How do you GET your Music
I'm very curious about this.
Back in the day (when you could actually keep up with what was actually being released) I bought 1-2 albums per week.
As I got older and reached the demographic targeted by The Word (see http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/advertisers Advertisers/Media Pack at bottom of the page) I was buying about 10 albums per month and possibly more.
Then DVD's, Play Station Games etc., (where do you stop?)
But in this day and age the amount of new releases and potentially interesting stuff on release is staggering. So what do you do?
I personally have bought very little from Itunes as I would rather DRM free music. Thanks Word Downloads (although to be fair I haven't made a purchase there either) although I do use Beatport for Dance related stuff which thankfully is DRM free.
Do many of you out there go illegal? Torrents etc.
Anything new in the last few years has been been double checked at 320bpm on Bit Torrent before I make a purchase.
Do I delete it afterwards whether I buy or not?
Certainly not.
I just decided I couldn't be arsed buying bucket loads of tripe with one good song.
Do I feel guilty for "stealing"?
Definitely not. I have one room in my house that stands testament to supporting the industry. And I still catch more than an average amount of Gigs during the year.
But I just wonder how many of you are sporadically legit and scan your purchases like me? Or is my moral compass off kilter?
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i'm in a similar boat to you springer
I blew €45 in HMV at the weekend and two of the three albums I bought were ones i knew well from having illegally torrented a month or so ago.
I'm not one normally for railing against 'the man' but I've had it with the industry relying on the 'pig in a poke' business model where you have to buy something without getting to hear it in the natural surroundings. Would you buy a pair of shoes based upon a computer representation of what they look like on your feet? Hell, no. You want to try them on.
a mix of downloads and CDs and deezer.com...
I get most of my downloads from 7digital.com (DRM free, hurrah). Got fed up with emusic eventually (also DRM free but I was running out of stuff I wanted). Only made the mistake of purchasing from itunes once!
I don't torrent anymore (when I burned all my CDs onto the computer, I used bit torrent to "replace" the CDs that refused to burn). What I do now is check out music on http://www.deezer.com which is free and legit!
Home taping is killing music...
I'm sure most of you remember that slogan, it was pre-internet too and related to that ancient audio recording artefact - the cassette tape! How the record industry quaked in it's boots.
The thing is, did you feel guilty taping an album for your mates? I can't quite see the difference between recording and sharing a good old fashioned tape or downloading from someone's on-line record collection that they post on an MP3 Blog site.
Nowadays I rarely buy CDs but do buy albums from Itunes and subscribe to emusic too but I confess to getting a lot of free stuff from on-line music blogs. Mainly old 60's garage stuff that I love and is very hard to track down on vinyl these days.
There are some fantatsic sites where people share their old vinyl converted to MP3s.
However, I too have a huge record collection so I think I've done my bit over the years!
There is the moral argument that culminated in the famous Metallica versus Napster incident - are you taking profits away from artists?
It's a valid point in a way, as an ex-musician myself you do want to get something back, but often sharing and swapping will lead to good publicity for gigs and there are people who will buy records regardless.
But record companies commit far worse crimes of ripping off the artists and the punters, so who is the bigger villain?
see there's a world of difference in that
making a copy of a tape for your mate meant that one of you had to have the original album at least. P2P means that one person has it and as many as want it can copy it from them, and the more that hold onto it, and keep their torrent application running, means the easier and quicker it is for others to buy.
It boils down to honour, doesn't it. There's a world of people out there who consider that essentially music shouldn't be paid for and that they're within their rights to download as much as they want and never pay up for it. They'll tend to witter on about the band making plenty of money from touring, but we know that unless you're already in the zone marked 'relatively popular' (i.e. if you're depending on myspace exposure to launch your career) you'll be doing well to fill the dressing room at the Electric Ballroom.
My own warped take on this (and i guess i'm not above the charge of rampant hypocrisy) is that if i torrent something by a newer band, i'm more likely to buy their album quicker, assuming I like it. New McCartney album...ach - he can wait a bit, but the Black Kids probabably need the brass sooner!
all completely arbitary. Completely illegal, i suppose, but not amoral; I sleep easy at night.
Seems like an appropriate time for this...
Here's a news story about a certain band that have taken the unique step of letting their new album out via P2P sites, relying on a unique software widget to promote their album and their tour and actually testing the argument that pro-file sharers have often advanced; artists recoup through higher gig attendances and merch sales.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/...
Brave or barmy?
I would never have guessed...
who that "certain band" were in a month of Sundays! Excellent!
I think it's brave - as I mentioned above the industry has been shitting itself for years, this same argument existed with cassettes but that never brought the "man" down did it?
I really think the industry should accept that p2p, MP3 blogs, free downloads from MySpace etc are the way things are nowadays, they really have to address the issue, find ways of working with it.
Mind you, I won't use any p2p sites like Limewire or Kazaa, there are a lot of viruses and stuff on there and I was in for a big surprise when once I thought I'd downloaded Blondie's greatest hits. The Blondie was not Debbie Harry and her hits were not of the musical variety!
