.
7. In reality many artists sell less than 10 copies so earn a lot less than $83.
8. In reality most artists sell none.
9. No artist can make an album for $83 so most artists earn nothing.
10. Bandcamp makes money because it does not matter whether they sell one copy each of a million different albums or a million copies of one album.

Bandcamp and Spotify are not a good models. Their current success is actually a product of "the Label system", not a reaction to it. Bandcamp and Spotify does not Invest in Artists, only the Artist makes that Investment, and the people who buy the Albums pay for that Investment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Profit is the Return on Investment, this is measured in more than just Money.

The Worth of something is more than its Monetary Value.

Investment is not about the present.

You cannot Invest in the past.

Investment is about the future.

If we do not Invest in Art then there will be no future for Music or The Artist

If there is no future for Music or The Artist then there will be no Art.

We Value Art by how much we are prepared to Pay for it.

If we are not prepared to Pay for Art then we have Devalued it.

When we do not Invest in Art it is because it has no Value.

If we do not Value Art then it has no Worth.

If Art has no Worth then it is Worthless.

If we Value Art as Worthless then there is no incentive to Create Art.

If we do not Invest in the Creative Arts then we will not Profit from the Art.

If we Value Creative Art as Worth something then we must Invest in The Artist.

Edited by Dean - October 01 2014 at 11:23

What?

Obsidian Pigeon View Drop Down

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 14:54

As others have said, prog fans are probably the fanbase that buy the most physical copies of albums out there. Progressive music was also really only popular in the 70s and has survived since, in one form or another, and piracy will in my view have little to no impact on the creation, distribution, or listening of progressive music.

Rednight

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 16:31

Obsidian Pigeon wrote:

As others have said, prog fans are probably the fanbase that buy the most physical copies of albums out there. Progressive music was also really only popular in the 70s and has survived since, in one form or another, and piracy will in my view have little to no impact on the creation, distribution, or listening of progressive music.

Really! And I suppose you're going to hop on down to the nearest Tower Records store to pick some up.

SteveG

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 16:55

This thread has a lot of exposition on what should obviously be viewed as a practice with no redeemable qualities. Why is that?

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Obsidian Pigeon View Drop Down

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 20:21

There's still Amazon and other websites, including those owned by bands where they sell their own merchandise. Just because there aren't as many physical locations to purchase these goods does not mean that the demand has necessarily shrunk in the subsection of the population that looks for progressive albums, especially because this portion of the market does not encompass a good portion of the total demand in the music industry. It really depends on your preferences and whether or not you want to pirate them, and from experience I'd say progressive fans tend to collect a lot of merchandise, including vinyl and CDs. I don't consider digital copies (bought via iTunes or wherever) substantially different in distribution than vinyl/CDs/whatever floats your boat. Generally, people listen to music from mp3 files nowadays anyway.

Dean

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 20:52

Why Bandcamp and Spotify are not a force for Good in the World

As mentioned in my previous post Bandcamp has (almost) 1 million Artist and pays out $83 million to those Artists.

When we just count the zeros in the sales figures then this seems like A Good Thing.

When we read about the Bandcamp success stories then this seems like A Good Thing.

When we read about Amanda Palmer making $15,000 in 3 minutes then this seems like A Good Thing.

However, as I said before, this averages at 10 CD/download sales per Artist, now this no longer seems like A Good Thing.

You don't need Bandcamp to sell 10 Albums, you don't even need the Internet at all to sell 10 Albums, you can sell that many to your friends and family without trying too hard.

It only takes 100 Amanda Palmer's selling 100,000 Albums each for the $83 million paid out by Bandcamp to be completely spent. This would mean that rather than selling 10 albums the remaining 999,900 Artists have sold nothing.

If we ignore the 'Amanda Palmer Effect' and classify a successful album as being one that sold 10,000 copies then the total number of Bandcamp Artists that could have possibly been classified as successful is 1,000, this means that the number of Artists selling nothing would be 999,000. This would put Bandcamp's success rate at 1 in 999.

For an Artist signed to a Label, 10,000 would not be classed as a successful Album. Selling 10,000 albums would not break even.

However, if we accept that in this Bandcamp future no Artist can sell 10,000 copies then we can call an Artist "successful" if he breaks even.

If, for sake of argument, I ignore the physical items like CDs and T-Shirts and and for the sake of the same argument I assume each album costs the Artist $1000 to record. I will also assume that each Artist has only 1 album to sell and it retails at $10.

This means that the Artist needs to sell 100 copies of The Album to break even and be called "a success".

So 10 million albums sold on Bandcamp means that a maximum of 100,000 Artists could have sold 100 Albums each. This would mean that 900,000 Artist have sold nothing. This puts the success rate at 1 in 9. And that's seems pretty good compared to the 1 in 20 success rate offered by the Labels.

But of course breaking even is exactly the same as not making an album.

If you are a gigging Artist you can shift 100 copies of a physical CD fairly easily. If you only manage 10 sales per gig that's still only 10 gigs. You don't need Bandcamp to sell 100 CDs. Trying to sell downloads at a gig is another story.

