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Wilco on P2P, Digital Music and the Internet
Saint Aardvark writes "As if Wilco wasn't the coolest band in existence anyway, Wired has an interview with them about their relationship with P2P, the Internet, and their fans. For example, they were contacted by fans who'd downloaded A Ghost Is Born before it was released. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy explains, 'They wanted to send money to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.' Many other choice quotes make this a fascinating read."
Now, if they did that for all the albums they stole, we could end world hunger.
This is the second story today (the first being the Pixar) that has been taken off the front page of Fark.
This isnt the first time, just the first time I've bothered to pay attention
That sounds like a much better charity than the RIAA's Lawyers Without Ethics.
Now RIAA will attack them for condoning piracy...
Selling entertainment is like selling perishable fruit, you need to do it while it's still fresh and desirable.
For example, I quite like Scissor Sisters' "Take Your Mama", so I paid for the CD and listened to it. But I must admit you can only listen to one song for so many times until you're sick of it. So now the enjoyment from this song is long gone, but I have already paid $20 for this now-known-as piece of plastic and song that I no longer enjoy.
I believe any potential "lost sales" are from people who, on one hand, don't want to pay for the music, but on the other, want to enjoy that particular music.
Will this be considered "Lost Sales" if someone told you:
"Nah, this shitty movie is only worth watching it once, why would I pay for the DVD/Movie?".
This person could pay for the DVD/Movie and watch it once, or download it from the Internet and watch it once. Either way this person got one unit of enjoyment out of this, but it's not quite the same to capitalist.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I did hear an interesting piece on npr talking about the 'Numbers Stations' phenomena. Appearently they got the name for their albumn "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from a CD compliation of these number stations.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
It's most likely a record label issue, while record labels (usually) can't prevent you for doing things for free, they DO control all money you receive for sales of albums, merch, etc. That's why bands that make gold records often make more off of non-record-company related deals (like interviews, photo shoots, hosting MTV shows, modeling contracts, movies, etc.) than actual album sales (not that the album sale profits rae anything to laugh at).
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
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Thing is, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is such an amazing album, that even if the album hadn't been released online, I still think it would have been succesful. (I'm for it though!) Great music spreads by word of mouth and CD-R and P2P, regardless of who made it. My buddy made me a copy of YHF and that's how I got into that band.
By the way there's a great documentary of the band making the CD, its called I am Trying To Break Your Heart. I highly recommend it. Shows the whole process of being dumped by your label then getting picked up by another label, both of whom were owned by the same umbrella company. Strange stuff, today's music business.
Wilco's ethics are very punk rock, even if their music belongs on its own planet. If you haven't heard YHF, do yourself a favor and pick it up.
Those last three words blew me away. Although I'm not a huge Wilco fan, I definitely appreciate where they're coming from. To me at least, they embody what a True Musician consists of. Somebody who plays music for the sake of making music. Somebody who if they make enough money playing at clubs and hawking CDs to make a living, then GREAT! But if not, they'll still be playing on the weekends and at nights when they're done with their 9-to-5.
Now contrast that with Britney Spears or Ashley Simpson. Think they'd be singing in their garage if their "music" career never took off? Fuck no. Since they only care about entertaining and not making music, they'd probably be just another coked-out stripper on the LA Strip, telling you how they're going to make it big and be somebody between lapdances and serving you a $10 cocktail.
Regardless, it's glad to know there's still a few bands out there who are in it for the love.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
When I read this article (on Fark, yesterday), I immediately went to Wilco's site and ordered a copy of their CD "A Ghost is Born," and if they swing through Seattle I will take in their show. Band promotion through free downloads instead of record contracts is the future of music, and is the key to getting the record industry off our backs before they buy enough legislation to keep us from accessing our hard drives without their permission.
Fame and fortune have been the carrot on the stick which the record industry has been able to dangle in front of musicians for the past century. When a few bands demonstrate that it's possible to succeed without signing over their lives to a big label, others will follow. Reaching #8 on Billboard is one of the first cracks in this wall. Help it spread!
given the dismal % yield on most charity soliciting, getting 15000$ form total strangers is a good showing. This is just an anecdote from the war raging between copyright holders, major labels and file swappers but it does make me think: The size of the market if you include all who file-swap and download must be vastly greater than the market that only counts those who buy CD's or are on the fence about a CD purchase. If a band could get a few pennies/track each from the larger market and nobody was peeing away millions on promotion, it just seems possible they could earn a living by their art and not soak their fans in the process. If downloaders thought of themselves as "supporting the band's future work" rather than "buying this song" ,which they could just as easily swipe, maybe they'd pay a little and not mind. Is that the paradigmn shift thats gnawing away at the mass marketing of music as we now know it? Given the huge exposure potential of freely available streamed samples, why would you need to spend on poromotion anyway? For years we have had shareware vendors giving away one version of a program in hopes that users would be pleased enough to pay for a better version. How similar is that model to what Wilco is doing?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.