Brave and barmy
They have gone where other bands dare not travel for a while now.
They get most of their revenue touring and its a great way of proving that you have something interesting and good to play. Mind you the corollary is also true.
yeah but, hang on..
that's the album that a blogger on here posted about at the weekend, saying he'd already paid almost £30 upfront for it on pre-order. He is obviously a dedicated fan, but if it was me and I'd shelled out for something I found I could get for free - legitimately - I'd be a bit miffed.
True
The band have acknowledged that fact but have made the point that they've got to weigh it against the fact that within days of preview copies going out, their stuff (like every other bugger's) is up on P2Ps. Plus the £30 edition is not just a vanilla release. It's a bit special.
"We agonised over this decision, knowing that some would see it as a kick in the teeth to our most loyal fans. Saying we are giving it away is to not understand the reality of the situation we are in. The album will be available in the internet anyway. people will download it. We can't stop them. It was a hard thing to do but when you realise that these people will be downloading it anyway, this is an opportunity to get something positive out of the whole file sharing thing and maybe find a way of ensuring our survival in the 21st century."
Torrents, etc
Maybe I'm not doing it right but I've tried using torrents a couple of times and it takes an absolute age to download anything, especially if its a bit obscure and there's only one or two seeders - not really worth the hassle I find. However I have downloaded stuff from blogs as well as buying CDs and using emusic. I also buy vinyl from charity shops which is also technically committing the same crime as the illegal downloader because none of the money I pay is going to the record label or the artist.
If the record industry didn't spend so much of the past 40 years shovelling coke up their noses then perhaps they would have been able to prepare for the time when music fans found a way to get one over on the people who had been ripping them off so succesfully every time they went down HMV.
Any artist who stops making music because they aren't making enough money out of it wasn't doing it for the right reasons in the first place. And as for the suits, fuck'em, they've had their fun but now it's over and they should wake up and smell the coffee.
Post of the week
so far!
Does that include Cliff Richard?
He doesn't like downloads -> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7606342.stm
but I would also suggest he hasn't spent 40 years shovelling coke up his nose.
Also your point about artists stop making music if they are not making enough money is over simplified. I suspect they will continue to make music but we wouldn't get to hear if it were not economically viable for it to be produced and distributed.
The model is changing and will continue to change but stealing artists work because its easy and the industry has made high profits in the past is not defensible.
I have downloaded one moody track this year
And puntastically it was the Burial remix of Bloc Party. I did this because I think it is marvellous and you can't buy it anywhere (I tried for about 2 weeks to find it). And I have a copy of the Bhutan Philharmonic which has a dodgy background. Again, you can't buy it or I would have. That, genuinely, is it.
I also copied the new Coldplay album from a colleague at work to see what it was like. I have deleted it now. If I liked it I would have bought it.
Mostly I buy around 4 - 6 cds a month, normally Amazon with the occasional ebay for harder stuff. I have 75 tracks from eMusic and I'm still finding that good value some 15 months into my subscription. I have downloaded a few songs via blogs and band sites. I don't touch iTunes - expensive, low quality and DRM.
I don't see why I should think it was acceptable to steal something. Even if it's licensed with someone who morally I don't rate. It would sink me to their level. And I have plenty of music for around £35 per month (more than I can normally listen to, which is a separate issue altogether.
I admire your puritanical diligence
"I also copied the new Coldplay album from a colleague at work to see what it was like. I have deleted it now. If I liked it I would have bought it".
However....I'm not saying that I don't want to pay for my music, far from it, but I'm dammed if I'll spend hard earned cash on dross any more.
And I won't have a guilt complex about not deleting the stuff that was "illegally" downloaded either.
As you say the model is changing and what's acceptable or not today probably won't be the case in 10 years time.
Insistently the price of an album 10 years ago was higher than it is now. So maybe people feel that they have been stitched up enough. Even if this is a very simplistic way of looking at it.
As I've said I have contributed. And have the stocked shelves to prove it. But I won't play the game anymore.
Puritanical Diligence
That's going on my CV. Lovely turn of phrase.
Cheers......But.......
Don't forget that it's copyrighted so you'll have to delete the words from your CV before you use them!
You can't uninvent BT
Here's a great example of state-sanctioned and subsidised "analogue" torrenting: Public Lending Libraries.
Authors and artists get royalities from book and CD borrowing. It's an established business model, why can't it be applied to BT for the music industry? Sorry, yes of course - not enough profit for the middleman.
Yes, I am very simplistic, bitter and a dumb punter: I paid good money to replace my vinyl with CDs. Now I'm expected to shell out for a bunch of lossy ones and zeroes that I can only play on 'authorised' machines.
I'm a bit of a moaner...
...but I can't get away from that feeling that you are stealing if you download for free.
As those god-awful piracy advert state, you wouldn't shoplift a DVD, so how is it different stealing it off the internet?
It's worth remembering that it's not just the big artists and record companies that make the cash, it's the little guys that get invested in and the independents who are the heart of many local music scenes.
I for one make no apologies for refusing to download.