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Posted
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emmett
from the more-artists-for-napster dept.
schtum writes: "As reported on NME: Public Enemy's Chuck D has become the first high-profile artist to come out in support of under-fire website and MP3 software provider Napster You can read Mr. D's original statement here."
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Napster is everything I want to see and Chuck D is more than just another moron.
My partners and I have been in the music business for 15 years, we've probably been playing for 25. We own two recording studios and an on-line independent record label. One of my business partners has achieved the ultimate dream a "major label contract."
The following numbers have probably been posted far to many times but they bear repeating. One of every 1,000 artists signs a contract. Of that group about one of every 100 releases an album. The lucky few who release an album make about.05 on every $15.00 sale. From that revenue they pay off the loans which they've contractually entered into with the major label record company. When an album sells a million units at $15.00 per unit and the artist recieves.05 the label makes $14,500.000.00 and the artist get $500,000.
Two years ago Mohtown had $150,000.00 of my partners money. About six months back his lawyer discovered this money and of course requested that they recieve it and asked why they hadn't. Mohtown said, "We lost your address and didn't know where to send it." This isn't a unique experience, it's the norm within the music business.
The majors have artificially inflated the cost of product production. To think that bands spend over a million dollars on average quality studio productions is enough to make me sick. Of course it's easy to understand, the major labels own the damned studios where their artists work. High quality production is being done in basements within studios where the total gear and room investments come in under $50,000. Many of these cost around $35.00 an hour. If each song on the album requires 10 hours of production time that's $350.00 per song. So, a ten song album can be produced for $3,500.00. Let's double it just because we can, $7,000.00.
The end result of this is some blood sucking executive is vacumeing out the fans wallet with an artist's product. Fans and artists are both be wripped off.
An interesting phenomena for me is to observe artist ignorance. My forays into the mp3.com artist message board have awakened me to the fact that the majority of us still want that god damned major label contract. Mp3.com and the majority of their artists treat that site as a window mall where they can display their wares for interested major label artist representatives. Mp3.com is the crap hole of the internet. I'll say they've done a couple things right but Napster is going to sink their ship and rightfully so.
I don't blame fans for stealing music. I don't personally do it but I encourage everyone of you to content your hearts/ears.
I don't blame fans for stealing music. I don't personally do it but I encourage everyone of you to content your hearts/ears.
I want you to buy my music and it's my challange to produce something you want and to hope that a fair price will warrant an exchange of my goods for your money. Is.25 cents a song to much to ask for in a digital download environment? Hey, I'm bustin' my rear trying to do what's right for fans and artists. I want to know whether Napster and mp3 users will buy direct from Independent Artists.
Remember everytime you steal a song, an undeserving executive is denied their legal right to fill the fuel tank of her college kid's BMW. Meanwhile the artist who produced that song is trying to sell enough dope to pay their rent.
I've gotta go to work, I'd love to finish writing and even spell checking my pissed off montra but then I'd have to "kill da landlord." As a side note: I couldn't afford to run an independent on-line record label if it wasn't for Linux, apache, php, midgard and the entire OSS scene.
I hate the major label business model, I love the independent music scene.
"if you had any idea how badly I wanted people to hear what I'm doing"
*ROFL!* Though I suppose inadvertently MAKING EVERY WORD A FSCKING LINK might give some idea of it... furrfu! how embarrassing! What the hell? Must be from posting 'UBB' code on the mp3.com boards and forgetting to close tags. Oh well *hehehehe* ok, so click somewhere in the general vicinity of that post... (skulks off embarrasedly:) )
You're right, of course. Unfortunately, the answer will probably be the dirtiest word known to an artist:
Marketing.
I remember some TV news "magazine" doing a documentary on marketing in the music business--"whoring" a song, if you will. Okay, this will show that this was a long time ago, so here goes: the band in question was Jesus Jones (remember "Right Here, Right Now"?) Essentially, the band was picking up a little of a cult following, got picked up by a label, and wanted a hit, I suppose. So, what happened? The label's people started cutting deals with stations to get the track "Right Here, Right Now" put into heavy rotation.
