Dave

Oh yeah, apparently we're bigger than The Beatles in and around Russia. Free and pay-for downloads of our (Limpid Green) albums are all over those websites. I haven't done anything about it. We offer our music for free anyway. It does bug me that someone might actually be selling our music, but I'd be surprised if anyone's buying it.

So if we have our music free on Bandcamp, are there areas of the world that can't access it and would access it from one of these junk sites instead?

Hi fellas, irritating, isn't it ? 

Yes, no point playing Copyright Whack A Mole with Eastern European music thieves. If I get Google or Bandcamp or DCMA to ban them, they'll just change the URL and off we go again. As has been said, waste of time. 

Anyway, my idea is to produce long preview tracks on Bandcamp - released free - with a voice message in them pointing them back to the Bandcamp website where, if they like the track, they can buy the extended version on CD. That way, the pirate sites do me a favour instead. Pirate away, comrades. ;-)))))

I just think taking down streaming on your page is a useless move. They lost, you lost. 

Hi Dave,

I did what you did with the threatening of legal action to a Polish pirate site some years ago and my music disappeared from it the very next day. But to be honest, as soon as the music disappears from one pirate site, it pops up on another one and I've no idea how much money I might have lost because of this over the years.   If I could be arsed I would go around policing them all and chasing my music off their sites but I think it's a no win situation which you could spend the rest of your days pursuing and still not come to the end of it, and the only way to be sure is not to have your music available to anyone in any format, and what would then be the point of doing it at all...?

I am getting to the point where I'm thoroughly sick of banging my head against a brick wall and have stopped using the online distributor I was using to put music onto the likes of spotify and itunes but that''s also partly because of the stupid amount of ridiculous hoops that particular distributor makes me jump through to release my albums as well as an anti piracy measure.

I've also given up on Soundcloud for two reasons, one being for the piracy threat and the other being that it seems to be so full of badly performed and badly recorded shyte, placed there by wannabe chancers and karaoke specialists who can't play a note and make everyone else look as idiotic as themselves who just want to collect likes for their crap ideas. I still have my page there but have removed it in the past and might well do so again as I really just find it to be a bit of an embarrassment for the reasons given above.

Neither do I use Facebook which, if possible, I detest even more than Soundcloud..!

On my bandcamp album pages I have this message :

I don't know if that message makes any difference or not but it's all I can think of, and I also take comfort from the thought that I continually upgrade my product with remixes and alternative artwork, so if the pirates want to keep up to date they're at least going to have to work a little bit to get my stuff.

It's a shyte situation, no doubt but I don't see a way out of it aside from the earlier idea of not having your music available in any format whatsoever and that, to me at least, is self defeating.

If you think all people who downloaded your music illegally would buy it if there were no ways to get it for free, I have to disappoint you. Very few would buy "dark horses".

Want it or not, the time of studio projects is over. The only way to get some money from your music is playing gigs and selling CDs (LPs and merch) at concerts. Am I wrong?

in which case, the counter is 

If you don't pay for music and support bands, you're not a proper fan. What are you doing, sending good wishes ? Thanks very little. 

Yeah, you're right the world has changed and not for the better in so many ways...  I actually do buy music from unknown artists on occasion from reviews and by recommendation, and I don't indulge in any kind of music piracy - do you..?  What's ridiculous about complaining that people are ripping off your product for free when they should be paying for it..?  regardless of being a megastar or an unknown..?   Theft is still theft even if it does only involve a small amount.. 

Sorry, Irrelevant. You are equating MUSIC with MONEY. They are two totally separate subjects. 

Music is not about money, it's an art form. However, if you put up a painting in a gallery and someone just walked in, hoiked it off the wall and walked out with it, you would be justifiably upset. 

If you don't understand someone getting upset about continuous copyright violation, I think you might have to sit down and think about it for a while. If there's no copyright, no ownership of music, no respect and no rules, musicians will just play amongst themselves and the only free music out there will be stuff with zero value, produced by people who don't care about it for people who don't know any better. 

Also. Music is NOT cheap. Music has been made cheap and devalued by ..... a few greedy people and a lot of very greedy and shortsighted "fans". 

Eh...?   "unknown bands cry they suffer from piracy"...

of course they bloody cry matey because they can afford it even less than your average Dave Gilmour and the like.

