Slashdot Mirror
Moby Says Techie Fans = Fewer Sales
jalefkowit writes: "Launch is reporting that Moby explains the recent slide in sales for his newest album, "18", by describing what he calls the 'Pearl Jam Effect': bands and artists with more tech-savvy fans sell fewer albums than those with less tech-savvy fans, as the techies will disproportionately get their copies of the album from friends with CD burners or P2P services rather than from record stores. What do you think, are we putting our favorite bands in a bind?"
the super rich.
Well, if you like the music that a band puts out, you should buy the CD to support the band in the first place.
Moby will have to buy a new Audi this year istead of a new Rolls Royce. And he might have to fly commerical to Tahiti instead of chartering a jet. Oh horror of horrors.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
"Techie fans" have been able to pirate songs for years now. Perhaps Moby's latest album just isn't that good? I haven't heard it, but that seems like the most likely explanation.
Yeah, let's completely ignore the fact that Pearl Jam hasn't made a video in a decade, is never seen on TV promoting their music and doesn't pay for FM radio play.
Has Moby ever considered that he just might suck? And that's the reason for poor sales?
Techie fans are more likely to be legally conscious and aware of their rights and the copyright law. I, for one, download (pirate) MP3s, and see if I like the artist/album. If I do, I buy the CD, and the MP3s become legal. If I do not, I delete the MP3s. This exposes me to a wider variety of new music, as I might not be aware of music that's not commonly played, but all it takes is an MP3 download to judge an artist.
-Evan
I think that while having more tech-savvy fans will open the possibility for more CD copying, it isn't the only deciding factor. I know that back in the early 90's, I used to get most of my music by copying CDs onto audiocassette, and I wasn't very tech savvy at the time. Likewise, I see a lot of people who aren't very computer literate making tons of CD copies of their albums. Could it be that the record just isn't as good as his previous works?
I didn't buy it because the reviews sucked, and because it didn't seem like enough of a departure from 'Play' to be interesting.
On the other hand, I don't steal music.
I bought it
To me, the "Pearl Jam Effect" means that they haven't released a good album since Vs. Sure, there have been a few decent tracks here and there, but none of the albums since Vs. has been worth a hill of beans... Is this what Moby means?
Common Moby.. Put out better music and people will buy your stuff.
Let's consider that Moby's just seen a decline in his number of listeners and not experienced the "Pearl Jam Effect."
Its a crap album... imho
/sigh
Hes a prolific artist, but...
I do tend to listen to new tracks from a band by using a P2P service first, then if I like what I hear I go buy the CD - then rip it to OGG/MP3. In fact, I've bought CDs from bands I've never heard of before based on a single track I've downloaded.
Maybe I'm not the average "criminal" though...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
... it's total creative decline. very easy to blame the internet, even though most of the content is pure crap
Its funny how you only see the old washed up artist compaining.. Sure there are people not buying albums cause they burned the cd but I always download the cd before I buy it cause frankly most cds just have like one good song on them and no way am I going to buy an album for just one song.. Our parents all copied tapes Don't fear the technology, abuse it
SLASHDOT SUMMER CAMP
Hey Slashboteers! Are you finishing university? *STILL* unemployed after the dot com layoffs? Well, have we got the answer for you! Chief Executive Officer Rob Madla and SS Officer Michael Sims invite you to join them at the Black River Public School in Holland, Michigan from the 10th of August for the SLASHDOT SUMMER CAMP. Three full days of pony rides, coding and male bonding. Special Appearances by NAMBLA Grand Wizard Katz with his partner Wai Tu Yung.
Activities include:
Tickets are US$90 each, and the event lasts for three days. For more information, or to book a place, contact CmdrTaco
Terms & Conditions:
Spaces are limited to how many people we can lock in a basement. Camp is open to males aged between 12 and 19. No soap is allowed on the premises. CmdrTaco's Jubei cabinet is not to be used as a simulated coffin for sex games without his involvement.
The Message Tim is referring to deosn't bemoan Moby's own sales. He is actually talking about weezer, and other alt rock bands. He draws the correlation between having smart fans and lower sales, because, hold on, this is good, because smart fans usually means tech savvy fans. So, many tech savvy fans equals lower sales. Why do you imagine O Brother Where are thou seemed like a golden calf?
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
Well techie fans certainly will listen to a few track via MP3 or RealMedia before buying. Since this album isnt what 'Play' was they are probably not buying '18'. I listed to '18' via real audio and was disappointed. There is no 'Body Rockin' on this CD. It is very sedate and not dancy at all. Not to say it is a bad album. I was just hoping for something with a bit more jump.
I like traffic lights
If you sell an album to every tech-savvy american, your sales will be lower than if you sell to every non-techie american. Ergo, techie-friendly artists (if that tech-friendliness comes at the expense of generic popularity) will not sell as much as britney $pear$
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
I'm sure there will be a lot of people post saying that this is a bunch of b.s. and they will call Moby an RIAA sellout or something of the sort, but the sad fact is this is probably true. I know I buy most of the albums I download, but your average kid using a p2p program isn't going to. I think this would also explain why such terrible shit is always topping the charts, simply because the fans are to dumb to get the music any other way.
Keep Austin Weird!
"I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing," he added. "I'm not writing this to voice my opinions. My concern is the way that the industry looks at the success of a musician or of a record that sells or doesn't sell. Popular artists traditionally sold a lot of records. In the future that might not be the case."
---- Moby from launch
that this album just isn't as good as the last one? or the novelty has worn off his style?
Hasn't it been at least suggested if not established that tech savvy people, i.e. those that use(d) such P2P tools as Napster and Kazaa actually went out and bought more albums when they could get access to mp3s of those artists they wanted to check out (recent Slashdot piece on this subject)?
I maintain that Moby just sucks. If you suck people don't want to buy your music, that's what I've found.
It's just not that good frankly. Moby really needs to consider moving back to electronica, his past two cd's have just been sad remberances of the kind of music moby used to put out. . .
Moby fans are more tech-savvy? Really? Why? Is there geek music? Since when did Moby qualify? This couldn't be because his latest album was not that great and/or more of the same? No, I don't listen to the man, just speculation for disappointing sales..
.. But it's impossible until there's DRM which will give absolute control to Record Industry.
I really do wish they weren't so anal about all this. If you could conveniently buy high-quality non-crippled copies of your favourite artist's songs, that *might* eat into p2p-"marketshare"
I'm just one person, but I do buy CDs from artists I like. First I rip 'em and then put the CDs away. I usually go for the "mid price" discs, tho..
Moby's new album isn't that good, he hasn't gone in any new directions since his last album. It's very predictable.
Blaming bad sales of a weak album on technology is pretty lame.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
no.. we just dont buy shitty cds anymore.. no more dot.com money.. guh
who listens to their crap anyways?
Artists like Moby are precisely the sort of artists who stand to benefit the most through distribution of their music through p2p networks. The reason is simple: Moby's music would be considered by many "alternative" and consequently it doesn't get a lot (any) air play. So where am I supposed to hear it to know whether I like it enough to buy the album?
If that's the case, then why hasn't this album taken off then? Well, I'd say the recent successes of the RIAA in getting p2p networks shut down has probably helped, but ultimately, maybe the album just isn't as good? Not having heard it, I can't comment on that.. Maybe someone else can. Maybe the marketing of the album sucked? (I haven't heard of it all until now). Either way, I think it's clear that blaiming the p2p networks is based on opinion (And FUD) rather than fact.
Wow .. listen to everyone get defensive. "Sales are down because Moby is crap now!"
Err. how do you know it's crap if you didn't buy it and listen? It's the album after the crap one that is meant to suffer.
Mmmmmmm
You 36 year old bald headed say blow me
You don't know me, you're too old
Let it go its over, nobody listens to techno
~eminem
My explanation for lower sales: '18' just isn't as good an album as his others.
Compared to 'Play', it's just bland and boring.
I don't know if anyone here listens to KMFDM or MDFMK when they existed, but MDFMK was dropped from their label due to poor record sales. The frontman, Sascha, attributes this to mp3's on the internet.
Many people here are posting comments like "Because they suck ha ha" but I don't really think that's the issue. These artists still do have large fanbases, it's just that the reasons NOT to buy a cd outweigh the reasons TO buy a cd. Maybe techies are more aware of the RIAA stranglehold and are "boycotting" -- I know that's a reason that I haven't purchased any cds lately. With the cost of cds right now (can anyone say !RAPE!) and the state of the economy, people aren't going to go out and buy cds all the time because it's just not worth the money.
Anyways...I just think that to attribute one cause for this is a really naive assumption.
-kwishot
Actually the "technie" crowd, while not the least guilty when it comes to trading music, are certainly not the most.
Saying that it is because the techies "trade more music" is really oversimplifying something which is, in truth, much more complex. There are issues such as the number of them who listen to the particular style of music, the percentage of them who purchase music, and so on. This is particularly relevant since "technical savvy fans" probably make up a very small percentage of the potential fan-base.
Seems that this is more scapegoating than anything having to do with music trading.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
If album sales were down and concert ticket sales were higher or unaffected, then maybe this effect exists. Or techno is dead! Pixies rule, Pearl Jam drools.
Maybe his music is slipping because everyone has heard the entire thing on TV commericals already and there are alot of great underground bands that kick ass and are tech savvy without the benifit of infinite repeat on MTV.
Moby's have no more linked to techie than 802.11b have to do with cat 5 wire. Simply he just sucks.
I don't think Moby knows what he is talking about. I don't believe Pearl Jam have ever suffered and lost money due to the fact that fans were trading music on the internet, etc. Pearl Jam have sold an insane amount of record over the years, and they also have one of the largest fan bases of any band from the 90's. He may be referring to the trading of bootlegged concerts on the internet, which really doesn't hurt the band at all. In fact, Pearl Jam encourages this. Pearl Jam is the last band to be worried about technology ruining them. They exist to make music and let others enjoy it. Plus, any Pearl Jam CD that comes out will definitely sell.
mund freud.
It's not the nature of the audience, but the size which makes the biggest difference. If your music appeals only to technical people, then you have a much smaller audience of potential customers.
would have done a cd a bit different from the last one!!
the tech has advanced, and techies are more likely to download music now that before. Better technology, and more users have made filetrading easier, so those who were too unsavy (or had a life) to use ftp or newsgroups can now use simple tools like gnutella.
your average 6 year old britney fan probably wants a cd because it's not just the music, it's a piece of britney. hell, i'd rather download the album, it is really only mediocre, but that doesn't make downloading it alone any more excusable. People before would be more willing to buy the cd because mediocre music could not be obtained in any other way. Now that people can get it free, why pay for it? There's no incentive to support the artist like there is with great music where you are truly grateful to the artist. I don't think this situation is right at all. But i'm poor and morals are expensive so feh.
I believe moby is right on the money with his claim but the times are a changing and little aside from legislation can stop them.
Photos.
I heard a song by that guy once, and believe me you, it sucked ass. It might have been the suckiest song that ever sucked. That guy looks like a walking penis. That should be his name, "The Walking Penis." He was in that video with that hot chick, and he never even scored. He should die. If you like his music, you should die. PEACE I'M OUTTA HERE!
So...less people have heard the music. Fans will know there's a new album out, but the casual listener won't. Me, for example. I'm a 'casual' Moby listener - I bought Play because I'd heard the tracks on adverts and liked them, whereas I doubt I'll be buying '18' because I haven't really heard any of it. Except 'Made of Stars' or whatever its true title is, and that really wasn't to my taste.
Summary: no music in adverts = less exposure.
Cheers,
Ian
Moby explains the recent slide in sales for his newest album, "18", by describing what he calls the 'Pearl Jam Effect': bands and artists with more tech-savvy fans sell fewer albums than those with less tech-savvy fans, as the techies will disproportionately get their copies of the album from friends with CD burners or P2P services rather than from record stores.
;-)
I have a better explanation: his new CD is crap. What amazes me is the accurate correlation he makes to Pearl Jam. I stopped buying Pearl Jam albums after the first two because they went dramatically downhill after that point, and am most definitely not buying the new Moby album for the same reason. I guess he's halfway there, at least.
Is your browser retarded?
For what it's worth, technology is one of the reasons why I was exposed to Moby. I bought Play after hearing it on my boss's computer. She was listening to her MP3 copy of the CD she bought.
--Sam
Egotistical artists = fewer sales.
It can't be that people don't like his music, it's got to be that they're downloading it!
One of my favorite bands, Garbage, seems to have a love/hate relationship with techie fans. On the one hand, their second album was called "Version 2.0" and their third album "Beautiful Garbage" came with a program that let you remix a couple songs by yourself and share them with friends. They've also acknowledged their fans are downloading their music, and like many artists share the opinion that fans should buy their stuff, and I've seen lots of fans support that. I think real fans are the ones that do buy the stuff. It's the casual listeners, maybe who want a song or two, who are the ones doing most of the downloading. I know I bought BG the week it came out (admittedly, after downloading it and listening to it).
This is just an excuse that these guys make up because of the low-rate material they put out.. rather than admitting that he needs to spend some more time in the studio, he ends up blaming the advent of file swapping (which is almost dead these days, mind you).. pathetic..
"Make it idiot proof, and someone will make a better idiot."
And that's what he delivered. A good album that is highly derivative of Play. It isn't a bad album at all, and I'm sure it will sell well. I like it a lot. But Play was revolutionary. But Moby is, by his own admission, an egotistical prick. It's easier to blame downloaders and copiers than it is to admit that he will probably never, ever, have a record as popular as Play ever again.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Mody is starting to sound alot like Joan Osborn. Poor Joan thought after she had that one hit CD and then started to fall off the charts, she said "Napster hurts us frings groups". Which she failed to realize is that A. she sucks, B. What fan base she had was very VERY little. C. She never made another CD that was anywhere close to the quailty that her first one was. Anyway if my point wasnt lost in all that here it is, DONT BLAME everything else on your poor sales, maybe your CD just sucks or sounds to much like the last one for people to care about it that much to go out and buy it.
... if he's going to slag off the tech community like this, I see no reason why I should become one. Seriously, does he really think that saying "My record sales suck because my fans are all pirates" is going to win him any points?
However, that being said... this is also a wake-up call for the tech community. The mere fact that Moby thinks he can get away with saying this kind of stuff tells me that the RIAA/MPAA's public-relations smear campaign to portray all computer people as pirates is winning. This is not good.
Note also that the editors at Launch took his theory seriously, and printed it up as plain news.
We need to do some public-opinion shaping of our own, and fast. If we keep letting the music companies dominate the discussion, we're toast.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
Haven't we learned anything from Eminem?
of 'We Are All Made of Stars' kicks the original into submission completely. Sorry, Mr Hall, but your latest album blows goats.
First, you decided to release the same record again. Then, you whored yourself -- and admitted as such -- by putting yourself on the cover of literally every magazine you could find. To blame people with burners is missing the point. Hell, how the hell did you get to be where you are today? Aren't you the artist who lives in downtown Manhattan with the ascetic's loft and the loaded studio and the Macintoshes?
I appreciate Moby, I think he does valuable work, but when he says, 'I'm not blaming tech-savvy people...' you have to wonder why he feels the need to rationalise in that way.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
I copied Moby's newest CD, and am glad I did. It really isn't very good, original, or otherwise worth $15. On the flip side, Moby is correct when he states that techies aren't gonna buy CDs...especially when they aren't good. It is interesting, though, that many people are perfectly willing to pay for games, having realized that programmers have to make money somehow. Perhaps the music industry is just where games where fifteen years ago....
Elian Paiuk
I personally only buy CD's put out by smaller artists for two reasons:
1. I like to support indy artists, because they're the ones that need the money the most.
2. It's hard to find music from indy musicians on file-sharing networks.
So, that's my code of "piracy ethics". (sounds like a oxymoron, doesn't it?)
While I enjoy music, and I want to see it remain a part of our culture, I don't see why we need artists to be megastars and major labels to be money hoses for their shareholders for that to happen.
What Ever Happened to Fair Use!? OOOH-YeaaaH!
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
I bought it and I'm real sorry I did.
To me it sounds like an alpha version of Play. Even the B-sides of play were all better than his latest CD.
Techie fans != poor sales, Bad music = poor sales
Doc Brown
It could just be that "18" sucks??
I've heard my roommates copy. It's not very impressive...
-Chris
Maybe his album isnt selling because every song on the album is featured in a commercial.
because its practicaly Play all over again, like a 2 cd set that was broke in half. Moby sold out, and sold the rights to EVERY SONG ON PLAY and he plans to do the same with 18. Since its just a rehash of the shit on the last CD, people havent really had the motivation to buy it.
I guess he forgot the about the fact that he sucks '18' review
Let's but dollar signs for the S's in Britney Spears name, reminding people of Micro$oft in a humorous manner. Good idea. Cracker.
difficult sort of update, sort of.
about record sales. and charts. and etc.
i've written about this before, but i thought i'd address it again, especially in light of the fact that i have a new-ish record in stores.
a while ago i wrote about the 'pearl jam effect'. i described the 'pearl jam effect' as being a phenomenon wherein bands who have very technically savvy fans will see their records do poorly in the charts, whereas bands/artists who have less technically savvy fans will see their records do quite well in the charts. this is owing to the fact that bands/artists with technically savvy fans will have a lot of fans who will end up downloading music or burning cd's, whereas less tech-savvy fans will generally end up buying their cd's. looking at the 3 week sales history of weezers new record, for example, has proven to me that this 'pearl jam effect' is strongly influencing the album charts in the states (and elsewhere, although not so much with weezer cos they seem to only sell a lot of records in north america). weezer sold a lot of records in their first week of release, but since then their sales have dropped off considerably. even though they have radio hits. even though they have a very loyal fan-base. even though they've made a record that their fans really like. even though there's good press coverage on the band and their new cd. etc. i would be very interested to know not how many cd's weezer have sold, but how many copies of their record are actually in existence.
i have a feeling that there might be almost twice as many copies of their new record in existence (in the form of mp3's or burned cd's) as have actually been sold.
i'm not saying that this is a good or a bad thing. i'm not writing this to voice my opinions. my concern is more for the way that the industry looks at the success of a musician or of a record that sells or doesn't sell. popular artists traditionally sold a lot of records. in the future that might not be the case. in fact even now that might not be the case. pink outsells weezer in the states not so much because she's more popular, but because her fans are more likely to buy, as opposed to burn, her cd's.
i don't mean this as a criticism of pink, i'm just using her as an example. just look at the american top 20 and you'll see what i'm talking about. most of the records in the american top 20 are by bands whose fans are, for the most part, more inclined to buy a cd as opposed to burn or download it.
again, i'm not editorializing. i'm just pointing out a strange phenomenon and wondering at what effect it will have on the future of music. this whole issue of burning and downloading is too big and too complicated for me to really voice my opinion on it (not to mention the fact that having an opinioin on burning and downloading is kind of like having an opinion on the weather. meaning that having an opinion about the weather isn't really going to change anything.)
ok, that's it.
good night.
moby
Is it karam whoring if i post as anon ?
it really was a lackluster album, that's why it isn't selling. Are we going to have to go through this now everytime an "artist" puts out a flop after an irridium album?
"it's not selling well because of those darned mp3 traders."
Funny those darn mp3 traders didn't interfere with the success of the previous album, which for some reason, obviously not linked, got much better reviews.
Weird as it sounds.. as a 30 year old I find business lacking in coming up with convenient and affordable methods of accessing and playing music. Take a look at Japan where you can download music from a vending machine... why haven't solid state players and stereo components come along?
I buy my music once I hear it. I can't listen to radio because the people with the most money have their songs played 24/7. I have to use other ways.. friends.. online reviews and mp3s. I decide whether I want "The Track" and not necessarily the Album.
Please.. someone in North America design a useful music distribution system that eclipses the old style music system.
I'd pay a buck for a song... and if distribution to electronic players is done.. no media.. it's ultra-cheap.
You don't have to include the RIAA companies...I know tons of promising young bands that produce much better music.
One can dream.
obviously this is true. But I'd argue that the atleast part of the reason that this is the case isn't because we have access to p2p software and burners (other users do, too) but because we are more aware of how much both the consumers and artists get ripped off by the record companies.
Even if the p2p/burner stuff didnt exist, or there was copy protection that worked, I still wouldn't buy the CD's - because its moroly wrong.
stuff
As opposed to da hood, where everyone gets hooked up by their man on the sidewalk with the latest bootlegs? Some 80% of hip hop buyers are white kids, I've gotta believe that difference isn't only due to the population difference that comes from being a minority.
From the article : "I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing," he added. "I'm not writing this to voice my opinions. My concern is the way that the industry looks at the success of a musician or of a record that sells or doesn't sell. Popular artists traditionally sold a lot of records. In the future that might not be the case. In fact, even now that might not be the case. Pink outsells Weezer in the States not so much because she's more popular, but because her fans are more likely to buy, as opposed to burn, her CDs."
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
is the grip that technology, disregard for intellectual property, or a consumership that is less respectful thereof causes a decrease in sales. I hate it when artists this argument for two reasons: (1) they shouldn't accuse their fans and supporters of being so shady; and, more important, (2) it's a cheap excuse for the flatline or drop in the quality of artistic content. Heck, The Thong Song was number one on Casey's Top 40 a year or so ago, and the RIAA is complaining that Napster reduced its CD sales? That's like the Marlboro Man blaming lung cancer on working at a gas station as a teenager.
Lol what a pathetic excuse, I'm a long time fan and listened to 18 after downloading it, thank god it saved me precious money, I guess trying to turn commercial is not always a good idea.
I thought the "Pearl Jam Effect" was the Eaglesization of punk rock.
Everything about Moby screams "commercial electro-pop whore."
the album just sucks.... that's why it's not selling....
I just got back from the record store, having bought "Play" by Moby as a surprise present for my wife (with a bunch of other things scattered around the house). I stuck this CD in the computer -- where she is to "discover" the gift -- only to have it fail to be recognized.
I searched on the net to find if this is a copy-protected CD, but no luck. Seeing this thread on slashdot assures me that it is, despite the lack of any warning about copy protection on the packaging. Drag. I bought "Play" because of the MP3's I had downloaded. It's somewhat ironic to be "reverse-napstered". Now I have to "steal" this album to put it on the computer.
The question remains -- should I take it back to the store and harass the clerks? In general, going to the is was already more time than I want to spend. Going back to end up with nothing but philosophical satisfaction at having rejected a copy-protected CD seems like throwing good money after bad.
Matt
...everyone who owns 'Play' doesn't need this rehashed material.
Don't blame technology when your creativity is sagging.
There's a phrase that could, and should be considered when examining a downturn of sales of _anything_ right now: "It's the economy, stupid."
There's a subset of the populace who don't have work (who DID during the dot.com bonanza). They aren't likely wasting any remaining saved income on non-essentials.
There's another subset of the populace who is just happy to have a job, and having recently experienced joblessness, or having watched people they know go through it, aren't real likely to be wasting any disposable income. They might even be saving for a rainy day.
Factually, does he know why his album isn't selling well?
I would agree with the majority of the posters here is that it's not his audience that's the problem, it's his album itself.
It seems by making comments about his album sales not doing so well due to the fact that his fans/audience don't want to pay for his music and would rather steal seems like he's shooting himself in the foot.
Don't piss on the people who made you. If you screw up (produce an album that doesn't hit the top of the charts), make something better.
Are we likely to see more and more people blame their crappy album sales on piracy? Of course, it's not fun to take responsibility for your work if it sucks.
He's really not saying if it's good or bad, he's making a statement that says that his sales are lower because of internet savvy fans.
Really, Moby likes to get his name out there, so he gave his music to the marketroids as long as the content wasn't based on cigarettes, alchohol or some other stipulations.
I don't think he sold it, it was public domain for advertising.
Maybe he wants to actually try to sell his stuff. I own the album and i like it.
Does he not think the reason nobody buys his albums anymore is because they don't have to -- they just need to turn on the tv and wait for an ad break? I feel so sad for him and his millions of dollars.
It's too bad when you hear an artist blamming the Internet for bad record sales.
I don't know, maybe record sales are down on his new album because it's not as good as his previous shit.
There have always been one-hit-wonders, it ain't the Internet's fault.
LoRider
Even the slashdot staff has been quick to call the boycott off. But I know in my heart I can't by a CD from anyone associated with the evil RIAA. Until Moby (which I already have 2 of his CD's purchased at full price at BestBuy) disassociates himself from them I won't buy his CDs.
I just don't happen to think MOBY is worth buying, or listening to for that matter.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Most of the songs on Play were licensed for commercials and movies, exposing them to mainstream audiences who did in fact recognize good stuff. Has 18 been out long enough or been licensed heavily enough to achieve the same kind of market penetration?
When Napster was at its peak, I was part of the majority of users who downloaded to sample. However, the RIAA gave Napster, and the whole idea of free music over the Internet more publicity than it would ever have gotten on its own. As a direct consequence, a lot of freeloaders started using MP3s. This is why we've gotten to the point where less people buy CDs because they download MP3s. The music industry got what they deserved. IMHO, this trend is only going to get worse, and no one will be able to stop it. Services like Gnutella and Freenet are unregulatable and unstoppable and will give the freeloaders the opportunity to continue in their ways. I can only see this leading to a revolution in the way that music is made: recorded music will ultimately be free and used as a form of publicity to draw people to what will be keeping musicians in business: live performances.
I thought Eminem summed it up when he said:
"And Moby, you can get stomped by Obie,
You 36 year old bald headed fag blow me
You don't know me, you're too old
Let go, it's over, nobody listens to techno"
See its easy, NOBODY LISTENS TO TECHNO!
I liked the last album and bought it, but the only song I've heard off the new album SUCKS so I'm in no hurry to go buy it... imagine that...
.technomancer
Moby is now just trying to find an excuse for his new album, "18", being utter shite. Just because us 'tech-savvy' listeners normally have no social life and are afraid of the strange 'outside' world, doesn't mean we can't go buy a bloody album. Stupid twat.
Just my stoned 2 bits worth, worth.
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
I belive that tech savvy people easyer understand the legal aspect of piracy, EULAs and modern copyright protection. They might not agree with RIAA on means and do share and download songs, but very often they end up buying the album. I belive this is either because they want the real stuff or because they belive that everybody are entitled to their own opinion, even if it means accepting that others can creat destructive EULAs and over protecting their copyrights because they only think about profit in a short term.
The ones who hurt music are those who are less tech savvy, less hackish/geekish. Most youths know how to operate a computer, burning CD's and sharing files is a piece of cake. What they are not aware of is the impact this has on musicians and record labels. They are just not thinking, what they really do is think like RIAA: "How can I get the most without paying?"
Look a monkey!
But after a couple of plays, I'd have to say that 18 is probably the better album, musically. It's more refined; it's generally less repetitive and punctuated; it has a better flow. Those old-timey (heh) vocal samples seem less wedged-in.
If this is Moby's "old samples" phase, so be it. The very fact that people complain of similarities in his songs between two albums says a lot about the impact Play had and the variety he's shown himself to be capable of in the past (Animal Rights, I Like To Score...)
> Well, if you like the music that a band puts out, you should buy the CD to support the band in the first place
...)
In the current market yes, if you like the band the best way to show your support seems to be to buy the CD (and merchandise and concerts and
Ideally though the artists would be a little bit more technologically savvey they would allow fans to fund their music without there being so many middlemen skimming off profits.