What's that tell ya? To get recognition, you have to go through sources that can shove your music down people's throats. Sadly, even PE was that way: if "Fight The Power" hadn't been bashed into my head my numerous media (mostly because Spike Lee, film god, made the video) I probably wouldn't have known Public Enemy from Al Capone (nor the difference.)
Oh yeah, and to all you folks who say PE sucks: listen to the rhythmic content of the tracks, and not just the sampled beats. The lyrical rhythm is something to make a white guy like me jealous.:^) Mah Gawd, the man's brilliant!
One more thing. Chuck D may go on about the plight of his people. I admire him for that. But it bothers me that so many members of the African-American community continue to make race an issue after we've attempted to make children (my generation was one of the first, with limited success) fairly "race"-blind. Case in point: the NAACP is bringing up charges of racism in the local police force. Are the police unduly harassing black community members? Hopefully, no; AFAIK the police "harrass" problem folks regardless of race, sex, or creed.:^) No, there simply aren't any black police officers. Not, "there aren't any non-white police officers," not, "there aren't any minority police officers," just "there aren't any black police officers." Well, it's nice to see my local NAACP is full of a bunch of bigots.:^P
It doesn't really take the power back, as such. It nullifies the very notion of power, It puts the field of conflict back in the hands of the 'people' to resolve it as best they can. Bloody, civilised, impoverished.. In my mind, all those options are far better than the slavery he's rebelling against. The worst: White Boy Slavery. Which we as 'enlightened individuals' are trying to tell black america is a better option than what they have now. When the empowered are themselves enslaved, as they are now, it is indeed time for rebellion! Get a Usenet feed, Kidz. Read some ASR. LEARN what whiteboy slavery is! You'll take up the gun with chuckD to merely LESSEN your suffering!
Quoting out of context is the fast track to hell. YOU LIED! Ready yourself for the cosmic consequences. Get a fucking grip on actual reality. Lubricate. Liberally. Pete.
Do you have any sort of clue just how much of each CD the band rakes in? 3/4ths? Keep dreaming. Half? Not even close. Fourth? Eighth? From my understandings, the artist earns maybe one dollar off of every CD sold. Where does the rest go? promotion! recording lables! riaa! I'm rather sure Chuck D is all for having people being successful, but I'm sure, he, like practically all other artists, want the record companies to go fuck themselves.
The "Quick Links" Slashbox (which I *do* know that I can turn off in preferences) has a section that says "Support Slashdot:" and includes links to ThinkGeek and CDnow. Back when Slashdot was a few college kids living on Ramen, selling blood to buy parts for a server in someone's dorm room closet, or something similar, this made perfect sense, kinda like the PBS and NPR mail order sweatshirt, poster, and coffee mug catalog, but now that this is a "real grown-up business", is it still appropriate? They aren't still dependent on donations, are they?
IIRC, the Sultan of Brunei is richer. BTW, this says very little except that your resources are distributed inequitably.
and has the most intelligent and inventive people in the world.
Yeah -- the immigrants ! Seriously, your kids are stupid. Read any stats on education, or try teaching in America then teach abroad and compare.
BTW, did you mention -- it has the highest per-capita prison population in the world ? Did you mention that your kids are among the dumbest among the industrialised nations ?
its language is also the primary language of the world. and most cultures mimic us.
Americans invented the English language ? ROFL ! The reason that English is dominant has as much to do with the size of the former British empire as anything else. This is also why almost all East Asian writing is Chinese ( essentially ). Most cultures mimic America ??? Yeah, whatever.
jealous of America. i want to live there but can't because they don't want any more stupid foreigners like me."
Last I heard, the high tech industry were begging for H1Bs because there aren't enough intelligent Americans around. PhD programs are also recruiting foreigners by the ton. It's kind of funny that the "stupid foreigners" are being recruited near the top of the intellectual ladder -- research and high tech.
