Slashdot Mirror
Can Newspapers Save Local Music?
impaler writes: "Roblimo has posted a great piece over at NewsForge about how the Washington Post and other newspapers are hosting MP3 download sites for local musicians and how the sites are actually very popular. An interesting read." Just because the "music industry" works a certain way right now doesn't mean that all change is bad; Bruce Springsteen is apparently finding that he doesn't need much beyond a lock and key to keep the Internet hordes from passing around his albums before they're released, and the musicians on the Washington Post site seem to like being there.
You've clearly missed the point, all bands start out as local bands, only blind dumb luck gets them to stardom, ..that or they're created. Otherwise do you think Backstreet Boys, NKOTB or N'Sync would've ever seen the light of day? No. This gives musicians everywhere an avenue to be heard on the cheap, by everyone, what more publicity could one ask for? It's a great idea and I'm thrilled to see it in action.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Think about it - nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates (like Canwest/Global here in Canada) that could put forth, gasp, an original viewpoint, a cutting edge playlist, and even just good recommendations for new music, unlike any radio station (college stations excepted) or any major venue.
Now, will we have to worry about ClearChannel buying up North American newspapers if this catches on?
ed
I'd disagree with that. There's a lot of high-quality local music in many cities that I've played in. Yes, there's also a good deal of trendy, badly-produced, over image-engineered crap, but that's music in general, isn't it? You have to take the bad with the good. Of course, you also run into the fact that people are used to hearing albums with high-dollar production values, and just can't see through the mediocre production to good songs/music.
Sadly, as a musician local to the D.C., I have to say that I didn't even know this existed. I now have to hope that the Post's snotty attitude towards forms of music other than Folk and Alterna-Rock doesn't carry over to the page, as there are a lot of local musicians here doing things worth hearing that aren't working in those genres. (Although I admit the Post's music critics have been getting better in this regard lately.)
Sleeman beer is doing an ad series based on the fact that their bottles don't have labels. They have hosted a bunch of bands which aren't signed to labels on their website and are using them in commercials.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
In Philadelphia, venues like the Grape Street Pub do much more than promote their own shows. They are trying to build a thriving original music scene in philly, especially with the compilations they sell and put out on the web.
Local music magazines are also much better at promoting local musicians to the people who will actually come out to see them. Origivation is a good example for Philadelphia.
Ben Garvey
Acoustic Rock : http://www.bengarvey.com
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Newspapers are struggling to keep readers and stay relevant. I see this as a Good Thing. It provides a good service and it's a way to get more eyeballs on their ads, without resorting to charging for internet content, registrations, etc.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Being in an indie band for the past 4 years (www.snoozerland.com) I can say that napster and other file sharing programs have helped our record sales alot. Not that we are selling millions of records but napster helped boost our sales outside Canada. (Actually untill napster we weren't selling any records outside Canada!). It also brings people into the clubs in the cities you've never been to before when you tour.
Thanks to file sharing we're hitting the states for the first time in September when our new cd is released and we also will have two songs on an upcomming movie sountrack.
What record companies have forgotten is that word of mouth is a very powerful thing
Snoozer.
My area is significantly smaller than NY, Chicago, LA, etc.
But we've got a pretty good local music scene (and pretty good local news, for that matter).
I bet if you went out and actually listened to some of the local acts, you might find some pretty good shows. I've found that local acts tend to have excellent stage presence.
Also, the big acts of today were yesterday's local acts, and some from much smaller areas than NY, Chicago, LA, etc. IE: The Tragically Hip, arguably one of the biggest bands to come out of Canada, and quite successful on the world's stage, came out of Kingston, Ontario. I suspect that NY has suburbs bigger than Kingston....
Sure, there's a lot of junk in a local music scene, but just because of that don't discount all of it. Maybe you're just going to the wrong places to experience it.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Can Newspapers Save Local Music?
A better question should be can local music save newspapers. When I used to buy a paper, I typically did so to look for something in particular; classfied ads, movie listings, the latest electronic store ads, even the comics. Occasionally if I had a few hours to kill, I'd actualy read the news.
But the net has given all of those things to me for free, and a heck of a lot faster. So newspapers have to find new ways to bring in revenue. I don't (and currently won't) pay for a local newspaper online, but I would if it were to provide new avenues of information like local band MP3s. This is such a great and fantastic idea.
If my local newspaper were to still provide the news and information I want online and add mp3s from local bands (and who knows what else), I'd have no reservations about plunking down $15 a month for it.