Like Dave says in his post above I probably averaged a few hundred quid from each album I released a good few years in the past but now I average next to nowt and it all seems like just a big waste of time, especially when I read bollocks like that post you just wrote.

The point is mate that if I had a corner shop and some idiot came in and said  "I'll have two bottles of coke, a packet of fags and two bags of crisps but I'm not going to pay you for them because I think I should get them for free" what d'you think I would do about that...?  Nothing...?  Just carry on as normal and wish him all the best.   FFS mate.

I guess it's genre-independent. There are lots of artists playing pop who are not popular at all.
 

It's very untypical for the artist. I've heard from musicians that stage is a strong drug - they need the audience feedback even feel the power over the crowd. I think it's an essential bonus to the joy of playing your music, isn't it? 

"Proper" musicians without listeners, writers without readers, actors without spectators etc. Terrible!

Right, another illegal download site who's removed my music. So far, two in Poland, one in Russia, so the tactic mentioned above works. THEN I had a brief trawl on YouTube and lo behold, someone is actually ripping my music off Bandcamp and then putting it on YouTube, complete with ripped album graphics. Great. Copyright complaint in to YouTube.

Basically, I'm tired of playing Whack A Mole like this, so I'm just going to put preview tracks up on Bandcamp for free. If you want the whole album, you buy a CD. I don't expect to be not pirated, but I might make things just a bit harder for the casual rip off artist out there. 

At the end of the day, it'll dent sales, I'd rather have one honest sale, and honest fan, than a hundred dishonest one, who are daily going from being merely freeloaders to being absolute vultures. 

I feel like if I'm going through the effort of making music for my enjoyment, I might as well share it with the world. Takes about 10 minutes of my day to upload something I've recorded to Bandcamp; not that big of a time investment for a hobby!

But I guess if it's better to have no "vultures" than to have no fans at all, that's your own prerogative. Plenty of other musicians around who have their music available to listen to before I buy it.

And yes I do play music before you make that assumption... just check my signature (actually, I'd be very happy if someone went through the effort of listening to my music and gave some honest feedback for it - best I get is a "like" on Facebook or a "great set, dude" after a show).

Oh yeah, I'm a King of the Pirate World! 

Yes, you're missing some points. 

You may keep on dropping tears "Oh I'm pirated again".

Or you may think what's wrong with your music or the way you're presenting and promoting it, think how to increase the number of fans, think what can you do to play for a bigger audience than "2 drunks and a dog".

It's up to you to choose.

Ah of course....

The reason my music is pirated is because there's something wrong with it or there's something wrong with the way I promote it or market it.  

Haha, yes indeed mate, sound logic and a truly deductive analysis there from you,  and I wish I had an ounce of such sage wisdom as you have, but after 47 years of playing, recording and performing in a multitude of situations I really don't need some clown who thinks piracy is perfectly acceptable in todays music business to give me hints, tips or snide remarks, on how I should improve my music, presentation or marketing.  Cheers.

Seems you've made up your mind and you're sticking to it though, so go and enjoy your jams, really. I'm going to try and not have your kind of attitude about it all down the line. Wish me luck! 

How do you make the CDs without the studio projects? Are you saying you should only sell live CDs?

Completely wrong end of the stick - "What's wrong with my music .... ? " - nothing. I don't want to increase the fans, I don't want a bigger audience, that's about MONEY and not MUSIC. 

And I have chosen what to do. ;-)

That statement above says "We non musicians can tell musicians what to do and play, otherwise we won't buy your music". But you non musicians *don't* buy the music, anyway. You generally either scoop up the free downloads or pirate it. So you've actually lost any bargaining power there - not that you had any with proper musicians, who'd just ignore you in the first place.

Musicians essentially do not play for an audience. The audience is just there. It pays its' way in. Except that USED to be the case. 

Completely wrong interpretation. No one can tell musicians what to do and play (unless you're Gerry Bron and the band you manage is called Uriah Heep). 

From the other hand, if you make music for years and very few people know it, isn't it a reason to think what's wrong? Usually artists get furious to hear this: "We have our VISION! Who are you to give us your silly advices?! Getouttaheregoddammotherf**ker! etc".

And please don't forget - actually we, non-musicians, buy music.

I thought it's pretty simple. To make money artists have to tour and concerts are best place to sell your CDs, LPs (no matter are they studio or live). 

In the 70s, 80s, even 90s album sales gave big percentage of artists' income.

I say of the artists who can afford to make a living on playing music, without having another day job.