The CD costs $2- or so to make, but how much does it cost to distribute ? All the middlemen need to take their cut, and each cut is a percentage. The price grows exponentially with the no of middlemen. You may as well ask why you're paying $20 or more for a pair of pants that cost $2- for a Thai sweatshop worker to sew together.
In conclusion, this "CDs are too expensive" rhetoric is totally bogus. If someone was capable of giving the artist more money and getting the music to consumers for less, we'd see the record companies go out of business. But they're not. The problem is that the retail style distribution model is inefficient.
Electronic distribution might or might not prove cheaper. However, what the slashdot community seem to like most about the internet distribution model is that they can freeload and circumvent copyrights.
BTW, see further up and hear what he has to say about Microsoft. I bet if those comments were posted, we'd see all the anger of slashdot directed his way.
That's an interesting anecdote, but this is rare. Usually, the small labels don't do much better in terms of prices, because they can't come up with a substantially better business plan. Also keep in mind that import duties often drive prices up outside of the US, adding yet another percentage markup to compound everything. Also, importing adds another layer ( at least ) to the middleman chain.
You're quoting the retail price which is irrelevant to this debate. What you have not quoted is the (wholesale) price that record companies offer to retailers. The record companies don't set retail prices -- those are determined by the distribution network as well as the record companies.
I'm not clear that prices really have increased. I can still get most of my CDs for $11-14 or so. It's only if the retail outlet overprice that I need to pay much more. When I was in the US 10 years ago, I paid $8-11 for a cassete. Allowing for compounded price increases over 10 years, I don't think the increase is enormous.
Moreover, you offer no evidence that the record companies are charging double, and I'd argue that it's the middlemen who are screwing you as much as anything else.
Cassettes cost the same amount to distribute, and a little more to produce. Yet, they are sold for a fraction of the price of a CD
The record companies don't break even on the cassette sales alone. They obviously recover manufacturing costs, but they rely on CD sales as their main revenue source. In isolation, cassetes are a losing proposition, but a lot of the costs are shared by the CD thing ( staffing, distribution, administration/accounting, marketing ).
Like I said, if you have a business plan that gives more back to the artists and gives the consumer better prices, by all means, go for it. However, all I've been seeing here is a lot of hot air and no business plans.
Sure, there are exceptions, which is why I said "usually" instead of "always". If I say "usually, birds don't fly", you don't prove me wrong by saying "emu". I put it to you that these anecdotes are the exception rather than the rule.
what the hell do they do, just ship the cd's and sell them at a ridiculously inflated price.
The problem is that when you go through a few chain of middlemen, you get exponential price increases. It's not that each middleman is inefficient, it's that routing through a few layers of middlemen is. That's why businesses that sell things online (like Amazon) can always get better prices to the buyer -- they cut out middlemen.
In any cases, if the artists learn to either promote for free or sell online ( I know that slashdotters hate the idea of paying for something though ), it would be a good thing.
Immigrants have children in school too, does this make them stupid as well?
Check the statistics. American kids are dumb ( ie they score poorly on international tests ).
They are being taught basically to survive in today's and tomorrow's economy which was built by American business and economical principles.
What ? The Americans also invented capitalism ? Yeah, whatever.
Foreigners will do the same work for less money. An average American computer science or engineering grad expects 40k a year and up right out of college. An engineer from India will work for half that salary.
Bzzzt -- you can't legally pay a H1B that low. There are minimums that you have to pay H1B workers, and I know a lot of those workers -- the minimums in question aren't that bad. So no, it's not about cheap labor. BTW, you don't even address my point about academic research, which also takes in a lot of foreigners.
I should mention that I don't believe all of my arguments (-; However, I just get annoyed when some stupid American comes along and claims that America's success is due to the fact that Americans ( supposedly, "like him" ) are somehow superior intellectually or otherwise. My experience has been that this isn't really the case.
