Bush signs controversial anti-piracy law

[RudolfTheRed]

Stoner4life you can bark up this tree all you want but the truth is MOST musicians, if not the vast majority agree that file sharing is good for the industry and its helped there careers more than its hurt it. Just give it up already. You sound like a politician or cop right now. I may not buy every fucking album of every band i listen to (the number is in the 100's-200's probably... i simply don't have to money to buy all that music.). So if i download a new band for free and find out about new music this way then I support those bands in other ways. If there in town i see them live or tell other people about there band. Now hadn't i been downloading music for free I wouldn't have heard of about 30-35% of the musicians i listen to. The same applies to a lot of other people. Now because of file sharing bands have larger fan bases in the long run it helps them more than it hurts them.
How is that a bad thing? Honestly, I would like to fucking now. And before you go off again sounding like some cop... think about what i just said.

Its just when street teams go out and advertise a product. they hand things out for free so people get interested in there product. file sharing is essentially that. get your head out of your ass. this whole stealing argument is fukin tired already.

 

[RudolfTheRed]

OK, so here we go again, MOST musicians don't go on big tours. I didn't make that scenario up, you're just totally uninformed when it comes to the reality of the music business.

If your a musician or in a band that doesn't tour chances are you aren't a very successful musician in the first place and you probably don't make a living from it anyway. i booked local bands/musicians at a club for years and most if not all liked it when people shared there music simply because people are talking about it if there listening to it and that's all musicians give a fuck about. they only care if someone listens to there music and whether or not they like it.
Only the greedy corporate money hungry ****s give a damn. Those shitheads shouldn't be in music anyway. If your here to make money get the hell out. And once again, give the stealing argument up. I don't fukin care. file sharing has done more good for the musicians that it had done bad. just like marijuana. it does more good than bad, but people only focus on the bad things so marijuana is illegal. talk about narrow minded, eh....

 

[KillerSmoke]

I believe in privacy on the internet, but imo piracy can only last for so long.

 

[Stoner4Life]

Stoner4life you can bark up this tree all.......

yadda


yadda


yadda.......
get your head out of your ass. this whole stealing argument is fukin tired already.

hey! snapperhead! it's not me complaining about this shit already.......

IT IS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!!!!!!!

I'm just here backin' em up and reppin them hard

remember that!

they don't want YOU stealing

wanna know how I know that? they said so.......

 

[TwoOhSix!]

Do you work for the RIAA or something?

 

[petal]

Stoner4life

stop shouting for gods sake

 

[RudolfTheRed]

hey! snapperhead! it's not me complaining about this shit already.......

IT IS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!!!!!!!

I'm just here backin' em up and reppin them hard

remember that!

they don't want YOU stealing

wanna know how I know that? they said so.......

Wrong, wrong, wrong again.

I listen to what musicians say. Most musicians agree that file sharing has been good for the industry (or else bands like Radiohead wouldn't release there albums online for free). The only people complaining (the ones you are defending here) are mutli-national corporate record labels (who have ripped bands off and exploited them for years) and the very evil RIAA (who happens to be apart of a lot of shady stuff and has hurt musicians more than its helped them). The only interest they have in music is they can make millions and billions of dollars a year from this supposed 'industry'. the very idea of turning art into an industry makes me want to lean over and puke my fucking brains out.


Goodbye.

 

[Stoner4Life]

Here's my last post in this thread as arguing about stealing just ain't my bag.......


I will agree that file sharing is good ONLY if you're a band that's unknown and looking for people to listen to their music, THOSE musicians put it out there so you can enjoy it for free. THOSE musicians are NOT under contract, they are HOPING for a contract and a marketing plan to make them rich and famous. If they'd like to give it away for now that's fine with them, me, you, even the record execs don't care at this point.

BUT! the issue I've sided with is somewhat different (and the actual topic of this thread btw) in that the record companies are instituting whatever means available to them to protect their copyrighted materials from being SHARED. Once under contract a bands music needs to be SOLD to garner income for everyone involved.