And Moby in particular will probably make more money selling his songs to advertisers than he will on record sales (and the advertisers often end up adversting Moby as much as their product).
The music industry is on crack, and Moby has fallen for their rhetoric. I think my subject sums it up neatly. Will they ever learn?
--
wher eis the spllchkr when u need it...
Funny how the music on commercial airwaves sounds either exactly like Limp Bizkit or Creed. Also funny how 98.3% of the music available on p2p filesharing systems is these same bands.
Click here for some real opinions on music.
Got friends?
To me it sounded like a B-sides of Play, nothing new, nothing fresh. I've discussed it with a bunch of friends, and given the recommendation not to bother, or to borrow it if they're interested. No one has taken me up on the offer, and as far as I know no one has bought it.
Word of mouth can be a killer marketing tool either way. In "18"'s case I thought it was a waste of money, and told anyone who asked me what my opinion was. Perhaps I'm not alone.
I don't think Moby sucks, but I do think 18 does. Moby might wanna listen to his fans who are voicing an opinion by not buying it instead of blaming them for his woes.
--
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
Radio still makes you or breaks you. In this case, for whatever reason, the radio stations aren't behind this album. Thus fewer people know about it. Thus fewer sales.
It seems like most people are claiming that they don't own any illegal music. No one here is doing anything to hurt sales.
Then again, slashdotters are not your average "techies." As simple as it might be, the average joe doesn't know how to rip his own mp3's. The people who most hurt record sales are the ones who go from the record store to iTunes, rip everything, and share their entire hard drive on Kazaa.
Perhaps bands can learn from They Might Be Giants. The whole TMBG album was available on their site way before their latest CD came out. At their shows, they laugh at the people who buy the CD's. And when they played a free show in Boston, the crowd was half a mile deep.
Thats total bunk. I just bough thte new KMFDM
album two weeks ago. (course i did d/l a few
of the songs to make sure I liked).
Maybe Moby just sucks and thats why nobody is
buying his music.
"nobody listens to techno, so lets go"
Moby vs Eminem
Is Moby or any of these other bitching artists having trouble playing there bills. No, they are having problems with there labels. Moby may say this, but it has nothing to do with his personal feelings.
The problem is we judge a records quality by it's sales, which doesn't always work.
I don't his schlocky pseudo counter-culture crap free, paid or otherwise. Maybe nobody's buying his shit because it just plain sucks.
Battlefield Earth - the finest film of all time
Waterworld - second finest film of all time
Art Garfunkel's solo career
Joe Pesci Sings
;)
So please, everyone, stop the filesharing! If you want the artists to continue making music and movies of this quality they need to be paid now, or else the quality might change...and that would be terrible!
Techie fans are more likely to be legally conscious and aware of their rights and the copyright law. I, for one, download (pirate) MP3s, and see if I like the artist/album
Since when is it in your rights to download the mp3s in the first place? True you may end buying the album or deleting them, but you still didn't have the right to download them in the first place. Whole versions of songs shouldn't be used for sampling the artist/song.
nt
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
...maybe he's just washed up???
I haven't particularly liked anything Moby's done recently, except the song Porcelain. My friend bought the album "18" so I got a chance to hear it, and it just wasn't very interesting. I won't be buying that album.
...before taxes for his show in Atlanta before taxes. Poor baby.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I mean Moby of all people, he can't sell a record that people *dont* like now can he. This leaves only one other excuse for why his album didn't sell as much as the last one did, it has to be those pirates that we can just lay blame on and go on our ways.
Wonder if he has ever thought about the fact that the reason why he didn't sell as many cds as he thought he was going to is because the album is not that good?
You can listen to it at Borders or Barnes & Noble or your preferred music provider. If you don't have a music shop that will let you listen to it, you can always use amazon:
moby
Anonymous posts are filtered.
In my opinion, moby just had his 15 minutes in the spotlight, and it's starting to ride out. He's still making great music, but a lot of the people that bought his albums are fickle, and the real fans of his are buying his music. The same thing is happening with fatboy slim, the same thing happened with the prodigy, and now its happening to moby. It's really sad actually, and i hope he gets more of the sales he deserves.
And here I thought it was because his last good album was _Everything Is Wrong_ and his core fans stopped buying his albums when they started sucking.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
i dont think this is an issue of "tech savvy-ness". He claims that Pink sells more albums officially because her listeners are not as technically inclined? Let think about their demographics. I'm no expert, but i would guess that pink caters to a relatively affluent suburban girl. These people probably have a fast new computer which has a CD burner that is set up in a way that a monkey could use it. Why would these people be unable to burn a CD or 7 for their friends? The technology isn't that hard any more to copy music. it has nothing to do with someones knowledge of computers.
I think Moby is doing exactly what the RIAA has been doing. Blaming technology for his lack of sales. CD sales are down because the economy is in the shitter and Moby appeals to an older crowd who don't have mommy and daddy buying their CDs (like pink) and, because of their lack of jobs or fear of losing work, are watching what they are spending and overpriced CDs are on the chopping block on superfluous expenses. Period.
I can already smell it...
;P
"Today the RIAA donated a undisclosed large sum of money to Moby to help out with the poor financial situation caused internet pirates."
Its never that the music sucks, the prices are too high, or the customers (God forbid that these are actually individual people and not compulsary consumer whores) are pissed over business practices, its always those damn pirates.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Moby was overplayed, overhyped, and his first single from 18 ("We Are All Made Of Stars") was hardly anything breathtaking or original. People simply don't have as much enthusiasm for Moby as they did when he released Play.
A much better solution is to download mp3s and oggs without guilt, and give money directly to artists via fairtunes.org.
I really don't think disappointing sales on 18 can be blamed on the listeners, I think it should be blamed on Moby himself. I used to be a big Moby fan, but his last album, 7, just plain sucked. Sure there was maybe one or two good songs, but I don't want to get his newest one only to find out it's just as bad as his last one. I think that's what he should blame the sales on.
Also, I think Eminem is wrong. There are a lot of people that still listen to techno. I know I do.
Sorry, I don't agree with you. I have almost all of moby's CDs (yes, I bought them,) and I think the new album isn't very good. Hence, I did not buy the album NOR did I download the album.
I feel overqualified for posting to slushdot on this matter.
I have acquired about 300 CDs, 850 albums and about 30 cassette tapes in the last 18 years. Less than 100 of those were purchased new, and most of those only after I already had the album through other means. Everything else I got at swap-meets or from used dealers. I only support artists that I truly like by buying new.
This poster's name secretly replaced with Folgers Crystal Meth
because the only single released so far kinda sucks. I bought Moby's last 2 cds. If I heard decents songs from 18 I'll buy it too, but so far nothing. (Also since Napster's demise, I don't hear as much music and don't buy as much)
They misunderestimated me. -- George W. Bush
...or maybe Moby just isn't that good in the first place....or maybe people who don't like Macs refuse to buy an album produced by a sworn Mac-lover...
hmmmm.....
i find it disturbing that he assumes that people who work in tech dont have just a wide array of tastes as any other demographic.
just because you work with computers does not mean that you listen to music made with computers... thats just stupid.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I got the latest Moby CD and it isn't that great. Maybe he should at himself before blaming his fans.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I feel that having a large following of tech fans is a plus, because a larger amount of them understand things such as value and capitalism. Reading slashdot user comments shows people always telling us to support artists that we like by buying their stuff. Look at Mandrakesoft. They say they're out of money, put up a donate link, and bam, cash flow. Why? Because their product has more value than $0 to many people who use it.
It is the non tech people who hurt sales; they see $0 vs $19 and don't consider things like quality, bandwidth, time, and value as measures of money. A lot of my non-tech friends used to buy CDs, but now don't understand why the money needs to change hands.
It is those people who will download with no intention of buying, not tech savy economically conscious slashdotters. (In most cases at least)
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
what gives moby the right to speak? Him of all people
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Most artists don't make THAT much money on record sales, its the big labels that make the money. If this wasn't the case why would the RIAA be so up in arms, not to protect the artists i can tell you that much.
If you really wanna support a band, go see them when they tour.
The only thing I'm high on is love...Love for my Son and Daughters. Yes, a little LSD is all I need.-Marge Simpson
that explains why i don't have it. I don't have a pirated copy either, because i like moby enough *not* to steal from him. Seems probable to me that a lot of techies are in much lower paying jobs than they were a year or two ago, and perhaps are having trouble adjusting to a budget. I know in my case, I just don't have ability to buy every cd i want -- wish it were otherwise.
Aside from that, geeks have more entertainment options grappling for their limited resources, like new computer gear, and video games... If you went and shelled out 60 clams for Neverwinter Nights this weekend, it may be tougher to justify the already hard-to-swallow 18 bucks for a CD, even if you like the artist.
just my 2 cents.
Moby's got it all wrong. Ever since his style shifted away from techno, less people, such as us techies that may like techno (see the connection?) stopped buying from him. We're probably a major part of his fan base. Mobyster ought to get a clue and stop blabbering words that the RIAA stuffs in his mouth.
...MOBY is unoriginal. he's clearly taken ideas for his current website photo shoot from the LBC-representing band Havalina, as evidenced in the link below...
http://www.havalinaland.com/slbfootnote.html
I rest my case.
And as if there weren't enough things to like about Moby already...
He also talks about Weezer's recent load of garbage Maladroit. Both 18 and Maladroit seem to be in the same figurative boat here. They both sound like all the good material was used up on the previous albums, and this is what is left conviently stretched into 50 minutes of fodder. As also mentioned, the idea that these artists think nothing of calling their fans thieves gets to me. If I went to a store and the owner constantly asked me not to steal from him, I wouldn't frequent that store. I don't like accusations from people that I purchase from
you guys should at least read what the guy had to say before attacking.
IF the whole CD is great why would any real fan want a pathetic low quality bootleg?
Bootlegs arent vinyl quality, or even CD quality.
When I want to listen on my surround sound stereo system, I dont want to be listening to a bootleg.
This is like the war cassettes vs CDs, everyone could get bootleg cassettes, now people can get bootleg CDs, but not at vinyl quality most of the time,
Musicians should up the quality of their work, If i have money I'll buy CDs sometimes not just to support the band but because its better quality.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Remember how eminem's album was the most played album on the internet before it was released? Well most people liked it and it has easily been #1 since it came out. All the internet is doing is forcing people to write good albums. I recently bought the dvd of the matrix even though fairly easily I could have downloaded it. Why is that? Because it was a badass movie. Make a good cd and people will buy it.
it couldnt possible be because 18 is an underwhelming album, could it? good, old fashioned critical analysis is right out the window? Im sick of people blaming mp3s on declining music sales. I dont know if any of you have noticed, but 95% of popular music is insufferable, and CDs are like 16 bucks. I know for me at least, MP3s have only prompted me to buy more cds, because MP3s give me access to phenomenal music that happens to be under the radar. Also, Ive read at least one study that concluded that mp3s have polarized buying habits, if anything. Why do people buy less cds? because todays popular music sucks, to put it quite frankly. The kind of logic Moby is exhibiting is the kind of correct-on-the-surface logic that people bashing open-source software believe in. I'm interested to see more research on the effects of mp3s
Artists who make their money from exploiting the capitalist virtues of their labels are often the first to espouse liberal / leftist agendas. Seemingly because they're 'artists' they must therefore adopt an anti-establishment stance. (And you can't get much more 'establishment' than Dubya)
If truth be known, any musician which is signed to a major label and spouts this crap is a filthy hypocrite. Packaged rebellion for the masses.
Do you REALLY think Moby cares about who's in power? He's too busy getting coked up to the eyeballs. A bit like Dubya in his wild youth, ironically enough.
And don't even get me STARTED on Alanis Morrisette!
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
I am a techie and the kinda person Moby discusses about. I am also a big fan of music in general and I must admit - I do download a lot of MP3 music. But it's not like I would be ripping something off from the artists - I don't truly enjoy that crap I usually download (I download the latest hits to test 'em out before I go and buy the album). If the artist is good enough and something I want to listen more than 2 weeks, I will go out and buy the album! This has happened with every U2 release, for example.
Moby is only saying something that's been repeated a million times elsewhere. He's an intelligent enough to address the issue without berating his fans Metallica-style.
I would say this is hard to refute. Indie, geeky, techno, and others in the technophile musical demographic are being copied left and right. Oh course there are huge advanteges to this in terms of exposure, concert attendence, etc. For instance, even before the broadband P2P revolution, back in 1998/1999 Stereolab managed to sell out two good sized Chicago venues. This is a band that never got any local radioplay and never came close to the top40 or top100 record sales.
Shameless copying is a tradition that started with music lovers and has simply been made easier through technology. Moby questions how the industry measures success. That's a very important issue. The genie is out of the bottle, but the industry measures success through outdated methods.
In another way this isn't exactly new. A lot of talented artists who take risks instead of sticking to pop formulas tend to be undervalued and underexposed. At least P2P can fix the latter.
It's too bad Moby has to protect his name by blaming his fans.
Musical artists should not be charging money for their music anyway. Any 'artist' who whines that people are 'stealing' his/her music obviously is not in the music industry because they love music, but instead because they want a lot of money.
If all music was freely available you know what would end up happening? All 'pop' music and other label creations would dissapear, (heh, and so would the labels) what would be left over is a lot of great music created by those who truely love music and not those who are in it for the money and only money.
If you think that these artists will have no money to make music with, you are wrong. I make well under 10k/year (i'm a student) and i still manage to buy all the audio equipment to make and produce music, and i certainly don't charge for my hard work. what i do charge for is live proformances, which should be the only time an artist should charge money for their music to be heard.
MABASPLOOM!
Did you not read any of the article at all? Or did you just read every other word? He didn't accuse anyone of being a thief. He accused the recording industry of being unable to properly measure the popularity of an artist because the only metric they use is how many CDs get sold.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Moby has a new CD?
Guess since he didn't sell all the songs to 500+ advertisers then no one even knew it was out.
This stuff is new to them. We've had p2p and burners for quite a while now, to them it's the new fad so it's exciting.
Read through virtually any discussion on /. and see how many people casually bring up indie music like it's the norm. The bulk of people that are copying the eminem and Destiny's Child CDs don't fucking listen to The Jesus Lizard or acoustic emo bands. They listen to the radio. Who's complaining? Labels and artists who get played on the radio.
The tech folk are the ones who are fighting to keep our ability to duplicate purchased media, so it stands to reason that at least a portion of them actually stick by what they say. The mainstream has no such motiviation.
Wait, let me try this another way.
If the techies are the ones ruining this for everyone (as is implied), then who the hell is buying all of the CDs they continue to sell? Is it that easy to lose sight of the fact that the technically knowledgable of the world's communities are the absolute minority?
Maybe it's because '18' sounds just like 'Play' and people were a little disapointed?
Have a Happy.
When an artist's new music comes out, I check out a few songs by searching the 'net for some mp3's. If I like what I hear, then 9/10 times I buy the CD from a legitimate retailer (Thanks for the low prices Best Buy!). BUT, most of the time, the CD as a whole is CRAP. One or two songs that are good is not worth me dishing out $10-$17 for the CD
With the death of the 45 single, an artist can have a hit single that gets a tremendous amount of airplay. However, airplay (i.e. popularity) will not always translate into CD sales.
If you look at the Billboard singles chart (Hot 100), success there does not equate to CD sales since labels for the most part do not sell singles anymore and the singles chart is mostly based upon airplay stats.
This is just another guy with a MIDI keyboard that thinks he can make music. Come on. His "music" is complete crap. No lyrics, just repeatitive crap. On the occasional instance of human voice, there is a 99% chance it isn't mobys. In the rare fact that it is, he isn't singing(because he can't), but talking! AHH! And most of the New York, PETA, vegan, free-your-mind type of people that listen to this junk need to be slapped. For an album three years in the making, 18 sure does sound like it was tossed together at the last minute. As for the "hit" song, "We're All Drunk In Bars" would be a better title. This song is what made me buy the CD. The only reason I can explain why I liked this song is becuase I was drunk in a bar. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool. But the rest of the CD is NOTHING like that song. Bottom line, this CD sucks. If you havent heard it, don't. If you have, I'm sorry. If you bought it, return it. If you've done that, good job. Your a great friend. But, on the rare chance you like his music, I suggest using your fav p2p program to download all his mp3s.
the reason moby's sales are down are due to the talentless crap he calls music.
...as I'm going to be hearing it as background music in all the shiny new television commercials for the next year or so anyhow. Right, Moby... you corporate whore, you?
Actually, the album "18" is, in my opinion, pretty poor -- perhaps that's why it's not selling. People interested in the type of music Moby "represents" are on to other, more interesting acts like Boards of Canada or DJ Shadow.
~jeff
Just to clear it up, moby hasn't made a techno album in 10 years. thank you
Are "techies" really that big of a proportion of his audience to have an effect like what Moby is talking about? This is entirely speculation on his part. CD-R's are everywhere. My mom can burn a CD. Maybe people just don't like the album. The effect he's seeing is probably interest in his music shifting to other areas. His music has a certain niche, it's not lowest-common-denomonator assembly line music for everyone from 5-year olds to their parents like, say, Bratney or N'suck.
-R
Before tech savvy people had the computer we had the radio and tape cassette.
People could ALWAYS pirate music, yet michael jacksons triller sold 20 million copies, funny how no one decided to pirate him even though it was all over the radio all the damn time and everyone had it and could copy the cassette.
I know, I had one of those dual cassette players, you stick both cassettes into it, play one and record on the other. Funny how when everyone was using cassettes the RIAA didnt complain about sales but now, that they are losing their monopoly, piracy is suddenly a big problem?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Isnt that sposed to be:
moby says techie fans == fewer sales
Now I wonder, how many people out there who are arguing against his theory have burned CDs themselves? Sure, a true fan would support an artist by buying the album, but, in the case of Pink and similiar artists, all fans, not just the "true" fans, are buying CDs. The main point is that the threshold for buying is much lower for these Top 40 artists who actually get the names of their songs announced on air (while others usually don't it seems lately).
I'd like to end my post with something Moby also put in his, a sort of disclaimer:
I design user interfaces for a free network management application,
He is on V2 Music which is a member of the RIAA. Moby is rich -- why doesn't he start his own label and sell music directly or through independent distributors? In case Moby hasn't noticed, all of us are currently hating the RIAA right now. I will buy this album because I already own all his previous albums. But, why does everyone immediately blame the spectre of "piracy" for their loss of sales? Has he ever considered that mabye all the techies are currently unemployed and don't have $15 to spring for the new Moby album?
His concern is the way that the industry looks at the success of a musician or of a record that sells or doesn't sell. In the future that might not be the case.
Moby should have spoke about that more than the "Pearl Jam Effect" to avoid excommunication from miscommunication.
now he wants me to run out and spend 20 dollars on his critically panned shite, when he's planning on ramming it down my throat anyway every time I peep the Simpsons? So he wants me to pay to listen to it, then have someone else pay him to force me to listen to it.
Call me Ishmael, but i'd like to hit him w/ a harpoon my own self.
Marshall Mathers AKA Eminem AKA the "One-man 2-Live Crew of the 21st Century." Blech. Y'know, if he actually had some talent instead of basing his schtick on cussin' everybody out I might respect him. As it is, give me Talib Kweli, Deltron Z or even the Beastie Boys any day of the week over his tired-ass garbage. Next!
how about the fact that there is such a vast increase in the amount of techie music out there?
That has to account for some of it.
I consider myself a techie, and I download MP3s for bands I like -- and don't buy their CDs. It's just the way it works. I'm not going to pretend that I actually buy CDs, because when it comes down to it, if you can get it for free, you will. "Software is like sex -- it's better when it's free", as Linus Torvalds said. This applies to virtually everything. For me, paying $18 on an album makes me feel like it has to live up to my expectations in order to be worth the money, though most of the time it doesn't. When I download an album though, it's alright even if it's not that *great*. I can just pick up one or two good songs off it and maybe get used to the rest over time. Sorry if that sounded weird, but it's a hard thing to explain.
I'll buy it, if not I won't. It's that simple...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Moby, I listened to Pearl Jam, I knew Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam was a friend of mine. Moby, you are no Pearl Jam.
...is an ignorant consumer.
That right Moby? Is that the rationalization for your decline? Dumb people who can't copy tracks don't like your music?
How about: people who know better find little value in your latest rehash of past neo-saccharine throbfests?
Edith Keeler Must Die
I think Moby's totally wrong. Most of the people I know who download mp3s aren't tech savvy at all. Because of that, they learn how to do the basics, burn a CD and that's that. The technologically ignorant are the ones who are looking for the quick shortcut to avoid paying their $15.98. A real nerd isn't looking to cut corners -- s/he's more likely to shop online, to use search engines to find and buy obscure bands, to be into collecting stuff like CDs, and. bottom line, to have the disposable income to waste on non-essentials.
Moby's real enemies are 1) the teeny boppers who swap CDs with their friends 2) his own lack of originality this time out and 3) Dirty Vegas, who took his niche.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Scenario: Artist makes a fantastically creative (in mainstream music sense) album that sells a boatload of copies, sells out to the absolute maximum with every track being licensed for an advertisement somewhere along the way, thus turning the artist in question into a very very rich man with more popularity than he's ever seen in his life. Then in an effort to extend his 15 miuntes of fame, he records a follow-up album to the last one, that happens to be as close to an exact duplicate of the previous album. The fans are bored, the general public is apathetic, sales aren't lively and drop off the table when everyone buying the album the first week (henceforth known as "suckers") tell their friends "stick with the last album, this one's the same, but not fresh". The artist then goes on to blame everyone but himself for putting out a mediocre follow-up effort to what could be his finest work ever.
Move over Pearl Jam, we now have The Moby Effect.
If Moby thinks catering to techies hurts his sales, he can try to cross-over to become a country music singer, rapper, or Christian folk singer, etc. Of course, whether he could do so successfully would remain to be seen.
Sig: Free classified ads at
Lets face it, "We Are All Made Of Stars" is not very good. Infact it's lame, maybe a little homo. I liked the mp3s from the previous album so much I went and bought the CD. This song isn't even worth the 30 second download.
Techno has put a lot of musicians in a bind. How many orchestras did Mr. Moby employ to make his last album?
I always thought Moby was trance-techno dance zombie music, but after lots of people recommended "Play" to me I downloaded some songs from Napster (RIP). I thought "Wow, this stuff is pretty good!"...so I bought the album. I find it interesting now that Moby is slagging P2P since I downloaded his latest album from newsgroups this time and, well, i didn't even keep the mp3s...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
if Moby's music didn't suck, people would buy it. HTH.
...is that the latest Moby album simply isn't very good.
Same idea, different band,
I got the new Counting Crows album off gnucleus http://www.gnuucleus.com However I still bought the album, and still go to the concerts. I think if someone is a big enough fan, they will want the shiny thing, not just the music.
Are people going to eschew going to concerts when gargoyles go to them, and people can enjoy pogoing for their lives via VR?
He thinks that sales of his and other band's CDs are lower because people are d/ling mp3s instead of buying them. He thinks the recording industry doesn't properly account for that when it "decides" how popular an artist is. (They're probably too busy suing people to worry about it.)
I'm not sure why 20 bazillion posts need to be made about how you think the CD sucks. I think that ground has been covered just a tad.
And another quore from Moby about this issue:
"What do you think about Napster and CD burning?
Moby: On one hand the thought of people in the music business losing their jobs makes me sad. I have a lot of friends who work in record stores and at record companies, and I know that they're nervous these days. So I hope that some way is found to protect their jobs. But I do hope that as the music business becomes less profitable that the people who are in music only to make money will be forced out. People who love money more than music shouldn't be involved in the music business, in my opinion."
From a random interview i found.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Moby is clearly suffering from superdj/superartist syndrome. I thought he was a new age kind of non-material guy. And I thought he was smarter than that.
Tech saavy people generally don't like mp3s because they care about the quality of their media. These are the people who spend hundreds, nay thousands of dollars on their reproduction equipment. mp3s are only a 10th of the real thing and personally i only use them for preview. mp3 has done nothing for the RIAA than fm radio and the compact casette didn't already achieve. (note the word achieve)
Artists with a tech-saavy following were having trouble long before the advent of mp3 and the net. Case in point, new order and the hacienda. It took a good decade for that club/style to turn a true profit.
Moby's sales are down because his market is small and his writing isn't thrilling anybody. Moby, 'move' rocked in 93. The rest is highly debateable. I didn't buy your album because I prefer sounds coming from other artists.
Yesterday I downloaded two artists... Sander Kleinberg, and Adam Freeland. In the last 12 months I have purchased 3 albums which give royalties to Adam, and 2 which give royalties to Sander.
Chemical bros, Norman Cook, The ORB, Digweed, Propellerheads et al. And don't get me started on Orbital's brown album. I've had mp3s of that bitch, and I've bought three copies because people keep nicking it.
If you want my buck in your royalty cheque, you have to get back to the people who are out there buying. You have to 'move' me. Baby, baby.
s.
I copied Moby's newest CD, and am glad I did. It really isn't very good, original, or otherwise worth $15.
I think you proved his point.
So you didn't immediately fall in love with '18'. That doesn't give you the right to copy it, does it?
I'm sure you're going to justify this here or in your head some how. Here are a few easy options for you:
1. As soon as you decide you like it then you're going to rush out and buy a legitimate copy;
2. You don't think that you should have to pay for anything less than the best, and this isn't it so you don't ever have to pay for it; or
3. Hey, I already bought one of his albums and he's not going hungry right? Where's the victim?
Frankly, I don't care which of these you pick - they're all lame excuses and you know it. You just want something for nothing.
(And don't even pretend that you making a copy is "try before you buy". As plenty of other posters have pointed out, there are several ecommerce websites where you can listen to the tracks before parting with your cash. And, nowadays, many of these websites, as well as many bricks and mortar retailers, will gladly refund your money on any purchases with which you're not entirely happy.)
Whether or not you like his music or his polictics, the bottom line is that Moby is right: tech-savvy fans are far more likely to make or own illegal copies of CDs, simply because the have the means and the know how to make perfect copies.
I fail to see how an artist pointing this out (especially a conciencious artist such as Moby) is reason for a public stoning.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
are we putting our favorite bands in a bind?
well that's assuming you even care about crappy rap music... needless to say i don't.. i did however buy the latest slayer album a while back.. and the one before that and the one before that too..
Slayer Rulez!
moby who?
Well, they assume that the negative correlation between techie fans and album sales is causation. Maybe it's because there's a direct correlation between smart people and techies, and no smart person would be stupid enough to spend $20 on some lame Moby album.
I found the CD to be quite boring. I own Play and Downloaded 18. I don't even desire to listen to it again. I think the lack of high sales is due to both piracy and crappy music
Well, I got a solution to this alleged problem, then, and it's not DRM, or the DMCA, or all kinds of horrible laws that will have our grandchildren trembling in fear from the Thought Police. It (the solution) is as follows:
Artists who want to make money will make music to target the less tech-savvy folks. Like, Metallica will play Beethoven, and Pantera will play Chopin, and Black Sabbath will play Mozart, and Led Zeppelin will play Strauss (Jr), and so on and so forth. They'll make a shitload of money because each person who listens to that stuff will buy a copy.
Artists who want to die of hunger in the streets will play cool music.