IMO, the main reason America is as succesful as it is has a lot to do with the fact that it has a very solid political foundation, and there are enough smart Americans to make sure that the foundation (usually) doesn't rot. There are other countries which are also good politically and economically, but because they are smaller, they are also less visible/influential.
My comments about the education system here still stand -- I'm not saying that there aren't any smart American kids -- but a lot of the bright kids don't know anything because they don't teach them anything. My experience in grad school has been that though some American guys are very bright, they have much less background knowledge than their European or Australian counterparts.
Many major artists have gone independent, or in some cases psuedo-independent. Trent Reznor owns and runs nothing records, and spent as much time promoting his bands the last few years as he did working on "The Fragile". And a KMFDM anything would sell like crazy, since it would be a reunion record...:)
He did give away music in mp3. It was, in some opinions, the act that started the industries defensive attacks. Before that they seemed to have mostly just ignored it. PE's response was to keep releasing music, but in an executable format. That still pissed off the record label, and Chuck wasn't satisfied with it, either, since the player they were using was only available for Windows. (And called 'MP4', which ticked off the MPEG group...)
To add insult to injury many of the songs downloadable for free were critical of the recording industry's not allowing the songs to be downloaded in the first place. You can still find copies of "Swindler's Lust" floating around.
but I seem to recall that a couple of years ago PUblic enemy posted their new album in mp3 format on their website for download something like a month before it actually went to stores.
Yeah, and if I recall correctly, their record label eventually forced them to take the mp3s off their web page. Chuck D was not happy about that.
You make a good point. I'll try to download some of your MP3's [mp3.com] this weekend and check it out. (Can't guarantee I'll like it, but I'll try to check it out at least.)
Sure, artists want to make a living, preferably the best one possible, but.... "Given the countless undertakings one can pursue in life, why do they choose to torture themselves with this particular pursuit?"
I think that's pretty revealing. That's why you see so many lawyers waiting tables at night to support their day jobs, right?
Also, why do you have scare quotes around "artists"? That's not too friendly, man.
It's an incredibly hard life. I gave it a shot. I couldn't take it, so I'm in computers now. Wanna know why?
I AM in it for the money. Anyone looking for financial security gets out of that business and fast. Borrowing for rent or going without a phone for a long while really sucks, especially if you know that you're good at what you do.
By supporting Napster, he is supporting our right to give out (and maybe even sell) PE stuff.
The inference seems to be that he does not own his back catalog, I don't think Chuck is going to object to music that he created, but does not own, being spread through the Napster network. However, to be fair, if you like something, buy it. Chuck should be able to get his 000.1c royalties from a purchase.
I list my box on Napster as a 56k conection. It keeps my get requests down to a low number
I list my 56k modem as a 56k modem and it does not help. I still max out the number of outgoing requests (10) relatively quickly whenever I'm on it. (Of course, a lot of people abort those transfers when they discover that my advertised 56k modem connection really is a 56k modem....)
I'm not a fan (metalhead here..) but I LOVE what's going on!
I'm not a metal fan, but Bring the Noise rules, only reason I have Attack of the Killer B's By Anthrax. I don't find it odd that he supports napster. There is an article in Wired that says back in 98 he had new Public Enemy stuff posted on the PE websitebefore it came out, but the record label(Def Jam, aka Polygram, which got bought out by Universal) got pissed off and demanded that the songs be removed. Here is the link : Wired Story [wired.com]
To be honest, I never tried napster until two days ago, and that was only to see what all the huballoo was really all about. I must say that I was extremely disappointed. There were many artists who were not even listed in the database. When I found artists that were listed, there were usually many copies of just a very small set of unique tracks. And then when I went to download those that I was actually interested in, I discovered that most of the sites were down or otherwise unavailable.
Well if you were looking for "The Best of Yanni," of course you were going to be disappointed. May I ask what kind of music you listen to? I get the feeling you like something wayyyyy out of the mainstram, like gregorian chants or techno-rap-bluegrass or something. Of course alternative (true alternative, not the nirvana/pj/aic definition of alternative) isn't going to be represented: Napster relies on the files on other people's drives. If nobody else listens to the crap you like, you're not going to find it!