SOLD, not shared.

 

[RudolfTheRed]

Funny thing is major label artists have come out in support of file sharing and say it doesn't at all hurt the artist. People like Radiohead, 50 cent, and so on. So even big artists support filesharing. Hell even Metallica is onboard with it now. Only you have been left in the dust.
I finally found it... but this is a real good usa today article about file sharing and how its doubled the revenue of certain bands.

When free is profitable
By Brian Mansfield, Special for USA TODAY
The first time Moe played San Francisco, the band didn't have a song on the radio. It didn't have a video; it didn't even have a record deal. Yet the group sold out the 750-seat Great American Music Hall.
Wilco found that putting out pre-release tracks from its Yankee Hotel Foxtrot primed the pump for bigger record sales when the CD came out.

The secret to Moe's success? A community of West Coast music fans had been trading tapes of the New York band's concerts, duplicating bootlegged recordings and distributing them to friends. The members of Moe never saw a dime off those concert tapes, but they arrived in San Francisco to a full house.

That experience helped shape guitarist Al Schnier's views on the file-sharing debate.

"We always encouraged taping of our shows, from Day 1," Schnier says. "There's tons of live Moe that gets traded over the Internet. We're breeding fans who have an investment in this thing, because they're discovering us. It's very cutting-edge to find something underground.

"The same is true for the file sharing that goes on these days."

Though unauthorized file sharing may be illegal, not all artists view it as bad for business.

"I definitely believe that file sharing has helped our business," Guster guitarist Ryan Miller says. "We've sold only a couple hundred thousand copies of each of our last albums. We've never made a cent from our album sales, so we don't really see that money anyway."

The notion that bands could make more money because people steal their music seems counterintuitive. But Barnaby Greenberg, who manages Donna the Buffalo, says file sharing may help "heavy-touring acts that aren't depending on huge releases."

Greg Joseph, bassist for Pittsburgh-based rock band The Clarks, says, "We're a big enough band that CD sales do affect our bottom line." Joseph says his band sold about 45,000 copies of its 2002 release Another Happy Ending. "And lack of CD sales certainly affects our bottom line. However, we're a small enough band that we still need the free, word-of-mouth spreading of the good news."

Bands such as The Clarks or The Rosenbergs, who once toured under Napster's sponsorship, may not be able to pay (or have their labels pay) hundreds of thousands of dollars to promoters for a chance at getting their songs on the radio. They can, however, give away an equivalent amount in royalties through free downloads and file sharing. The desired result is the same: finding an audience. And to The Rosenbergs' David Fagin, taking that chance is better than not being heard at all.

"That's why we signed on with Napster when it was so controversial," Fagin says. "The alternative was just to be a regular band trying to do radio promo."

A revenue trade-off

Artists generate revenue from a variety of sources — not only through CD sales, but also from publishing income, ticket sales and merchandise. Acts that control most, if not all, of those income streams have the most flexibility when it comes to their position on file sharing. For some, they're essentially trading in part of their publishing income to increase tour and merchandise revenue.

Donna the Buffalo owns its publishing and now releases its own CDs. Greenberg says the band has quadrupled its fan base and tripled its gross income since it started releasing its recordings independently and aggressively giving away copies of its music. Though Donna the Buffalo typically sells around 10,000 to 20,000 copies of a release, Greenberg says, the band played before 300,000 people in 2003 and expects to double that number this year.

"Our approach in that time has been to focus on getting our music heard by new people by any means possible, mainly by giving it away," he says.

Not everybody in the music industry can work with such a business model, particularly record companies, which typically have just one way to make money: selling recorded music.

"Artists obviously have a different blend of revenue — they have endorsements, and they have touring," says Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA). "Sales represents a piece of it, but not the totality. (Related story: Artists mix it up with file sharers)

"For us, the guys who basically are the venture capitalists, the investors in the creation of music, our revenue stream is rooted in sales. That explains some of the perspective differences."