......... this thread is about the (majority) of non-musicians who .... don't. ;-) 

My analytic data says that's well over 90%. Probably 95%, in fact........ sorry to have to correct you !! 

Many would disagree, but it takes the firm belief that musicians are like THE prophets and have a precious flame to spread, for the magic thing with an audience to happen

I can see both sides in this (probably not surprising being some kind of half musician). It's a nonsense to say that "musicians play for an audience" in general and even more silly to say it in the face of a musician who has just stated the opposite. "Musicians don't need an audience at all" is nonsense as well as there are some who do and say so. Obviously both of these tribes of musicians exist and that's all fine. Musicians are a pretty heterogeneous bunch, also some pay for other musicians' music and some don't.

To me Davesax's attitude is totally legitimate; he should be able to decide what and how widely he wants to make his music available. Then on the other hand he's saying all the time "it's not about the money", but obviously there's also the option to  put whatever music you want to publish out there for free for anyone to have, and to not bother about pirates. It's not quite like stealing a picture in the sense that if somebody "steals" your music, you still have it, while the picture is gone. Somebody who listens to your music for free doesn't take anything away from you, not even "potential" money as long as they otherwise wouldn't have paid either.

Still at the end of the day it is helping music if we pay and it is hurting music if we don't; musicians have more money for equipment and maybe more time for music if they make some money and that makes music better. So it's a decent thing to pay, however if somebody has an appropriate budget to pay for music and spends that,  I don't mind if they get some more for free that they wouldn't have bought otherwise. 

It's s strange one, at a recent gig there was 1 person in the audience by the time we finished playing. You can either get really disheartened or treat it as a paid rehearsal. We went for the latter and took the opportunity to wander into the "audience" to hear what we sounded like.

It's s strange one, at a recent gig there was 1 person in the audience by the time we finished playing. You can either get really disheartened or treat it as a paid rehearsal. We went for the latter and took the opportunity to wander into the "audience" to hear what we sounded like.

 I had played a few gigs like that, where the band was larger that the audience .You just have to make the best of it sometimes. Like you said, paid rehearsal. 

Won't we support our soul brothers and give money etc, even if we don't think they play that well and worked that hard, because their music has power on us, and we want more, so we invest...!?

jayem wrote: However, if we discover music that touches us on pirated website, won't there will be the same natural drive for us to go and look for a way to show appreciation and support the band, as if we did discover them in the CD store ?

You can go elsewhere to discover music in the first place.

Maybe the term "fan" is not quite right? I'm not necessarily a "fan" of what I like, I may like to listen to the music, it may give me a lot, still I may not be interested in any further "fan stuff" such as merchandise, being in contact with the musicians, picking up stuff just for completeness etc. The key communication between a musician and me happens when I listen to the music, same if somebody else listens to my music. What goes on on the musicians' website or elsewhere in most cases doesn't interest me much, apart from listening to good music. Music is for the ears! I pay for music but this is in the first place for rational and general ethical reasons as explained above, I just think it's "the right thing" to do, not for paying personal respect or communication. I may leave the odd "this is great" note to musicians because I know it's appreciated and they deserve it. However, the stuff that really matters to me is when listening and not at any other time on any other channel. And as a musician I like if people listen to it and like it but I don't mind much whether they throw money at me or not, neither do I mind much if I don't get any feedback. (Actually I have never even given anyone a chance to pay for my music as a "fan".) 

Davesax: In my perception it seems somewhat inconsistent that on one hand you state that you don't make your music for an audience in the first place and you can quite happily be without audience other than musicians with whom you play, but on the other hand you seem to mind quite a lot how the audience that you have actually behaves and it bothers you so much that most of them don't pay and just listen.

Hi Lewian, no inconsistency. 

I don't play for an audience, that's right, but there's no inconsistency in complaining when an audience appears and completely wipes their posteriors with you, in the vast majority of cases. 

It just convinces me more that I don't actually want an audience. ;-)

Also. The point about copyright is this.... it allows an author of some artwork to determine how the artwork is distributed and to what audiences. I'd be upset if some rap artist sampled me. When you absolutely lose control of what you've made, it's a very unpleasant situation. 

Davesax1965 wrote: So. 90% of your fans are just freeloaders, at best. A proportion will pirate your music onto a download site. Some audience. ;-)

Well, you can be a pessimist and be upset with how the current state of digital technology has changed the world...