Oh, you found multiple copies of some artists/songs? What a fucking revelation! You mean more than one person likes popular music? Do you think that's why they call it popular?
Finding obscure songs is inherently difficult on Napster: if it was on Napster, other people would have it. If other people had it, it wouldn't be obscure. Don't blame Napster for your bizarre music tastes.
(This is not to say Napster is perfect, but if nobody has the song it is not a shortcoming of Napster -- I was looking for Heart's rendition of Led Zeppelin's Rock And Roll today and it took hours and then I only found it at 96k. I can't blame Napster for nobody wanting that song besides me and whoever that guy was that had it.)
Do you have any sort of clue just how much of each CD the band rakes in? 3/4ths? Keep dreaming. Half? Not even close.
Depends a lot on the deal. One friend of mine basically did it all on her own and pressed a 1000 CD's paying out of her own pocket. She expecpects to recover all her costs after selling 500 of them. Thus she pockets 50%, but she has to do all of her own promotion and has to put up money up front. Also if she becomes popular pressing more copies is relatively cheap since all the recording and mixing is done, thus she'll get a larger chunk of profit.
Another friend went the other way and got a deal with a largish record lable. For his first CD he gets a small amount of cash up front and hardly getting anything pr. CD sold. However he considers it worth it since it means he doesn't have to do as much of the promtional work himself, he will be on a recognized and well know lable and thus will probably get a larger audience. Also he has to put up a lot less of his own money, since the record lable is taking most of the risk and if his record doesn't sell, it doesn't mean he'll be sitting with a large debt he can't pay. That's also some of what the record lables get paid for, to take the risk of losing money if the album doesn't sell.
I agree with previous post on a whole, but i would like to add something.
I support mp3 trading. I have spent more money on cds since i started trading then ever before. With that said i think that we should expect more from "artists." The way i see it true musicians shouldn't be doing it for the money. Just like linux hackers don't don't expect "monetary rewards" for their deeds. I expect a true artist to want his music to be heard as much possible and not want to limit the means in which it can be heard. If mp3s offer a means of broadening the artist's audience then they should be for it.
So you are probably thinking "well full time artists need to eat!." fine they can make their money from performances, that is where the real money comes from anyways. "well they don't have someting that can be performed," fine then release a cd. If you are good, you will be supported by your fans.
I have more to say, but it isn't like anyone will get to read this as moderators never touch my posts.
No, I think he meant using its overwhelming power to subjucate and expoloit those weaker than it. At least, as an American and M$ hater, that's how I see it.
Chuck D rules. He pioneered a lot of Internet music technologies, and his work with Public Enemy is top-notch.
Pioneering internet music technologies would be using actual technologies of the internet for music purposes. Using the internet as a fancy mail order catalog isn't all that pioneering regardless of availability.
Sorry but having a nice website and giving away stuff is not "pioneering technologies." See the keyword is technology. He may be some kind of musical pioneer (not that much of his stuff ever appeal to me), but he's not a technological pioneer. Arguing that he is is like arguing that Bill Clinton is some kind of political pioneer. The fact the Bill pioneered the art of perjury doesn't make him a political tactician.
Pop Quiz: who here knows what a backdoor man actually is? (Hint: it comes from the old, southern, black dialect. It is also used in a song called, appropriately enough, Backdoor Man. A line from it goes like this: "Well the men don't know but the little girls understand")
Now all we need are more artists wanting to come out in support of free music. Mind you, Chuck D's been doing it for years.
As a musician myself, I'm smart enough to realise that the more people who listen to my band, the better. ( http://enchanted.sinisterweb.cjb.net/ ) It's the ultimate memetic virus!