This solution will work because it will get rid of all the stupid new music that's being made, and it'll keep the old geezers of the world busy listening to all the old fashioned music of like 1000 years ago. In the meantime, all us tech-savvy folks will have no choice but to revert to the heavy metal of the 1980's, and then the good ol' days will return. (And I can listen to that because I have long hair.)
In a recent issue of Wired (the one with Moby on the cover), Moby himself stated that his new album, 18, is very similar to his previous work Play. He also stated that the "management" was concerned that having such a similar album to Play would hurt sales. While I do own Play and enjoy it very much, I personally prefer Moby's older works, which is one reason I have not purchased 18. Perhaps the reason 18 is having slower sales is because it is so similar to Play; with Electronica, I believe people are less likely to purchase similar material (a lot of Electronica can sound the same).
I preordered my copy of 18 from Amazon.com, and got it a few weeks ago. I can say after listening to it more than 5 times, this CD sucks. Really. Do not buy it. Do not copy it illegally. Do not listen to it.
The real reason Moby isn't selling is explained in the new Eminem album:
"you're too old, let go, it's over. Nobody listens to techno!"
We all know that "piracy" is just a myth! I bought a CD once and I know a friend who bought one once and everyone on Slashdot says they buy CDs they like so obviously he is lying!
Mmmm.. Donuts
Who is he? I mean, I've never even heard of this guy. Never seen him on TV and never heard him on the radio. This guy is news to me.
the only reason SOME (not the majority!) of tech-savvy fans don't buy CDs is because they are also YRO (o == online OR offline...) savvy - if the artists and labels would stop trying to screw off their fans' backup abilities (not necessarily rights), then they would sell more CDs. I'd wager a bet that it's only some little kiddies that wouldn't buy the CD anyway that are using P2P, and the rest don't buy CDs because of the above. Hey, and if P2P didn't exist, then they would probably start screwing off radio stations. And makers of tape recorders/players (Betamax and VHS, anyone??)
Oh well...
--pi
Moby probably doesn't even know what a "techie" is...
"Look where we worship" -- Jim Morrison
that the techies(read: the SMARTER of their fans)...are aware of what the RIAA and it's associates are doing to people...that they too may join us in the struggle against them. They gave up all their rights when they became labelled...and complaining that people are not promoting such activities, by buying their albums and thus paying off the very same orginizations which seek to imprison us...is sheer stupidity.
as well this is furthermore propeganda to make us geeks more like the witches of the past : 'burn them, they are evil' sort of thing
"you keep calling these kids criminals, eventually they will start acting like criminals"-emmanuel goldstein, early off the hook episode
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Moby just realized that the techie community can think logically, and save money so they can upgrade their ghetto computers! Moby can suck my dick!
And what has Moby done to take advantage of this new type of customer demand? Evidently shrugged his shoulders, and decided that the status quo is good enough.
I feel much better when I see other artists (like David Bowie) see that the way the music customer demands the music product is changing, and instead of complaining, actually charges forward and embraces the newness.
I wish there were more stories about the innovative new ways people are trying to take command of this new Internet-driven world, instead of just the "oh woe is me" stories.
RFC2119
that many people are perfectly willing to pay for games, having realized that programmers have to make money somehow.
Let's get real here. "Many people" don't give a rats ass about, nor spend two seconds thinking about, whether the programmers who wrote their favorite game gets to eat or not. No, the trend away from pirating game disks has more to do with the rise of internet play and the developers sucess in using this phenomenon to enforce valid licensing. Witness Blizzard and their battle.net service. Everyone on slashdot hates Blizzard for trying to shut down a 3rd party online service for their games. But I don't think anyone fully realized that the only reason Blizzard cared is because 3rd party online services can and do provide online play for unlicensed installations of the game.
I copied Moby's newest CD, and am glad I did.
You sir, are giving the rest of us law-abiding music fans a hard time. I myself only want to be able to rip MP3s of my own legitimately purchased music CDs, not "try before you buy" via illigal downloading. Downloading copyrighted music that you don't own on CD is illigal. In a misguided effort to stop you record companies are now selling CDs that don't play properly in computers and are difficult to rip and get into your MP3 player. Thanks for nothing.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Maybe his time has come and gone. (I must be honest I don't know if I've ever heard any of his stuff.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
He should change the lyrics to "Don't you know that nobody buys it who's techno"
nuff said
Moby's featured fairly regularly on MTV...his music gets plenty of coverage.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
But we, the tech savvy as you call us, are not sheep to be herded into a music story to pay the insanely high markup your distributor chooses to hit us with. Give me the opportunity to download your music from the web without burning restrictions and at a reasonable price and you'll see piracy and other copying drop like a stone. It's not that we're suddenly demanding more, it's just that we can only now demand a product worth buying. 20 years ago, purchasing the music or listening on the radio were your only options. If the major lables wanted to 'bend their customers over the counter' so to speak, (and they most certainly wanted to) then they would. They chose to do that. They continue trying to do that. The only difference is that we now have other options on the table. So I say to you, either continue herding those sheep you can find into the store to buy the outragously-priced CD's, or try selling everyone a product worth buying. Quality music for a reasonable price will sell like you can't believe. I haven't bought a CD in years, but I'd most certainly choose to pay for a quality, legal music service. Offer me the product and I'll buy it. Continue trying to bend me over the counter, and you won't get a dime from me.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I've been a fan of Moby's for far too long now and have purchased all of his domestic EP/LP releases.
I think that if Moby is seeing a decline in sales, it's because he has started running as fast as he can away from the techno/electronica genre that got him where he is and is instead going for ambient soul. That's great and all, I like the ambient soul approach, but maybe a lot of other people just want to hear slightly less techno revisions of "Next is the E".
Moby's music is just going in a direction different than what he was known for. Car commercial producers love it, but that doesn't mean his original fanbase (most of whom I'm guessing would fall into the 'techie' range) wants to come along for the ride.
Or as he said during an interview on The Daily Show regarding a lyric naming him in a recent Eminem track, "I haven't done techno in, like, 10 years."
(Note, however, that while Eminem was referring to all of electronica with the shorter, catchier "techno", Moby was referring to the sub-genre of techno itself.)
What's happening to musicians is a return to the way life used to be for all the centuries before recording technology, when the lucky ones who got paid at all got paid to perform, and that was it. There was this one century when people who owned expensive machinery could make tons of money cranking out copies of music and dribbling out a tiny percentage to musicians. Very few musicians got rich from these dribbles. Most continues to make money entirely, or nearly so, from performing. In the current century the copy-cranking industry is becoming obsolete, and the extra dribbles are going away. The first musicians to make this transition are going to be the ones whose fans are most aware of non-dribble technology.
Makes sense to me.
People who copy albums have neither the incentive or the bandwidth to compete. It really is a competition. A business' product vs. their product for free. Fine. Let's look at a comparison. (Businesses here mainly includes independent artists):
1) Businesses can afford readily available and reliable bandwidth in large amounts.
The free copies probably can't.
2) Businesses can advertise.
The free copies probably won't.
3) Businesses have an incentive to provide a higher quality product at a better price due to increased competition.
The free copies probably won't put in the required time, and certainly not for free.
4) Businesses can make new products.
Copies, by definition, are never new.
5) Businesses have an incentive to make it very convenient to find and purchase their products.
Free copies are usually very difficult *and time consuming* to find. That's not free. Time is money.
Add to this the fact that most people are honest, and the whole "piracy" argument becomes quite flimsy indeed.
I'm not in support of draconian *AA legislation and irrational copyright controls, but I *am* in support of artists earning a fair living from their work. Technology should be used to encourage that.
"Illegal" copying will never go away. It's no different than shoplifting or people writing bad checks. It's going to happen. That should not be an excuse to treat everyone else poorly (Best Buy, are you listening?). If you treat people like thieves, that's exactly how they will behave, mainly because of the implied insult, not because they weren't willing to buy your precious "content."
Note to the music and video publishers: Put your stuff on line sooner, and these problems will be reduced.
Another $0.02
bands and artists with more tech-savvy fans sell fewer albums than those with less tech-savvy fans, as the techies will disproportionately get their copies of the album from friends with CD burners or P2P services rather than from record stores.
Sounds like a good reason to eliminate copyright law: it is doing exactly the opposite of it's purpose - to encourage science and useful arts.
Weezer have far more 'geek' fans than wannabe-populist Moby, or even the fine Pearl Jam (whose audience was mostly psuedo-intellectual depressed teens).
Weezer have continued to have great success, and Maladroit has sold more than the green album. All this despite a -very- easy to obtain high quality rip coming out weeks in advance! Weezer aren't anti file-sharing either, so it's all good.
Moby can go stick his head in a grinder. I actually like Moby and what he stands for, I even like his music.. but really, his music is pretty damn dull. It's no surprise people wouldn't buy it.
mogorific carpentry experiments
If the editors weren't such lazy worthless fatasses they would have put in a link to the actual journal entry. Nowhere in there does Moby complain about his record sales or people copying his stuff. This whole story is a gigantic troll and all of you losers are biting on it big time.
He just needs to have more Gwen Stephani camieos
But for people like me, I support the artists I like. When I had a tape player in my car, I would routinely by tape and CD... yes I know I could have justed copied the CD to tape, as it was in my power under the fair use (or something). Now, I may d/l the CD frm the 'net, but if I like it, or plan to listen to even one track a lot, I will go out and buy the CD. Because I support the music and artists that I like.
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
I call it the Sucky Music Effect.
Happened to Pearl Jam too. Don't blame your inability to create more interesting music or your one-hit wonder status on P2P.
I've never gotten into the P2P scene. I've downloaded a handful of songs and personally I'd just rather own the CD. But with the economy the way it is prying me from my friend Jackson takes a lot more than my desire to listen to music.
What's really funny is if they sold the CDs for ten bucks I'd probably buy two and the RIAA would get my twenty bucks. Moby can try to pin it on the techies however much he wants but from where I sit it's the economy more than piracy.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I bought one Moby album and listened to it twice. Forced myself the second time. You buy one Moby album you won't buy a second, therefore, Moby sales go down.
When he whores out every track on the album to advertise everything from chocolates to cars.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
The only person I know who liked Moby enough to buy "Play", his first album
um, "Play" was not Moby's first album. Here has released many others.
cpeterso
Sorry, Moby. Your latest album isn't up to your standards. That's why the sales aren't good. Start making music again for yourself. If you try to write music to repeat your 'Play' success, you'll just come off as a hack.
You're better than '18'. Just accept that you laid an egg and move on.
You can never equivocate too much.
* High turnouts & low CD sales = fans doing the distribution.
* High turnouts & High CD sales = artist rocks
* Low turnouts & High CD sales = artist doesn't put on a likable show.
* Low turnouts & low CD sales = artist sucks
So Moby, tell us how many people have been coming out to your shows ? Must be because of those p2p bastards ripping off your cool show.
Eminem's new CD was widely "pirated" before it was even released. Then it was released and its sales have been excellent. Why are Moby's CD sales hurt by but Eminem's are either unaffected or boosted?
cpeterso
No, it's not the CD burners that are hurting his sales. His problem is that he's Moby, and he sucks ass.
I knew as soon as I clicked on this story that the top comments were going to be "WELL MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE IT SUCKS!" Thanks for not letting me down. FWIW, I don't care, I only clicked to test my prediction.
...sorta feelin like a geezer now.
I ain'ts got no clue who or what a moby is, but from what I am reading here, he's a moby *dick* head.
And a "pearl jam"??? Isn't that the stuff... well, ya know... I mean... ummm.. well.... I "download" that stuff and P2P it with my girlfriend, and I OWN the "copyright"!
An interesting interview with Moby in Shift.com magazine:
-----
(...) after hearing that songs from Play had been mysteriously filtered out of Napter last year, he threatened to protest by running through the streets of New York wearing nothing but a Napster T-Shirt.
"Being opposed to file-sharing is like being opposed to the tide: You can stand on the beach and yell at the tide, but it's just a fact of life. And it's going to spread" he says. "The two things that aren't going to go away are publishing [copyrights on songs] and touring. If I were in the business, or I wanted to be in the music business, that's what I would be looking at"
(...)
---
Shift v10.2, p.35 (summer 2002)
How is concert attendance. The same folks he claims pirate his CDs also go to concerts. Soooooo, if his CD is any good then they will still show up at the concerts. Don't artist make more money off of concerts than CD sales?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Moby assumes a few different things:
Some of these points could be true, but he can't really back up anything he says. He tries to give examples of other groups to explain his so-called "Pearl Jam Effect", but his examples do a poor job of explaining his own poor album sales.
Pearl Jam is an entirely different band. Pearl Jam decided to stop promoting themselves in the traditional way in order to keep from being too corporate (by not making music videos anymore, very little marketing, etc.). They also flooded the market with 72 official bootlegs. Some also say the quality of PJ's music has also been questionable recently. In any case, there is little evidence that Pearl Jam's reduction in albums sales has been solely due to people copying their music.
Weezer's poor sales of their recent album may not be due to people copying it. I bought Weezer's "Green Album", and it's a little over 29 minutes in length. There were a few decent songs, but I felt a bit ripped-off. I'm waiting until I find out more about their latest album "Maladroit"--especially since it's only been a year since the "Green Album" was released. It almost seems like they're trying to pull off a 1-album-for-the-price-of-2.
I wonder what Moby's next excuse will be about why his album "18" isn't selling well?
I hate to be the one to bust his bubble, but 18 which I personally have baught a couple weeks ago when it first came out, sucks. His previous work was rather insightful, but its an old gig. As per reference to Pearl Jam, I am ALSO a big fan of Pearl Jam. But honestly over the last X amount of albums, they have purely fallen on thier face. They make rather unenlightened music, these days! Ten was amazing. It defined a WHOLE generation, it seems. Vs. was rather excellent, but out of the 6(?) albums, the only song I can even think of at the moment is Given to Fly. Moby, STFU. Just because you have a crappy album doesn't mean people are going to buy it. We aren't all drones.
Play was a rehash of his previous work, I thought. And since it wasn't billed as a retrospective, I figure it's all downhill from there. That's why *I* haven't bothered with his more recent work.
If techies were more likely to burn techie-type music (assuming there is such a thing) then the P2P networks' content would be skewed towards the stuff, rather than bubblegum music. Anyone think that's true?
As for this bit about artists traditionally making their money from album sales, that's the "tradition" of thirty years or so. Traditionally, artists toured. THAT goes back thousands of years.
Finally, if your last album was a smash hit, used as the provisional soundtrack in every editing booth in the country and licensed for all sorts of commercials, with sales building over a year or more, what are the chances that your next album is going to beat those numbers?
I have downloaded the album a few months ago.
Listened to it.
Hated the labum
Deleted the mp3s to save space.
Didn't buy the cd.
It's the same as listening to the cd in a record store except i wasn't rushed for time. Saves me time and money too(and hard drive space sometimes if the album sucks like Moby's current one).
Maybe Moby just needs his mummy?
I have never heard of Radiohead complaining aboot this stuff.
Dude where's my Sig?
The Pearl Jam effect is not what Moby says it is.
Moby says Weezer is also suffering from the "Pearl Jam Effect." "Weezer sold a lot of records in their first week of release, but since then their sales have dropped off considerably, even thought they have radio hits..."
What happened to Weezer (and Moby) is that the audience changed. They have a group of core fans who went out and bought their album as soon as it came out. But their sound, though solid, no longer bit the general audience as hard. Pearl Jam is a perfect example of this. It's not that their music is overshared, it's that no one in the larger audience cares, they've moved on to something else (not neccesarily something better).
I can't believe this FUD came from Moby. I can't believe he had this thought and then sat down at his computer and then typed his thought out and then sent his thought to his website. File sharing isn't hurting the record industry any more than MTV and the radio have.
Moby claims that he has "very technically savvy fans" and that everyone else who manages to sell records does not. That's such a silly argument, it's hard to believe he said it. Does he have numbers to show that his audience consists solely of super-intelligent computer geeks? Or that only computer geeks participate in file sharing or CD burning?
Poor Moby, you're album is at 35. Last week it was at 15! Sorry, buddy, I've heard it and this album isn't "Play", it's just another silly Moby album. The people that are dedicated Moby fans are going to run out and buy it immediately. Word of mouth is going to say, "It's not all that good, unless you're a big Moby fan", and then sales drop as people who aren't as into you (e.g. me) stay home in droves.
Saying that his fans are more savy is rediculous. Stealing music isn't technically difficult. You need only a computer and internet access (can you say "College Student"?). One person with ripping software gets the MP3s on the web and the rest is just the personal choice effect. I would bet that the most shared music is also the most sold music. Moby's music isn't getting shared more than Eminem's. That's the bottom line.
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
What a cry baby. He's amassed a larger fortune in the last decade than I'll make in my entire life on my engineer's salary. Ya can't help but feel bad for the guy, eh? If I had his talent and wealth I wouldn't be complaining.
...
WHO THE FUCK IS MOBY?
My answer: Hell if I know. Ah, duh, maybe that's the problem. I buy a shitload of CDs, the latest being Disturbed (even though it was $20). My iPod has 5 1/2 days of stuff, all that I bought. So, how do I learn who you are to buy your product? That's not my problem, it's YOUR problem.
As for Disturbed, I first heard them on some net radio station. Too bad RIAA is shutting down that avenue for me to hear new music too. (You'd think they'd be happy these net-only stations are marketing their artists for free, but no, they have to CHARGE them...) I guess I should be an obediant slave and just listen to Clear Channel crap on a real radio... Ah, no, I won't. I'll just stop hearing new stuff via my RIAA-defined sinful methods and hence stop buying CDs as a result of not knowing what's out there.
Excuse me for my attitude, but I'm growing sick and tired of whining fucking musicians and record companies and their huge imaginary losses. Go get a real job you pathetic pieces of shit.
There's enough music out there now to last us forever. All the "new" stuff is just recycled old crap for the most part. Nothing new gets done. So big loss if you all decide it's not worth it anymore to stay in the field.
Hey, you know what, back in 1983 I lost $250 million dollars. Yup, I wrote a network OS laid over CP/M in Z80 assembler from scratch using some POS 230k/bps twisted pair network hardware from some washed up company called Orange Compuco for the college I worked for. No one else had a viable network OS out at the time. Instead of quitting and running with the code and starting my own company, ala Cisco, I stuck around the college as a loyal employee. I calculate my losses due to my employee loyalty at $250 million dollars. I think I should sue the college I work for for this imaginary estimated loss I just pulled out of my ass. Hey, it's all the rage now.
(This message is full of angst, probably from me listening to too much Disturbed! :-)
Maybe he should go back to making music for commercials? That's where he made most of his $ on previous albums (before he hit mainstream).
Ironically, he recently stated that he would never do it again with '18' or any album in the future.
Yes, the album does suck. I've heard clips of the entire album (from his website). It consists almost entirely of old songs with a wee bit of techno sound in it, much like 'Natural Blues' in 'Play' (which I own & love).
As other have mentioned: go back to techno!
Taking into account that I have yet to hear Moby's new album, I feel it is a bit pretentious for him to believe not only that every album he sells will sell "x" amount. Also he believes he can attribute his slump in sales to an outside force, rather than considering that perhaps his "Play" sales were a fluke or a fad, and not a real indication of his market ability.
Also he is using the current Record Industry cop-out of blaming music sharing or p2p for lower sales. Let us not forget the record high sales that went on during the hayday of Napster.
Once again I have not heard his new album, however the record business is driven mostly by the ability to give people what they want to hear. They may have become sick of Moby's attitude which I have found at times to be quite pretentious.
"I am deep inside your children, they'll betray you in my name!" --Zack De La Rocha
I have heard several tracks from 18, and it just isn't as good as _Play_. Frankly, I'm not planning on buying it. I might download it or get a copy though. And if, if mind you, the album grows on me, then I will purchase a copy.
Moby shot himself in the foot. If he wanted great sales, he should have made a great album.
I instantly though the "pearl jam" effect was either:
..) and leave "18" in the thrash.
a) the hard-core fans demanding something original (or at least that they evolve on some level) from their group/Moby
or
b) that once the exclusive club of fans notice that the group/Moby has gone mainstream they find someone else that give them the feeling of having better taste in music
Both fit Moby. I for one downloaded his two last albums before deciding to buy the last one (the name eescapes me
/penhead
well, i really have to disagree here. the reason for the slump in the record sales for 18 has just got to be that it's not all that good of a record. I currently DO own 18, and many of Moby's previous albums...but it's just not up to par, not even with PLAY...i guess some people are sampling online, but if they don't like what they hear, what makes you think they're going to buy it?!
i liked older moby. i own those CDs. I listened to some of his newer stuff, then didn't really like it and got rid of the cds. The reason his current cd isn't selling well is because it's not very good, not because it's being pirated. That's a lame, scapegoating approach, moby. Go back to your old electronica stylings, and maybe your sales will pick up again.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
OK, follow this and tell me if this makes sense:
Remember the Eminem Show? We'll it was by far to be known as the most pirated CD *before* it was publicly sold. So, now that it's for sale, it should tank, right? I mean everyone who wanted a copy of the CD should have it. Well, Amazon shows it as #4 in the sales rank RIGHT NOW, which is very, very, VERY high if you are familiar with Amazon's sales rankings.
If you look at demographics (my take on them, so forgive me if you don't fit
Take the tech savvy example to the extreme: Try selling media (CD's, DVD's, whatever) to very un-savvy people. You'll have difficulty. The only people I know who own more than 100 CD's are people who would have to fit in the 'tech savvy' category.
In the end, a popularly pirated album will also be popularly purchased. Numbers may skew as demographics change, but Moby is on the ass-end of that exception, imho.
-- Phil
There are a couple of reasons that I don't purchase many CDs anymore. And yes, MP3s have had a great impact on this... along with my growing out of obsessing over music. 1) They're no longer $12. The last time I was at the mall, new CDs were $20. That's just plain ridiculous. I understand that there's inflation and that advertising costs are rising, but brand new DVDs start at $20. Now, let's think about this for a minute. A product that gives me ONLY music and is limited to 74 minutes (even though most lately are 40-50 minutes) for the same price as a product that gives me up 3 hours of entertainment and includes, but is not limited to, music.. it also has ... a story, special effects, and cost a hell of a lot more to make than its counterpart.
2) I can't try CDs before I buy them, nor can I return them. I have a real hard time shelling out $20 for something that has a nice shiny wrapper and one catchy song on the radio. I can go to Blockbuster and rent a DVD for $4. Why can't I try CDs out anywhere? Why can't I return them if I don't like them?
Currently, if I do purchase CDs, I purchase them used, and I've already downloaded the entire CD and decided whether or not it's worth my $8. Perhaps I am a cheap bastard, but I've been burned on more than one occasion by a shitty band with one good tune.
If the RIAA wants my business back, they need to look at the other forms of entertainment out there that are the same price. *HINT* Reduce the price to $10 and allow me to return it if it sucks. Then I'd be more likely to spend my hard-earned cash on your precious silver disc.
...that the album just isn't that good, so nobody really wants to spend $$$ for it, since with a limited economy, there is lest money to throw away, so you have to be choosy?
A decade? I seem to remember seeing a kickass video for Do The Evolution, which I know is newer than a decade. Nice Todd McFarlane animation, and a rockin' song. I've heard that it wasn't an official video, though. Can someone confirm this?
If the music is good, he deserves to make his buck. I download his music too but I liked it and ended up buying it.
Moby needs to hope his distributor gets his music on line quick for 99 cents a song. He'll see sales improve at that point IMO.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Moby's saying the file sharing is hurting his sale (but it's not such a bad thing). RIAA is saying that file sharing is hurting their sales (and that it's the end of the world).
Neither of them bothers to present any proof that their sales are actually aversely affected. I haven't seen any evidence, in fact, in Napster's hayday, sales were way up. So I'd say, sharing doesn't hurt record sales. Saying "It does too!" wont convince me. Even if you say it real loud.
Popularity is measured in sales because sales reflect the number of people that are willing to spend money to listen to an album. Moby's at 35 this week, something like 32,000 albums last week. Cry me a frickin' river.
He's not at the top because his album isn't getting into people's heads the way Play did. Personally, I think Eminem is a schmuck, but even I find myself humming his stupid assinine song. That's how you stay on the top of the charts. If your music can't penetrate outside your already established base, you're not going to sell a gadzillion records.
So Moby might be right that they shouldn't only measure music by its popularity, but his album's not suffering due to file sharing. It's suffering due to not being so good.
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I agree. Play was OK. I liked most of it for what it was, but there were one or two tracks that annoyed me. I bought it because I was a fan of some of his earlier stuff, but I could already see his music changing with that record.
Now I just consider him a sellout and try to change the station whenever I hear his awful new music. I don't know who told him he could sing, but that was a mistake.
It's really sad. If he'd just stayed true to his endeavors in electronic music he wouldn't have alienated his fans and he wouldn't be in this position.
This sig is exactly seventy characters long and a real waste of space!
.. Just needs to get a new hair cut and chill..
The 2 things that are effecting sales:
1 - demand is low due to a bad encomomy. First thing to go in hard times is 'extras'
2 - perhaps not as many people want his crap?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So hmmm, Wilco breaks into the billboard chart at number 13 thanks to mp3 trading on the web,
and Moby is "barely floating".
Good! First off, Moby may know a thing or two about making music, but what exactly does he know about Economics, and specifically those that are related to album sales? Ah! He doesn't have any qualifications. Thats fine, I am not a slave to "pieces of paper" that say Harvard or Yale, what is his evidence?
1) he's not doing so hot.
2) Weezer's not doing so hot.
3) Pink is beating the PANTS off them both.
Hmmm, could it be that PINK spend mad money on songwriter (Specifically the lady from 4 Non Blondes) Linda Perry
Hunh, maybe she's just getting more air play and has better quality songs?
okay, okay, fine. WEll, what about Wilco, who's album has been available for ages on the web, I would think they have a techie fan base?
And didn't wide spread MP3 availability simply help them out?
So let us re-phrase the Pearl Jam Effect- when your new album sucks in comparison to your previous albums and you don't sell because you don't deserve it?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I am now spending MORE on music than before. Why?? Here is why (Moby
- MusicMatch appears to pay royalties for music played. I don't know this for sure, and don't really care, but they did mention that they cannot play the same artist more than X times an hour.
- I'm buying more CDs. When I hear a tune I like, I can click and put the CD on my wish list. I start to notice trends around artists, and go out and buy their CDs. Before, I would only buy CDs I had heard, and since I don't listen to radio much, my purchasing has gone way down in the 10 years.
So...Moby and all the other non-techies that don't 'get it', pay attention to why you are really losing fans.You have to be trusted by the people you lie to
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I did some searching online and found a little bit of information. I cannot say for certain whether or not its credible, but it seems to have a ring of truth to it.
Taken from Anthems.com:
The electronic pop auteur Moby made news with his last album by licensing every one of its tracks to advertisers. But he doesn't plan to "Play" that game for his new release, "18."
"The reason we licensed stuff from 'Play' was that was the only avenue we had available to us to get people to hear the music," Moby said of his 1999 album, whose tracks appeared in ads for American Express, Nissan and Nordstrom, among others. The commercial saturation paid off. "Play" became a 10-million-selling blockbuster that catapulted Moby into the pop mainstream after a decade in the rock and dance undergrounds. After that success, however, "18" is getting a lot more of what Moby calls "conventional support" in the way of radio airplay, MTV exposure and press interest. "We've had requests (to license '18' music), but we've said no to everything." Led by the hit "We Are All Made of Stars," "18" debuted in mid-May at No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 chart with healthy first-week sales of 126,000 copies. The album currently stands at No. 26. with total sales of about 291,000 copies.