Let's look at this from a different perspective:

If each album cost $1000 to record and there are 1 million albums on Bandcamp then that is a total investment of $1,000,000,000 or $1 billion (in short form), of which Bandcamp has contributed precisely zero. [there are more than 1 million albums on Bandcamp]

At a selling price of $10 each the total sales generated by 10 copies of each album is then $100million...

As we know, that total $1 billion investment by 1 million Artists has earnt them a total of $83 million.

No matter how you cut it, no matter how you do the mathematics, the total loss by all the Artists added together is $917 million, or each Artist is out of pocket to the tune of $917 each.

Yet Bandcamp makes $14 million clear profit from this.

And all this is legal. In any other industry we would look at those figures and go "Hang on, that can't be right". We would take one look and smell a rat. We would suspect this was some kind of elaborate Ponzi or Pyramid scheme, and in some ways that is what it is. Just a legal, non-fraudulent one.

Pyramid schemes work on expectation, they attract lots of investors each with the expectation that they will earn lots of cash, and they fail because each investor cannot generate enough sales to recoup their investment. Their investment is to buy a stock of Wizzo Bogcleaner that they have to sell. However, the only sales a pyramid scheme makes are to the immediate family & friends of each investor, when all those sales are made the investors have to sign-up new investors. Each investor now gets paid by the investment made by the new investors, essentially they are unloading their unsold stock of Wizzo Bogcleaner onto the next mug in the pyramid. These are fraudulent because the goal is to sign-up investors not to make sales, the organisers know that each investor can never sell enough Wizzo Bogcleaner to break even.

Bandcamp avoids this fraudulent aspect of the pyramid by not taking money from the investor in payment for the Wizzo Bogcleaner it cannot sell, it gets the investor to actually make the product himself. Now there is no pyramid so it cannot be a pyramid scheme. Simples.

However, the mechanism that makes it work are exactly the same - the expectation is the Artist will make lots of cash but the sales made by most of the Artists are to their immediate family & friends. Bandcamp creams 15% profit from each sale for no outlay of its own.

As I said,you can sell 10 albums to friends and family without Bandcamp.

Bandcamp is not interested in selling your album, (that's your job), Bandcamp is only interested in the $14 it earns from each of the 1 million Artists that uses it.

Go to the Bandcamp site and look around. They tell you that you can make money selling your album. They don't tell you how may albums each Artist sells, they do not tell you how much each Artist makes. But to entice you they tell you how much they have paid to all their artists in total, and that is 83 million dollars.

In reality the situation for the Artist is much worse than this - many Artists have more than one Album to sell, many artists do not count the invisible expenses it cost them to produce the Album, they don't count the cost of their time, they don't count the cost of promotion, they don't count the "cost" of giving away free copies. And if the Artist has physical product to sell, such as CDs and T-shirts, then they have invested in the stock they hold of those products, whether they sell or not. Even if it does not cost $1,000 to record an Album, the investment by each Artist is higher than it costs to record one Album. Whatever the actual cost is, it certainly isn't $83.

For all the wonders of modern technology an Album that cost $1,000 to produce is not a great deal of money to spend. A more realistic figure to record an Album would be ten times that at least. Hiring a studio can be any be anything from $300/day to $3,000/day and a recording engineer is no less than $500/day so your $1,000 is pretty much spent in just one day in the the cheapest studio you can find. One day is not enough. You could record your album without using a studio or an engineer, but if you want to have it mixed and mastered professionally (and trust me, you should) then that's $500 for the mix, $500 for the mastering and again your $1000 is all spent. And if you are no good at graphic art (and why should you be, you're a musician) then you can add another $500 for that, except you can't because you spent the budget on the recording...

What?

Svetonio

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 20:58

I agree.

Svetonio

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 21:02

siLLy puPPy wrote:

Yep. In short, prog lovers tend to love the music enough to nurture it financially and savor it more. The music industry has without doubt changed because of piracy so it is a matter of adapting or dying but money can still be profitable its just that now the artist has to go the extra mile to attract the bees to the nectar. Take the new Mastodon album for example, how could you possibly not want that beautiful art? For whatever reason, the kiddies these days are buying lots of LPs instead of downloading.

I think market saturation in a world where everyone can make an album cheaply is more of a problem for an artist standing out in the crowd. Personally i think its exciting times in the music world

I think so too.

