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Grateful Dead Clarify Stand on Live MP3s
Maver1ck writes "Seems things weren't as stange as they
appeared last week. The Grateful Dead will, under strict guidelines
prohibiting commercial use, still allow free MP3 downloads
of live performances taped by fans. They just won't allow banner ads, sales
of user data, sponsorship or any other "profit" from the
exchange. Law firm press release is at PR Newswire.
Still begs the question of paying for all that bandwidth..."
Is it wrong to pay S&H to have a friend mail you a tape?
Or to send him a couple bucks to cover a blank CD-R to have
him burn you a concert? Bandwidth is a bit more expensive
than postage though...
The company doesn't specifically mention these, but trades are usually done as "B&P" - which means blanks and postage. Send the person an envelope containing a SASE and blanks.
Sending cash to compensate for postage and blank costs is questionable - what is to stop someone from buying bulk postage & blanks and making profit? (admittedly not a lot of profit, but enough to pay for some weed & acid! 8^) )
And they don't improvise so therefore:
1) nobody cares about their shows
2) they wouldn't want people to hear their weak
performances
People now worship the dead not for the dead themselves, but for the many bands who now follow their marketing decision to allow the audience to tape their concerts and trade them.
Phish & DMB are just two of the more well known ones, but there is a rather large number of them.
If a site has to worry about financing their existance, it has gone beyond being a for-fun hobby and therefore is not what the band wants.
Mark
> Still begs the question of paying for all that
> bandwidth..."
It does not "beg the question." Begging the
question is when you assume what you are trying
to prove.
Maybe it "raises the issue."
Sorry. That's a pet peeve of mine.
So I'm a nerd.
I already have enough good reasons to leave
the Internet permanently and forever. Please
don't give me another one!
Look. Having a website with free and/or
promotional stuff is like having a party:
You don't charge anyone for anything unless
you have like 4 keggers, and that's only like
a $2 cover-charge.
Your party (and you) will live on reputation
alone. You don't charge people for letting
them use your telephone. You don't charge
them for letting them use your electricity.
Bandwidth is not like postage. Both are ways
of communication. But, if I wrote my mom a
letter, I wouldn't sure damn as hell send her
a receipt for the amount of the postage.
If quality is your concern, why not just encode MP3s at a higher bit rate? Have you ever encoded tracks at both 128 kbps and 192 kbps and compared the output to the original?
Huh? You can get any level of quality you want, just change the bitrate.
Ah yes. They have visibility up the bunghole.
They also have wads of cash up the bunghole, but their bungholes cringe shut at the thought that someone else might profit by distributing their work.
All those pissant jam bands pay enough token hommage to "Freedom" and other hippie ideals to make the Trust Fund Babies and Ponytailed Korporate Drones go "Dude! They're soooo kewl!"
Wake up America! It's time to play the Ramones.
1-2-3-4...
True enough.. And I agree that this model is affordable for the band if they can find somebody that is willing to host them.
I was referring to the fact that a small band is probably not going to want to pay all the costs associated with hosting a site of their own (their own dedicated lines and servers).
And, I believe if they were going to be able to profit or break even from hosting their own site they would need it to be commerce enabled, probably with a community focus. This is going to cost even more money, unless the band has the skills to build the site, or the hosting service is willing to make them a deal on that too..
Who cares, what they dont know cant hurt em, there is no BIGBROTHER you are free to do what you like.
Why should we respect the law by saying "oh is this wrong or not" when big corprates often dont give a ratts ass and do what they want any way to the people/citizen folk.
Wow, how shocking to see the Grateful Dead on slashdot, good job.
I've always believed the dead's philosophy of "when music is played: it should be free." I definately agree.
Jory Stiefel,
Thank You Jerry! (fare thee well)
I'm willing to live without the CD quality for the convenience of downloading (cable modem, yay!)
Sure, I'd prefer DATs, but since I'm relatively down near the end of the tape trees anyway, mp3s are fine by me.