What I really think is happening is that Moby has gone to a much more traditional record deal. It's my belief that with the album Play, Moby had much more control over it and its creation. He had the ability to choose how to distribue his music, so he did it in an unconventional but very effective way: he got it into the public though advertising and on the internet via MP3s.
Now, he complains that the same avenue is leading to lost revenue. Methinks that there's a new record company dictating what's going on behind the scenes, and he's not going to be able to make any money unless he sells enough albums. The CD "18" has followed the exact same pattern as most "big-time-record-company-promo" CDs: release single, promote it, make music video, stick video on MTV, release CD, watch CD get into Billboard Top 10 in two weeks, watch it fall off the chart in another two weeks, stop promoing CD. It doesn't look like Moby is in control of his music anymore.
Course, I could be wrong, but this sudden change in attitude just doesn't make sense.
As a former music store employee who witnessed the MASSIVE sales of Moby's last album, "Play", I can state with some authority that his fans are NOT necessarily tech-type people. Most of the thousands and thousands of people I sold that album to were completely unfamiliar with electronic music, and many were just buying it because they heard it on a commercial... Many of these customers proved their "no-tech" status by asking, "Are you sure this is a cd, not a dvd?" My humble opinion is that Moby has dug his own grave here by choosing to release "We Are All Made of Stars" as his first single. It bears little resemblance to the songs on his last album, and I think that the teeming masses who bought that only want more of the same.
Cmon here, yea so i know about computers, and i can burn cd's and so on, but so can all the dumb people i know who think the big metal case with the power switch on it is their hard drive. Face it, it takes an iq of 4 to download an mp3 and burn it to cd.
not to mention, at 50 cents for the cd, plus my valuable time to download, and the limited realestate in my apartment are all the things i consider before pirating music, and i can tell you i didnt even bother to download his album.. now what does THAT say?
Of course, it couldn't be because they made a crap album. It couldn't possibly be that. All recording artists under the RIAA make music that every Real American would be more than happy to hand over their hard-earned dollars for! Why, if we don't shell out $20 or more for each CD put out by an RIAA member, then the terrorists win!
Or wait - maybe it is a crap album.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
but he also acknowledges that effect. Of course he wants people to buy his cds...but if they don't he is still thrilled that they listen to his music. How do I know this? Because I have spoken with him first hand about this very issue. I met with him in NY 3 weeks prior to 9/11. He foreshadowed the sales of this album and his subsequent albums. Not only his, but other artists whose fan base consists of people over the age of 12. Spears...the boy bands...they will have greater sales because parents will buy the albums..because the RIAA pushes this crap on the radio and because the fans of people like Moby do infact download more than they buy. Again, he knows this and is not pushing people to stop the downloading, rather, he remarks that next time one hears a comment like: "what is this shit on the radio" we can attribute it to the lame ass spears/boybandoftheday/shit RIAA tinsonics that has demonstrated high sales. Essentially, download if you want..but don't complain when the stuff you want to hear isn't played.
Wow Mr. Deluded has gotten even more so... The only Straight-edge person I know of who thought he was creating "Acid Music". Moby has been suckin'for about 20 years. He sucks that sums it up. He like Beck for old people... Except Beck doesn't mistakenly think he is a genius. Besides I don't hear and REAL electronic bands whining. Sucks Sucks Sucks ... Man Moby Sucks
Album sales are not a matter of profit for artists as very little of the money from the sale of the album actually filter through to the artist. The only problem that decreased album sales causes is that the album sales metric becomes less useful, and of course the industry wont sign artists who dont sell albums. Interestingly though, they could just log on to various filesharing services and SEE how many copies of a song are on line and apply a nielsen-ratings style multiple to the result. This would give them a pretty good idea of the popularity of the song. Of course, they still would have the problem of not actually selling albums. but I dont mind that so much. It just means fewer stores in the mall, and one less industry devoted to delivering plastic to the masses.
I'm sorry but I refuse to pay $20 for a CD, which is what they seem to be going for, on average, at Virgin here in San Francisco. I'd happily pay half of that. $10 is a reasonable price, and one that is viable for companies as well. Dischord Records, home of Fugazi, seldom sells a CD above $10 and they're doing fine.
Of course if you want to get rich, you'll have to charge more than $10 a pop. Unfortunately I refuse to help someone become incredibly wealthy at my expense.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
cause 'necks don't cotton up to them fancy komputer things. My daddy didn't use one to plow the back forty.
Moby had a party when he finished selling a license for EVERY SINGLE LAST SONG from his play album. In other words he allowed his music in commercials, movies, tv shows, and other media. To this very day I here his songs in the background of commercials and various shows; however, I have yet to here a single song from his new CD (18) out in the media, radio, or television. Companies just aren't buying it. What makes him think that other people are going to like it more than them. I own both CDs and must say that even though they are similar, Play is MUCH better. He just needs to get a bit of a wakeup call.
Launch magazine is simply reporting on a blog entry from Moby dating back to winter 2002. This blog entry was picked up by Details magazine (where I read it) this spring and discussed here and there since then.
Album sales for Pearl Jam has been hurt (they only sell 1 or 2 million for each record compared to 4 or 5 million) since they refused to play the game and shake their asses on MTV. The tech savvy PJ fans who tape and trade their music (online and off), spark the interest of nascent PJ fans. The more exposure, the more people have an interest in PJ music.
I disagree with Moby that tech-savvy fans are the reason album sales are down. Napster and the ilk are responsible for album sales decline for those people who are marginal purchasers of the music. Why spend $17 on a CD when you're not sure if you like the music or not? It's a better gamble to spend the time on a P2P network and get it that way.
VOTE NADER 2004
This is just more of the same type of industry justification that's been going on in both the movie and music industries. What's really to blame is the boring music, bad plot lines, and all around crap product these folks keep trying to peddle to us. When we don't buy they blame it on piracy. This seems to be very indicative of the culture at large that seems to lack responsibility for oneself.
Moby seems to forget one very important piece of information... Pearl Jam, has for years allowed their fans to bring recording devices into concerts, have often released foreign import albums in this country and have gone out of their way to be an enlightened band. I have all of PJ's albums, some of which I've purchased two or three times. Moby, on the other hand, suffers from little-bald-guy-on-stage-with-a-guitar, "record in my bathroom" laptop-sample-using-techno-rock. To be more accurate, he should have called it the "Moby Effect". If you want to hear any good electronic music, listen to someone like Nine Inch Nails.
My $.02 which is more than I have spent on Moby albums in the last few years...
FLR
Well, I saw a TV ad for Moby's new album the other day. I don't watch much TV, so I don't know if this is common now, but the only TV music ads I remember seeing recently were for Madonna, Yanni, and now Moby.
I think he's just past his prime. And I bet the record labels aren't trying real hard either, especially with all the hip new young talent they have to manufacture and push.
I liked Moby's earlier stuff, but I jumped ship after Everything Is Wrong. There's so much weird and cool stuff out there why stick to the formulaic crap?
I agree with the other posters, this is a bizarre thing for Moby to say. Does he have any proof that people are downloading his music any more than anyone else? Hell, I didn't even bother downloading it, I just don't care about Moby any more, and it's probably the same with most of the music-buying public.
I guess it's an easy thing to say: Hmm, my new album that isn't very good, sounds a lot like my last one, and is being promoted about 1/10 as much as other new albums, and it isn't selling well. MUST BE DEM MP3-TECHNO-SAVVY SONG-SWAPPING MANIACS! Oh yeah, and thanks to Christ, and remember: animals aren't ours to eat, wear, or say bad things about. Peace.
1: Raver kiddies
2: Pretentious pricks such as yourself who believe they are so fucking sophisticated and contrary for listening to "non-mainstream" music.
What part of my original post came off as pretentious to you? I'm certianly not sophisticated either. Just because you only liked the music because you fell for some kind of "contrary" crap doesn't mean that everyone else is like you. Some of us are capable of making up our own minds.
If i were to describe my music tastes it would be "random" not "contrary."
Let's see, top 40 pop and rock, heavy metal, grunge, punk, j-pop, techno, goth, industrial, video game soundtracks, showtunes, and the ocasional bits of country and classical music. Pretty much the only stuff i have a serius dislike for is hiphop and rap. Maybe i'm a music slut. Or maybe i just listen to what i like instead of wasting time worrying about what others will think about it.
About the only pretention i see going on around here is the idea of music being judged by how mainsteam or not it is, and it doesn't seem to be something that _i_ brought up.
So are you still going to be listening to punk rock in a few years, or is it just another "cool" fad for you?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Come on, it was a joke! jeez....
PS *I* even listen to techno!
File sharing makes it impossible to use sales as a metric of music quality, but file sharing isn't going to go away, so P2P networks are a practical reality that musicians intent on making money will have to deal with. Sales matters (whether it be albums, tickets or swag), because it determines the resources available to the people making the music happen. But sales is inconsequential to the P2P debate, file sharing is something that exists in the here and now, and if you're going to treat your art as a business, you need to do the free market thing and go where the money is. When life hands you a lemon, go make lemonade, 'cause bitching about how sour it is doesn't sell very many shiny plastic dics. If he's a victim of a practical reality of modern culture, or specifically the practical reality of selling to a specific subculture, I suggest he change his target audience. If he cannot change because of the artist in him... well, art is the pursuit of self-expression, and it is its own reward. Business is making money. If he can't make his music in such a way that he can profit in the current climate, he's failed at being a salesman of his art. Blaming culture for not wanting to pay you for your art seems backwards.
Yes, P2P probably effects his sales, and it may be in a good or bad way, but he provides us with no way to make an informed decision. This is a hallmark of FUD. His suppositions as to the cause of his lost record sales are not backed up by any numbers. I wonder how many ticket sales and swag sales he's lost too? If it is proportional to the lost sales of he album, I would consider it hard to pin his record's failure on file sharing.
Oh yes, I am a musician too. Shameless plug... if you can't do it shamelessly, then why do it at all?
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
CLUNK scratchscratch I don't scratch think POP vinly quality scratch is quite POP scratch as POP good as scratch CD quality. scratchPOP scratchPOP scratchPOP scratchPOP...
Yeah, cause no one ever used to do this with cassette tapes. Hell, my entire music collection from the 80's was dubbed cassettes.
or possibly:
(-1, http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=humour)
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
After reading this crap I don't think I will ever listen to or buy any more Moby CD's. I am sorry but his latest work just isn't up to the quality of all his others. If he wants to blame it on his loyal fans, then he can go screw off, cause he has LOST me as a listener.
I'm burning dozens of Britney Spears CDs daily.
Move out of your mothers basement and take it easy on the pizza you 70's throwback :)
Moby's latest album isn't that good. It's basically Play, his last album, but different songs. Now, I thought Play was a good album at the time, but after every song on the album was licensed to advertisements, and Moby put out Play: Side B, I got pretty sick of the songs. A lot of what made Play popular was the way he mixed old-school soul together with big beats and new electronica. That gimmick doesn't work twice, but that same kind of sound seems like what he's trying to produce in 18. (FYI: if 18 sounds like it was made in a box, that's because it was - completely created in a windowless small room in his flat - doesn't sound like a fountain of inspiration to me...)
I am a serious electronica fan, and so are many of my friends...if we really like an album, we buy it - mp3 quality is nowhere near CD quality, and DJs buy albums on wax (real ones, anyway). I doubt a lot of clubs/DJs are buying 18 yet, for 1) its quality and 2) he's only released one single (in the States, anyway) that hasn't been doing anywhere near as well as Play's hits (which is important, because that's what he's using for comparison.) Moby is old news (can we say 96?) and no artist should expect guaranteed sales. That kind of super-ego-centric attitude is exactly what doesn't sell albums.
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.
... if he didn't suck. Might read into a Richard James interview, but Moby??
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
And you never know. All that repressed homosexuality may well come to the surface.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
From the comments I'm seeing, it looks like Moby is on the wrong side of the "tech savvy" community. Free access to music can increase sales, but it looks like it can work against an artist who disappoints his fans: if the record sucks, everyone knows it quickly and many do not buy the album.
Sorry Moby, but the days of putting out mediocre records with no backlash are over. You're going to have to work for your sales now.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Moby decides to elaborate in his journal on a brain fart he had about a bit of this and that and everyone misconstrues it as excuse digging for why his album isn't selling well. Puleeze.
I D=833 &ViewType=Current
Actually read the entire journal entry at:
http://www.moby.com/cms/viewdiary.asp?Diary_
Personally, I don't think he was making any sort of mental or implied connection between his current album sales and his theory. And I really don't think he's losing any sleep over current sales numbers considering how much $$$ he's made off of "Play". I'm glad to see an artist take hold of the business side of his art and twist the greed it always seems to involve towards something other than lining his pockets. I hope he continues to "sell out" as so many of you seem to think he has.
Now move on with life. Nothing more to see here.
Gee, I wonder, when I make a free copy of a product, instead of buying it, do you think the people selling it don't get as much money as they would have otherwise?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I can't say I recall ever hearing of the guy. I know a lot of techies, and I've not heard the name mentioned before. That being the case, does this guy really have such a big techie following? What genre is he even in? Must be something I don't listen to, or I'd have probably heard of him.
I have to say that I haven't been buying as many CDs lately as I was a couple of years ago. Reason why? Not because I'm copying them from friends or downloading software from the net... but because the bands I like haven't been putting out much, if any good albums lately. I've also built up a big enough collection over the years that I have back filled most of the old releases in my collection, so I am not buying as many back catalog releases lately either.
If techies compose a fan base which only bootlegs music, will alienating them in a public venue help or hinder the bottom line?
It wasn't too long ago that Gates & Co struck out against unlicensed Microsoft Basic users and barely survived the community backlash.
That's right. Musicians should suck it up and get a real job if they're not making enough money on their music career. (Of course, any *good* musician can easily make more than enough to live on from doing live performances.) And either way, who cares. Writing / playing music is fun. They want us to *pay* them to have fun and live the easy life?! There's something wrong with that picture. Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for compensating folks who dedicate their lives to the arts, but they'd better be producing some really quality work and not just looking to become rich and famous on our dime.
They Might Be Giants are f*cked!
I downloaded both Play and 18 before their release dates. I bought Play, but not 18. Then again, I would purchase it in the future if it grows on me - I've only listened to it three times. I don't feel I've short-changed Moby, either -- I went to a concert, and bought a t-shirt. College students can only spend so much money on one artist...
However, it's fair to say that without cd-copying technology, I would have purchased 18 already. So, I guess it does hurt his sales, no matter how much I might be able to justify it.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
I own the new Moby CD and let's be frank. It just isn't as good as 'Play'. It is good, but it was going to be tough to follow 'Play' with another great album. So lukewarm sales indicate lukewarm reception.
While the unemployment rate of the US population in general is a mere 6%, among techies, unemployment plus underemployment is somewhere between 25% and 35%. Techies are not that big a portion of the whole population. With no disposable cash, of course they won't spend where it can be avoided. Of course there will be many who steal music even if well employed, but many others won't.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
First, let me say I'm not a huge Moby fan. I don't dislike the guy, but I remember when he was a basic rave DJ in the San Francisco area.
Funny that he made his money for so long by mixing records of other peoples' stuff together. Somehow I doubt he paid the appropriate ASCAP or BMI fees. So right off, I have a hard time sympathizing with his complaints about piracy.
But beyond that, isn't it notable that artists with a large fanbase in the tech community blame that fanbase whenever sales slip? Metallica was the first; Moby is just the latest.
My theory is this: Acts like Metallica or Moby build up a cult following over years. By nature, that cult following is largely techies and other folks who don't follow the Christina Spears of the month club. People who actually care about music and are willing to follow smaller bands to get what they want.
At some point, some of these bands go to pot (literally, figuratively, or both). Their later work becomes increasingly detached and less and less like the early work, eventually ending up as a mellowed out, regurgitated pablum made up of bits and pieces of all of their early work, mixed with maybe a few mainstream artists whose stolen sounds might help draw in a few more customers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfans. Fans lose interest and buy less.
And then, as the final stage of intellectual and moral decay, these acts engage in a strange form of denial crossed with egotism crossed with paranoia. "The fans must still love us!" they shout. "We're sure they're still listening to this new crap we put out, but for some reason sales are down. It's those goddamned fans! They must be stealing our crappy new stuff, because after years of paying for our old, quality stuff, they've suddenly become a backstabbing pack of thieves! Yeah, that must be it! Those fans of ours sure do suck!"
Anyways, that's my theory. It would just be sad, if it didn't have the dangerous potential of impacting our legal system.
Cheers
-b
... the fact that he is a no tallent ass clown?
maybe it's because moby is a wanker, and hasn't done anything interesting since 1962.
It doesn't matter how techie or non-techie you are. If you don't appreciate an entertainer, you won't buy his or her cd / dvd. And yes they overcharge consumer for the media. It's about time entertaintment world look for another way to distribute their creations. If musicians and consumer work together, I'm sure music labels can't do much about it.
I bought a lot more CDs now than the ones I bought before I knew Napster, Kazaa, etc. To bad that more than 50% of the money I paid for a CD goes to the person whom doesn't deserve it.
Solong Moby,
- C
This is crap, stop trying to beat around the clear truth. Bands with more tech savvy listeners are getting screwed. Dont give me this "buy an audi instead of a rolls royce" bs. If this trend continues, major music labels are going to support bands and musicians whose supporters are willing to pay up (or unable not to). Because of this, we are killing the music we listen to.
What I recommend is that instead of buying the CD. If you like the band, send the band a check for what they'd get in royalties - a few bucks.
Is taste-savvy-fans, not tech-savvy-fans.
Has anyone else noticed that any time someone has problems, they tend to blame some evil, external agency for their woes?
RIAA does the same thing all the time: they blame the inability of their business model to change with the times on the changing times, rather than the business model.
I realize this is probably not a popular view, but, hey, what can you do: I'm a product of society and my parents, so it's not my fault, right?
-- Terry
Don't blame the internet for your lacking popularaty. And what the hell? Moby. It's not like he's cool anymore. There is alot better electronic music coming out than that.
-makoffee
Moby built his success with Play not by the quality of the music, but through it's excessive use in advertising. Most of the tracks are familiar to anyone who watches TV commercials. It's easy to like an album with familiar songs. 18 hasn't been nearly as much of a "sell-out" album with limited exposure to advertising. Hence, lower sales.
Effectively, Moby is blaming is fan base. Pretty funny.
Maybe, people are taking Eminem's words to heart? hahaha
When will mega artists with sliding sales relaise that they are starting to suck and have lost whatever talent they started with ?
the world may never know
I heard a bunch of songs on Play though P2P. This sold me on the album - I got sowered by music by hearing the same stuff over and over on the radio. Side note: I love hearing other stations calling themselves alternative, you're still Top 40, just a different 40. Napster was great, I bought 3 or 4 albums because of getting stuff from there. Play was one I bought, I had heard of Moby, to be homnest wasn't sure who he was. Downloaded Porcelain and a couple other tunes and I bought the album.
Now I don't consider myself the average downloader, I don't know if I am. Maybe nobody else pays for downloads. Idunno, and I don't think Moby does either.
One possible explanation for 18's lack of success ironically is Play's success. It became Moby's measuring stick. Play was groundbreaking, a bunch of songs that were great. A singular event. A lot of folks bought his next album (18) with expectations of the same groundbreaking record. From what I hear, it's good, not the same. So people bought heavy numbers initially, then word of mouth hit him. Moby may not think of this, or may not want to admit this, but it is a plausible explanation.
I remember Public Enemy and Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black, their 4th album. Their 2nd album (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back) redefined rap. Their 3rd (Fear of a Black Planet) was even better. Apocalypse was well above average for the time, but not up to the standards of the previous too. Instead of being revelled for consistently having above average albums, they were reviled for having substandard (their own high standard). Took years to recover.
That is as usual a FUD (and a bit of trollish news also...)...
Like always... you just hear FuDs from the "Copyright Knights" of the "Round Coin"... of "King Eisner"...
Cheers...
oh yeah i remember seeing it now on the music tores... never caught my eye thought... i might just download it tonite see what all the fuzz is.
The actual problem is that the album is terrible. It's really an embarassment, compared with "Play", which was a masterpiece in my opinion.
A "phony "Goth" poser"? How are they phony? Are they not "real" "Goths"? What's a "real" "Goth" like? Or are they phony posers who aren't really posing?
I like goth music, but other than that and wearing black if i go to a goth club, i don't do any of the "normal" goth stuff. Does that make me a posing phony goth poser phony?
I don't know about the posing phony poser phosy people, but if i go to a goth club it's to have fun. How will giving up on fun stuff save me from a lifetime of misery?
I'm a phony pansy phobic phaser posing phoser pfaucet phonetic posse person, how bout you?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
After recently learning on an Oribtal "Greatest Hits" album, I was delighted. After looking online at all the tracks on the album, I started contemplating buying it. To me, Orbital is a band that had mostly tech- savvy listeners. So I bought the album. $24 later, I am still enjoying the album. (The picture on the inside cover is the best ;-))
- Ambrose
"And Moby, you can get stomped by Obie"
But isn't Moby one of these 'artists' that samples music from other musicians? He gets riffs and melodies from famous musics, mix with computer generated sound effects, and call it a work of his own?
He may have addressed the issue with a soft approach, by making a fairy tale that technology is hurting his sales. But where would he been if he couldn't use this same techniques? Looks like he's more egocentric than I've previouly thought.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
I get more results searching for Britney Spears on Edonkey than searching Moby.
And I'd say ed2k users are more tech-savvy than say, Napster's were.
Nobody likes being called a thief. Nobody likes having their freedom threatened. Nobody who's been paying attention likes the RIAA. More than most people, geems are paying attention.
Now, Moby is a major-label band. I won't buy major-label music at this point. I just don't want it that much, not enough to sponsor a major label. Now, I know that most geeks don't feel as strongly, but they don't need to. If the requirenment for buying an album changes from "is it good enough for me to fork over $10 to some pretty cool people" to "is it good enough for me to fork over $10 to some pretty evil people", that's going to effect sales. Probably for a lot of people, a lot of albums fall in between those two standards.
The RIAA has been figuring they needn't fear the wrath of geeks. Maybe they're starting to be wrong?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
What I don't understand is why Moby and every other major music artist is focused on album sales.
I realize this is "easy money" when compared to actually going out and *playing* thier music, but I would gladly pay to see Moby live. Yet thier tour this summer involves all of 8 stops, getting no closer to Omaha than Chicago and Denver!
How did musicians earn a living before recording albums? Playing it to audiences! Technology gives and technology takes away.
So now artists need to go back to the old model to make money. Boo hoo. I have to work to get paid too.
And as result may spend more on the disks. PFYs working at fast food joints, are less likely to have money to spend on CDs.
p.
I think what we're doing is not putting our FAVORITE bands in the lurch. We BUY those CDs religiously.
It's the mediocre ones and the ones we don't care about that we dl with no regrets.
I own the new Vapor Trails CD by Rush, but I forgot it at work. Do I drive 30 miles to pick it up or dl and burn a new one?
I drove. It makes me sick to download stuff I really like.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
The new Rush album came out the same day as Moby's.
Sales have been horrible.
Rush, traditionally, cater to techie fans.
So like Moby, Rush has either begun to suck or all their 'loyal' fans are getting Vapor Trails from p2p.
If P2P sharing hurts sales, why did Eminem's new CD do so well? Wasn't the release of it pushed up because of P2P sharing? Maybe bands should get a clue, give the listeners additional reason to buy their CD. Eminem had a limited edition DVD, the Beatles did it way back with a poster in some of their LPs. Either that or maybe it is just that Moby's latest isn't nearly as good as his earlier stuff. Weezer on the other hand didn't do the greatest job of marketing their new album. Too bad, its a good one.
if i had the points i'd do it myself.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
First off, I haven't heard anything too impressive from this CD yet. One song that is alright, but I want to hear a hell of a lot more before I buy it. And I haven't downloaded any mp3s off the net.
Secondly, CD sales will continue to drop, as long as we have p2p file sharing networks and CD burners. But is this a bad thing? How many of us blew cash on a CD for one or two songs, just becasue CD's are priced at $24 or whatever they are in your part of the world, doesn't mean that is what they should always be. CD prices are overblown at the moment, face it, we've been getting ripped off. Finally we have the ability to easily test the waters first, make informed decisions and then spend that hard earned cash supporting an artist we are really impressed with and who deserves it. I support the art/music I like, otherwise bye, bye art/music I like. That won't change. But I'm sick of paying too much for a half-assed, so-so CD because I have to. When CD prices drop to what they should be, sales will go up again, If I can buy a new CD for under $10 dollars I'll be more likely to just take a leap of faith(as I do sometimes in used CD's), but not now. Revenue may not go up to what it was, but revenue for record labels have been way too high for too long anyway.
What I read into his statements is that all he cares about are sales.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
i dont hate Moby. i like moby. i have play and 18. i even like 18. but its not as good as play. a little math equation since i am such a geek: s1/q1=s2/q2 where s is the amount of sales and q is the quality of the cd and the subs represent different cds. make better music, get more $$$.
btw...i saw the music video for "we are all made off stars" on mtv, liked the song so much i dled the mp3, liked the mp3 so much that i bought the cd. if it wasn't for file sharing, i wouldn't have bought the cd. so personally i think you're wrong moby...
At some point in my life, I used to believe that musicians actually sang and wrote songs as a musician and not a businessman. I guess the measly twenty mill. moby takes in is no longer sufficient to sustain his livelihood. It probably cramps his style since it'll be a little harder for him to afford those shoes with the diamond studs underneath.
No wait, the RIAA has taken it all, the record companies, and every other middle-man is bitching through Moby...
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
Could it possibly be that if they appeal to tech savvy fans (and not others, else the figures would be similar to "normal" bands PLUS the techie sales) ...
...
...
... that maybe, just maybe, they appeal to a smaller audience
Statistics lie. Statisticians lie damn well. Actuaries know where the bodies are
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
>I've told all of my friends not to buy it.
;-).
Same here.
I *do* buy CD's I've heard and know I'll enjoy listening to (end to end, not for some stupid single).
Moby's "Play" was one of those must-buy CD's... it had a nice groove start to end, while "18" has *one* good track.
Now, perhaps "18" will bring Moby some new fans. Or maybe he just wanted to experiment (good for him)... but I just don't like the new album. It's far too melow and slow.
PS -- It's *completely* unfair to label "techies" as CD copy fiends. It seems the last time I checked, the #1 CD on cddb.com was Eminem... that's *hardly* music for the "techie crowd" (I'll resist the opening to label the Eminem crowd
I thought it was the other way around: the public wanted another Ten, but got "Not for You" and the aforementioned politics. When it comes to a platinum album, most fans don't want a radically different sequel. This is a band we're talking about, not Picasso.
Tech-savy people have non media controlled tastes. Make good music and someone might buy your crap.
So, I guess this means that Neal Diamond will be the top seller in a few years.
I don't think tech-savvy persons are more *or* less likely
to pirate music. I think the two traits are orthogonal.
Personally, I don't pirate music, but I also don't buy
this guy's stuff, because it's entirely out of genre for
me.