The Internet is generally stupid
Some pretty heavy spin Timothy is applying to that story. It reads more like -- In order to avoid having his new album widely available through file sharing services, as recently happened to Eminem, distribution of Bruce Springsteen's new album is being tightly restricted. As a result, few reviewers or radio stations have heard it.
Of course, Springsteen can get away with that. (Or is he completely washed up now, anyway? I lost interest in him 15 years ago.) For less prominent artists, handcuffing their publicity efforts is a major issue.
Not that I'm losing sleep over this either way, but the Slashdot writeup is a 180 distortion of the NYT article.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
For example, you are not allowed to distribute the music over a LAN. This means that I could not use my Rio Receiver to play the music over my hifi system. You are also not allowed to use the music to construct any kind of database. This probably rules out most fancy players that create nice indexes of your music. It may rule out all hardware based players as they will create a (small) database of the music stored internally to the player. It certainly rules out using JReceiver as my music server.
I understand that they want to restrict the use that people make of the band's music, but it does seem a little over restrictive.
Way to quote it out of context. The text you're quoting is with respect to sharing 3 songs on the Washington Post site. 3 songs that were chosen by the copyright holder (presumably the band, given that they're unsigned). Not their entire album. Not whatever 3 songs a random P2P user chooses.
Guess what? This is the exact same thing that RIAA acts do, too. Take, for example, Linkin Park. They're big right now, they're signed with Warner Bros. Records, they're on the radio a lot, they're showing up on MTV. You don't get much more RIAA than that.
Yet on mp3.com, they've got their own page with FOUR songs available for anyone to download. That's a whole song more than the band interviewed by Roblimo. But still, it comes back to the fact that it's 4 songs that the copyright holder chose to release. It's only the songs they pick, and it's certainly not the entire CD.
Arguing that giving away a few songs from a CD validates unrestricted P2P filesharing is like arguing that a free demo of the first few levels of a game validates piracy. It's up to the copyright holder to decide how much freebie/give-away advertising to use to promote the product before it starts to cut into sales.
Here's the deal:
I've never heard of snoozerland (until now). I've never heard any of their songs. How am I supposed to find snoozerland on a file sharing network when I don't even know it exists? WHY would I search for snoozerland if I don't know it exists? WHY would I search for snoozerland besides something with more name recognition?
Filesharing doesn't help get the word out about your band. It only helps get the music out to those who already have the word and care about hearing your music.
For instance, you say: "(Actually untill napster we weren't selling any records outside Canada!)". As I stated above, how could napster help you sell records outside of Canada when no one outside of Canada knew about your existance?
Wouldn't 'net radio or sites like MP3.com be more influential for fledgling bands when a filesharing system?
(I'm not trying to poop on your parade here. Just presenting a line of thought. It's cool that you are now experiencing greater success because of MP3s and the 'net, I'm just saying that I'm not sure how important a factor filesharing was to the bands success due to the natue of filesharing systems.)
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
That's how it would be if RIAA ran the car industry, and it's a darn good thing that they don't - not just for the customers but for the car makers. Think of all the impulse buys they would lose if potential customers couldn't walk through the lot, seeing, touching, smelling the new car smell . . . . Now, it's true that car dealers have problems with theft off the lot, and they'd have less theft if they kept the cars locked away from potential buyers. But such measures would cut heavily into their sales, so they don't dream of trying it. In most business sectors, the sellers of quality merchandise understand intuitively that knowledge of the product sells the product. Contrast this to the shady used car dealer trying to pass off lemons as good cars -- that's the guy who won't even let you kick the tires, much less test drive.
The counterintuitive, myopic policies of RIAA and its marketing-machine clients stem from their shady used-car dealer psychology. The RIAA machine clearly recognizes that quality music will sell itself to informed listeners. Music that sells itself doesn't need an RIAA machine, so RIAA necessarily becomes the enemy of both quality music and informed listeners, to preserve its own existence. That, in and of itself, explains why the trash the big labels put out keeps getting inexorably worse. If sites like the Washington Post succeed in convincing a critical mass of musicians that they are better off without the RIAA machine, no Fritz Hollings, Bono amendment, or anything else can save this dinosaur industry that exists solely to hard-sell crappy music to malleable children and teens. To speed this day along, I will be making a point of visiting the site, listening to the downloads, and purchasing CDs of bands that I like.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
I mean has anyone ever been attacked by a tiger while reading something on your screen?
Nope. The tiger is for defending yourself against people attacking you with fresh fruit.
Sorry, it's been that sort of day.
-r
Just because something is free does not mean you have to take it.