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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.""
If you look back, even major label artists get helped by P2P. Case in point: Radiohead. Their 2000 album Kid A wasn't promoted in any way, however a copy was leaked onto Napster before it was released. Millions downloaded it, and sales went right through the roof. The same thing happened a few years later with Hail To The Thief, which sold more copies than the previous two combined.
I personally own about $500/250GBP worth of music CDs, none of which I would have bought without P2P being there. It does help the record industry make money.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The media distribution companies, whether music labels, movie producers, or stock photography corps, all understand that when communication becomes much easier among individuals their business model suffers. The only service they really offer is making media easy to find and get. The internet has done that for everyone now, and frankly, I'm surprised it is taking this long for individual artists to get on board. One of the problems that still is being worked out is open, well supported formats for sharing information. Look what RSS did for blogging and what it is doing to traditional journalism. Imagine what similar formats and application to support them can do for other individual producers of content.
Artists need money. Fortunately, audiences have money!
Artists don't need middlemen taking their money and screwing with their work. Fortunately, these days audiences don't need them either!
Peer to peer has a lot of potential, but up to now it has largely been disorganized. There is no easy way to go through a list of all the music, and no way to know which of the 1% of the songs are legitimate.
This means that the chance someone will download some indie music off kazaa is close to 0. There needs to be a way for artists to advertise their own, legal music on these networks. There are already websites that allow this, like http://www.garageband.coc. I think free download websites like this are a much better way for indie artists to spread their name.
Its these threats that's keeping indies like me down.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
It seems that the majority of artists support file sharing until they get big. Some of the bigger bands support sites like purevolume, where you may (or may not) download an MP3, but listen to a song through flash instead. I would hope that artists who provide MP3s at websites would not get angry about file sharing. I don't see it coming to an end, because this is going to create a war between artists and fans, which is ultimately worse for the artist.
Yeah, that sounds just about like Terence Trent D'Arby.
I would agree that P2P helps the little artists. What is not as well known is that the label execs (many of whom I know and work with) rely on P2P statistics to decide which records to promote and which songs to shoot videos for.
A certain young artist from Sony just shot a $150,000 video, which will hit mtv2/vh1 next week. The original budget for the video was about $20,000, but after the song took off on the networks, the label delayed the album launch and put more money into the video.
Do Indie Rockers really support P2P? Or are they just saying they do, because its five years old now, and its retro-ironic to pretend you like it?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Good point. The early Beatles were all about being managed. They started in Germany with the leathers, and came back and Brian put them in suits and made them mod.
They were as managed and as packaged as anything that comes from American or World Idol. The difference, of course, between them and Kelly Clarkson, is that they were brilliant musicians and songwriters.
The difference between music piracy and GPL violations is quite simple.
In the latter case, the company committing the violation is making a profit off the work of others, and in a way, cheating their customers.
In the former case, nothing is being stolen, and no one is being cheated, as many people would not have bought the CD or CD single to listen to the song(s) if they didn't download it.
It's about money. Nothing more, nothing less. That's just how I see it.
The Beatles were steered by some sort of management comittee. Remember "Michelle"? The year it was released was 14 years after the year the name "Michelle" became the most popular name to give baby girls in Britain. Looking at the other Beatles albums, the pattern emerges. On the early albums, there is almost always a song using the most popular 14 or 15 year old girl's names in Britain, while on the latter ones, (basically after the Ed Sullivan appearance), there are songs using both these and the most popular US adolescent girl's names as well.
Anna, Julia, Lucy, Rita, Martha, Maggy (Mae), Penny, Pam, Honey, Sadie...
Beyond this, there's the required love song on every album, the required 3:22 long song for optimal AM play, and so on. Looking at when songs were actually recorded in studio, John and Paul uusually had to wait to record their favorites until someone in management was satisfied they had the required songs in the can.
Who is John Cabal?
Okay Hairy Nutsack, listen up... (got your attention? good. No hard feelings, I know nothing about your nutsack, just wanted to open this up in the same sort of overly aggreavted tone you started in, so that you feel right at home.)