I almost never listen to 20th century music, except for the
occasional Yankovic or Shickele, or a little polyphonic
(non-monodic) a capella stuff, or stuff other people select
and play when I happen to be present. Mostly given the
choice I listen to baroque (especially late baroque), and
sometimes a little romantic (in the traditional sense;
Chopin or whatnot), or _occasionally_ some of the better
classical (I'm not into Mozart; Dvorak is pretty cool
though). I tire of monody (one lead melody part with
support from parts written around it) quickly and have a
marked preference for real polyphony (interwoven separate
but equal parts designed to go together) or fugue. So
as you can imagine I have no motivation to pirate anything
produced by Perl Jam.
Now, I'm not suggesting that tech savvy people are
unlikely to listen to modern music. What I am going
to suggest is that tech-savvy users have very specific
ideas about what music they like and will pay for, and
are less likely to buy an album just because it is
produced by a popular group, even a group that has
formerly produced albums they like. Part of what
makes a geek geeky is that he gets adamant about
small things other people don't seem to care about.
A geek will refuse to pay for something he does not
want, on principle, even if it's considered fashionable
outside of geek circles. (Unless it's a technical
gizmo he can mess with and reprogram, in which case
some geeks will crawl naked over a field of glass
caltrops to buy it, but nevermind; music does not
fit that category.) But I don't think geeks exhibit
a marked tendency to pirate, or not to pirate, any
more than the rest of the population at large.
Now, people who listen to baroque are probably less
likely to pirate music illegally than people who listen
to modern music, but that's a different matter. (Think
in terms of, lesse, 2002 less seventy is 1932... The
artist would have to be, err, 180 years old or so. Yes,
the performances are copyrighted, but the lack of composer
royalties drives the prices down a LOT. Plus, the
ecconomy of scale is quite significant for some of it.
Bach for example probably sells more albums every year
than this Moby guy has sold in his life (though perhaps
not more _dollars_ worth of albums).)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Why does Moby believe his fans are copying his CD? The article doesn't really say, just that his CD isn't selling well so he immediately assumes people are copying it instead of buying it.
Is this the new excuse for the 21st century? My CD/software/picture/magazine/etc isn't selling sell, people must be copying it? Course it couldn't be Moby's fault and that the CD sucks, could it?
(Preamble...
Moby has a good point, and I am curious to see if the industry will realize they are strangling themselves. The RIAA is the only monoply know, with no competitors, that cannot seem to maintain itself (if you believe their press releases). With that said, here are my knee jerk reactions. (I'm glad I have a place to occasionally jerk my knee.))
Well, of course, any time you can't make sales, it's obviously the fault your fans. It couldn't have anything to do with bloated CD prices. It definately couldn't have anything to do with putting out a albumn that sux. After all, every group just keeps putting out hit after hit. Look at Vanilla Ice or Milli Vanilli. There's no way you could just be a passing fad. Nothing new and refreshing could ever come up and take away your sales.
On a more down to earth note...
I like Moby, a lot. However, I have never owned any of his music, nor have I ever used, copied, listened to or had in my possession any "pirated" or "illegal copies" of his music.
Basically I started boycotting buying new CD's years ago.
First, it was because I was in college and had to pay rent and eat. I couldn't aford to buy a new $16 CD every week or to. (I wanted about 20 a week.) Even now, with a good job, I have more important things to blow $16 on. Drop the price to $10 and I'll consider buying again.
Second, until the control freaks in the music industry get their shit together, stop whining, and listen to the people who support them, I have decided NOT to support them.
Up until a few days ago, I mostly listened to streaming audio. CARP killed the stations I listen to on June 20, 2002. I discovered many artists on these stations. I have a list of about 100 CDs I want to buy (again, once the record company lightens up). Occasionally, I'll break down and go to the used CD shop and buy a couple to tide(sp?) me over for while.
Napster was cool. However, it required too much time and energy to get something that wasn't always up to par. (Ghee, it's sure be worth my while if I could go to the local record shop and buy theses CDs for $9.95.) Besides, 99% of the stuff I got off Napster was stuff I already owned. This, I think, must have been because that was all I could think of while sitting at the computer. Because Napster was too much work for me (sue me, I'm lazy), I haven't even bothered with any of the others (that, and I DON'T LIKE AD/SPYWARE).
In summary...
Lars, RIAA, MPAA, etc., would you please take too steps back and too steps to the side and look at what you are. You're big, powerful and influencial. You are also very EGOtistical and GREEDy. You do very well where you are....Why must you have more???
Note to self:
boy, when i ramble, my spelling sure goes to hell. I wonder how many mistakes i didn't catch.
If I recall, it wasn't more than a few weeks ago that he released his album early because it was leaked onto the internet. One would assume this would kill sales, right? WRONG. He still made it to #1 with no problem.
Hell Eminem even use to promote downloading mp3s in his music and he's STILL selling like hotcakes.
I think Moby just needs to write better CDs instead of blaming everyone else.
hey now that i think about it, i kinda like that 'stars' song moby does, but not enough to get bent by spending like 16 bucks on it... i'll download it, and if i like anything else he does i'll definately see his show when he comes to town. thats the way artist make the real money, isn't it? record sales profits are for the label, and the artists ego.
Am I the only one waiting for Mr. Hall (aka Moby) to make an appearance on Slashdot in his defence, as per his participation in the "Moby sucks because he uses DAT backup for his live shows" on USENET in 1993. (has it been that long? /me checks watch)
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Nice way to eat ones cake and have it too. If I boycott CD music to show my displeasure with RIAA thuggery, they turn it around and blame the sale loss on P2P. Cute.
I decided to check up on Moby's assertion that he is being swapped more than Pink by P2P. After filtering out things like Pink Floyd and Moby Grape I actually found MORE copies of Pink songs than Moby's on Gnutella. My horizon was ~20 Terabytes and I averaged ~200 Moby files as opposed to over 300 Pink files. How many more albums does Moby vs. Pink anyway? 5x? 10x? God I hate whiners!!!
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
Moby used to be marginally interesting, experimenting with different styles and tending to go against the grain. However, since the massive commercial success of Play (which wasn't even that great to begin with), Moby seems to have found what he thinks is a winning (or at least very lucrative) formula worth milking for awhile... and so the new album is an unimaginative rip-off of Play, in every respect.
Perhaps it's not so much a case of having a 'tech-savvy' fanbase as it is having a 'music-savvy' fanbase.
I know I have 2x10^3 more mp3's than my least tech-savvy friend. He's got tons of CD's and DVD's tho -vs- my mp3's and divix files.
Some could say the reverse. That free promotion and distribution across the net benefits upcoming artists. In fact this article from Wired makes a case.
Nobody listens to techno anymore. Moby's recent album may in fact no be as good as he believes it to be.
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
You can be sure that Moby has been told this by various people in the music industry, probably over and over again. I think P2P music trading is a good thing, but unfortunately musicians are stuck in this awful recording industry system. All artists/bands should get compensated for performances rather than record sales or radio play, and it kinda works like that. It's the labels that make(steal) most of the profit from record sales and residuals. Perhaps the artists' are also not getting enough from t-shirts, posters and other merchandise. But there's not really much they can do about it. I can wait till the major labels go bankrupt- We might as well encourage it.
Thriller sold over 50 million copies dumbass...
Ten was Peal Jam's best effort ever, and all the albums rank higher and higher on the suck-o-meter.
Play is the same way. It's a breakout album that was perfect, and 18 is a copy of it. Plus I purchased another Moby' album from his earlier work in an effort to listen to more of his music and found that it was low on the scale of good music.
I have 40GB of MP3s at my home. They are all of the CDs that I purchase. I buy music I like. After previewing pieces of it on CDNOW.com it went into the 'OK if I get it as a gift but I'm not buying it' list.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
"18" is so bad I would return it if I could.
Bill
bamph
IT could be that people just do not like his album 18 as much as his previous ones.
Then how do you explain Emineim's recent sales? His album was being bootlegged before it was even released. By your logic the number one selling album should be Richard Simmons Sweating to the Oldies.
From a recent Wired article: That was the masterstroke in marketing Play - the licensing of all 18 of its tracks, from the technofied down-home blues "Honey" to the muted rock anthem "South Side," for use in advertisements, TV programs, and movies. Moby offers a soft-focus view of how this all happened. "That was just, like, taking advantage of an opportunity," he says. "There was no strategy involved. They called us up and said, 'Can we use your song in this commercial?'"
Moby's managers, Marci Weber and Barry Taylor, offer a decidedly different account. Even before the release of Play, with its record-setting run of commercially licensed songs, Weber says the strategy was core to the Organization. In 1996, for instance, they received reports that Moby's atmospheric "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters," which sustained the climactic scene in Michael Mann's Heat, had made an enormous impression on the film-music community. So during that year's Slamdance film festival, Weber and Taylor "invited every music supervisor in Hollywood" to a party to increase their client's visibility. "We put on this free show, big dinner, all that."
You didn't sell because:
a) your machine wasn't working as hard. and...
From the same article: There's no getting around it: 18 sounds, almost track for track, like Play. It even has the sampled gospel vocals - though in place of the earlier disc's rusticated "Ooh, Lawdys," 18 features more urbane, sexy-sounding shout-outs to the Almighty. Moby insists the echoes are essentially coincidence. "I want to make a good record," he says. "And if it means it has songs similar to things on Play, fine."
b) people already bought your album the first time.
I went out an bought entire catalogs of music, I don't trust anybody to rip the music better than I can.
A.G. Russell IV Extreme Internet Solutions The wonderful thing about standards . there are so many to choose from! "W
01010000011100100110010101110100011101000111100100 10000001110000011011000110010101100001011100110110 01010010110000100000011101110110100101110100011010 00001000000111001101110101011001110110000101110010 00100000011011110110111000100000011101000110111101 11000000101100001000000110001101101100011001010110 00010110111000100000011011010111100100100000011001 10011101010110001101101011011010010110111001100111 00100000011001000110100101100011011010110010111000 10000001000110011101010110110001101100001000000110 00100110000101101100011011000111011101100001011100 11011010000010110000100000011101000110111101101111 00101110001000000101010001101000011000010110111001 101011011100110010111000000000
Writers imply. Readers infer.
The issue is: Although his last Cd ("Play") was new, different, interesting, etc., "18" just sounds like the tracks that he didn't have room to fit on "Play". Maybe if he could do something original again, he might have better sales.
Has anyone considered that it's a bit of both? I.E. It sucks, and is suffering from "The Pearl Jam Effect"....Anyone?
When it comes to debating/arguing/deciding something. Only a fool assumes everything is black or white. /.
But then again, this is
and woulda, except i can't bring myself to spend 20 bucks on something I can have for free.
Sux0rs to be a musician in this day, instead of miserably failing at preventing copying, perhaps the industry has to adapt to meet the changing market. Theres a thought. Don't ask me how; no idea.
Bob
"Failure of Windows operating systems is extremely rare. If it happens, it is usually due to operating system file c
I think 90% of the posts are way off-track here. If you actually read the article you could see that Moby isn't saying a great deal about piracy and such. If you think about it, artists do NOT make that much money off of album sales, believe it or not. Most of the money comes from touring and advertising and such. If anything, file sharing networks and well .. piracy HELPS the artists become known to a much wider array of people than any other venue. There are arguments out the yin-yang about record companies losing money, blah blah blah. Maybe I'm the only person that would actually enjoy being a musical artist for the music, a couple million dollars difference here and there shouldn't matter that much, should it?
---End of Rambling
An adaptation of this should be part of some "P2P" boilerplate FAQ that gets posted at the top of every such article with "READ THIS FIRST" in big letters.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
18 just isn't a good record. Perhaps all of the poor record sales for the major record releases is because they suck.
z(p)
is that it enables people to hear more than the one or two good songs on the album that get radio play without purchasing the entire CD to find that it sucks. I remember before P2P I'd occasionally hear songs on the radio and visit a friend who had the CD (i never had the money in those days to buy them, so i listened at my friends' houses, not burning or taping them as the record companies would have you think). And I seem to recall more often than I care to having liked one song that got radio play and not liking the rest of the CD. This P2P issue is the same. If people can hear the songs before buying (like you can with almost any other media, i.e. seeing a movie on free HBO or in the theater before buying it), and you only have one good song on an album, this is what happens. Sorry to be redundant, but moby, your latest isn't your greatest. I'll put my money somewhere else. (and no, I don't have Moby MP3s or even any P2P software, either)
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
i think moby's right about the techie bit... .. i'll buy the actual cd.... one because i need to clear off some of my mp3s on my hard drive to make room for more, second just to have the cd, & third to say kinda "thanks for making good music" by paying for it
though i don't know if i'd call some of the people i've seen use p2p file sharing "tech savvy"
personally i bought the album right off since i've loved everything i've ever heard from the guy... i'm not disappointed w/ my purchase. ((though this album is quite similar to the last & does not into a new genre like many of his previous albums have))
usually if i really like an artist i have mp3s of
but that's just me
He made some of the coolest techno music ever - Next is the E, Go, etc., etc., etc. Ever since leaving that behind his music has gotten blander and more boring.
The RIAA will just go on blaming the poor sales of '18' on mp3 sharing. Never minding that that this is Moby's worst album yet. Why find, produce and promote good music? Just hire a well known artist to crank out some drivel whilst passing a movement on the pot.
I've been listening to Moby since long before 'Play' made him a household name and got him his own show on MTV. IMHO '18' is boring tripe compared to 'Play', which was a pretty steep drop in overall quality to begin with.
Stuart Kahler
Yes, technologies such as P2P and CDR play a large role in someone's ability to retrieve music for listening.
But, although Music Industry Execs (and their bretheren) decry such things, Record Sales were higher last year than ever before. And it's a continuous rise.
People like me download all their music. Why, because I don't have money to spend on CD's, especially when a disk that cost $10-12(US) 2 years ago is now $16+(US). Pardon my french but f**k that!
I'll download, and people will pay, and Industry Executives will still have their billions of dollars each. It's not a fair game from our point of view, not theres. And it won't change.
It seems that Moby wants to pin the blame on technology and not himself or his company. I didn't even know Moby had a new CD and couldn't care less. Yes, I bought (after downloading mp3s) 'Play'. I haven't heard anything new of his on the radio. Whos fault is this? Moby for making a CD which isn't good enough so that he can sell the rights to every song or the record company for doing a crappy job of advertising it? OH NO!!! It's the techies fault! I mean, with napster and audiogalaxy gone they MUST have downloaded his music.
I don't care if his new CD is as good as the last one, I don't care in hearing it and won't miss it. I guess thats a 'techies' fault and not his for actually making the CD
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
I'm really disappointed to read this from Moby because it'll get quoted all over the place by RIAA and I really don't think it's true. First week sales for bands with semi cult followings like Weezer and Moby are ALWAYS dramaticly better than week two, three, etc... because that rabid core of fans is lined up waiting for that album to hit the streets. Moby and Weezer are not radio driven artists. Hell, Moby and his manager go out of their way to point out that "Play" sold like ten million copies and they NEVER released a single to radio. It was advertised almost striclty through song licensing and word of mouth. An artist like Pink makes pop albums for teenagers that watch MTV and listen to top 20 radio. Pink is an EXTREMELY hit driven artist. If she released an album and not one single they released was able to crack the top ten, bye bye Pink. The Weezers fo the world and the Pinks of the world are sold to two totally different demographics (generally speaking). I have yet to see any evidence that Napster and CD burners have dented the music business. I've read more to indicate that, like audio cassette dubbing, they've probably done more to help spur sales than hinder them.
Just once, I would like to read an article quoting a music industry executive like this: "Well, we were really expecting Artist X's follow up to their last hit album to sell really well, but it got our on Grokster where tons of folks downloaded it prior to the release day. When they got an early listen to it, they decided that it sucked and stayed away from the record stores in droves." That scenario is more likely closer to the truth than the "digital piracy is eating our CD sales" theory.
Chris
I think everyone has forgotten the single most imprtant thing.
When was the last time anyone in the music industry said "My Newest CD just isn't as good as my older one, so it hasn't sold as many copies." ?? Huh?
This is so fucking hilarious to me, that it's been YEARS since I've ever heard anyone from the music industry talk about the QUALITY of an album.
People saw Metallica sue Napster, and everyone got their own scapegoat. Nobody ever again has to consider anything like personal responsiblity. IT'S ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT!
Screw you all! I'm gonna go download some Johnny Cash songs now.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Funny to see this one week after I bought his 18 album because I liked the mp3s.
There are always many options that do not involve even the implication of piracy. Take for instance classical music. Bach has been dead 550+ years and does not give a rats ass if you copy his music, in fact he did not give a rats ass when he was alive :) Most of the symphonies that preform this music are not looking to make huge returns off of cd sales, because the market is not there. Furthermore, most of the companies that produce these cds are german anyway. Seriously, an analysis of the sound quickly indicates that classical is more 'music' than other forms of sound produced by human beings for listening pleasure. Most music today is white noise! Lets see the RIAA start calling themselves propigators of white noise instead of the structured sound we call music. Just dont tell moby.... that type of unpopular opinion will probably make the whiney bastard shit his pants. Is that what you want: A SHITTING MOBY!
It is ALL packaging. Moby. Eminem. Metallica. The Rolling Stones. The Beatles. Elvis. It is the fame machine. Ars gratia artis (art for art's sake) ended with the emergence of recorded music. It has been marketing ever since. It continues to amaze me that people think they have taste in music! Music tastes are a manufactured product. Sure, your personal feeling enter into it somewhat, but the music you know, the music of your parents that you hate (and the music of your parent's that you like -- admit it, there is some!), your whole "palette" from which new music is pulled and sold is a manufactured product.
I've always despised the talk about "That's commercial," "That's just pop," and my personal favorite "He/She/They sold out!" Come on! It was all sold before you ever heard it. "All you Need is Love" my ass! Money! Money! Money! Moby! Money!
If RIAA doesn't want to see sales going down, all it's needed is increase quality and lower prizes. C'mon, recently there are no good albuns starring around.
RIAA must realize two things.
By adapting itself to the reality I'm sure that there won't be bad results for any album ever launched.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
The geek crowd is many things, but one defining characteristic, atleast for me is, geek think for themselves and tend to change their preferences more frequently than say the 12-20 age group. Some one who loves britnet will probably like britney for a long time. Some one who likes Moby or pearl jam isn't necessarily a geek, but a geek who likes pearl jam is more likely to bag an artist once they are main stream.
Everyone loves new things, but geeks are more likely to use P2P, which a higher turn over rate in the geek segment of consumers.
Is this bad? Is it good? Who the hell cares. This is what happens and no amount of bitching by Moby or metallica is going to change how the geek segment makes purchases. A typical teen (if it really exists) buys what MTV peddles, because the need to fit in is greater than some one in their 30's or 40's. How about look at all the other artists who have had their 15 minutes of fame. Then look at all the artists that have lasted more than 2 decades. Moby needs to re-invent his ass and do something new. Look at david bowie, who has had a career spanning 4 decades.
Grow up Moby and stop your bitching. This is the perfect inspiration to reinvent yourself. Mod me down if you like, but the post is really a story about Moby (who is really smart and talented) being lazy and stuck artistically.
I am a big fan of an electro-industrial group called Project Pitchfork. I originally discovered them from a Shoutcast stream in December 2000. I bought my first CD from them (EonEon) in April of 2001. At the end of last year I had 5 of their CDs. Now I have every one of the albums they have released (8) plus the rare Live '97 CD and The Early Years CD. I have an additional 4 CDs on order. Why did I start buying this many CDs from a single group? I kept downloading MP3s from them and liked them enough to keep buying their albums. The next closest in the amount of CDs I own from a single group is VNV Nation. I own 4 CDs from them (3 albums and one MCD). I discovered them at the same time I discovered Project Pitchfork. Ever since that time I have been on a rapidly increasing CD-buying frenzy. I discover a lot of music I like from either Shoutcast and/or MP3-sharing programs and if I really like it I'll buy the CDs.
Has anyone even questioned where Moby got this information from? I have yet to hear how he determined that there are more tech savvy people buying his music now than before. Has he been having surveys filled out bye everyone buying the CD? Despite whether his new album is good or bad he can't just make a comment like that without any backing.
Wasn't there an opposite article on Weezer regarding platinum sales even though they release most songs via mp3 on their site? Mody is a bright guy, but perception doesn't always jibe with numbers.
Personally, the "Pearl Jam effect" came from them making the same album three times. Though I grudgingly admit respect for Vedder's stance on arena ticket sales surcharges.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I have absolutly no problem with paying the artist directly for thier work. But when you consider that most artists make and average of 7 cents per cd sold, that averages about a half a cent per song (on average).
Tell Moby that I have his penny for the two songs that I have downloaded. Just send me a self addressed stamped envelope to mail in my payment.
could it be that the album sucked? Naa..couldn't be that could it.
sheesh..talk about stroking yourself.
OK. I actually bought 18 because I dug play.
I ripped it and had it on my machine at work. I also lent the cd to a coworker.
No one really dug on it too much. Including me (except for the first track...sorry, moby). I've removed it because of hard disk limitations and no one's complained. (and no one has copied it AFAIK.)
On another note, moby's comment ultimately revolves about how artists are judged. Movie and musicians now are totally judged on what they deliver financially..if someone has a 'miss' (i.e. low-selling album) they're immediately candidate for the 'has been' bin.
Well, it's been said, but I'll say it again. Maybe if the first single off of the new record wasn't titled We're All Made of Start then maybe people would buy it. Sounds to me like he's trying to make excuses to his label why his album isn't selling. I've actually heard a few other cuts from the new record on RadioParadise that made me want to buy the record in spite of the first single. Well, after this nonsense, no more.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
...nobody listens to techno.
When it was easy to download music I never burned anything. I'd grab half a dozen albums, get hooked on one or two, run out and buy them, dump the rest. In those days many of us viewed with distaste the idea of having an mp3 collection *instead* of a record collection. I spent much more on entertainment than I should have because of Napster.
Today it is increasingly a royal pain in the ass to download music. I know who's responsible, I know who stood by and did nothing, I've heard and rejected the trite Fat Cats Versus Starving Artists arguments, and I am not alone.
I don't buy many records anymore, nor do I often bother trying to download music. What was once exciting has become ugly and boring and not worth it. Especially, the music being recorded lately - by corporate and independent artists alike - is less worth the trouble than it has been in my lifetime. I took an interest in Moby's album because it represented a rare exception to that trend, and because I didn't have to pull teeth to hear the damned thing first - but I only *purchased* it because the guy doesn't have a chip on his shoulder over piracy.
I will never pay the piracy crybabies for their work again and have finished entertaining arguments that I ought to. Again, I am not alone.
His Pearl Jam theory sucks, of course, but it's worth repeating that the Launch article was taken from informal, rambling blog musings for fan consumption.
What's Eminem's beef with Moby anyway?
c-hack.com |
I have the deepest respect for bands that allow taping. A band like Bag: Theory, which plays completely improvised jam music really NEEDS people in the audience with their DAT decks and mini-disks because that music just evaporates into the air after it's played. I know that's an extreme example, but it works for a lot of other "jam" kind of bands.
It's ironic, but Metallica used to have a "tapers" section at their shows. This was well before Lars started spouting about how he was being ripped off by Napster. Hypocrites.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The day an artist stops being an artist and becomes a sell-out is the day they start to write summaries why their albums arent on the charts. Really, how many true artists give one flying sh*t where their album stands on the national charts? Not very many. Sure, they love to get paid, but to most, even thinking about caring why their album is going up and down on charts doesnt even cross their minds. They're too bust writing music to worry about it. Moby needs to go away now. He's sold out and it's too late to save him.
I rip Moby's songs off of all the commercials he sells them to.
Years ago when people (everyday people, not just vinyl freaks) bought LPs, they weren't just getting a recording of the music but a gatefold cover with lyrics, photos, artwork and often even a message from the band or producers. The packaging was something you could look at while listening to the music, carry around with you and show to friends or stick up on the wall if you liked. This made it worth buying the record even if the quality didn't seem much better than a bootlegged tape.
How many CDs are now distributed like this? Looking through my collection around half of them have a 5" square picture on the front, another on the back and NOTHING -- no lyrics, no discography and if you want to know so much as when the songs were published and who collaborated on which tracks, you'd better be good at reading small type over lousy colour print!
Personally I feel somewhat cheated when I buy a CD and recieve nothing but the music. For my $20 I want to know a bit more about the artist, or at least about the production of the album I am buying.
that the album sucks or that all their "tech-savvy fans" are just out of work. The economy sucks! don't expect me to feel sorry for muli-millionaire recording artists while allot of my friends are having a hard time paying their mortgage or even buying groceries.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
ummm has anybody thought that nobody likes moby, and maybe he sucks???? this is how eminem can get away with making cracks on moby, have his album pirated weeks in advance of release, and still have the #1 album in the country???
Here's Moby's original journal entry that started it all.
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
Why would i buy the album when Moby will sell every track to every tv/radio/sound track/elevator musak company out there?
It's called being over exposed...
Weezer rocks, PJ rocks, neither will ever get dumped by their record companies for small sales figures. I personally own every one of their albums (except for the 1million live PJs), because they have good songs and I like the artists.
I did buy "Play" and it was a mistake, because Moby over commercialized the album and now i hate hearing those songs, they remind me of television commercials and who needs more of those in their life? Moby himself ruined his last album, and I have no confidence that he won't do it again, so I haven't and won't buy his new one. I hope he has done well for himself, because I don't want to see his label (V2) fuck up the White Stripes, who deserve all the acclaim and sales of any band out there at the moment, the way he was screwed up his own music.
So to sum up, move over Moby and if you lay a finger on the White Stripes may Osama find you first!
Check what MOBY has to say about Triumph and speaking of which, isn't 'triumph the insult comic dog' one of the best things about being alive in the 21st century? i would like to have a 'triumphs greatest hits dvd' that would cheer me up when things are bleak. maybe i'll try to convince the man to get me a bootlegged copy of 'triumphs greatest hits' i love that little insult comic dog. moby So, dont copy my CD, don't share mp3's of my music, but hey gimme some bootlegs! Yeah!
I think it isn't a case of lots of "techo-savvy" fans burning and copying instead of going out to buy the cd. It's a case of people like me who refuse to buy any new music, because I want to buy the MUSIC, not the stupid distribution media. The RIAA wants me to buy the physical media and be stuck with that, so I'll have to buy it again when blue-laser cd's are out, and again when crystal hologram storage comes out, and again when RNA-enhanced neurons come out. Sorry, I have about 400 cd's that mostly collect dust now that their contents exist on a file-server on my LAN. I don't plan to go back to the days of swapping discs every 35 minutes just because some pointy-haired business exec can't give up the old ways.
Let me download a good-quality 256k-bit mp3 or ogg directly from the publisher and I'll happily pay $1 a song. Until then, I have my collection, alternative music through non-RIAA sources, and the radio.
Has not this dude realized techno sucks. The only reason he got big was from the tech world downloading his crap. I like any kind of music but that is not music. Techno Sucks.
"""SLAYER"""
i download a ton of music. but i end up paying for the cds of artists that i think are deserving of the support, mosting independent and smaller names that i would like see put out more music.
"I described the 'Pearl Jam Effect' as being a phenomenon wherein bands who have very technically savvy fans"
-Moby, Launch
If I was a fan, I would be offended by his allegations. Then again his argument is pretty weak by his assumptions.
And I thought Moby was a smart, intellectual type. That was my stereotype of him, until now.