Or you can be an optimist and, assuming your assertion is correct, view the piracy as a sign of success in today's world. Because if 90% of your listeners are pirates, then 9 people pirating your album means one album sale, 90 pirates would mean 10 sales, etc. Perhaps 0 pirates mean your music isn't even worth listening to for free.

Not saying you have to change your views, but this is just how I see it. Piracy is not something that will go away very easily in a world where it's trivial to transfer a couple hundred MB over the internet. You can threaten to stop making music, but that's an empty threat because someone else with a different perspective will keep on releasing their own stuff.

Again, it's not about the money or sales, but a basic reasonable two way relationship with artists and listeners. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not angry about this, just throwing up my hands in utter frustration with the way some people behave (or rather, how most people behave). It's just the internet and the modern world.  

Vompatti wrote: Please share links to the sites so I can get my music on there as well.

 

LOL!!!   I was thinking that as well 

Meltdowner wrote: It took one week to have my new album pirated. I know I wouldn't get any money from the site users but I just don't get why share a low-quality download link when anyone can stream it for free on Bandcamp with the same quality. Particularly when I work on this site that divulge music without infringing copyright, there's no excuse for this.

 

Perhaps because some streaming services and websites are blocked in certain countries. Not everyone lives in a free country.

I noticed when I started putting out albums on bandcamp that a bunch of Russian sites had put up the music for download for a price. To be honest, it doesn't bother me. I give it away for free on bandcamp. If someone wants to pay those guys I'm fine with it. Maybe they're boycotting bandcamp and don't want to interact with it. On the other hand, if those Russians get a sale off my music it's because the person was not smart enough to do a search to find it for free on bandcamp or elsewhere. I understand some people getting pissed off if they spent a lot of money on professional studios, musicians, mixers, etc. But since I do it all myself for the most part, and doing prog I know I will never get a lot of money anyway, for me it's not a big deal. For me it's nice if someone listens at all - in fact, I'm still surprised that my albums made it to this site at all. 

On top of that - if you put "personal circumstances" aside, look at the bigger picture. If you condone piracy of intellectual property, then that's all the Arts stuffed. Any books, music, film, doesn't become the property of the artist, it gets sold or given away by nothing by pirates. 

Not only is this morally wrong, but it removes the incentive of artists to produce work. Someone might have a MIDI keyboard and a few VSTs, others may spend months and thousands putting music - or art - or a book together. If they don't get fairly financially compensated, not many will either want to work for nothing or be economically capable of doing so. So they do something else. 

So what is being advocated is, essentially, the death of music. As we know, small, specialised musicians with lesser audiences will go first. I see on this site "I always pay for music" and my Bandcamp analytics tell me quite another thing. Frankly, the music scene has become a freeloaders' paradise: the retort is "If you were a proper musician, you'd play for nothing", to which my answer is "In a pig's eye, Sir, and if you were a proper fan, you'd support musicians properly."

With piracy and fans just hoovering up free downloads - look at the free downloads thread, nothing on it any more - music will die. Simple as that. 

So what is the solution? Shut down the internet? Execute people who copy and share files? How do you do this across borders? I honestly don't see any other way.

I don't think copying and sharing is stealing - when people share a copy of one of my tracks I don't lose my copy. I think you can only truly own something if it has a physical existence (CD, vinyl, whatever). Also if you take the idea that you can own non-physical things, like mp3 files or pdfs, to its logical conclusion, it becomes absurd. Imagine I come up with a new recipe of lasagna. If I share the recipe and someone decides to try it out, do they owe me royalties? How am I going to collect them? Should I go to court and give lawyers a bunch of money to force the guy who is using my recipe to pay me every time someone orders that at his restaurant?

It might be morally wrong, but should we legislate morality? I think that would be a nightmare, because not everyone has the same set of moral principles.

Speaking for myself, I make music because I love to do it and every time I was hired to make music I hated it. Somehow bringing that monetary reward to the forefront kills it for me. So I give it away for free, because it's either that or keeping it to myself. I end up selling a few CDs, a few downloads, a few vinyls. I doubt if I wanted to sell only the physical stuff without putting it on the net I would have even got anyone to listen to my music outside of my small circle. For bands who tour, that's how they will have to make their money. And the truth is the time when you made music off of physical records was an anomaly, for the majority of human existence, musicians made their money through patronage (still possible today) or through touring (minstrels, big bands, etc).