In some genres, the revenue streams run to different places. Country singers, for instance, often record songs written by other people. If unauthorized file sharing undermines the sales of those records, the results can be devastating for songwriters without any other source of income.

"The story I'm getting from most other songwriters is that mechanical royalties are definitely dropping," says Hugh Prestwood, who has written hits for Trisha Yearwood, Randy Travis and others. "If you make songwriting a profession where you can't make money, you're going to completely eliminate the talent from the field."

For some acts, file sharing seems to have actually increased sales. When Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out in 2002, the entire album had been available through peer-to-peer networks for nearly a year. Yet the album sold more than 50,000 copies its first week out — the best debut of the band's career and more than double the first-week tally of its preceding album.

Like a 'down payment'

The band hopes to replicate that success with A Ghost Is Born, due June 22. The album's tracks already are easily available through unlicensed sites Limewire and Kazaa. Anticipating that, the band has begun streaming the album on its Web site and has partnered with a group of fans to accept donations from downloaders via a Web site called Justafan.org. The money raised through that site will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

"They came to us and said, 'We want to encourage the people who are downloading to do something positive,' " Wilco manager Tony Margherita says. "Kind of like a down payment."

Bainwol says the RIAA has no beef with copyright owners who choose to give away music or encourage the sharing of their music.

"There may well be outliers that choose to market their products in a different way," Bainwol says. "That's perfectly fine. It does not change the essential reality, that you have to have an economic basis for an industry to survive."

Even some of the musicians who feel they have benefited from unauthorized file sharing admit to feeling conflicted about the practice. And few endorse it outright. Even Moe, which outlines a concert-taping policy on its Web site, specifically prohibits trading of the group's official releases.

The Clarks' Joseph warns fans to be careful what they wish for when it comes to free music. "If sales are down, the band will not be on the label anymore," he says. "That could end up hurting us, because our label definitely helps us."

At the same time, Guster's Miller is not keen on the idea of sharing his other income sources with his record label.

"It makes more sense for the labels," he concedes, "but it's not like touring is incredibly lucrative. ... We make a decent living, but if the record label was to take a percentage of our merchandise and touring, we wouldn't be able to do it."

But that's exactly where The Rosenbergs' Fagin believes the industry inevitably is headed.

"Labels and artists are going to have to share. The label and the artist will benefit if the label promotes the shows a lot more, and the artist gives them a percentage of concert grosses."

Fans paying 'dues'

In the Moe business model, the band shares with its fans by allowing them to tape its concerts, then trade those files or burn CDs for their friends.

Schnier believes Moe fans who share the band's music feel more invested in the band.

"We have fans who are so dedicated to our music that they want to own everything we put out," Schnier says. "Having a burned version of a studio album is OK, but it doesn't have the artwork.

"Our fans, very much in an NPR/PBS way, feel it's a voluntary effort. You can listen to NPR for free, but the people who understand it pay their membership dues. It's the same way with our fans.

 

[greenhead]

I'm guilty of downloading a few Mp3's, like most people are, but I'm going to play Devil's advocate here for a sec.

What if somebody goes and takes a few cuttings off of some your plants without your consent or knowledge?

An electronic file can be copied and spread through the internet and a plant can also be copied and spread through clones.

Why are you allowed to steal somebody's music, and I'm not allowed to help myself to a few clones off of your plant? I shouldn't have to buy your weed without sampling it for free first. If I like your weed, I'll purchase it at a later occasion, maybe. If I don't fancy your weed, then I'll simply go and find somebody else's plants and grab a few of their clones, until I find some weed that I like. The weed that I steal and that I don't like won't be smoked and it will be thrown in the trash (I promise), just like I'd delete an MP3.

Fuck weed growers and the weed industry, they're a bunch of fucking criminals and ripoff artists charging way too much for something that they do not own the creative rights to, something that was created by nature and it's my right to go and help myself to whatever I please. There is also a lot less effort, money and skill involved in growing a few plants than there is in making a album, so weed growers should definitely not bitch if somebody comes and copies a few of their plants one day.