Who are you trying to fool? There's a slew of errors in your post. I have to wonder who you really work for. Artists who weren't listed in the database? Napster has ALWAYS been far more likely to carry a rare song I'm searching for than ANY other search tool (Scour, Gnutella, etc). When you "finally" found an artist who had some tracks listed, it was only unique tracks? Pure BULLSHIT. Search for any popular artist and EVERY song they have will be out there. When you went to download them, most of the sites were down? Impossible, because Napster only lists online sites. Now I KNOW you're fucking lieing.
And your last line is a giveaway, suggesting SO CONVENIENTLY that I "just buy the CDs" I want to hear. Too bad only half the stuff I want is availble easily on CD, eh?
Well there you go. It seems I'm wrong. Good for Chuck then. You and a couple of others have pointed out that what he really wants is to have greater control of his music, and sees Napster as a vehicle for this. But from reading the statement the/. story pointed too, all I got out of it is that he's happy the big record companies are upset.
Goes to show there is often more to a story than initially seems.
<carl mode> I think I've learned something today.</carl mode>
Freshmeat is my favorite example of andover suckage. First they put up pointless bandwidth wasting ads for gnu, wine, xmms, etc... Now they slowly started putting in real ads. Thankyou andover. I liked freshmeat much better when it was on redhat's servers.
I meant something more along the lines of blocking them by putting 127.0.0.1 for their name in the hosts file or using junkbusters or some other such hack. You're right, I assumed wrongly that mine was the only way to block it.
If they're blocked completely at the client though, then the hits won't be logged and/. won't get money for those ad views. --
Puting up ads from doubleclick is different from amazon though. With amazon, users have a choice of whether they want to support amazon. With DC, users who haven't blocked DC's IPs are helping DC simply by visiting slashdot.
Yes,/. users are more likely to have DC blocked, but if everyone on/. blocked DC, then there would be no reason for/. to serve DC ads; the ad views would never get registered and/. would get no money. Therefore, slashdot is profiting by exploiting those who are less knowledgable, which is horrible.
(or those who are knowledgable and don't mind DC (perfectly okay))
(or those who are just too lazy (borderline)) (or those who don't have enough control over their machine to do anything about it (maybe bad))
The problem with DC is that they're peering into something the general populace doesn't expect them to. While this isn't a priori a bad thing, most users are surprised when they first find out what doubleclick is doing, and they possibly would have not done certain things had they known. Therefore, DC is doing it without their knowledge or consent, and slashdot is assisting in that.
Also, adfu doesn't keep DC from seeing your cookies; IFRAME, IMG, and SCRIPT tags are included in some slashdot pages (approx 5% of them) with direct URLs to ad.doubleclick.net. --
Ok with a record label you get a small amount per cd sold, but they do their best to make sure you sell as many as posible, so you at least make something.
On the other hand with MP3 a lot of people may download them, but you get nothing. A large number times 0 is still 0.
Again how does the band benifit?
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
I listen to a lot of smaller bands, mostly folk and I'm woried about one thing. If the bands can't sell the CD's they have made. They won't make more. Somehow the bands have to have to have a way to make some money. Studio time is not free, and while it is miniscule to someone like Chuck D it is not to a lot of people who are figuring that they can sell 1,000 copies if they are lucky.
So where is the money to make these recordings?
The Band has to eat you know.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
And how does downloading an MP3 support an artist?
It is great for the listener, but unless you go to a concert and buy a ticket its not supporting the artist. And quite frankly my favorite artist is Stan Rogers, and he is dead.
I think I am missing something here. But here is a fact, recording studio time costs money. That money has to come from somewhere. Where does it come from if we all download all the music we listen to? Please tell me I want to know.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
I'm really hoping for the day when I can find music I like, easily, in legal MP3 form.
There are plenty of excellent bands and artists who are making their music as a hobby. In some cases the music they are making is of a higher quality than some of the stuff churned out by major labels.
Note use of "some". 95% of what's on MP3.com is crap, but then so is 95% of what you can buy in HMV.
The problem is, we have a large, established infrastructure in place to help us gain exposure to music we might like: radio, TV, the music press -- people who are paid to sift through the dross and present us with the cream.