Wouldn't it be more relevant to the 90's to ask what Pearl Jam's stance on mp3 is? Yes, the gratefuldead were cool back in the 60's. Can't we get over them? Moderators, score this -1, the debate down below zero is more relevant than the long winded platitudes at > 2.
I take exception to CmdrTaco's statement that bandwidth is more expensive then postage. It is far cheaper to send something digitally then to use sailmail. Not only to you have to pay USPS but there is all costs (and time) involved in packaging and creating/copying the media you are sending. You add all the up and you can see that sailmail is very expensive and very inefficient (unless you are sending massive amounts of data concurrently). Do the math... figure out how much effort and money it would take to send out 5000 copies of a Greatful Dead single via sailmail. But then everybody on /. knows that and that is why we have all abandoned using sailmail in favor of sending messages via email and downloading our music via MP3.
/. or mp3.com. But /. and mp3.com are hosting hundreds or thousands of users and so they as a LOT of traffic and hence have huge bandwidth requirements.
The reason that bandwidth seems expensive to CmdrTaco is that he has to pay for all the leaches like me that come and visit his site and use his bandwidth. And he has a lot of leaches - so he needs a lot of bandwidth. The problem isn't one so much of cost of the bandwidth, but instead the economic model that the Internet uses... (i.e. everybody pays for their inbound and outbound bandwidth). That is great for a peon like me with my personal DSL line. I got bandwidth to spare and I can visit, for free, great sites like
And there is the problem, the Internet infrastructure does not allow a consumer of information to easily compensate the distributor of information for the bandwidth used to transport the data off their site. And I'm not sure I want it to be easy... think about what that would lead to.
I used to do a little Phish trading in the past. And generally it IS considered wrong to exchange money in any form, whether it is to cover the costs of media and S&H or not.
;) )
When using the snail mail this is usually handled by one trader sending the other blank media and return package with the postage already paid.
This method covers everything but time and resources withouth any money being exchange, but time and resources simply can't be compensated for.
I think this is pretty fair. I think the bands that allow taping of there live shows are doing a very cool thing for the fans. But, I don't believe anybody should profit off those recordings unless the band is getting a piece of the action.
Bands generally benefit from tape trading - especially smaller/lesser-known bands, b/c the tapes allow a wider audience. I think the internet could increase this benefit by orders of magnitude.
The problem of course being paying for the bandwidth.. I wish I had a solution, but I don't. The bands that could afford to distribute their live shows themselves off there site, would be large enough that they wouldn't need the exposure. And, the small bands probably couldn't afford to do it themselves. Fans will do it, but as this GD has pointed out, the have to do it without any financial gains.
(sorry, that turned in to a rant - and sorry about the AC posting - I'm at work, and don't remember my password
Posted by tyler23:
The best MP3 can do is still a lossy compression with extremely noticeable audio artifacts, primarily in the loss of dynamic range and dulling of the frequency extremes. It's fine for what it is - people were really glad to have the Phil & Phriends Warfield shows up so quickly - but realistically, it's not a suitable trading medium for anyone of an even moderately audiophile persuasion.
I do download and listen to MP3s for fun at work, but I'd never burn a CDR of any of it, unless it was very cool and completely unobtainium otherwise. A few simple blind listening tests convinced me completely.
I'm interested in this discussion; tape/CDR trading and OSS culture have always seemed similar to me in many ways. For example, I'm burning at total of 350 CDRs of those April Warfield shows - 35 copies of 10 disks each - none of them for trade. My motivations are exactly the same as most OSS programmers.
Posted by tyler23:
I'm working on an article for PauseRecord on exactly this issue. While I don't think the parallels are exact, I think the music trading community stands to learn a lot about intellectual property rights issues from the OSS community, which has obviously already thought about this a little...