I believe I am entitled to anything that is legal to do, and I will fight tooth and nail for any right I enjoy that is being taken from me. I would fight just as hard for the freedom of speech of that was being threatened, or the freedom to urinate in nature, or the freedom to fart in your general direction.
A "right" as you say, is simply anything that is not forbidden. So yes, there is - at least in sweden - an inherent RIGHT to download copyrighted music without compensating teh artists. This RIGHT will be taken from us, because not enough people listen to what the artists think, and what the general populace thinks, and way to many people listen to what the MAJOR CORPORATIONS thinks...
Now my idea on this is that teh major corporations should either change their business model or just collapse and die. They say they loose tons of money - fine, I am very happy. In this age the major corporations that have been between artists and consumers is no longer needed, any artist can easily create music with computer aid and justa s easily sell it or give it away for free. They can book shows and make ads for themselves, and no corporations are needed.
So, they say they go bankrupt due to our pirating... GREAT. I have never been happier. I just wish the governments would stop making new laws only aimed at restricting new technology so that major corporations can still make money the "old way" instead of changing.
Now when it comes to Doom 3 or the GPL, what you are suggesting is not legal, and therefore not a right. It's a crime.
Please keep yoru facts straight.
I would like to now why the profit in the music business is so focused on the record sales. What about concerts? Videos? Interviews? Advertising? Soundtracks? It would be nice to have a break-down of the percentages of the profits with the traditional model and with the new model (where p2p comes into play).
I have such a lot of music already that I rarely find anything new of interest. But practically everything I bought in the last year was from a defunct San Francisco label named "City of Tribes." Beyond that it was a pair of Bill Laswell CDs, one by Lydia Lunch, and the latest Kraftwerk. Most of that stuff I had to purchase without ever hearing a single note beforehand - I just had to trust in the type of music I was buying. The Kraftwerk I downloaded first - and after I found I liked it, I bought it. I wanted a clean copy to rip to my music server.
Yeah, it's all lies. People don't really do that...
the problem with music
by steve albini
excerpted from Baffler No. 5
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.
Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says, "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim it again, please. Backstroke."
And he does, of course.
I. A&R Scouts
Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A&R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire," because historically, the A&R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly.
These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave. Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well.
There are several reasons A&R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip" to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.
The A&R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it.
When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great, gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast.
By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A&R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.
These A&R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Jeffy Tweety of Wilco (mentioned in TFA), a popular indie band, is a staunch advocate of P2P music distribution and making music possible via the internet. When their label Reprise rejected thier album "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel", they purchased their master copies and streamed it online for free.
In other news, Jeff Tweedy and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig will discuss their opinions regarding file sharing, free culture, and the arts. Lessig wrote the 2004 book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate, will moderate the discussion. All LIVE from the NYPL in conjunction with Wired magazine.
Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
Celeste Bartos Forum
P.S. Wilco rocks. Hard.
-----
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org :
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing and Pong! the Movie !
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
Most artists have not given that permission.
Most artists that anyone has ever heard of, do not own the rights to their own music and cannot give permission.
It's always "the evil RIAA" with no mention of the human beings whose music you're actually taking and depriving revenue for because you want it for free.
Many artists get very little or none of the money collected for their record sales. They usually do better with t-shirt or concert ticket sales.
But the copyright holders who don't give permission also have the right not to, and if people want to pretend they have a moral ground to stand on, they'd respect the wishes of those people.
I don't violate copyrights as far as I know. I also have no ethical problem with those people who do. I'll tell you why. Copyright is not a natural right like the right to free speech or the right to freely exercise one's religion. Copyright is a special government sponsored monopoly that was supposed to be half of a two sided bargain. Artists were given a limited monopoly on commercial copying so that they could make money. The public was given the assurance that copies would then be made, thus making books, songs, and art forms more widespread and available. Also, it insured that our children would be able to freely read older works, which would be preserved for them.