I have owned everything Moby at one point or another, minus 18.
Sucky Moby release = Fewer Sales
The only Moby CD that I still have is the 1992 Moby title release, all techno. None of his other releases really come to be anything like it was. Moby went through fundamental change several times with different releases until Play was releasedm which was noticed by the popular music listeners. Play was indeed mostly good, with a few tracks reminiscent of the sounds of releases like Everything Is Wrong and Early Ambient, but also new stuff that was smart and had a great sound.
It may be that there were fewer sales for this release because people were able to sample it before they actually bought the CD. What they found out was that nothing in the new release was to their liking, much like I did. It sucked.
Moby went from being and Early Undergrounder to being a Pop Play-er. This has changed his audience scene dramatically. If he wants to maintain that popularity, he is going to have to come to the conclusion that other artists make -- he will have to whore himself out and move with the audience, trying to keep himself in their face. Otherwise they will just move on to something else, like the way people forgot about Ticke Me Elmo, Tamagotchi, Cabbage Patch kids, and those damn Pogo-Ball things.
Moby should be very thankful for the sales that he has had and had better keep in mind that he too can pull an M.C. Hammer. Top of the charts can be bankrupt and forgotten in a short time. If he wants to be true to his own nature, then that is fine. What has he to complain about? If he wants to be a pop whore, then he failed this time around because his last release, 18, failed to capture the attention of either the popular audience or the underground-techno audience. He is complaining because that release was not for himself. Or at least not for something other than his pocketbook.
Back to that lone Moby CD in my carrying case. It has a place along with my Orb, Tetsu Inoue, collection. I kept it because it because I liked it. The same reason that I bought it. The reason that I bought other Moby CDs is because I had heard them on places like Netradio.com and SomaFM Drone Zone (R.I.P). I will not waste my money on guessing about what CDs are good, and I will not waste my time to go into a CD shop and put the greasy headphones on. I sample my music online. I had no interest in any music before it's devellopment of being shared within the online world.
I downloaded some songs from Play and liked it, so I bought the CD. When 18 came out I did not even have a chance to download songs to "try before you buy" and just went out and bought the album.
Maybe a lot of techie's like the try before you buy aspect. But I'd be willing to bet that most people fall into the same boat as me: download it, if you like it buy it, if not, move on. I bought 18 on the merits of Play. I was dissapointed. 18, IMHO, is terrible. But that's just my opinion.
Maybe most people agree with me, and that's why Moby's 18 isn't selling. Write good music and people will buy it. I don't buy into the idea that downloading / copying your friends is really hurting CD sales.
We've been down this road too many times before and all studies have pointed to the obvious: on the whole, downloading music has helped CD sales, not hurt them.
Moby, this is a bad excuse for a badly written CD!
....it's the Eminem effect: "Nobody listen's to techno, Moby you can get stomped by Obie you 36 year old wannabe" --or something to that effect. Eminem gives him a pretty decent thrashing after Moby talked some trash, and who's making up excues now, and who's selling a shitload of records? hhmmm.... ;)
I saw the MTV video. I bought the album.
Nuff said.
If you had all downloaded the pre-release of Eminem's new album, you'd know "nobody listens to Techno."
- too lazy to reg
- MobileBadBoy
The record companies are in the business of being a middle man (which we no longer need) and controlling what the radio will play.
Most bands make most of their money doing concrets. Non-platinum bands are almost always in debt to the record companies.
If you want to support your favorite bands go to concerts. They cost less than two CD's do.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Are "tech-savvy" people really the problem? Just about anybody can copy cds these days. My (very limited) experiance is that most of the people who copy cds a lot are not "tech-savvy" at all. In fact, "tech-savvy" people might be slightly more likely to understand the issues involved and not copy cds at all.
:-)
For that matter, the term "tech-savvy" is a bit stupid, especially as a way of describing tastes in music. That's why I keep putting it in quotes
actually READ the article? Moby wasn't saying that ripping and burning is bad, he was saying that the record industry's criteria of success and failure are increasingly irrelevant.
I give Moby a +1, Insightful.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
"It is impossible to be unfair to the rich and the powerful."
-- Harry Britt
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
As far as I can tell it is all the non-tech savvy college students and high school kids who are using teh p2p services these days. Every college kid I've met in the last year has a collection of at least 1000 mp3s and the PC their parents bought while using the net connection their school provides.
High-bandwidth + no accountability + no money = no cd sales to the biggest music collectors around.
These are the same people swapping viruses like you wouldn't believe... both digital and meaty varieties.
It's not techies or geeks, it is the unwashed masses of the almost educated that are responsible. Tech-savvy enough to understand the internet but inexperienced enough to completely ignore how their actions impact the rest of the world.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
All those "broken CD" copy prevention schemes are simply a method of migrating away from a computer literate fan base!
Finally someone has figured out how Britney Spears manages to sell as many CDs as she does.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
Excuse me, being able to get on the Internet and owning a CD-writer may have been enough for being labeled "tech-savvy" half a decade ago.
Nowadays being able to find the powerswitch on your computer and clicking on a few buttons is all the technical capacity you need to download and burn.
I take offense in "tech-savvy" being used in such an indiscriminate manner!
I'm also quite unhappy about the implicit message, which seems to be "most tech-savvy people are thieves".
But then again, an attitude like Moby shows explains a lot about the music business in general. Some sort of distorted paranoid view of the world in which everybody tries to steal their work.
Okay, so moby's starting to go down the shitter. Play was indeed a good album, as was pearl jams "10". I have heard a couple of songs from "18" and they don't seem nearly as good as some of the ones on "play" and thus I will not purchase "10" because the music isn't the level of quality that I would invest my $20something dollars into (RAAAAAPPPPEEEE!).
But pearl jam started fighting ticketmaster for being bastardly, maybe moby should try something similar? I mean, its not enough that he is (was?) number 15 on a major selling spree, it's not enough to have that, perhaps he wants number one handed to him on a silver platter? Don't give me that shit. I saw MTV's cribs right after "Play" was released, and the guy is loaded, probably even moreso now. Go cry me a fucking river, you're probably in the top 98th percentile for income, and it means nothing to you. It's very sad, the human universal is not love. It is stupidity and greed.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Actually, "purchased" might be too strong a word. I think I might have used some GeoCities GeoPlus points that got turned into gift e-certificates to order the CD via Amazon (or similar).
Personally, I believe he's reached "terminal saturation" -- that is to say that's we've all had enough of him. Guy Pierce is suffering from the same thing (actors must hate it when three movies come out at once). Britters is pretty close too. That Pepsi/soccer ad combined with the photo of her smoking has probably pushed her over the edge. Then add the PS2 game...
Makes me think of this Salon dot com article:
Courtney Does The Math
- lazy
- mobilebadboy
I believe Eminem put it best when he recited: "... and Moby, you can get stomped by Obie, you 36 year old bald headed fag blow me, You don't know me, you're too old let go its over, nobody listens to techno ... "
Every time i hear a Moby song I think of the miss butterworth on the syrup bottles doing slave labor. Oh well.
Well, my karma is going to hell, but all well...
:)
Nice to see there's some taste in music around
It really shows bad taste when you use the Internet as a scapegoat to cover up the fact that an artist simply is'nt connecting with his/her audience like the used to.
It's almost as bad as a company blaming poor sales on 9/11.
As a side note, Moby should know that I discovered him, and purchased several of his albums because of the Internet before play received the national attention it eventually would garner.
Shame on you, Moby.
The Internet is generally stupid
You guys are all nuts. Pearl Jam's best album is "No Code", followed closely by Vitalogy, Yield, and Vs. (my favorite period is Vitalogy>Merkin Ball>No Code). Binaural is quite different, I'd say it's not quite as good as Ten. But (until now) I don't know of anyone who thinks Ten is their best album!
Chris
Here a CD costs $20. Even if it has no nice pictures inside or if it has 40 minutes in it they all cost that. Now I hear the new Moby album isn't that good so I won't pay $20 for it. If the chance appears I suppose I could spend 5 minutes copying it and maybe listen to it someday when I'm bored. And maybe I would pay $5 for downloading the good tracks. So in my case the problem is that the product is not so good as to pay the price they ask for in the store, but pirating is so easy that I may spend some of my time listening to his crappy album afterall.
Err, Moby has had far more then 2 albums, you ignorant fuck.
Should I feel sorry for someone who may have made 5 or 6 MILLION dollars, as opposed to the 14-15 million dollars they COULD have made?!
I think not.....you know, back in the days of court jesters and musicians, they were lucky just to earn food to eat, so tell me where it's written in the tomes of history where musicians and the suits that own them, deserve....no, are ENTITLED to earn millions upon millions of OUR hard earned money ?!
I wanted to get up and write this because after 30 minutes of reading other peoples comments, I didn't see anything else up here that really approximated what I had to say. Forgive me if this is inadvertently a "me too" post.
I am in this "tech-savvy" audience of which Moby speaks. Hell, I even used to like his music. I have disagreed with his politics from day one, but that has nothing to do with the music as far as I'm concerned, and has even less to do with what I'm saying here.
When MP3's first hit the scene, and by that I mean FTP servers and Windows shares when I was in college, when it took real time to encode these things, and when WinPlay would suck down 80% or a P75, and a P90 was a balls out speed demon, I was like "Sweet dude! I get to totally download this music, and I don't have to, like, pay for it and stuff. It doesn't matter because I'm just a college student, I'm gonna start a dot.com company, make a bajillion dollars and then I'll buy every CD on earth and support all my favorite artists." I was exactly was the record companies think everyone is.
Then I started to get out of the mainstream crap that I had been listening to, and get into ambient techno (No, I have no interest in debating the definition of ambient or other sub-genres of electronica) which was really undergoing a lot of positive development at the time through the work of groups like the Orb, Space Time Continuum, FSOL, etc -- many of the early astralwerks artists. These guys were fringe enough that I couldn't realistically find that music on MP3 for a variety of reasons. I rarely attended concerts, and when I did, I often felt disappointed that the live performances weren't faithful reproductions of the studio works. I even extolled the virtue of FSOL's rejection of the entire concept of live performance to my friends and cohorts.
Over time, my musical interests shifted from electronica to a more organic brand of music, much of which emanated from the legacy of the Grateful Dead and Phish, and which subsequently became categorized as "jam rock" and the artists became known as "jam bands." I came to appreciate live music as a return to the notion of music as performance art where the value became in the actual, specific performance itself. I feel that this is a concept that was only natural in the world of classical music, and a concept from which much of pop music is not implicitly cognizant of.
Many of these bands condone open, legal, high quality (as well as MP3 based) swapping of concert tapes. I'll refrain from making this post a big ad for the eTree, but I wanted to come out and reveal my position on the 'MP3's and file sharing implies lower record sales.' I don't know if I'm the only one, but there are a ton of bands out there that give away the right to experience, through a recording, a unique performance. I am currently embracing those bands, and to be honest, it keeps me busy. I already have well over a hundred hours of brand new music that I still haven't even had time to listen to. It was all free, and my posession of it is legal and condoned by the bands. I now support musicians by going to concerts.
I used to buy $200 worth of CDs a week, and sell a lot of it later second hand, because that was the only way I could expand my horizons. If I were in that phase of my life now as opposed to then, I would probably be downloading MP3s. I found a great way to expand my horizons for free, and now I spend virtually nothing on CDs, ever. To be totally honest, if a musician isn't willing to make some effort to let me in on what they've got to say, then I usually suspect that the sad reality is that they don't have much to say or they don't care if I hear it. If they don't care, why should I?
And that's the bottom line of this post: I wanted to outline a demographic who get their musical kicks for free and don't give a crap about Moby, Eminem, or Britney. This is a demographic that makes bands rich through touring, which is ultimately performance. My crowd supports musicians through ticket sales (which has a corporate demon all its own, which is another story.) But I don't buy CDs, and I don't "steal" from artists who don't invite me to, and I'm sick of listening to artists and record companies whine.
That's my story. I'm not sayin' you should buy into it, but I a great example of one reason why CD sales might be lower. I used to buy a lot of CDs, and now I don't. And that's why.
This too shall pass.
the word is spelled RIDICULOUS, you fucking retard.
what is wrong with you people?
his mother I believe. She sued him for character defamation from the last album.
"What do you think, are we putting our favorite bands in a bind?"
Yes, we do.
I recently bought his last album. I own all his CD's. Yes I have a CD burner but I *must* have the original of all audio CD's I like.
It made me laugh.
Since when is Moby anyone's favorite band?
Maybe it's not that Techies suck, it's just that Moby sucks.
Alright, this statement seems to say "We download pirated music. Is this okay?"
No, you fucking moron. Next question please.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Aphex Twin is an exceptional artist, but I'm not sure his inspiration came from his room...it was from his complex mind. That works well in Aphex Twin's case, but for Moby, his isolation only led to his egotism flowing out - I was kinda saying, if Moby got out and looked around, and got some second opinions, he wouldn't be wondering what happened to the sales of his self-proclaimed hit record.
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.
Here is something to consider:
Nobody else could have possibly thought of making an Eminem reference. It is a waste of your time to skim through the comments already made to check. Instead, you should do your best to make sure that everyone knows that you suck Eminem's figurative phallus. Please, quickly, post that Eminem quote. You're so smart for thinking of it! Eminem is so witty! Quick, quick!
Maybe Mr. Moby just doesn't get the fact that there are fewer tech-savy fans than normal fans out there, so if he appeals to the tech-savy fans and not the normal fans, he will sell less simply due to the fact that his market is smaller.
D'oh.
moby's out of touch. it doesnt take a techie to burn a cd anymore. your average 12 year old is better at it than i am. their parents, however....
I just did an impromptu search on gnutella (using Limewire), searching for the above bands, getting the above number of hits. In my experience, newer, more "techno" music is much harder to find on P2P networks than is 60's and 70's rock. Methinks Moby doth complain too much!
The big companies get to dictate the big venues
It doesn't have as many big singles as Play is probably a reason. I think 18 is as good as play (better in this time - because play is getting old) - but doesn't have 'why does my heart', 'bodyrock', 'run on', or any of the other mainstreamesque numbers.
That said - i copied 18 - and so did my flatmate, but i'll be buying as soon as i get into midsemester break and earn some more money.
Try not screwing me out of money Moby, and maybe I won't screw you.
I won't buy 18 because I went to Area One last summer in Vancouver. Now although, not EVERYONE on the area one list is guaranteed to play at EVERY stop, when you show up, there is a list of the ones who did make it.
The list said Oakenfold was there.. cool.
So in the Oakenfold tent, the music was great, but you couldn't actually see Oakenfold. It didn't matter... who needs to see him as long as you know he's on the decks right?
October, 2001 - Oakenfold does a chat with the BBC.
Jared Cook: Hi Paul... Rumour has it that some time ago in Vancouver, Canada, after Max Graham opened for you and you saw the crowd's response to his style you whispered to someone that 'Trance was dead'. Did you say that? And if so, what did you mean by it ?
Paul: No I never said that. I didn't know it was dead. I have never played in Vancouver by the way!
Do not give Moby a cent. He's a lying thief. Dang, did I ever get fooled. Oh and beware of Area Two. There is a good chance there will be some imposters posing as the real thing.
Not exactly the way to treat fans in our day and age if you ask me.
Just my 3 cents CND.
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
Thanks for the reminder, slashdot!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
So sad artists start to speak about business in the way they know how it works.... but letting other busineess men doing their own business.
:-)
No Moby: there is a lot of people here that can burn CDs but hav bought your latest one!
And please let the evolution do its own work: within 10 years, the plain old dummy CD format will disapear. so be prepared...
Bought 18 - thought, yeah, OK, sorta ..
Stopped listening after a few days, and went out to buy Mutter. (Neues Rammstein Lieder).
First day or 2 - Mutter seems like a dud, then it gets better and better.
Finally got sick of Mutter, so I burnt me a CD of all the songs that I had lying around in my mp3 areas that managed to get me kicked off of opennap servers.
This way I can drive through the streets with the sunroof open and play loud music from various artists whose CD's I am not allowed to buy. Let everyone within earshot enjoy the music !
Next week I might set fire to the Houses of Parliment.
I think his sliding record sales might have something to do with the fact that his music is shit, and many people have just woken up to the fact.
I just love how the artists blame piracy, or mp3's for their album sales (or lack thereof), when plainly, the album is crap.
If you want your 'favourite' bands to keep going, don't steal their work. Pay for it. I suspect that many of the readers here earn good livings from software engineering and therefore from copyright laws, at source. Stealing someone elses intellectual property is just plain stealing. There is no excuse, no rationalle, it's not a game, it's a criminal activity. Even if you don't like giving money to the industry, send the band some money. Sheesh. Anyway, wouldn't a better plan be to copy CDs of bands that you *don't* like and games from companies who suck and give those away, so ending their pitiful careers.
Who cares that communist vegetarian thinks... He is a thoughtless moron!
britney spears sales are going trough the roof...
Oh no! CD burner, that will be the end of the music industry. Yeah, right.
Does anyone really believe that until CD's could be copied that people did not copy music.
I remember being a spotty kid at school, and borrowing LP's (vinyl) from friends and taping them (why did record stores sell blank tapes as well as pre-recorded music).
Why did so many manufacturers sell music systems (and still do) with twin cassette decks ? surely this is aksing for trouble - who has not used the high speed dubbing facilities.
It is not the technology that causes the copying of the music.
Fucking "sup" tags did't make it there..
By appealing to a smaller group of people (us nerdy types), he's... well... appealing to a SMALLER GROUP OF PEOPLE!!!!
less people who want your cd == less people to buy your cd
While its true that unsigned bands make their living with gigs its not true of the more popular signed bands. Live tours are used (like singles) as a way of selling albums and as such are a cost center. It is hugely expensive to put on big live shows, the insurance cost alone (lots of people + beer + big lighting/sound rigs = big risk) is vast and without labels to cover it all but the richest bands would be limited to small gigs.
Maybe people hear from their favourite p2p (rip audiogalaxy) that the "18" is just a watered down "Play" and don't buy it because of that.
Hell no...
1 million vs. 2 million...
and that is with 1/2 of us buying
instead of all of us...
Hrm...1 Million in earnings..nah..
I don't think we're put'n them in a bind.
even if they require $750,000 in advertising
and expenses...
if they can't live with 250,000 for a single
album...they can move to africa or south america
and 'stretch' their dollars...
*grumbles at the whiney bitches*
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Interesting guy.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
What do you think, are we putting our favorite bands in a bind?
Moby sucks, so no.
Greetings Fellow Humans,
ok, it's true. you caught us. we admit it. we've created something awesome, both terrifying and powerful. we've given the power back to the people. we've released information. it's free now, to travel as it will, from point to point, at the mere request of any individual that has the minimum requisite intelligence.
you can say what you like about our motives, but know that we do not regret our actions. be prepared, for many things about the world you know are going to change. the value of information is going to drop radically, for one. we apologize to the companies that have made a business out of (re)distributing information, in any of it's various forms. there is nothing that can be done to reverse the effects technology has had and will continue to have upon society.
you're all simply going to have to find another way to make money. you can either choose to make this search hard on yourselves as well as your customers, or you can learn and adjust to the changes in your environment.
good luck,
The Technological Elite.
thanks for that commodore 64, mom and dad.
I would expect better from someone like Moby.
I think the real reason is the public realizes that 18 is just a really bad duplicate of Play. And I think they also realize that Moby is now a great big corporate whore sellout. Why doesn't he license all the songs on 18 to car companies? It would sure generate alot more revenue than just plain old record sales. I love it when rich people complain.
Moby assembled some quite nice tunes, I'll say that for him.
But I reckon he makes so much money from allowing his work to be used in advertising that his albums should be downloadable for free. I think most people have already payed for a copy of "Play" without knowing it.
And let's admit it, he borrows enormously heavily from old Blues and Gospel records... and does he pay anything for all the samples he's ripped?
I can see what all this is leading to. Soon, the record companies will simply give up on selling CDs and other forms of recorded music. Instead, they will trickle feed free mp3 tracks from established artists encoded at less than 128K so it sounds crap.
Artists will then be required, as part of their contract, to tour like mad and we, the public, will be forced to go and see them live if we want to hear any more.
Some of you will say great, that's just what I want to happen. But, this will be the ONLY way to hear this music and you will be charged $200 or more for a ticket. Basically, "sharing" as you call it will take us back to the dark ages and only the priveledged few will be able to listen to innovative and interesting artists any more.
Thanks.
I think this image by Scott McCloud says it all... (scroll down).
See its our fault his sales are down. It certainly could not be that his music sucks-shit! No I don't think that is the reason. It must be something else. Yeah the record company will buy that story!
The techie effect can also mean that a band makes it that otherwise wouldn't have become popular. Or many other possibilities. It's such a complicated web of cause and effect that one really can't draw any conclusions.
How did this get modded +5 Insightful?
1) Fair Use. Sharing is not Fair Use - never has been. Consult a lawyer if you need convincing, or read up on it.
2) You do have rights over the physical media but not the contents. You claim you don't have rights over the media because you are prevented from using the contents as you wish! Why distinguish between media and contents if you don't see a difference.
3) Fair use DOES cover making a personal backup copy. So if your media fails you have still got the music.
Moby is feel'n the burn because 18 sucked. Tons of people ran out to buy 18 because Play was great... hence the great initial sales. However, after most people placed 18 in their CD player and realized that 18 was not as good as Play (it was like a bizzaro rehashed version of Play), the word got out, and sales slowed down.
Go to any record store which sells used CDs... you can find a million and one copies of 18 used. Used CD stores are a -great- way to tell if a new album is good or bad. If a lot of people are buying it, and keeping it... it is probably good. Yet, if a lot of people are buying it and selling it back for 4 or 5 bucks, it probably sucks.
I think the numbers speak for themselfs. I'm obviously not the only one that ran out to buy 18 and was let down.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I know a number of techno and electronic musicians who are doing interesting stuff (not talking about myself here, I'm thinking acts like corruptdata, sporophyte etc ad infinitum). Some of these guys can easily be struggling to subsist, unable to afford a single centralized point of online distribution for their music that's under their control.
So, a lot of them turn to OMDs, which themselves are increasingly demanding money from the artists because it's not coming from the listeners.
So, is Moby's right to have NO decentralized music trading networks that cost him nothing... greater than these starving artists' right to HAVE decentralized music trading networks that cost them nothing?
It's almost like 'Google effect' for art- if it becomes a situation where you can type in 'Chris Johnson' and 'Horse' somewhere (upon hearing, 'hey, that's a wailing guitar solo in that song Horse by Chris Johnson') and have the mp3 in seconds, then there is less pressure on the artist to sign off on a bad deal in order to get their material out there and heard.
This is not an insignificant point, take it from someone who was doing music in the 80s... it's still just as hard to get someone to listen, if not harder, but it's hugely cheaper for the artist to keep a substantial catalog out there and available- and in the ultra-Napster-future that the record companies dread, it will end up costing nothing. No matter what it is, somebody'll have it, and the network can deliver it to you for basically nothing- without charging the artist for the cost of the distribution.
We're not there yet- for instance I bet you the egosearch I mentioned ('Horse' with the guitar leads) will come up dry on everything out there at the moment. More importantly, I _know_ it's not out there in anything new and improved like Ogg Vorbis- because I don't push the CDs, I make the mp3s available freely, and nobody's ever bought the CD- so there's no source for higher-res Napsterized versions until somebody buys/rips/encodes/shares.
But there'll come a day when people swap around full res CDs or DSD like it was mp3s, and there'll come a day when pretty much anything is out there at your fingertips.
Because Moby is a bit outnumbered.
And doesn't need another million, as much as other people need the distribution.
Well, after reading through these comments, I sure as hell am not going to buy Moby's new album.
It would appear that its crap, well done Moby, you just made your record sales even worse!
polyprecords
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
How many true artists care about where their album stands on the charts. The charts are one of many ways for the artist to feel validated by their hard work and accomplishment. To be honest, I think Moby's just being upfront and "real" about how he feels about all of this and the fact that he's wondering about it can have the positive effect of creating a dialogue amongst music fans about his point.
BTW, if anything, Moby sold out last album with the licensing of "PLay". Note that this album is not as easily bought for commercial use.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
somebody mod that shit informative or some shit; that was kewl
This is Moby, the artist that licensed every one of the tracks on Play for use in commercials. What does he care about selling albums? That's largely irrelevant to his income, and he clearly understands that. If you don't know why, I suggest you go and find out
Note that while he's declined to license any of the tracks on 18, his stance is actually that he hasn't licensed them yet, but he will when an "interesting opportunity comes along" i.e. an advertiser cracks and offers insane money to be the first licensee. I think his point is that CD sales just provide leverage for him to make a living wage selling other rights, and that it would be to the benefit of artists to have all of the swapping and downloading counted as well.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I just don't like them enough to buy the album. First, I listen to the song on the radio, and if I like it, I might try to find it on a p2p service, so I can listen to the whole thing without the radio announcer blabbing away. If I still listen to it after a day or two, then I'll buy the album.
I just think Moby is sore that he's not as popular as he thinks he is.
Just my 2c worth.
Just last night I set up the last parts of a PC including CD burner and burning software for friends of mine. ;-).
Onc again I noticed how far away in knowlege about computers I am from "mere mortals".
The task of installing hard and software to burn CDs is a straitforward and simple task to us. We know what steps to follow, and if where stuck and the manual is nonexistant we know there should be a thing called "readme" which explains special details we ought to know.
They gave me 50$ for setting up the CD-RW (and the internet connection) - at first I refused it, but they insisted and I mercyfully gave in
On the way home it occured to me that I have 15 years of computer expierience and that 50$ was actually a bargain for people who have other stuff to do than learn about stuff like the fact that Webpages are made of "sourcecode" and that that looks like something one can read and understand fairly well or that installing ISDN Capi under Win98SE sux big time and it usually takes 3-4 calls on the Hotline to get the message across to them where the actual problem is.
Bottom line: If I wouldn't have done it and explained the use of the software to them, they wouldn't have a burner set up. Evidently, people who are tech savy can ripp a CD considerebly easyier that other people and are much more likely to put up with the 'hassle' of doing so.
This is a good arguement to make CD's cheaper.
In the 'olden days' it often wasn't worthwhile looking for somebody with the Vinil to make a cassette. The Albums where cheap anough and the Artwork often was a great bonus. Ergo: Make CD's cheaper again and include added value - then ripping won't be the big thing anymore.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Personaly I buy the CD, then rip it to MP3 because it's easier for me to listen to then.
In general I own the CD of every album I have in MP3, with a few minor exceptions where I can't easily get the CD, most of those I eventualy manage to get hold of eventualy and re-rip them myself because I prefer a slighly higher bitrate to the average 128kbps.
If it wasn't for friends giving me MP3s I would never have heard of several bands, such as HIM, Blind Guardian or VNV Nation, to mention a few, let alone gone out and bought their CDs and go to their gigs when they play in the UK (which I have, Blind Guardian gig in August *whoo*).
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
It's just a B-side compliation that's been lauded be the press for being just like his previous work. We're not talking Brandenburg Variations here; this album is just sub-par. I suppose it'd be fine as background music at some event but nothing on it has really gotten me hooked to where I'd want to buy it or even keep it on my hard drive.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Interestingly, over here we have DAB, a terrestrial (not satellite) digital radio format based on MPEG 1 Layer 2, and it was on a local DAB station that I heard the album (and decided not to buy it) -- they played every track over the course of an hour or two (extra time for station breaks, adverts, and little snippets of interview with Moby to introduce each track). I find it odd that this kind of digital audio broadcast (of complete albums, no less) is "good" while internet digital audio broadcast is "bad" (to the RIAA & co).