Posted by tyler23:
As usual, a bunch of people with axes to grind have to change the subject. You don't like the Grateful Dead, Phish, MMW, String Cheese Incident, or other jam bands? Fine. Don't listen. So what? This is an intellectual property rights issue, and your opinion of the music is irrelevant; and your emotional repsonse is very psychologically revealing.
I don't get along with most Deadheads (or especially Phish fans). I find them boring. But I am a HUGE Deadhead and Phish fan myself, and I have a large number of Deadhead friends who fit no stereotype whatsoever. I listen to classical, avant jazz, trance, ambient, dub, folk, acoustic, and ska musics in addition to jam band stuff...
Please get over yourself, and pay attention to what's actually being discussed.
In fact, a lorry full of tapes has far better bandwidth than a T1 line. The Latency sucks though
--
Afterall, you have to pay for your site somehow.
Would they object to your posting of an mp3 on your "free" geocities site? I doubt it. So long as "you" aren't "geocities".
If you have a private, corporate site or personal one that is partly or wholly banner supported, then go ahead and post the GD mp3 on the server, just don't put any links to it on your sponsored page. Only give out the URL that goes direct to the GD page and let it stand alone.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Question: by "warez" site, do you mean those sites with endless porno consoles and blink tags that never actually go anywhere (aka warez.com), or are we talking about an unpublished ftp server that someone's running out of their basement? The former would probably never carry Grateful Dead mp3's, but the latter is probably much more likely to comply with the Dead's licensing than mp3.com.
This is more to the point, I think. I would say that an ideal solution would be for commercial mp3 sites to simply not carry Dead tunes. Leave it up to the amateurs, who have more of a vested interest in keeping it real.
--Alex
Causation can cause correlation
Look at it this way-- before mp3s and the internet, cassette tapes and the parking lot outside concerts served much the same function. This is simply extending the same rules to new media. And I would imagine that it's perfectly all right to ask people to pay for shipping or the cost of the CD-R, since you're still not making a profit off the transaction.
I think that the Grateful Dead were pretty revolutionary in their treatment of "bootlegging". Instead of considering it a loss of revenue, they called it free promotion. If only Fox would do the same thing with Simpsons fan sites!
Causation can cause correlation
You'll never hear surf music again... That when the deads first album came out way back when, that's what they said about them.
to answer on the ethics of shipping and handling with a e-version of the audience tape.
postage would be absolutely ok. handling I would say absolutely not. the media is reimbursable, the time to burn it, no.
bandwidth? uncharted territory....
shameless promo on...
Kuli Loach
shamless promo off
First off, I hate the Grateful Dead. I hate most of their fans as well. Annoying bunch of pretentious patchouli-drenched turds.
There. That's out of the way.
The Dead might take a lesson from the GPL and let people profit from packaging and selling live gig recordings. It would increase their visibility and get lots of press. The most popular and successful sites/products would still be the ones who *gave* the music away (or sell an excellent product at a *great* price), with a few banner ads and no pop-ups.
I'd think that a bunch of idealistic peacenicks would be overjoyed to know that their music could enable myriad strangers rich and poor alike to buy their daily bread (or at least pay their web-hosting fees). Guess not.
Bottom Line: fsck 'em!
**>>BELCH
Why not simply donate the rest to charity? Use banners, cover your bandwidth, donate the rest or save it for more bandwidth.. Not too hard to figure out, just ask the band which charity they'd prefer...
Sounds fair to me...
Bandwidth can be used for personal reasons, and for as many different purposes as you want. Paying postage for a one-way shipment of some physical media can have no further personal use.
"Gee, I asked for money to recompense charges for my connection, but I got so much that I have my ISP payed off for a year. Cool!"