You choose which cream you wish to be exposed to, of course: if you like mainstream pop you listen to primetime commercial radio; if you like Hip Hop you listen to a specialist show; etc.
The thing is, selecting from the vast amount of music that's out there is a full time job. We *need* the press and broadcast media to make recommendations for us. We need someone do "discover" bands, so we don't have to.
Eventually, these media sources will get wise to MP3, and we'll start to see reviews in (say) NME for music which is only available as a freely redistibutable MP3. I'm guessing it'll be in one of the less mainstream genres to begin with.
For the moment, it's just too easy for a radio station to accept whatever the major record labels shove under their noses: it's usually polished, and has a nice video to go with it... --
Yup, review sites are popping up. Look to Repliq [repliq.net] for one that Slashdot users will have no problem grasping. True, there really is so much material out there that what you call "promoting labels" can't be kept at bay for very long. They perform functions that are necessary for both the bands and the fans, and they're somewhat of a necessity in the traditional music market. As of yet, however, it's still not too late to get into place substitutes that perform these functions on terms the musicians can agree with!
Napster isn't (in it's present form, anyway) a particularly well-suited distribution tool for independent/emerging artists. However, it is a great tool for getting people acquainted with downloadeable music. Let's just hope that once the record companies get properly euthanized, or people get tired of boy-bands and "best of the (insert ancient decade of your choice here)'s"-collections (whichever comes first), there will be services still in place telling them what music they should really be listening to...
It's good to see at least a few established artists supported consumer rights. I'm definately not a fan of Public Enemy's music (industrial/electronica is more my style), but I can at least respect the message.
There are other artists, though, that have wised up to the benefits of MP3. A few, like SMG [smg.org] have really embraced it. Dumping a brain-dead label and going independant isn't easy, but it's inspiring to know that the music is still flowing.
Good stuff, too, if you like the funky side of industrial.
What's really funny is, these days many of the larger artists could easily go independant and do well for themselves. If Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, or Pig were to go off on their own, their fans wouldn't forget them.
Make no mistake, the "artists" are in for the money.
Oh, of course they are. Hell, it's a business, just a little more touchy-feely than most. But artists are learning to exploit alternative channels of income such as t-shirts, videos, bumper stickers, concert ticket sales, etc. The music has become a freebie.
It reminds me of the model that the Internet appliance industry is limping towards (like Sega with Dreamcast) -- give away the method of access and charge for the service.
You kind of make my point here -- the record companies do provide a useful service, and it's not that easy to provide the same service cheaper. Each layer of middlemen costs something. You haven't offered any figures on how much the record companies sell each CD for ( in volume to resellers I mean ). You just whine about prices without providing any evidence besides your "opinion" that $15 is "too expensive".
Why should I pay a $15 buck markup for some plastic disk?
Because that's how much it costs to distribute it ultimately ?
A "vast distributed system" used to "challenge the record companies" is all well and good as long as you don't put nonfree material on it. Stealing from the record companies is hardly a legitimate way of "challenging" them.
Recently, anything I try to download from Napster gives me a "cannot access file" error.
Keep in mind that you aren't downloading "from Napster". You're downloading from some other Napster user -- most likely a non-technical Windows 95 or Windows 98 user.
If you get that message when downloading one of my tracks, there are two probable reasons:
my modem just disconnected from my ISP, or
my wife just rebooted the box that serves the MP3 files into Windows 98.
That Steve Albini article was very enlightening (and depressing). He doesn't propose any alternatives or solutions to the major label problems. With his experience in the music biz, shouldn't he have more to say? Is the answer to simply avoid major label deals and work with indie labels? Or is his answer to simply work for 7-11?
I think it is about time they got around to writing a Mac version.