Since I really liked some earlier songs with Moby, it saddens me to say that his latest album is just weak. Where did all the mellow melancholy go?
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
I can't believe that Moby has the balls to come out and blame it's adience for copying his new album and goes on about some "pearl jam effect"...
When the bottom line is that Pearl Jam released crap albums after "Ten". Same goes with Moby, "18" is again crap compared to previous "Play". Blaming others and/or inventing theories will not change that.
Besides, tech oriented people that Moby's referring to are too small a group, even among Moby fans, to have any effect even if his "accusations" were accepted. "Play" sold millions and even if the whole tech oriented part of his fans bought "18" it wouldn't reach one tenth of what "Play" sold, just because the general audience (techies included) simply think "18" is shite.
<rant>Inspite of the fabulous album "Play" Moby being the religous moron he is may lack the ability to see things as they are...<rant>
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
OK, I decided to use the interweb for something useful. I've just sucked down a selection of the tracks from 18, and you know what? I don't really like them. So I'm not going to buy the album, and in fact I've already shredded the tracks. Seems to me like that's no different from hearing them on the radio or requesting them on an MTV-a-like TV channel.
I enjoyed Play, and I even enjoyed the savvy way that Moby leveraged the crap out of it, licensing every track for use in commercials (thereby buying himself a shitload of exposure). But I don't like 18, and I don't like Moby's attitude that because CD sales are lower, there must be a cause other than that the album sucks or that he chose not to license the tracks. Shit, it can't be anything, he's done, right, because god knows that artists never just fade away after one amazing album. I mean, that's never happened before.
Damn, I wish artists wouldn't keep doing this. Someone needs to slap them round the head and say "Look, you can't all have massive hits every time. Some of you have to win and some have to lose. Deal with it.". Because every time that they even mention reduced sales and file sharing in the same breath, they just give Microsoft more ammunition for shoving Palladium down our collective throats.
You know, perhaps the most productive thing that we could do would be to start collecting metrics on gnutella search terms. I'd bet my bottom dollar that the number 1 albums and singles would correspond to the top mp3 searches, week on week, which would pretty much blow any "lost sales" argument clean out of the water.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that every song on Play had been licensed to different commercials, films etc. whereas Moby has said he will not license any of the songs on the new album.
Play was one of a few albums that sold across all boundrys of musical tastes. It was one of the most played albums in my office last year because regardless if we were into metal, dance, garage or blues we all liked it. And hearing it on all the commercials made you realise how many of the songs you did know and like.
By not licensing any of the songs I haven't heard any of them yet, and knowing how unpredictable moby can be I don't fancy taking a risk on the new album until I hear it.
Well beyond the fact thats I own over 200 albums and ripped them all. (Not to mention the 150 or so CD singles I ripped)
Quite simple really, at university after moving into a house my entire cd colelction was stolen!
That was over 200 albums then so It's not like I've not bought albums again (including a rare few re-purchases).
Though I do resent having to RE-BUY everything again.
And some of them can't be bought any more, how do I replace them?
Does the music industry care? (NO)
So why should I care.
Carrot007.
+----------------- | What is the question!
He's just full of stars.
Some of you might accuse me of living under a rock...but who the hell is Moby?
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Why not integrate some kind of "buy" button into winamp/whatever. So when you hear a great song being streamed, you could go into the on-line store and buy that track or maybe a whole album from the team. Another idea that won't happen.
Maybe if Moby put out a CD worth buying, his sales would go up. Play was an excellent CD, one I'm proud to have in my collection. His new CD is garbage, with only a couple of decent tracks on it.
If its good, people will buy it. If its ass, people will not. Its that simple.
What pisses me off about musicians is that they think their particular talent (or often lack of)automatically gives them a right to be stinking rich because they grew up in an era when producing and distributing a recording was cheaper than copying or sharing it.
And there is a corrupt greedy industry behind them ready to legislate our freedoms away to maintain this accidental fortune.
If equally talented people in other arts and sciences had got the deal musicians have had for the last 40 years perhaps the world would be more equitable, and musicians wouldn't sound like such whingers.
Just do it, don't make excuses. As for any detrimental effects on artists... well that is a result of excuses. Your actions have consequences. Learn to accept that FACT and drive on. If some aspect of it bothers you, then realize how illogical it is to lash out at anyone and anything that reminds you of this simply because you wish to forget. Your will does not shape reality, it merely steers your own course. STOP JUSTIFIYING!
because he sucks?
When CDs came out, a lot of the music on them sounded thin and lifeless because the recording engineers didn't understand how to get the maximum sound out of the technology. I just got the Grateful Dead's CD box set and have all the vinyl. I would say that the first album sounds roughly equivalent (but without all the surface noise). Starting with Aoxomoxoa, the sound on CD is not only clearer, but it's deeper; part of that's better mastering.
Where I notice the difference between vinyl and CD is in the low end. Kick drums and bass on older records sound a lot fuller and deeper, but that's not because they were put on a record, it's because the person recording them knew what they were doing. A lot of today's engineers really don't know how to mike a drum set or to mix for a natural warm sound, even when they're dealing with old 60s and 70s music that was recorded well. The versions of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" or Martha Reeves' and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" that are commonly heard on the radio now are on remastered CD and are good examples of music ruined by people that didn't know what they were doing.
I have over 3,000 records. CDs, when done right, are superior.
We all know this, but for those just tuning in : Moby latest album really sucks. I wish I could undownload it, what a waste of my NNTP byte-quota. It is just a blander version of 'Play'. Really he just got extremely lucky with the single 'Porcelain' which got him on the map.
He just ignores the golden rules of electronic music : solid rhythm and fat beats. Really his latest album should have been titled 'More money', because obviously with his whining that's all he was after. He must find it quite odd that lots of other artists who actually put huge effort into their music, are proud to know everyone's downloading their tunes because it is a better feeling to be 'loved' than to be 'paid'.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Im a software engineer, and I know 3 people in my office who have bought Moby's 18 album. Remember the tech-savvy will usually have more money than the non-tech-savvy by the time their 19...
Harder.. Better.. Faster.. Stronger
Moby has sold advertizing rights to every song on that album. I think he'll be doing just fine. Maybe people aren't buying his album because they need only to turn on the tv and watch commercials to listen to him.
Atually, Moby is incorrect about that. The reason the "tech fans" dont buy his album is not because they burn if from others who already purchased it, but because the "tech fans" know how much Moby sux. If your a true "tech fan" you know that Moby is not techno music. It is actually far from it. Moby produces sh*t, has always produced sh*t, and will always produce sh*t. Moby sucks giant-hairless-llama-balls.
I though Moby sales going down was because his music SUCKS, and not due to the demographics of his fans. I were wrong.
For the record I'd like to state that these bands whining about P2P networks sucking the money from their pockets are off their rockers (pun intended). The Grateful Dead has allowed audience members to tape their shows for 30 years and share them for free...no royalties to the band whatsoever! To me the Dead are true professional musicians...if they want to make money from their music, they go on the road and play music for their fans....it's a job....just as it should be. Bands today should be happy their music is getting around to so many people so quickly....and if they want to make the coin they should get out on the road and do what they are paid for.....Play music! IMHO, jkstraw
Here's my $.10. I am sorry I bought the album. I came to trust the name and the beat. I respected the fact that he could be a little out there and yet could still deliver the goods. I didn't download any of it via p2p. I regret it. Better still, I should have asked others their opinion on "18", but thought it couldn't be that bad. I was wrong. I hate it when people who scream that P2P is what is keeping sales down. In my case it has only put me in touch with bands that I have never heard of before, and I have gone out to buy the CD for. Moby, raise your antennae every once in a while and take a reality check. I think I will go eat a Hamburger and listen to Crystal Method.
I've posted this point several times before, but I have never read a decent response to it, just reiterations of belief. Why is that?
It seems to be a religious belief among a large group of slashdot posters that _sharing_ cannot hurt record sales. Or, even if it does, it makes up for it by increasing concert attendence. There does not seem to be any factual basis for this opinion but, like most religious beliefs, it is defended with outright hostility.
In much of the third world, _sharing_ is the norm. In fact, in the two years spent I lived in sub-saharan Africa I never saw a legitimate copy. Not once. The governments simply do not enforce any copyright laws at all. Of course the bands that are popular in bootleg are popular at the clubs and play to packed houses. But a) it means the only way to survive is to play 400+ shows a year, have no family, or life outside the shows and b) as soon as you can no longer perform you are broke and washed up. Forget the non-performers like studio musicians and producers. The result? Virtually, every musician and technician who can get a contract immediately moves to a country that does enforce copyright.
If he's saved enough greenbacks to buy his meat for some months, perhaps he might want to look into the invention racket. Those boys with the flying machine seem to have made out well.
Of course, he could always try heading out West, like so many seem to be doing these days. A man should have a pistol if he's going to do that, though. Some of those places are pretty wild!
Signed,
An Old Timer
what a load of crap. I bought the Moby album, if it wasn't for "we are all made of stars" the album would have sold a lot more. That video blows. He needs another video with better music to sell. The other tracks are awesome I don't know why the record company pushed that track.
Well, it's obvious, right? The new album isn't selling well, and it couldn't be because it sucks.
Geez, a musician gets the sophomore jinx and instead of realizing this one's not as good as the others, he blames it on piracy.
Get a clue o' bald one. No one's ripping off your new CD -- it's not good enough to bother with.
He is just grasping at straws on why his discs aren't selling. The real reason he isn't selling is like Slim Shady(eminem) said, "Your to old ain't nobody listen to techno".
Nice that moby considers his fans theives. What a guy.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
we've heard this before... when Lars needed an explanation why fewer people wanted to buy his band's VH-1-friendly record.
I wonder how he would excuse the poor sales of 18 without p2p.
Could it be that songs featuring his own nasally voice don't do as well? Could it also be that such a sombre record is not going to sell well in the summer? **Could it be that mediocre records sell poorly in an environment when every new CD can be sampled online?**
Can't moby accept that he sucks ?
Maybe people would like to listen to music that doesn't make them want to drown themselves ?
Lets assume the Moby is correct in stating that the majority of his fans are tech-savy. I think it would be safe to assume that the majority of the tech-savy people in the world are for paying the artist what the artist is due. Remember www.paylars.com? So, with that being said, Moby should offer his music from his site and bypass the recording industry. After all, most of the tech-savy people in the world are against the RIAA. This is of course assuming Moby is right in the first place.
Recording industry profits greatly from digital media. Most CD revenue goes back to the publisher. Artists profit from performance talent in concerts that can't be captured on a CD (think Phish, Kiss, Bon Jovi). Record labels did not reduce their prices to pass on savings to the customer, since they have a near monopoly, in radio + contracts. They took all the profit from technology advances. Now that customers are taking advantage on the benefits of digital media, rc's complain. The digital revolution cannot be owned. Only those without something valuable to sell are the ones who complain. Record companies used to provide a unique service; but now there are other ways of distributing music. Record companies are upset because they realize their products are easily reproducible. Yet, artists will be more widely heard, and isn't that a desire a true artist should wish for? Provide unique services, innovate, don't just exploit your current capital monopolies. Make CD's more than digital distributions of sound. Cover art, mail-in offers, and other extras will protect CD sales from MP3 trading losses. Music will always be copiable, but live performances, true art, and unique services will never be. (This was scribbled into my Clié while on the train)
$8.95/mo web hosting
Personally, I haven't heard anything I've liked by Weezer since 1995. (Remember that they even had a video on the Windows 95 CD?) Pink, on the other hand, has had two top 40 hits with her new album. I found her album to be creative, and have been craving purchasing a copy. At the same time, I found "18" to be rather disappointing, and think I'll pass on the purchase of this album.
Maybe record sales really are a good indication of what's good on the market. And maybe the drop in record sales altogether is not due to MP3 sharing which has become much more prohibitive with the amount of spyware going into the few trading softwares out there, but rather the fact that most music being generated for pop culture these days just doesn't have the same appeal as it once did. I think we could really use someone as creative genious for the 21st century as The Beatles and Michael Jackson were for the 20th century.
Imperial Tacohead has made a fool of us all.
See, I tried to rise above the pack by actually responding to the article posted on Slashdot (if you notice the majority of slashdot comments fail to do so) HOWEVER I did not do the deep research and check the journal.
Let this be a lesson to us- We know journalists are dumb (esp. online journalists!) and we know that they only pander to the lowest common sensationalist denominator.
Don't Believe the Hype.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Then isn't it feasible, if you're claiming your target market is a whopping 20-35% of the population that your record sales would be less than those of someone who targets the entire planet? Maybe Moby needs implants or something, now THAT would sell albums. Just ask Tommy Lee. ;)
[_-+ S3VYN +-_]
it is because techie types don't listen to as much music as they spend all their time working.
No, his recent album is lackluster at best. This is most likely the reason for his low sales
Or the reason he is selling less it that he was dissed by Eminem in his song "Without Me".
"....and Moby, you could stomped by Obie, you 36 year old bald headed fag blow me You don't know me, you're too old, let go, its over, nobody listens to techno.. Now lets go, give me the signal I'll be there with a whole list full of new insults...."
I would say that Eminem had a lot to do with his sales and he just doesn't want to admit that he got burned by Slim Shady.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
Have people actually been downloading or sharing songs off this new album? It seems to me that there is just less interest, not more pirating. Just about everyone I know has two or three MP3s from "Play", but I can't say I know anyone who's got MP3s off "18". Speaking strictly from my little window on the world, I don't see any negative correlation between sharing and album sales. In fact, the opposite seems true.
On the other hand, I have heard frustrated artist attack their fans before. Artists like Billy Corgan have become famous for it. But the real problem is not that hard-core fans are not buying their albums; the real problem is that they are failing to attract new fans. How much radio play has Moby gotten with this album? How many TV shows and movies are using tracks off it for their soundtracks (like Porcellin for Party of Five)? Most popular albums don't break sales records by selling to the true fans, but rather to the fickle masses.
Look at my karma - I'm bad, just like Michael Jackson!
Moby is hardly complaining in the way the RIAA and similiar groups have been belly-aching, and this stance is nothing new (I read an article by Moby in Spin about 6 months ago that had the same message, before "18" came out.)
Moby's not calling for an end to sharing/copying. He's just making the point that fluff-pop listeners tend to either be impulse shoppers or they lack the tech-savy to make their own digital copies.
Maybe he's making excuses for a marginal album, but I think this "THINKER" has a point.
ym
I think Moby is just jumping on the bandwagon. He's blaming his slipping record sales on P2P, etc. When the truth is that he should have just stuck with electronic music. His newest album is worse than the last one. His record sales are slipping because relying on a ancestor's copywrited name (Moby) isn't enough to make you any good. His record sales are slipping because 18 is probably the worst album this year.
___Abuse of power comes as no surprise___
I can count 4 copies of the album in our office (about 30 people), and not one person bought it. So, no matter what people say (I just dl'd the songs to see if I'd like it, I always buy the albums I like..really). I'm going to side with Moby on this one.
Reading slashdot user comments shows people always telling us to support artists that we like by buying their stuff. Look at Mandrakesoft. They say they're out of money, put up a donate link, and bam, cash flow.
Talk is cheap. But very few actually go and buy the product. Mandrakesoft isn't exactly swimming in cash.
I may be remembering incorrectly, but I thought I once read an interview with Joe Perry of Aerosmith where he'd said something about Aerosmith having to go on tour to make enough money to pay for their recording time in the studio for the next album. Maybe the real problem is that the artists don't make money off record sales. The record sales are just a way to put asses in the seats at live shows and thus sharing is a good thing.
And maybe guys like Moby, who couldn't perform an unplugged version of their chart-topping songs by definition, are doomed from the get-go.
Oh wait, we all know the recording industry screws both the public and the artist at every turn, right? This whole thing is probably redundant. :-)
-Joe
does the fact the album suck have anything to do with declining sales?
did the dotcom bust and the following recession have anything to do with it
god, i hate people that try to pin a phoneme to a single event within a complex system.
i wonder how the impending boycott of moby will have on his sales?
Its been pretty difficult as a recovering CD buying junkie for several years. For almost 2 years I haven't bought a major label CD b/c of all of their latest non-sense. Moby is on a label that is not owned by one of the big (and problem causing) labels.
Boycott Major label CDs.
I bought the "18" CD and let me tell you it is not that good. Tired and not memorable. Make some more good music Moby and I'm sure your sales will increase.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
That for however much we love them Pearl Jam and Moby are in the top top top percentage of artists already. The vast majority of artists are fucked.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think moby is just pissed that he can't make a decent song anymore. 18 sux. I can't think of a self respecting techie that would be caught dead listening to that shite. and he's probably ticked that eminem has more downloads on P2P networks than he does.
If you really believe that the key to success is an uninformed and uncaring fanbase, be my guest, give it a try.
I actually bought 18 last night. After listening to 3 tracks, I am unimpressed.
Moby's major influences (as he confesses) are Christianity and Veganism. Now we all know that it is easy to find revolutionary and profound ideas in these subjects even today.
However, from what I've heard of 18, it is neither revolutionary nor profound.
18 is Moby's attempt to rest on his laurels from Play.
Moby, get off your a**.
If album sales inversely correlated to tech-savvy audiences, these guys would be fucking billionaires.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I really can't offer any more conjecture than anyone else that replied, but I thought I'd add my two cents. Maybe there is a drop in sales of 18 because IT SUCKS!!! I actually bought the CD unheard and wish I had burned a friends copy first. Moby is lucky to have gotten a fraction of my $18, because next time he releases a CD he won't. I've never heard so much formulaic crap in my life. From the corny offset song of "...we are all made of stars..." to the retarded "...jam for the ladies..." I can't believe he didn't release this CD with B-sides written all over the front cover. No wonder people share music so much these days--we can't count on big name artists like Moby to produce quality material!
Moby had an incredibly successful album (though not his first), and just like many first novelists, his next one is judged by a much higher standard.
if moby wants to be successful, he needs to top himself. if he can't do that, well he should have realized that by licensing every damn song on his album Play, he basically has permanently saturated every one with his sound. We're sick of it.
Also, the thing that RIAA fears most about P2P is that people will be able to hear the whole album before they buy it, and many times, since commercial music sucks, people who like the single they hear on the radio, realize that the other 7 or 8 songs on the album suck.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
When a CD sells a zillion copies, but not a bazillion copies, that's not a flop. That's more success than just about any of us reading this will ever have.
All the people blasting Moby as being old and over the hill are pretty funny. 36 is not old, except to know-it-all teenagers.
There sure are a lot of people with bottled up angst, wanting to put down this CD in some sort of all-encompassing way. It's just a CD! If you don't like it, don't listen to it!
And then there are the people who say you should copy it because either (a) it sucks, or (b) Moby has an attitude problem. What weird logic! If those cases you think you wouldn't want anything to do with it, but it's the old double standard of "I hate you music industry, but I desperately need what you sell."
Eminem:
"And Moby, you can get stomped by Obie
You 36 year old bald headed fag blow me
You don't know me, you're too old
Let go its over"
I bought the Rush album Vaport Trails. I liked it. Not fantastic but pretty good. FWIW I own most of Rush's albums and have been a fan for years.
--->Life is like that sometimes...
I quote the poet Eminem,
"And Moby, you can get stomped by Obie
You 36 year old bald headed say blow me
You don't know me, you're too old
Let it go its over, nobody listens to techno!"
I say we make Moby say what *WE* want to hear if he wants any sales on his next album. Why do we let the record companies have all the control?
It goes like this:
Moby: "I'm really sorry I disrespected my fans by saying they all want to rip me off even though some of them aren't tech-savvy enough to know how."
Fans: "We accept your apology, and now we feel like you might deserve some of our money depending on how good your recordins are. We will buy your record if we like it instead of getting copies from our friends. Then again, if you suck, how do we know your apology is sincere?"
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
switch to country music. Where the real money is at.
Truly great music is made without the thought of ever making any money on it. What everybody seems to be missing is the fact that a really great band will make great music regardless of whether or not they ever make a dime on it. The Moby's and Pearl Jam's of the world have made millions of dollars. My two bits isn't worth a whole lot to them. But it is worth some to the guys eeking it out at the corner bar on Tuesday's and Thursdays.
Support your local lounge acts!!!!!
How? His music is okay... tired and certainly emotionless (like the drab man himself), but bearable for techno. How does this qualify him as 'one of our favs'?
/. . The writting is AWFUL (technically and in style), OPINIONATED, BIASED, and all around FUD-astical.
See, this is the problem with
As the point raised, in the author's round about way... Yes, we do kill those we love.
This story made it to the Norwegian national tabloid press via Slashdot, it seems:
http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=3282130
Excuse me for hopefully bringing Moby's panzy ass, hippie loving, ignorant SOB head back into reality. Moby... No one likes you anymore. I bought "play" and a month later sold it. You are like a cheap drug that gets you hooked, then gets you so sick of life you have to stop or you'll die. Before your politics and views came into being you were "cooler", now we know how much of a dumbass you are and have since realized that your music, though catchy, lacks meaning, reality, originality, or lust. Techno artists that will drive the future are those like BT and Paul Okenfold. Your newly sold out mainstream techno blows, and those who like techno now know this, and have probably sold play just like i did. So moby, go save a kitten and get rabies, or at the very least, just shut the hell up and don't make anymore albums.
Thanks, music critic in disguise
http://www.jivemagazine.com/music-reviews/2002/051 92002-moby_18/index.shtml
You old decrepid rapper(figurative), well quite frankly you may have a point because those people who are not buying your CDs are obiously people who don't care for you as a fat headed high maintenance artist. What about eminem I got his whole album a couple of weeks early through the net but i still bought a copy because I appreciated the music. Obviously you do not have a strong following
Attention Moby:
Your fifteen minutes are now over. Please put down the microphone, leave the stage and resume your role as a goofy-looking private citizen sans fame/fortune.
That is all.
(Letter from Fate, answering Moby's question "Why am I selling fewer albums?")
No Moby, the reason 18 isn't selling as well as Play did is because it's no where near as good as Play was. I can listen to Play over and over again, but I got bored with 18 after about a week. Does this mean Artists will now start blaming the Internet whenever they produce a bad record and it doesn't sell?
most everybody started out as a lounge act.
How would *you* like to be paid this way? Somehow, I doubt you would. I, for one, don't mind supporting the artist (though I wish we didn't have to support the record label.) Luckily for me, my fav band (the above-mentioned Pearl Jam) are on their last record of their deal, and will be sans-Sony after that.
His current album is so much like the first it's almost identical. I don't know where people are saying he's going off the "formula" its the same folk/rock back beats with the same ephemeral voices taken from many African songs sung in the 1800's. This was Play and it is 18. Everything Was Wrong was different, Animal Rights was different (and crap).
I think his big problem was churning out something so much like the first that no one saw point in buying the same thing twice. Though many of Moby's old albums sold like crap I think that had more to do with the scene more than anything else.
Techno and electroncia just simply have not been mainstream. Play as most likely the first real mainstream techo/electronica album and I think you'll agree while Moby is good its still not representative of the scene like of Paul Okenfield, Sasha and others.
Go into any dance club and you will hear numerous re-mixes of many of his songs as well as many other old electronica DJs that are out there.
For the record I own Play 18 and have listened to both many times and find one to be simply a continuation of the other. However I find myself listening to Play more often because the songs still seem to have a bit more life to them. I may not enjoy 18 but being a Moby fan for 10+ years I have come to know him as someone who does not always release excellent music and I think part of his fun and style was his willingness to experiment. I am disappointed that he really didn't do that this time.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
Moby has the perfect opportunity to test his theory empirically: his next album should be target at less technically-savvy fans, like Britney Spears'. If his record sales go up, then he was correct. If they don't, then maybe his music really does suck. Either way, he gets an answer.
:wq
Don't over-romantisize music. There are only 2 kinds of bands that don't "give one flying sh*t where their album stands on the national charts". Those are bands who haven't "made it" and...ok 1 kind of band. All professional musicians are concerned with how their albums are doing because they're just that, proffesionals.
Its a sign of whether or not people are connecting with their music. Why in god's name would anyone get up on stage and pour their heart out if they thought no one cared. There are only 2 measures of whether people like your music: album sales and concert sales. Note the word sales.
If you want to see people play for the love of it go to your local bar and watch a cover band. Everyone else has the same goal.
-dave
I bought this CD thinking everything would be like track #1.... NOT!
I think sales were down because... 18 SUCKS!
Well, I hate to say it, but too bad. It's not like Moby is now living on the street because his record sales have slowed.
Some people seem to be of the opinion that an artist has *the Right* to make zillions on record sales and such. There is no such right, sorry. If you can't make it as an artist, try getting a real job like everyone else.
I'm a programmer, and no one cares about the market trends or labor issues involved if I got layed off, or took a pay cut. That's life, buy a @#$%&*! helmet.
Step and repeat.
no, it's just that the people who listen to moby are art-snobs who now think that he has sold out and don't need another record full of the same stuff as is on play.
he forgets that these people have been buying his albums all along, which is why all of the other album sales numbers have been so low. on the other hand, he got one album that had all the right elements to make it a corporate album -- marketing, pop-hooks, etc -- and so play sold millions. now he is all pissed off because he is back to having record sales comparable to the rest of the world. i'd lash out too.
As so many others have said, and I have said before.. .. ..
Make all CD's $4. Fire your limo driver Mr. Record Exec, trade your Ferrari for a BMW (how terrible) and increase payouts to the artists to spawn new music. For $4, I'll buy a CD because it takes me about $4 of my time to find the music on the net and then burn it. Marketing aside...Why is it that a DVD can be had for $16.99 when it requires hundreds of people, from grips to directors, millions of dollars, and 100X to 1000X more time to produce? While a CD is $13.99 when all it takes is the artist, a small recording studio the size of a bedroom, and about 100X less people than a movie?
Right on the money.
The people who say that they'll never buy a CD again seem to always be the people who just figured out how to use a computer, while most of the people who actually know how to use a computer usually download mp3s to expose themselves to new music, usually ending up in a purchase.
"nobody listen to techno"
Moby's shortage of album sales could be contributed to his music taking a horrible turn about 2-3 years ago. Keep making excuses Moby.
This post will be modded down for no particular reason by a sweaty 14 year old who is not allowed out past dark.
Moby's last album had every track licensed for play in other forms outside of the cd and radio play (movies, commercials, etc.) Giving songs that kind of outside exposure boosts sales, which is an explanation for the multi-platinum success of Moby's "Play." Moby chose not to license any tracks on 18. Perhaps he wanted to see how his album did all by itself. Apparently, not well...
An example.
I'm fairly sure that record companies make the majority of their profits from record sales, while in contrast, the artists make the majority of thier profit from touring ticket sales.
With that in mind let's assume:
Artist 1: Madonna(non-techie users): Sells 1,000,000 albums and has 1000 songs per week downloaded on Kazaa. She is very profitable to her record company.
Artist 2: College Indie Rock Band(techie users): Sells only 50,000 albums and has 5000 songs per week downloaded on Kazaa. They are able to make a reasonably good amount of money touring. However, they are not as profitable to the record company yet obviously more popular.