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
Get OVER the Dead? What the fuck? Yah, let's get OVER Led Zeppelin, let's get OVER the Beatles, let's get OVER Blue Oyster Cult, let's get over The Who, let's get OVER Dream Theater, let's get OVER Stone Temple Pilots, let's get over beethoven, let's get over Elvis, let's get over Electricity, let's get OVER Tesla, let's get OVER chocolat, let's get OVER whatever the fuck your weenie ass thinks is good music. Let's get OVER Open Source, let's get OVER RMS, let's get OVER evolution, let's get over being DEAD, let's get OVER LINUX and Slashdot and anything else anyone hold's dear to their heart!!!!! Go to HELL you stupid bastard. Fuck off, eat shit! If ya want to get over something, let's get OVER Kosovo. (Send over an assassination team if Billy-boy is REALLY serious!!) Let's GET OVER your stupid ass!!!
(Moderators, find it in your hearts to give this a PLUS ONE!!!)
This is good, at least they have a solid policy in writing. Speaking for myself as an avid trader I would never dream of going to a format which is less accurate than CD-R/DAT for trading, and there are many studio quality recordings out there with no generational degradation (love digital trading)... and CD-R's are cheap... but having MP3's will be nice for downloading and previewing stuff. I think most of the hard-core traders don't care much about MP-3 unless it gets beyond the "better than cassette but not as good as CD" level of quality.
I wonder if the band will have the same policy for good ol' PCM. You can squish a full CD-R to about 300 MB with shorten (roughly the wav equivelant of gzip). With cable modems/xDSL getting cheaper fully lossless online digital trading is becoming more of a reality, 'cept when everyone else on your subnet is doing the same thing and you're getting modem-fast transfer speeds.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
If you use your home machine to do thedownloads, on a 56K modem, then you don't need banner ads. If you need to pay for a T1 to cover demand, then you're commercial. That's like making hundreds of tapes a day - yep, that sounds commercial too.
If you do it in your spare time for friends, your production is naturally limited. It should be the same for MP3s - if you can't afford it out of your own pocket, it's not a spare time hobby for a few friends any more.
--
Infuriate left and right
Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right!
---Anonymous Deadhead since 1990
Some people feel that trading for the cost of the tapes is fair. So you send me a 2-tape show, I send you $11 -- $4 / tape and $3 for shipping. Is that sales? Probably not, if you're just breaking even.
So now we have the wonderful world of MP3s. I have an MP3 website. You want MP3s. I pay $50 / month for hosting (all that storage, dontcha know), I get 50 downloads a month, so I figure that I want to show 5000 ads and get $0.01 each. That way, I break even. Just like when trading those tapes.
Oooh, but what if I show 5001 ads? Then I'm profiting. But is that wrong?
I dunno. But I've got the DMB site anyhow, complete with ads. :)
First, my comments make the assumption that the site(s) in question provide mp3s for download legally, a la mp3.com. Since warez sites follow a different philosophy, my comments don't really apply to them.
Reading the document it isn't really clear to me if this is allowed or not, but couldn't sites which have banner advertising simply have no banners on the pages where Dead mp3's are downloaded from. In other words, folks going to download other mp3's would see ads, as would those seeing the main page with, say, the letter indexes ("Bands whose names start with A", "B", "C", etc.), but once on the "grateful dead" page no advertising would appear. This might allow sites to pay for bandwidth, but still be in keeping with the spirit of what the Grateful Dead are trying to achieve.
Of course, then there's the ethical issue of whether Grateful Dead trading should be subsidized by the work and efforts of other bands who are, after all, competitors in a sense, which is what is arguably happening if banner ads to pay for the sites are viewed when downloading their material.
For what its worth, I agree with the philosophy the Dead are trying to promote -- I'm just wondering if there isn't an economical compromize that would be in keeping with their requirements, yet allow sites to continue to finance their existence.
comments? other ideas?
jean
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The bands that could afford to distribute their live shows themselves off there site, would be large enough that they wouldn't need the exposure.
I disagree. It's easy for a small band to distribute free .mp3s. I'm going to be setting up a site for a small "bar band" that wants to serve their whole CD from the site. It should be fairly cheap ($50/month) and allow downloads galore.
