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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.
"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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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
"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
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
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.
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
Moby's have no more linked to techie than 802.11b have to do with cat 5 wire. Simply he just sucks.
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.
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
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
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
BUT, your average kid using a P2P program isn't the kind of person Moby is referring to. He specifically referred to "very tech savvy fans", computer geeks, that sort of thing... ie, folks who are intelligent and technologically adept. And, I hate to say it, but your average p2p-using kid is neither of these things. :) Although, it's rather presumptious of Moby to assume he HAS an intelligent, tech-savvy audience.
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.
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.
Um, reviews? friends? singles? You don't need to hear an entire album to decide you don't want to plunk down $20 for it...
But the poster has, accidentally, expressed one more reason the RIAA hates ripping. The last thing in the world you want to do -- if your business model involved bundling lots of crap together -- is to create informed consumers.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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 ?
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
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?
"nobody listens to techno, so lets go"
Moby vs Eminem
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!
The answer to your question is "of course no one read the article." Otherwise, they wouldn't be making the misinformed, half-cocked assumptions that they are now reciting like a chorus.
For Final Jeopardy, can you name someone that DOESN'T outsell Weezer?
...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.
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.
And, of course, the big fallout with ticketmaster that makes it hard for them to be able to do big shows.
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 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 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
"18", the new album, just isn't as good IMHO, and I'm sure that's the reason why it's selling less, and not due any music copying going on.
Amusingly, Moby used to be an MP3 advocate, even appearing in an advert for the Apple iPod.
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.
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
True, the "try before you buy" technique is technically illegal, but in practice there is little difference between this method and listening to the radio or borrowing the CD from a friend except that you can get more variety this way.
"For success, it is essential you have Thunderball Fists." "I can have such a thing?" "That's right. Thunderball Fists."
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.
Maybe it's because '18' sounds just like 'Play' and people were a little disapointed?
Have a Happy.
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.
...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
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
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'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...
"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 CDs where as less tech-savvy fans will end up buying their CDs."
What hes saying is, the stupid people will buy CDs from the techies, the techies will get CDs from the net and burn them, and no one will buy them from the stores.
I mean yeah, this happened with the tape cassette didnt it? I guess we should go back to vinyl to end piracy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...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's music didn't suck, people would buy it. HTH.
...is that the latest Moby album simply isn't very good.
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
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
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.)
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
Your anecdotal evidence is trumped by mine. I mean, between my girlfriend and myself we have a total of over 30 years computer experience, we are both capable of using CD-R burners, etc and yet she still bought a copy of Pink.
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.
Please. 'Play' should just have been called 'Here's some music I made for your commercials'.
My other
nuff said
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
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.
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
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!
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 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!
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.
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!
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.
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
Maybe they should strike their own deal with the concert hall owners and sell their tickets from their web site?
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
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.
no, you're a moron
go to moby.com, look up his journal and read entry 6/16/2002 titled LA- record sales
here it is:
Record Sales
6/16/2002 - LA
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
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...
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.
Seriously. If Moby thinks he knows exactly who is buying his CDs, why does he not sell his music in a way such that this market will buy it?
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
"And Moby, you can get stomped by Obie"
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.
I guess you've never listened to Aphex Twin. Particularly Selected Ambient Works 85-92. He did most of those songs in his bedroom when he was still in his teens, and it's one of the most seminal recordings in the IDM genre, and in electronic music in general. Give it a listen and tell me if cramped spaces can't be fountains of inspiration.
Learn to Play Go
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
That's pretty amzing, since they're the same album. I don't really think it can be said any better than this:
Play
18
My other
Aside from do the evolution which others have pointed out, they also released a DVD of their US tour to promote binaural recently. Part of this DVD was also promoted on TV several times (cable, IIRC).
>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.
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.
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)
Uh.. because maybe he's an artist and not a marketing person? Anyway....even if he was a marking person, it's not going to make much difference is it? Marketing isn't chemistry. Just because you try to appeal to a specific audience, it dosn't mean it will work. But that's so obvious that you already knew that. So why bother posting in the first place.
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.
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
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
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!?
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."
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.
Great reply. After I posted I thought about those very comments you brought up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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...
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
Poor Sara.
"Ack! That person doesn't fit in a category! Quick, find one for them!"
I am a geek. I tell people that all the time. "Geek pride!" and everything. However, I didn't "aim to be" or "become" a geek. That's just who I am. That's just me. I am more important then my category.
You are you before you are a geek. No one can ever call you phony for being yourself.
Thanks for the reminder, slashdot!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
play was not moby's first album. Moby has been around for longer than pearl jam. Not as popular, but I have known of him the whole time pearl jam has been around and i haven't exactly been looking for him.
Interesting guy.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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'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?**
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.
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.
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?
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.
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."
Even if Moby is right about why his album isn't selling (and I have my doubts about that), it's still wrong to call this the Pearl Jam effect.
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...
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.
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).
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
So, many tech savvy fans equals lower sales. Why do you imagine O Brother Where are thou seemed like a golden calf?
Actually, in spite of the fact that "O Brother" has sold 5.5 million copies (biggest country album of 2002 by a long shot), country radio has stonewalled on it; the reason being is that their suspicion is that the vast majority of people buying it aren't regular country listeners, but are instead Volvo-drivin', brie-eatin' dilettantes who *are*, in fact, tech-savvy. The same people who made "The Buena Vista Social Club" a big hit a few years previously, in other words.
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?
Actually I'm just kidding, I still kinda like Moby. I do miss my monkyradio and somafm due to the stupidness of CARP.
Bleh!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
"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
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!
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!
Well lets just say that Billy Joel doesn't have much to crow about these days either.
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.
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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.