That agreement was destroyed after big business began bribing (lobbying) the government to change the laws. They have removed their half of the bargain and left the public with jack shit. Copyright is broken. As a result of the current laws the majority of copyrighted materials are gone forever. No one can read them, hear them, or view them. Hundreds of thousands of works that are our artistic heritage are buried in the name of making a few more bucks and removing them as competition for whatever is being pushed today. If they could, corporations would retroactively gain copyrights on all the classic works and bury them forever too. It is a travesty and is helping to dumb down our culture. Most people don't know that things used to be different, or that the laws were originally designed to do exactly the opposite of what they do now. Copyright was supposed to help us preserve works, now it removes them for all time. Many of these works are owned by companies that don't know they own them, or no one at all, yet still they are denied to the public.
In light of this legal, but horribly unethical situation, I have no problem at all with anyone who wants to steal works, copy works, hack into big media's bank accounts, slash their tires, or kick them in the testicles or some other tender body part.
I directed a video recently for a band called The Decemberists who aren't on a major label. They have, however, drummed up a lot of mainstream press notice and attention and good sales for a true indie label band. Once the video was done, however, I got my obligatory MTV2 airings at weird times of the night. So how were we going to share it? There'd be a cruddy low res version which is barely what the band could afford to host. So we distributed via bittorrent directly. We literally gave their fans as high quality file as we could. In one week using only bittorrent and not including the low res Quicktime, we've had over 5000 downloads. This is in the same week that Universal Music Group (one of the titans) has declared that music videos will no longer be streamed for free. Wired ran an article with all the details here: Wired article on how to get around MTV And now? The band is at number 7 on the iTunes music store and 19 at amazon. That is with the marketing budget of a small indepdendent label. Rewards come to those artists who embrace and understand how to use this tech. BTW i kept trying to submit this story but to no avail.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Or to indie artists in general.
We listen to indie artists: Bitmunk
Especially indie artists that want to spread their stuff via P2P under their terms (artists get to set prices, distribution formats, countries, descriptions, and licenses). We even have Creative Commons licensing options that the artists may use.
I just want to make this clear - I'm not astro-turfing - I'm the CEO of Digital Bazaar, the company that created the Bitmunk P2P music network - so don't take my word for it, check it out and come to your own conclusions.
In short, we're a non-DRM, P2P network that pays the artist up to 84% of the sale price regardless of who downloads/uploads their stuff on the network, the artist gets paid. All songs on the network are high quality 192kbps-320kbps VBR MP3s (which will play in any MP3 player). Additionally, you may then turn around and sell the artists work on the network and add your own small fee (which you can then use to buy more music on the network - or withdraw to your bank account).
The network launched this past Monday:
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=709
We've been covered by Slashdot before:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/13/183324 5&tid=95&tid=98
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
Sorry to be so harsh. I guess I just tired of the whole "we're so noble" act. Just admit what's going on. We're pirating music so we don't have to pay people for it.
... and eventually they buy the CD for the security of ownership.
... a practice which is under constant assault by the original manufacturers, who want to be paid each time a sale is made, and in fact each time content is read or listened to. The only thing stopping them from that is the current state of law, and the way things are going, the rights of resale are probably going to go away too.)
The harshness comes from your attempt to narrow the scope of the argument. Expand your mind and imagine people downloading music to try it out
I can't defend the guys with massive MP3 collections. But I don't have to. I'm not on the defensive here -- YOU are, given your sad attempt to focus the argument on illegalities and away from moralities.
Also, if the general public chooses to download an MP3 illegally for free, over buying it legally for 99c, then by definition the price is too high. The same applies to CDs.
(BTW, this is why I buy my CDs used instead of new
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Maybe unconciously we are striking back at people who have been ripping us off for years.
There has to be a reason why nobody feels bad about pirating music. If I took a coat from a homeless man I'd feel guilty, if I kicked a dog on the street it'd feel guilty. The other day I downloaded a song I didn't feel guilty.
