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."
What we need now is Open Source Songs. Tracks in development are released and fans can chip in and make those songs better.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
A new rock group featuring former members of The Clash and Generation X has taken a novel approach to the issue of piracy by urging their fans to copy their music.
Carbon Silicon make all their recordings freely available online, and actively encourage bootlegging or filming of their gigs.
They even attack the current waves of litigation surrounding illegally copied music in their song Gangs Of England, which includes the line, "if you want the record, press record".
"What we're talking about here is fans who are sharing music," Tony James, formally of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Generation X - who formed the group with ex-Clash guitarist Mick Jones - told BBC World Service's The Music Biz programme.
"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.'
"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."
Demos online
The music industry has been grappling with issues of piracy over the last few years, in particular since broadband became popular.
Artists who have backed anti-piracy campaigns, include Metallica, Tatu and Peter Gabriel.
But James said that he considered the internet to be the "most exciting thing that's happened to rock and roll".
In particular, he pointed out that people could now record songs in their bedrooms and make them available to the world, and new artists no longer needed "a label, or a manager, or a BBC Radio playlist".
Carbon Silicon use their website to show the development of their songs. Demos are put on the web so people can track how they came together.
"We feel that it's almost like if I could go and watch Lennon and McCartney in the studio making Sgt Pepper, and watch them on the internet making that record, that would be a really exciting thing," James explained.
"So I think what we'll see in the future is people will pay to be there - to be part of the creative process. That's a really exciting thing.
"Our ideas of copyright, and what constitutes a record, will change in the future."
Unfortunately, their web server is now a melted mass of carbon and silicon. I hope Slashdotters buy a load of CDs to replace that bugger!
I see that this is free as in beer, but is it free as in freedom? (can I alter and distribute?)
Wow! Too bad Nobody else does this!
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
For example recently I discovered http://magnatune.com/ which is a whole label following the same idea.
I think people should really encourage this and btw. they have some pretty nice music there.
(No, I'm in no way affiliated to them, I just like the concept and hand a fun afternoon recently listening through their offerings.)
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.
GPLed music shouldn't be too hard, as you can start by GPLing scores, MIDI files and the like. The samples would then logically follow (as they are derived works, so must be GPL). Editing at the more basic level would seem easiest, so that is why I'm thinking that is where you'd really want to start.
Music editors (and video editors) fill Freshmeat on a daily basis, so there's no shortage of ways of editing the final tracks, though convincing the RIAA that it is legal might be another matter.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"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.
Like the Grateful Dead? And all the bands that followed their lead, giving us over 1000 different bands with music on the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive, and thousands more that allow their music to be legally traded on the Etree Torrent server?
Ok, so you may say that's just live music, but if you want studio music, there's the Internet Archive (again) with Netlabels and Open Source Audio. I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing the news here.
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..?
Link here. They've only got about 6800 recordings so far, but it's only going to get bigger.
I remember The Offspring tried to give away an album in 2000 as mp3s on their website but had the idea shot to shit by their record label.
Sony Forces The Offspring to Cancel MP3 Giveaway.
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
> a rock band based in Bangalore
Holy shit! They're outsourcing rock n roll now?!
Circumcision is child abuse.
>Try setting up a lemonade stand
We've done a few experiements: Sitting on a busy
street corner with a cooler full of beer, for free to anyone who would ask for one (no takers!).
Walking around in a busy club district with a foam cup full of coins, saying "spare change?" -- meaning, "please take my spare change!" No takers here either.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
dude, you are really barking up the wrong tree
I think you're missing the point.
the fact that you refer to mick jones simply as 'former member of the clash'
Um, I was quoting the original post. He used that exact phrase.
And, I'm not making any comment at all on the quality of their music, or place in history. My point is that if The Clash hadn't sold a lot of records, and had scads of airplay for the better part of the 1980's (and still today, depending on where you listen), he wouldn't have quite the clout or financial comfort to engage in music making just for the sake of it, without any concerns about whether people are paying him to play. That's fine if you have a day job, or are financially set... but people who try to make a living entirely as a musician rarely have the option of giving away their work.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.