The amount of people grabbing my lossless endlessly reproducible copies of the music is insignificant - it's hardly anyone really..
Certainly not enough to do any financial damage to the artists whose recordings I admire.
Some of my favourite artists sure, would struggle to sell 5000 copies of a new release worldwide.
[Hey, it's esoteric music and that's just what we accept right?]
But I doubt that letting 26 dudes have a free download is going to make much of a dent in the resources of some small record label run from a kitchen table in a sleazy suburb on the outskirts of town - hey?
And hell, I'm sick of the tired arguments about "lossless changes everything" and "what if my 26 downloader-club friends in turn have 26 friends each?".
Shit, that's still only 676 guys that have my original rip, and I am willing to bet that NONE of those 676 dudes have many friends, or maybe any friends (the music we love is pretty marginal, y'know..)
Because if those 676 have only 8 friends, the we're well over the 5000 copies that was our original maximum-exposure sales projection.
We would'nt be recompensing the artist we enjoy so well - we'd be sucking them dry.
And we wouldn't want to do that would we ?
on the other hand one could make a case (conveniently ignored by even so called ethical bloggers) that posting , vinyl rips in Flac with photographs of the covers, precludes the possibilty
ReplyDeleteof a given record being reissued.
Downloads of out of print Lps run into the hundreds
if not thousands.
S
This is a very good point - and thanks for your comment.
ReplyDeleteAn illustrative example made in my comment here - the section beginning "Consider a musician who approached a former record label.."
I'd like to return to this issue before too long.
Yes, that is a valid point. It may preclude it in the sense that potential buyers may not want to purchase the item as they already have a free downloaded digital copy of it. On the other hand, posting OOP items may create a potential market demand by making people aware of an item they never knew existed. Of course, this is very hard to verify. So, what to conclude from that?
ReplyDeleteOr - where might 'promotion' end and 'just giving it away' begin?
ReplyDeleteAnd who has control over both processes?
In a (er..) forthcoming section here, regarding Out of Print materials - I'd like to delve into this in greater depth because it involves interesting, complex and nuanced issues.
Why do musicians approach record labels in the first place?
ReplyDeletePromotion or Money?
With the Promotion angle, sharing out of print releases would be increasing the promotion or exposure they seek for their music. It's obvious the record labels has failed in it's contract with the musician to promote the record, as the file sharing has exposed a market share the record label was unable or unwilling to find. (The record labels have been notorious on holding to an outdated model of promoting / selling music.)
With the Money angle, from this chart (http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/) it appears that the musician is better off not using record labels, & doing the physical work themselves. This may well be a reality that musicians are now waking up too, hence the attraction of bandcamp & kick starter fund raising.
Just the kernel of an opinion.
Thanks, I found all the comments here interesting & though provoking.