Indie Artists Support Peer To Peer

dpilgrim writes "Alex Veiga at the Associated Press has a good story on indie artists voicing support for file sharing networks. While not a new topic on Slashdot, it's great to see musicians speaking out about the value of p2p as an alternative channel for reaching audiences. Choice quote from Veiga's article, on what it's like to pass muster before a mainstream media company: "For Sananda Maitreya... online music distribution gives him the freedom he says he lacked when he was signed with a major label in the 1980s under his former name, Terence Trent D'Arby. Back then, Maitreya recalled, committees had to sign off on any music released. 'The Beatles could not have faced that criteria and come up with anything other than the most mediocre, conservative music,' said Maitreya.""

Comments

Re:P2P actually does help artists

[jb.hl.com]

btw, there's a RealAudio clip of band member Colin Greenwood defending P2P right here.

Re:P2P actually does help artists

[cliffy2000]

I seem to recall that Radiohead released Pablo Honey (with the huge single "Creep"), The Bends (with the huge single "High and Dry") and OK Computer, one of the most successful albums of all time PRIOR to Kid A being released.
But that's not what made that (IMHO, disappointing) album sell, it was the P2P leak. Correlation != causation, foo'.

This time, it's not just indie artists

[EvilStein]

That quote was seen on another article talking about the Grokster case. I read it the other day.

There are a few label artists that have filed amicus briefs with the court as well, the rock band Heart being one of them. They've been using p2p (the "weed" application) to distribute new material. Heart may not have any chart topping hits right now, but they've been around since the 1970's and have been a consistant solid touring act. Howard Leese (guitarist) still owns the "Bad Animals" recording studio up in Seattle.

Another 70's artist, Janis Ian, has also thrown her support behind p2p. After seeing older tracks winding up on p2p networks, they noticed that her older albums had in increase in sales.

p2p is great for indie artists, true, but it's also nice to see some longtime "major label" artists throwing their names behind it as well.

Re:P2P actually does help artists

[jb.hl.com]

(I actually bought Pablo Honey and it's the worst album I've ever heard in the entirety of my lifetime, my love of Radiohead notwithstanding, but anyway...)

The point is that the band did NO advertising for the album besides it being leaked on P2P. There were no singles, no music videos, no posters, no TV ads, nothing besides maybe a few displays in record stores. Precisely dick.

I also point you to this quote from Wikipedia:

The record industry assumed the album was now doomed to failure since fans already had the music for free. Instead the opposite happened and the band, which had never hit the US top 20 before, captured the number one spot in Kid A's debut week. With the record's absence of radio airplay, big time marketing, and any other factor that may have explained this stunning success, [a journalist] declared this was proof of the promotional powers of file trading and of word-of-mouth generated by the Net.

There you have it.