Should people be more educated to appreciate art and support artists? absolutely. But there really is no alternative to the current system without nuking it entirely and getting rid of the internet. Also will that happen? Nope. Do I want it to happen? Nope.

Complaining about something when you know there is no solution is just wasting time and energy. So, do you have a solution? Or are you just complaining to complain? I'm all ears.

If you don't believe that's the case, feel free to set up another Bandcamp account and clone all my music. We can discuss it in court. 

Dude, chill. I am not condoning piracy, and I am well aware of copyright laws and what they mean.

You do what you want. I actually went back and read the whole thread and I'm glad I did because it's comedy gold, mostly because of your entitled tone and lack of self awareness - you got called out for it and just doubled down - hilarious. You give this issue way too much importance, while claiming you don't: it's not about the money, it's not about the audience, it's about... what exactly? Respect? Again, funny. Seeking respect on the internet... different generation I guess.

If you want to go around reporting sites and whatnot and restrict your music distribution online, or even stop releasing stuff at all and just play for the fun of it, that's fine. More than fine, great. What rubs people the wrong way is the entitlement mentality and faux moral superiority - "argh, I'm the only one who knows the law, everyone who disagrees with me must be completely ignorant, argh".

Your last sentence is great example of this: why would I waste my time setting up a bandcamp to clone your music? You're NOT important and your music is not that great (sorry, I listened to a few tracks on bandcamp without tossing you a buck.. ups). 

I saw this thread and it reminded me of when I found these piracy sites the first time - just wanted to share my impression of it, not get into a fruitless debate with a self-righteous and delusional guy. But oh well, if you take anything from my reply it should be this: I am laughing at you.

Davesax1965 wrote: As a PS to Handwrist: just listened and your music is good enough to charge money for. You may not want to, personal choice, but you are good enough. People may not buy it, but that's nothing to do with copyright law or piracy or arbitrary internet executions. ;-)

 

I'm going to keep it on 'pay what you want' though, it's just my style.

Let me just mention two things - "entitlement mentality". Well, a rough calculation of the value of downloads I've missed out on is about $5,000 - $7,500. To which, sorry, I was actually entitled. 

"Faux moral superiority" - remove the faux, please. I don't steal anything off music sites, lots of people do. I'll also just say, nope, not superiority, just moral. 

Unfortunately - as you say, generational thing, mid 50's here, I seem to have a different view than people many years younger. But that doesn't mean to say that they're right and I'm wrong. Legally, I'm actually right, sorry.

As for setting up a Bandcamp account, etc, nope, I'm not that important a musician. But there's the general principle behind it. People do go off and clone Bandcamp accounts. They do go off, rip music off sites and put it up either for free or for a paid download, and it doesn't just affect small artists - big ones as well. It's morally and legally wrong. I've had radio play where someone will say "You can forget any royalty payments, they're worth sh*t here in Belgium". 

Unfair ? Do something about it. 

As for self righteous and delusional, no. Sorry, I'm right on behalf of all musicians, who are honestly getting ripped off. Like you, I'm not in it for the money, I'm honestly in it for the music. I'd charge nothing or very little for a download and produce CDs if there was actual evidence that those CDs would sell, but most people want something for nothing, which is a very sad state of affairs. It'll kill music. As I said, musicians will go off jamming with other musicians instead and will just stop releasing music - whilst a lot may pay for free, few have the time to recoup money by gigging - which rarely breaks even. 

I'm very happy to release music for free or low cost - but I'm not happy to be ripped off, or to see any fellow musician ripped off. 

It's a really sad state of affairs and I do wish you luck and all the best with your music, which I genuinely enjoyed. I also seriously hope - honestly - that you don't wake up one day to realise you've been ripped off for about $5k. 

I really don't believe that each pirated download = lost sale, but it's impossible to know for sure of course.

I do know however that at least one guy that found my music on one of these Russian sites that put music for free actually ended up becoming a fan enough that he has bought every album of mine since (including some obscure stuff I published on another channel), including physical ones, and it's one of my most loyal fans to this day. And perhaps he would have never heard of me if not for the pirates. And I doubt this is a one-case situation.

Sometimes good can come out of evil, I believe.

Thing is, one pirated download probably doesn't equal one lost sale, but if and when a lawyer gets hold of it, it's in their interest to mention that that's the case. And difficult to disprove. ;-)