Slashdot Mirror
Band Invites Music Copying
R C writes "The BBC is currently running a story about the band Carbon Silicon, including former members of The Clash and Generation X. The report claims that the band is encouraging fans to download tracks, demos, and works in progress from their website . Talking of re-capturing the culture of recording a tape to lend to your friends, they believe that the free availability of their music won't affect sales, and that the availability extra material like tracks in development will attract and engage even more fans."
You're music is going to get copied no matter what. All attempts to prevent consumers from making copies of CDs are bound to fail. There will always be a work around.
Instead, what bands should be doing is embracing the ease that they can get their material out there. You no longer have to beg and plead with radio stations or record companies. My band, The Dirt (shameless plug http://www.tractorgrease.com/) is taking that approach. You put a lot of time in recording your self and mixing/mastering tracks and then just give away your music? Well that's the reality of it if you want people to listen, especially as a new band.
People need to feel like fans, not criminals when they try to get music from their favorite bands.
Same here. I _love_ the Clash, and always thought of them as awesome musicians.. this just furthers my opinion of them.
I admit to filesharing, but of the good bands I've always returned to buying their CDs simply out of support and out of the extra materials you get with the CD (lyrics without the noisy ads, tons of meta information about the music's production, album art, etc). You just can't beat CDs for some things.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
"Please just LISTEN to our music, we'll do anything, we'll even work for free."
It is nice that they are willing working for nothing. However, this seems more like an attempt to gain exposure rather than actually releasing 'good' music for free.
Now the debate of whether they suck or not can begin to even make this invitation worthy of merit.
[cx]
I can't find any tracks on their website at all. Is it me, or is it all a bit of a con to attract visitors?
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
"It's just like you did when you were young, when you made a cassette of your favourite tracks you'd love, and would give it to a friend and say 'listen to this.
Yeah, exactly like when we were young, and you made digitally exact copies of the music you liked and shared it with thousands of people who you've never met.
...because eventually enough people not paying for their music will definately pay off their studio time. Oh, right... "former member of The Clash" probably finds it a lot easier than some semi-famous bands to not worry about whether anyone wants to buy the new material.
But taken to the logical destination, you can only look at this approach as making them a hobby band. Which is fine if you're not worried about the rent. If he's not worried about trying to eat off of music sales, I wonder to whom he donates his Clash residuals?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Good music has theme, connects to reality, does something to make you care. Those days are long gone.
:(
That's such a depressingly negative view to take.
I don't think that music is any worse than it was years ago, but you may be led to believe this if you exclusively listen to commerical radio/tv or whatever. Music has become saturated as there's so much shitty pop out there, but if you're prepared to look, I'm sure you'd find something you'll like.
I'm not going to start spewing my own current interests in music, but EVERYONE can surely find something they like out there..?
This band is composed of people who already made enough money off their copyrights that they can do what they want, what they started playing music for: to get girls, and quiet the voices in their heads.
The real demo of "free music" is not these ex-punks (long live the Clash!), but those emblematic hippies: the Grateful Dead. The Dead always encouraged their fans to record and exchange their performances. So they outlived all the cycles of fads. They never had the rights to allow free exchange of their studio records - the labels kept those rights, along with most of the revenue - so those weren't exchanged. Result: the Dead's albums, even the pretty good ones (_Workingman's Dead_, _American Beauty_, _Mars Hotel_) were never that popular, though their sales got a boost from their increased fans. Nobody collects 100 tapes of live shows, or follows a band around, without buying commercial releases, too. The Dead would never have lasted, if they weren't true to the spirit of the music: music is for sharing.
It's the central story of the record business that the weasels who run it understand nothing about the music, its makers, or its listeners. Everything they do is counter to the reality of the music itself. Sometimes they get lucky, like figuring out how to monopolize the distribution of the plastic discs most people use to consume music, in collusion with mafias that monopolize trucking. But usually they're fighting the ways that people always share music, and always have, for thousands of generations (of humans *and* copies, or renditions). When people build a music business around *more sharing* of the music, they get the real rewards of working *with* their product and market, not against it. It might not be the instant payoff that the weasels demand, but then it also doesn't usually require the one payoff to finance the 100 failures that their "clamp down" model requires.
--
make install -not war
Is this an attempt at a 'man bites dog' story?
Because, most bands invite music copying. It's only a select few who have big $$ contracts who restrict copying.
Most people are flattered if a fan base copies their music around.
So what is this? It's actually a 'dog bites man' story but we're pretending it's 'man bites dog' for political reasons?
But there are so many bedroom musicians. How do you pinpoint the future Lennons and McCartneys?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
from the article
"Everyone's going to say, 'hang on - if they've got it already, why are they going to buy the record?' But what we find is actually, people really like buying the records."
I'm glad someone thinks the album format isn't dead yet, given the popularity of buying single tracks from iTMS. I prefer listening to albums, rather than some mix of greatest hits by various bands.
Vote for Pedro