Bandwidth is alot cheaper than tapes & postage. Blank CDs are cheaper than audio tapes too.
-=Julian=-
Naturally the Dead are okay with MP3, and this
policy is the same as all their other music
trading policies, basically it's okay as long as
you don't make money on the deal.
Most all of the Jam-bands are using MP3, many of them provide them on their websites for download, providing both album cuts and live show outtakes for the fans.
Lauan Records (pronounced loo-ahn>, a Jam bands startup label, has colaborated with the Athens GA group Day By the River (DBR), to put out an all MP3 compact disc. They are providing over 4 hours of MP3 music for $10.00. If that isn't embracing the idea, I don't know what is.
Isn't this interesting ??
The same principles that "govern" the distribution of GPL-generated software "govern" the limitations of DeadHeads distributing GH concert tapes !!
In the words of the recent Wired magazine, when will the music industry realize that "Good Karma is good for business" ??
"He who questions training trains himself at asking questions." - The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
i've got several hundred dead tapes, 2nd generation off the dead soundboard, from back when i toured with them in the early-late '80s, plus i've ggot a good selection of rarities from the 60s and 70s. email me if you want to convert them to mp3 - i just don't have the time to do it myself.
-- ken williams
You are right, the difficulty is that the manner in which people pay for bandwidth makes it difficult to account for the cost of a particular use. But I am sure a creative web hosting operation could come up with an equitable model, in which they would not charge the site author (except possibly for storage), and each download would have a small bandwidth-based fee attached to it. This seems to be the closest analog to paying for postage.
This is basically the scheme that was suppose to underlie the micropayments boom on the internet a few years ago. It failed to take off, because consumers were uninterested in paying for content. But in a situations like the one we are discussing, where you have a captive fan base and no other option for financing, maybe bandwidth-based micropayments are the way to go.
How about a simple link at the bottom, something along the lines of "If you appreciate this service please click here" and link to some affiliate program. Then it becomes a donation of the surfer's time to the web site owner as opposed to a "forced" banner ad impression?
+&x
Its not wrong to pay for postage. (Typically $3 for Priority Mail ) There is no handling charge. You're not allowed to compensate more than the value of the media.
Usually media is given directly. Its all about sharing. No handling charges because the band worked to give you the music, you're only copying the band's work.
....saving up for another DAT deck
Bandwidth may be expensive, but you can do a lot more with it then with a tape. At least in my case, MP3s are the only way my music gets recorded. My tape recorder does not work near as well as my computer. ;) Maybe one day i will even post my MP3 files on a web site instead of email on demand when i actually have new stuffle.
"Alt-F4 that's for quitting" quoth Dan_Wood
The issue is greater than the dead or any other band, the reason it falls on the Grateful Dead is that they are the largest recorded and traded musical group, pretty much in the history of music. There aren't any other bands (except Phish, maybe) that have over 3000 hours of music available for trade of live performances. Let's change the band to Pearl Jam or DMB or any band of which you would like to get live recordings. Trashing deadheads and the Grateful dead is just plain ludicrous. One guy here went on to say F**K EM, well if it was a band you preferred then the argument would change.
The big picture here is the more important one, no profit from distribution, Blanks & Postage are and always will be acceptable. I have been trading tapes (and now CDs) for the last 10 years and that was the guiding philosophy. I don't think that using adverts to pay for the bandwidth is breaking any rules, it sortof falls under the aforementioned 'philosophy'. Oh and the dead were more popular in the 90's (higher concert sales) thatn they were in the 60's, 70's or 80's. FYI
don't forget Medeski, Martin and Wood.
This essentially is the same as most deadheads have always considered the etiquette of trading to be (whatever the medium) - and that is making no personal profit out of it, or covering costs other than the blanks and postage.
If I went out and got a Nak dragon tomorrow for tape dubbing, I can't recoup costs through GD trading.
I wonder though, is it permissable to have banners elsewhere on the site, just not on the download pages?
Andy