Kati

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 21:04

In my opinion to be honest illegal downloads have no negative effect to prog artists, pop artists maybe yes although they have a huge following many of those are happy with a low quality music download. I think those who use torrent sites to download music would never buy an album anyway thus if they listen, like it and maybe spread the music to others it might be positive

rogerthat

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Posted: October 01 2014 at 21:55

I am afraid the bitter retirement of Martin Orford as well as another band that broke up claiming the piracy situation made it hopeless, contradicts this view. On the other hand, the top selling pop artists still record healthy volumes. It may not be anything compared to the blockbusters of the 80s or 90s but they still regularly go platinum or multiplatinum. Of course prog rock fans like to take the convenient view that pop listeners are to a man fickle and will scavenge on illegal copies if they can, a view that is based more on personal prejudices perhaps than reality. The reality is that pop stars have access to a much bigger audience which would necessarily include more people who will either buy CDs or buy songs or albums off ITunes. I think there's one thing prog rock bands could definitely do to mitigate the impact of piracy on their prospects. At least in the beginning they should only offer individual tracks for sale via digital media. At that price point, more people would be prepared to pay. Sure, there are lots of people who now want music for free all the time. But the only way to get people back into paying for recorded music is to sell it in smaller parcels. A parallel can be drawn to the introduction of hair shampoos in small sachets by the likes of Unilever and P&G for the Indian market to capture those customers who couldn't afford or didn't want to buy a full bottle of shampoo. Certainly a $1/2 download of a song is more enticing than a $15 CD plus shipping, there is less likelihood that a person might postpone the purchase. Yes, prog rock bands and listeners alike are hooked to the album format. But if listeners will only pirate albums and not pay for the format they supposedly love so much, it's time for the bands to adapt, at least for the sake of their own survival. It's not as if this is a brand new idea anyway. Some if not a lot of bands already offer individual tracks in an album for download. I would only take this a step further and suggest that initially they shouldn't even invest the effort and money involved in putting together an entire album. Just release songs for sale and as the response improves, they can probably offer more tracks together at a time for sale.

Edited by rogerthat - October 01 2014 at 22:02

Siloportem View Drop Down

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Posted: October 02 2014 at 02:27

Rednight wrote:

Really! And I suppose you're going to hop on down to the nearest Tower Records store to pick some up.

People who make an effort to listen to specific music are going to make an effort to acquire that music.

That may mean paying for it. It may also mean finding more obscure ways to pirate it.

But I do think it's more likely that these people are willing to get the music through legal means.

It's not just prog rock either, I think it's any genre that's not easily available through radio or tv.

Thanks !! Your topics always so good and informative. I like you talk.

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Posted: October 02 2014 at 04:31

No. In my opinion "piracy" make prog rock reach to persons who don´t have the possibilites to know a gropu or album in other way.
I gave you my example, if wasn´t for "piracy" i almost for sure never have listened to Van Der Graaf Generator, or Flower Kings, and maybe never had the chance to know Riverside an others.
So in my opinion "piracy" is good for prog rock, in fact is good to all kinds of music.
Of course bands soul less records than a few years ago, but they have more concerts and more people talking about them now and it´s because of that.

chopper

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Posted: October 02 2014 at 06:47

Kati wrote:

In my opinion to be honest illegal downloads have no negative effect to prog artists

Sorry but I know for a fact that this is incorrect.

chopper

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Posted: October 02 2014 at 06:48

npinho73 wrote:

No. In my opinion "piracy" make prog rock reach to persons who don´t have the possibilites to know a gropu or album in other way.
I gave you my example, if wasn´t for "piracy" i almost for sure never have listened to Van Der Graaf Generator, or Flower Kings, and maybe never had the chance to know Riverside an others.
So in my opinion "piracy" is good for prog rock, in fact is good to all kinds of music.

That's only going to be true if you then went on to buy legitimate product from those artists.

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Posted: October 02 2014 at 07:41

Hi npinho73, the problem is that what people do is "listen" to an album (after downloading their complete discography) and then decide whether or not they like it. Prog rock forces you to listen properly and get what the artist is doing - this takes time with some albums.

But. Now there's the option to just sonically graze, instant "do I like this or not ? " - not get involved - don't like it ? Well, not as if you'd spent money on it.

And whilst this is good in some way, it's a very easy habit to stop buying anything which you don't like *on the first play*. Chopper is right, unless you then go off and physically buy the CD's, the artist gets nothing.... the incentive disappears for them to do anything else.

A lot of the "piracy is good" arguments I hear are actually "piracy is good for me" in disguise. If I was an artist, displayed an oil painting in a gallery, everyone came in, digitally photographed it and went out - without anyone buying it - I'd soon find something else to do. Yes, some musos will keep on producing music, profit or not (I'm in it because I love playing music and not for money) but without at least encouragement, the whole shebang will sink without trace. Guaranteed.

Davesax1965 View Drop Down

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Posted: October 02 2014 at 07:44

One from npinho73 -

"Of course bands soul less records than a few years ago, but they have more concerts and more people talking about them now and it´s because of that. "

Er, no. Beforehand, you recorded albums, and the sale of the album funded a live gig. Now, you can't get the working capital to do a live gig, it's incredibly expensive, you have to generate sales and interest, hire venues, PA's - then five people and a dog turn up as it's "prog rock" and not mass market. Established bands can just about get away with it, but they only just break even, making money from sales of merchandise. New bands ? - can't even afford CD or vinyl releases. Sorry to have to mention this but I'm a musician, take it from the horses' mouth, honestly.