I can't really tell you why I don't feel guilty, I just don't. Maybe because I only wanted to hear the song right then and there and haven't listened to it since, maybe becuase they play it on the radio a lot so it's not that much different to me.
Maybe just maybe I look at my shelf full of CDs I paid 15 dollars for and realize that most of them have only one or two good songs on them and feel like I have been ripped off.
evil is as evil does
I have built my own DAW recently using Planet CCRMA at home. I'm sure with your kit you can do some cool things, however everything I have read on the subject would indicate that a single commodity 24-bit soundcard isn't really going to cut it for professional work. Dunno. You tell me. Fortunately, in my case I obtained an RME HDSP 9652 for virtually nothing (many thanks to DLS!)...
However, I don't know how to use the software and I don't know much about this killer DSP card either so basically I am not getting anything done with this kit! Fear not though, it will not go to waste. I will learn, because I want to. I have the ProTools manual (which is indicated as a helpful reference for Ardour). I have the DSP manual. The digital recording process interests me so I will learn how to do it...
However, some artists do NOT want to be recording engineers (which is an artform of its own in every respect).
Some people don't want to learn how to master a disc.
They may be world-class musicians but not have an ounce of geek in them. In their case they need someone to handle that side of the equation for them, and that isn't cheap...
I guess I should have said, "not everyone has a DAW in their house--or even wants one for that matter."
How about this for a "moral reason": I have never, and will never pay for music that I haven't heard. Period.
I'm a Clutch fan and the radio stations in my area refuse to play anything created with in the last quarter century.
I have purchased nearly every Clutch CD the band has come up with, I buy a concert ticket every time they come to town, and I have three Clutch t-shirts that I bought at the show.
I would be spending a whopping $000.00 on them if I hadn't "pirated" their music at some point.
I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that don't support their favorite artists. Stupid people are prone to doing stupid things.
The other side of the coin would be buying a dozen broken eggs because you didn't feel you were justified in opening the carton before you paid for them.
well... if you want to talk about the way people work in the world on talks about "universal rights" while they may not be entirely unviersaly there deffinantly apear to be a set of moral standards that all people adhear to.
for instance, in almost all societies murder is unacceptable. And at least in cases that directly effect us (relatively localized cases) I think it's safe to assume that there is something moraly at stake when someone takes the life of another.
I don't follow your logic on the record company arguement. I said that the musicians DO have the only right to their music. I didn't say that Record companies aren't in violation of that right every time they inforce decisions that go against the will of the artist. This a believe it true. Simply becuase a right exists does not imply that everyone is sticking with the obligations brought on by those rights.
Personaly I would love to see a non-prophit organization created to distribute music online for musicians that want to maintain control of their music. Release all music under the creative commons. Musicians make money off shows and merch, not on CD sales. CD sales in the end largely benefit the record labels. So even though dropping traditional distribution might be in the best interest of a musician, it's not really an option for a corperation.
I don't see (don't want to see) places like I-Tunes and the new Napster take the place of record distribution companies. I-Tunes will destroy the conception of the album, the entirety of music put together by an artist to meld together. This is alright when looking at the big name artists that only put out a CD full of singles, but for the most part, I only want to listen to full albums. that kind of aesthetic isn't available through current online distribution mediums.
maybe if you could offer torrents of albums, seed them yourself, and then offer the free. I don't know... that's my take on it all.
Anders
You make it sound like the music industry is the only one with recording equipment??
There are hundreds of smaller recording studios more than willing to help you out for a reasonable price. If you aren't good enough to earn enough money to afford it, then you probably wont sell any CDs anyhow...
This may come as a huge shock to you, but they wont ask you to sign your life away...or even sign at all...
For those interested, check out the Tempus MP3s. Very good stuff!
PS MOD +1 Informative re: your take on DIY digital recording. There is so much involved. I can see a home-built system used to lay down idea track in the middle of the night when inspiration strikes you, but it would take a lot of cash to build a true production facility worthy of the name...