The record company wants $ so they drop the College Indie Rock Band to pour more money into Madonna's next album. That is why the model is not good for (new) artists. Somebody needs to track who is getting downloaded and how much, so the bands who head that list will actually be considered the most popular. Then the record companies have to find a way to make them profitable (for instance, like Korn who is releasing a DVD).
Personally, I always buy the cds - artists get screwed enough by the recording companies. I didn't buy Moby's newest because it sounded exactly like his other... whatever, 15 albums. So really, he should be putting the blame on record store listening kiosks.
Have anything to do with the fact that this is perhaps the poorest album Moby's released since the hour long commercial soundtrack "Play". I think Moby was looking for an excuse for slacking album sales that sounded better than "This album is rubbish." Aha! The Pearl Jam Effect! I could go on, but I'll just make myself upset.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Gotta place the blame somewhere, right? Damn techies.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Thanks Moby... you never considered that maybe the several hundred print reviews of 18 were not all that good, especially in light of Play for which it had to stand up in measure to? It never hit you that consumer confidence, and thus disposable purchases are down right now in this 'recovering' economy? You never considered that your music is not entirely 'mainstream' and as such enjoys a narrower audience than someone like Pink?
All you have done is tossed gas on the fire, so to speak. You are an emotionless twit with out of date talents and a self-important altruistic bend that has led you to publiclly humiliating yourself.
I'm sorry, but if I like a band, I want to hear their music by any means needed to be taken. I will download the mp3's from the internet or get a tape copy from a friend (SAVE THE CASSETTES!) or have them burn me a cd copy of the music. However, since the RIAA decides it's a grand idea to charge 20$ for 45 minutes of music I have never heard in my life, I refuse to pay for it on the grounds that I'm fucking POOR.
I've got a ton of mp3's, mostly albums, that I have either ripped from my own collection, a friends collection, or by checking out gobs of cd's at the library and ripping them. All of those methods are the same method that I used to use to get all the music I had before CD's were big. I'd have friends give me tape copies of everything, or I'd borrow and do a tape copy.
Why did I do that? BECAUSE I WAS FUCKING POOR.
By poor I don't mean "Woe is me I'm poverty stricken" - I mean that I don't have enough money to support buying 500 albums at 20$/pop. Say I want a complete collective of a bunch of bands because I like all those bands. If I have to buy 500 albums at even $2 a piece, i'd be paying 1000$ on cd's. make that 20$ a piece, and suddenly i'm $10,000 in the hole.
Now, how many of you have an extra $10k to spend on music? I know I don't.
Oh, and I stopped supporting big label music. I don't listen to things that are on major labels, I buy my music direct from the indie artists who make better music for the sake of making music, not for the sake of being a trendsetting hip moneymaker for a year.
Unwound went 10 years, got many big label offers, refused them, and continued to make some of the greatest music I've ever heard. That's respect for music and that shows a die-hard group that knows what music is -really- about.
[)(]subliminal labs[)(]
You can theorize about how tech-savvy helps his sales, but the reality is that his sales are lower.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Artists don't get more than about $0.75 per album. ($0.64 according to This. The freakin record companies take the rest. If you want to support your favorite artists, go see their concerts...
As a person who has done a degree and postgrad in music, geek music (at least from a pro musicians point of view) would include:
- Steely Dan (and Donald Fagen solo things)
- Joni Mitchell
- James Taylor
- Stevie Wonder
...the merits and demerits of each most musos would be happy to discuss for hours on end. These are geek music selections from pop music only. I would be happy to give Geekier-than-thou references from other genres.
"What do you think, are we putting our favorite bands in a bind?"
No his new album just sucks so I won't buy it - "play" was pretty good and after downloading it I bought it because generally if theres more than 3 songs on an album I like I will end up buying it.
Don't blame me for making shitty music!
Ave Molech Setting
...simply isn't as good as it used to be.
His earliest stuff was kinda punk/thrash, and I liked it.
Then he went through a period of hard-dance/techo, and I liked it (and the remixes he did of this too).
The album 'Play' was also a fine album.
Someone offered to lend me his latest stuff, which I did listen to, but didn't copy, and certainly won't buy.
(I used to buy Pearl Jam's stuff too, once upon a time - I've not got any of their latest stuff neither)
Maybe Moby's evolved his style of music (again), and it simply isn't as popular with his existing audience?
Let's face it, Moby is certainly more 'commercial' than he used to be - a few years ago nobody knew him ('cept on the club scene) - and now he's in the charts (which I'm sure is great for sales, but what does it say about your target audience??).
As a musician who hasn't even come close to hitting it big I am very offended by Moby's disrespect for his fans. Blaming the technical skill level of your fan base for your latest release's poor sales is pretty lame. Could it be that he's lost his edge? Could it be that his music is not evolving? Could it be that his fan base is moving on to new frontiers while he's regurgitating stale song structure and style? From what I've heard of his latest efforts this is much more probable than some piracy conspiracy.
I believe this is much more likely the case considering that mp3's and CD burners are just the latest evolution of copying devices. People have been copying albums and tapes for years with tape decks and artists weren't crying foul and blaming poor sales on their fans knowledge of the record button on a tape deck.
This is yet another instance of a clueless artist (although some would see him as geeky enough to have a clue) being the recording industries bitch.
I can't believe this FUD came from Moby. I can't believe he had this thought and then sat down at his computer and then typed his thought out and then sent his thought to his website.
Eh, he says a lot of stuff in his journal. Myself, I read it for the gratuitous Simpsons references.
Yes, I did hear the album before it came out by downloading a pre-release copy to hear. I deleted it a few days later because I simply didn't like the album. I don't like it nearly as much as Play (which I bought after downloading and liking).
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
It's just not a very good album! He sings way too much on it, and uses some pretty crappy synth-cello and synth-violin sounds on it, and the overall effect is very amateurish.
I think the other album I purchased with the Moby CD debunks his claim, anyway. Wilco's newest album was released in its entirety on their website, for download. I bought the album, partly because I think the band has some very good ideas about how to write a song, but also as a vote in the petition that says downloading music does not hurt record sales. Which, according to the sales on this album, appear to be true.
I think Moby is just looking for an scapegoat to blame for disappointing sales of an album that, even if it were well produced, would be very redundant with the work he's already produced.
You drank my drink, you drunk!
Maybe the reason why 18 isn't selling is because he already released that album a couple years ago under another name: "Play"
This is just one more time where Moby is saying stupid things. I have to say really liked his album Play.. I thought it was a really good album and spanned a lot of different music types and paces. I saw Moby live.. the man puts on one of the best live shows i've seen, he's got a lot of energy on stage, running around and jumping and stuff. BUT.. and this is a BIG BUT.. the man just says stupid things in every interview i've seen him in. He doesn't think or maby he thinks but he comes to a stupid conclusion.. like ben afleck did in the Kevin Smith movie "Chasing Amy" he's got this plain.. and reads something completely wrong. I'll tell you this the reason why his record hasn't sold as well isn't because of tech savvy fans.. I buy my music, and i'm pretty technically savvy. THE REASON why it hasn't sold is because he remade his last DAMN album... the one song i've heard sounds the same as Play and it just doesn't make we want to buy it. I really wished he could have become more inovative with a new album but he just put out another album of the same stuff. I got no problem with him.. I just figure.. hell if i want the same thing i'll just listen to my album of Play instead of shelling out another 20 bucks on a CD that really just doesn't do it for me.
Who makes you Sig?
Nobody listens to techno...
In brief, "18" sucks.
v iews25010.asp
And BTW, how many people bought Eminem's latest CD?! People have been selling Eminem's CD BEFORE its release! And still millons of people are buying the official CD after the officlal release.
Some reviews of "18"
NME: http://www.nme.com/reviews/10502.htm
Dotmusic: http://www.dotmusic.com/reviews/Albums/May2002/re
PLAYLOUDER: http://www.playlouder.com/review/533moby.html
The album just wasn't very good. half of the songs sounded like songs from play and the other half just sucked.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
I'll admit that I have some MP3's of songs and I didn't purchase the CD's of that artist.... but I own all the CD's for the songs that I really listen to. I only have just MP3's of songs that i will listen to on ocassion..... in a sort of "remember that song?" fassion.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
Actually I'm just kidding, I still kinda like Moby. I do miss my monkyradio and somafm due to the stupidness of CARP.
Bleh!
First he should realize the techno techies make up about .01% of the population. In the whole world! Hmmm, only 1000 people like my music. Why can't I sell 4 million copies like Ms. Spears? I just don't understand. Maybe I shouldn't have skipped so many classes.
FU Moby. Get over it. You're getting old.
I agree with most people here that it's the quality of the albums that are affecting the sales, not the technical awareness of the fans. Moby points out Weezer, but there's no real merit there. Maladroit sold way better than Green, with only a year difference in releases, and most of Maladroit was posted on their own website. The fans understood the need to support the band, and that combined with the selling tactic Weezer did of numbering the first 60,000 presses for collecting purposes, triggered the high sales of initial release. However, they are not the Weezer of old, and the fans and masses are readjusting, which explains the trail off after the rabid fans got their "collectible" copies. Yes it was a marketing ploy, but it worked.
BTW, I thought real bands made their money from touring. And I've never heard Weezer worry about their record sales.
The stealing will not stop until the record companies come to their senses and realize that we won't stop ripping (and distributing) MP3s until they stop ripping us off. I will shamelessly steal from the RIAA and feel little err NO! guilt about it because a) the artists are not getting adequately paid under the current scheme. b)I do not own what I pay for when I buy a CD or a tape or other media, I only own that copy of it c)THEY ARE MIDDLEMEN and have no place in this new digital era.
I will play fair and stop my stealing when I can buy a license for the music just like I buy a license for software. Then when I lose my entire CD collection (as I unfortunately have once this lifetime)I only have to replace the media.
An ideal system would allow for easy registration with a third party company so anyone anywhere in the world could register their license. Then if you lose your media you could go to one of those cool ass kiosks that the Aussies have (we would build our own so you don't have to fly to Australia) input your license # (or scan in the UPCs whatever) and it would give you your choice of media for the cost of creating it...
This would undoubtedly lead to CD players MP3 players that require you to input a license before playing but I am fine with that.
And Moby? You can get stomped by Obie
You thirty-six year old baldheaded fag, blow me
You don't know me, you're too old, let go
It's over, nobody listen to techno -Eminem
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Maybe Em was right about Moby. If nothing else, he'll at least have his royalties from the luxury car commericals.
File sharing may make a small dent in the sales of a pop artist like Moby, but it's the little indy labels that are doing cutting edge stuff that have had to cut back their print runs from 300 to 200. Non-RIAA labels like Schematic, Isophlux, Leaf, Chocolate Industries, Dub, Fat Cat, Morr, and Skam. I've talked to the owners of record stores like s://kimo and they've seen a real hit lately since their main audience is college kids who would rather fire up soulseek and save a few bucks than support an artist by buying a limited-edition record. Should file-sharing be outlawed? Probably not. Should people think twice about not buying something since they have it on MP3? I think so.
"Those that do not think with their heads, think with their wallets instead."
The issue here is not tech savvy or not, rather, the issue is time-value of money.
It takes alot of time to find the music at acceptable quality, download the music, organize the music, and then burn the CD. The only reason people accept this form of distribution is that it is cost effective. CDs are too damn expensive, and the consumer is in open revolt.
If CDs were in the $2-4 dollar range, I suspect alot of people wouldn't waste the time to download and burn a CD.
How can the recording industry justify a $15-$20 CD, when DVD's cost roughly the same, and are a much better entertainment value. Surely the production and distribution costs of a movie are much higher than that of a music CD. If that is true, why are CDs so expensive?
I can only think of one answer...greed.
-ted
Yes, there's a small minority of Slashdot readers and other super-nerds, but the truth is that there's an increasing percentage of computer owners with CD-R drives, blank disks, and cheap-o software that lets them copy songs.
...must be on welfare by now! After all, the Onion said all their groupies were 31-year old computer programmers! :)
-dexter "it's not true, I turn 34 next month" riley
He's right, people who are tech savvy and get his music via trading music with friends or downloading mp3's aren't buying his new album.
Why?
Because they get a chance to hear and it and find out it is utter crap. I'm sure a lot of Moby fans don't like his new stuff since he sold out with Play.
...point to lower sales and cry out "Piracy!" I'm not a Moby fan anyway, but I suspect a lot of it is that the new album is just not that good, and whatever tracks the studio *thinks* are good have already been played to death on every rock format radio station, thanks to mega-corporate-ownership and the payola agreements the media has with the studios. Why buy the album when you're already sick of hearing the same tired tracks played over and over again on the radio?
i think moby's sales are low not because of p2p and cd copiers, but because he hasn't come up with a decent album since the "move" e.p.
weird definition of sellout there. The only way you're going to be able to brand Moby as sell-out is if he produces music that go against his core values. My guess is that he likes to make his music, he likes people to listen to his music, and he likes to make a wage off his music. Nothing more. Where's the sellout? And the mans allowed to be curious and then talk about exactly how file-sharing affects the different types from the music industry. If this was some renowned weblogger, people would be falling over themselves to tell the world that this was a smart thing to say.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
Moby's whole hypothesis is based on techi's music preferences. I'm guessing the music preferences for techis is as broad as another other audience.
Personally, I have't been buying Moby albums for a while now. I took a chance and picked up "18".
I listened to it in the car on the way home from the store, and I couldn't believe I'd listened to the whole thing in 15 minutes. I just kept jumping to the next track as soon as I got bored with a song. Realistically, I'd call "18" something more like "9" because it's filled with half-songs!
Moby (like he's gonna read this), Maybe you should've stuck with 9 songs and flushed them out more! At least Phillip Glass could make minimalism work! You don't seem to be able to.
"I liked your movies, especially the earlier funny ones!" is a quote that comes to mind. In case you think I've always hated Moby, I geniunely enjoyed his 'pre-Jesus' albums, but nothing since. Like you, King, I think he's been overpromoted and exploited in the media as being suck a genius because he talks way too frickin' much!
" Console and hardware sales will account for $22 billion, or nearly 70 percent of the market, in 2002. Home video-game sales have soared in the past decade, creating a market that now rivals film and music as the most popular entertainment pastimes." http://news.com.com/2100-1040-938694.html As stated in that article, gaming is eclipsing film and music. Could that be the reason music is suffering? Maybe no the sole reason. I would say there are many factors contributing to the music industry's problem: the dot com burst and the associated lay-offs (of which I was a victim), gaming, customer revolt against high CD prices and now forcing DRM in a non-fair-use method, and piracy. Yes, I do download MP3's and see nothing wrong b/c 99% of them I download are singles only; I refuse to pay $5 for a single CD and the ability to buy a single online and play it anywhere I want has not matured. And of the entire CD's I have downloaded, I already owned them but had them stolen, therefore I do not see the need to purchase the media for the second time when in fact I have already purchased a liscense to use the music and I use the net to obtain that which I lost. Personally, I've bought more gaming media in the past 5yrs than I have paid for music in the past 12yrs and I've only downloaded MP3 for less than 2yrs. Games are just more entertaining than music because music offers no "replay value".
To go along with his theroy then the people who listen to Creed (those halfbaked Jesus Rock suckasses) must be total fucking Luddites!
This
-Bob
Never heard of him.
Gee, could that be why he isn't selling any albums?
Hello Enimen !
I have been a big fan of your's for a long time now, but your most recent album, '18', is warm pile of pig vomit. This is what happens when you go from being an 31337 underground artist with a small but loyal fan base, to a sell out MTV whore. Thanks for playing, next artist please.
Sapere Aude - Homer
I am, perhaps unlike most of the rest of the natiion, just too damn lazy to bother scoping out the net for MP3's to download, and I don't trust most music services of that type. Too many tales of gator and the like.
As such, I only know an album from what they've got on their site, occasionally hits on Amazon, or friends.
But even more debilitating, I was layed off back in September because we made the mistake of getting our boss addicted to EQ, and the business crumbled. And I have yet to recover. *grin* Thus I don't have the money for Moby's album, or any others.
Which is all to say...we are still in a recession, depending on what part of the country you're in. The radio commercials are all still talking about how tech will be the biggest business, and affect everything, and how the workforce will increase 80 percent by 2010, blah blah blah. But it ain't happening yet, or here.
But Moby still expects us to pay the 18 + dollars to run out and buy his new compilation sight unseen. I may not be raking in the techie dollars, but I still have the techie brains to know that that's just a bad investment waiting to happen. *shrug*
Listen to me Peter, I want this bench. You go sit on that bench over there, and if you're good I'll tell you the rest of
According to this [http://www.nme.com/news/29585.htm] article on nme.com Moby stated that he liked Napster and wasn't against it at all. So how can he really lay blame to P2P networks and their "techie" users?
Moby states that his album isn't selling as well because people are pirating copies of his album, not taking into account the fact that people may simply not like it(I know, that's redundant). Then sayingg that his fans are more likely to pirate his music than the fans of Pink. Maybe I'm taking it the wrong way, but it seems like he's saying the fans of Pink are too stupid to burn a cd..which in reality it doesn't take a rocket scientist to download, convert and burn a bunch of mp3s to cd.
I couldn't find any Billboard Charts quickly so I just used Amazon's ranking. I think the numbers speak for themselves.
Eminem's "The Eminem Show" is ranked number 4 in overall Amazon sells, despite the fact that his album was bootlegged across the country a month before his original release date. His numbers are also split up across 3 versions of his album (2 explicits and one clean).
Moby's "18" is ranked at 20 overall. I didn't read any reports of widespread bootlegs.
Maybe Eminem is right..."You're too old/Let go/It's over/Nobody listens to techno."
Maybe tech-savvy fans buy less stuff because it requires intelligence to become tech-savvy, and a side effect of being intelligent is that you acquire discriminating taste and become selective about purchasing stuff, rather than rushing out like a brainwashed lemming every time you see something shiny to buy.
The average well-trained fanboy who instinctively buys everything that happens to have the right logo that he's been brainwashed to respond to, whether or not it's crap, can't really be considered "intelligent".
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
...you're too old, let go, it's over. Nobody listens to Techno.
Domains for only $8.75/year! Transfer your domain for on
To READ the articlen tentID=20 9387
http://launch.yahoo.com/read/news.asp?co
Notice he says he is mostly interested in how popular he really is, rather than how much money he is making. Since, the music industry rates *goodness* on the number of CDs they sell and not based on how much the artists is actually listened to.
Give me a break. The guy uses studio electronics and sampling to crank out huge sellers? If he was smart he'd release an album for free on the web and invite music geeks to sample and create their own. Now that would win him a true following.
I recently paid a visit to some friends out in Detroit -- believe me, about as blue-collar a group as you could get -- and they told me, flat out, that they had stopped buying CDs. Period. All the music they listened to, in their car or at home, was downloaded from the Internet and burned to CD.
Why? Well, one good reason is that these people listen to a lot of mainstream crap. They like Britney Spears, they like radio rap and R&B, they like all the stuff that MTV plays. And for a lot of those types of acts, there's usually only one or two good songs on a CD to begin with (the ones that get made into videos). They don't want to pay $17 for a CD full of songs when they only want to hear the one.
These people are not Moby fans. They are plain ol' mainstream America. If Moby thinks the cultural sophistication of his fan base is what gives them the wherewithall to burn CDs, and so therefore is hurting him more than others, then some less-sophisticated musician out there is in for a real shock.
Breakfast served all day!
I believe David Bowie, doing publicity for his new album and tour, said he feels that the current revenue model for music only has a few years left, and after that, if you want to make money, you'll have to play live. The revenue stream from recordings will dry up.
-- "Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep voting? Do you think you're voting for something?"
One way is to only rip the good songs. :-)
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
So many people are spouting "support the artist!", that I'll just put my response here:
You want to support the artist? Don't buy the fucking album, GO SEE THEM LIVE. Artists get fuck-all for album sales, unless they're Metallica. They do get a lot of money from shows.
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
I dunno, I just don't like 18 as much as I liked Play. I suspect a lot of people might feel the same. There are definitely some good tracks on 18, but Moby's style is kind of odd, to say the least ;-)
I think artists just have to realize they can't always be king of the hill.
Right now I am listening to a cd-r copy of the Eminem Show. I would never have gone out and actually paid money for it, even the money for a cd-r if I couldn't have gotten one from work. However, everytime a new Phish or Ben Harper, or any band that I know puts out good CD's consistently comes out with a new one, I'l;l buy it the day it comes out. It is a simple inference, shitty music gets stolen, good music gets bought. Sorry to that whining &*$%# moby
Typing in all lowercase is almost as hard to read as typing in all uppercase; however, instead of shouting, it merely looks childish.
you're just pissed cause I did download one or two tracsk to see if i liked it as much as play before i bought it. earth to moby. this album (18) sucks ass.
-
I can see how the drop in sales of his recent release could be thought to be because of the "increase in pirating," but I believe that that is a wrong assumption. Look at his last release and then look at the songs he did. He was trendy then. Everybody liked Moby, not because of his music, but because it was the "cool" thing to do. He did songs with other trendy artists like Gwen Stephani (sp??), so everybody liked that release. The trends have changed and the "coolness" of electronica has left, leaving us geeks as untrendy as we have always been.
Oh...yeah...first post!!
sounds like you need a t-shirt
Moby is WAY off base here. If ALL of his other albums sold well, and this was the first to sell poorly, I would agree with him that - yes, techies are ruining his good standing with the record execs, who think he's a "Big Time Artist".
But the truth is, Moby has only had 1 "pop" (as in popular) album, and that was 'PLAY'. I had heard of Moby before 'PLAY' came out, but it sounded way too experimental(unrefined) for my taste. I like well produced or not produced at all music. Stuff that is recorded and level mixed is not really produced, so keep it off the shelves till it's done. Or if it has a completely raw sound to it, well that can really work for the music too (ala punk). Then it will sell well.
The only reason 'PLAY' (i own it) sold well was becuase of the song 'Porcelin', was different-sounding and refined. '18' is neither. It is now the same-sounding and unrefined electronica/ambient/house mixes everyone plays.
Sorry Moby...YOUR the reason your album isn't selling. Swallow your ego vegan, it's not made of meat.
Maybe Slim Shady WAS right about Moby...
Has moby even thought of the fact that as long as one's fans are techies and not "e" rolling "clubbing" dropout losers, he will sell less albums than, say, ace of base?
Moby, you perform to a niche market. Get over it.
Back when I was about 16, I bought a few albums. I progressively bought more but when I ran across a line of two real stinkers, I quit buying for a string of years. I quit buying albums alltogether because I got sick of the hit-or-miss nature of them.
... not to go and make an album for little old me.
One thing I'm really sick of is not being able to preview music before I hear it. Some outlets allow you to preview a CD but most don't.
What's really happened is I buy a lot more unusual styles of music. One in fifty of the songs I listen to or really enjoy ever ends up on the radio because the radio panders to a totally different area than me. Moby was well aware he was trying to make another album of "hits"
Moby: honestly, I listened to Everything is Wrong on Mp3 for over a year. Then I bought that album and the Play double-album. Of course I can't speak for everyone else and say they'll all be honest like I was. But I LOVE music and I will not be accused of not supporting artists who bring joy to life.
Consider this: I own 1 CD per about every 50 mp3s. But I would have bought maybe 3 CDs a year before I became a real music fanatic. Now, with my 50-1 ratio? I buy a lot more albums. But here's the catch: I may not buy all of yours simply because you made them.
Look up the NYTimes piece about him a month and a half ago or go to his restaurant in NY and you'll see The Economist lying around (and no I'm not telling you the name). Might not make him an expert at economics but at least he's not taking a cue from namby ass slashdot readers who think they're experts at everything because they can get linux to run on hardware commoditized by other (ahem) software vendors.
Apologies to Moby, because I haven't heard the music in question, so I'm not fully qualified to say it's a lousy album.
However, I have seen a phenomon in the past which a band releases an album, it's awesome, but since the band isn't well known it doesn't do well in the charts. But since everybody loves it, it does well over time. The second album gets released, and it sucks. And it hits number 1.
My personal story for me with this is Nine Inch Nails. "Pretty Hate Machine" and "Broken" I would still rate as the best albums I've ever heard, and "The Downward Spiral" as one of the worst. Yet which one made the charts?
At first I thought he was trying to address this phenomena but I think he's just trying to say that the mainstream media is going to ignore who is popular or not and just play the albums that sell. Which is probably true too.
Apologies to those who thought "The Downward Spiral" is the best album ever made. I might be in the minority, you never know.
... copying copyrighted music is theft. It has a thief (you) and victims (the artist, distributor, retail store). Just because current computer technology makes it possible to copy music CDs (or software, etc.) does not make it *legal* or *right*. The rationalizations that it ultimately helps the artists merely illustrates the current moral and ethical bankruptcy og our cultures. If it helps the artists then the artists will *choose* to release their music with a copyright that permits distribution without remuneration (for those vocabulary-impaired readers that means "available for free").
Techies don't go outside, therefore they aren't going to get reeled in by record stores. Duh.
Now as soon as X10 starts selling these CDs...
[insert witty comment here]
of Payola. I won't even karma whore and drop links here... it's on Slashdot now, and salon.com.
Also, the fact that Clear Channel has an oversized monopoly and the playlists are CENTRALLY maintained, means US radio gets all the creative heart and soul of, say, Stalinist Russia.
People aren't just trading MP3's to get something for free... they're also resisting the "generic, sanitized one-ness" that US radio has become.
If monopoly relaxations of the 1996 act didn't exist, we'd have more independant radio (and smaller corporations instead of one 800lb gorilla).
Every major US city has at least 1 "trendy corporate rock station", that played the 80's Hair Bands to death, then felt stupid when the independents one-upped them with punk, grunge, and other "alternative" music.
In Boston Mass, we have THREE radio stations that sound the same, where before they had their own personal twist. No point mentioning their call signs, they are all the same.
I use GRIP and -b 122 --r3mix.
check out r3mix.net. It does VBR encoding from 112 - 320 and saves a little space without sacrificing quality.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I haven't bought a new album in over 3 years. Do I have a massive and evergrowing mp3 collection? No. Am I the ring leader in an international organization hell-bent on destroying the RIAA by making legal copies outlawed by illegal laws, sell them for their actual worth, and thus recieve all my selections from underling efforts? Hardly. Although...
I don't buy new albums because I have a radio. I know that if I turn on the radio, that one new song I like will be on. In heavy rotation. Right after Creed. And it will be on every station I change to until I can't stand it anymore.
Why should I buy Moby's "18"? I've heard "We Are All Made Of Stars" about a hundred million times, and it keeps getting more contrived every single time I hear it, not to mention that he's sucked since going mainstream; so what do you think? Do you think I should still go out and buy?
One last thing: why not just drop the facade and call "Alternative" music "Mainstream"?
---------
Launch all sig
after I listenned it in a bar, it's because this album is very annoying (in french we say "chiant"). Once I get "play" from naptser , I bought it because I wanted to have the cover, the nice CD. Every one who enjoy music seriously could tell you the same, a burned CD is not the same than the real one, bought in store. mp3 are the same, they're cool to listen music when I'm working but in my house I don't want to reboot my pc to just listen CD, it's boring.
So back to "18", this is the most disapointing cd ever. Don't buy it. When moby produces a true great disk, I'll buy it. Audiogalaxy saved my 20 $.
In my mind, please don't kill me if you disagree.