There already is one - there's one on this computer I'm using right now. I think it's called Macster, but I'm not sure where to get it (I'm pretty sure about the name, but I can't check now because I'm booted into LinuxPPC at the moment)
Yea, I think that ananogy fit, but only if you look at Michael Jordan in the same light. Like that year he "retired" to play baseball. Retired for about a year, the length of something like say a "suspension". You ARE familar with his gambling habit right? You do know that sports figures shouldn't be gambling on certain things, and you do know that the baseball team he played for was owned by the owner of the Bulls. And one of my favorite Jordan quotes, walking back down the court after a hard foul, "You foul me like that again, I'll have you killed."
I mean the guy (Jordan) brings in roughly $10 billion to the U.S. economy, who is going to slam dunk him in the mass media?
or the fact that he believes Napster is sticking it to the Man? It seemed to me that he was happier the big coperations were upset, than by the free sharing of music. I mean, I didn't notice any of his songs available for download on his web site.
It seems that the Napster crew have made a bigger splash than I thought, because Chuck D was saying that it was talked about during a music convension.
"In conclusion, this "CDs are too expensive" rhetoric is totally bogus. If someone was capable of giving the artist more money and getting the music to consumers for less, we'd see the record companies go out of business."
Pure BS IMO. Who is really able to challenge the record industries with their billions and ubiquitous commercial presence and voice? You really think that I will be able to challenge these guys sending my CDs off to be mass-burned? And how the hell am I going to advertise and distribute my CDs? Just buy a few million dollars worth of TV and ad space, right? CDs ARE too expensive. Why should I pay a $15 buck markup for some plastic disk? I am not buying the disk...I am buying the/music/. I don't really care/what/ medium the music is on as long as I can play it conveniently. Nobody is going to be able to really challenge the record industries with tiny little garage operations. That's insane. Only a vast distributed system like the net/web/napster/gnutella has a hope of compensating for the billions of marketing money the average band doesn't have.
"Because that's how much it costs to distribute it ultimately?
A "vast distributed system" used to "challenge the record companies" is all well and good as long as you don't put nonfree material on it. Stealing from the record companies is hardly a legitimate way of "challenging" them."
So it really costs so much more to distribute CDs than cassettes? Isn't it amazing how pirated CDs and cassettes are so cheap? I wonder how pirates distribute them. Even after adding the quarter of a cent that actually goes to the artist and other expenses (like billions on advertising), they are still amazingly cheap to produce in a garage. I guess the record company must really have some inept people working for them, hammering out each CD manually. As the internet CLEARLY shows, the real cost of distributing music is really close to NOTHING. These record companies need to recognize this and embrace it in order to succeed, or they will be eventualy be economically punished for attempting to keep their stranglehold on the market. People do not buy CDs. They buy music.
As far as stealing from the companies not being a legitimate way of challenging them, what do YOU suggest we do? Write letters telling them how displeased we are? As if they would give a shit? Remember the law is/for/ the people. When the people change, the law must change, not the other way around. I suppose you would have told Rosa Parks to get her ass up and out? Perhaps you might have mentioned to the founding fathers that all this revolution stuff was actually quite illegal? Before the law can be changed it has to first be/challenged/.
It's very likely that the internet piracy of music will be benifitial for consumers and fair use rights, which is a very good thing, but we really do not know how it will effect musicians. Clearly, it's not an issue of stealing. There is not music without musicians, so without perfesional musicians there is not professional music period. This means musicians will survive, but the BIG question is "Will they do better then under the recording industry monopoly on promotion?"
Clearly, Napster and Gnutella give them a chance to do better then they did under the recording industry promotion monopoly, but remember Napster and MP3.com are going to exploit the musicians too. No, I'm not saing that Napster and mp3.com beam-it are exploiting musician, but I am saing that Napster and mp3.com will try to monopolize internet promotion.
MP3.com is pretty much "just another label." The only real point to putting your stuff on mp3.com is for free bandwidth. I predict Napster will ry to monopolize internet promotion by selling "high placement in search results to bands with the money, i.e. $10,000 will buy you the first 10 serch results (and 75% of the total search results) for your song will point to copies containing advertising for your site (or someone elses) and 1% of al search results show the versions of your songs containing advertising.
Napster is one of the good guys now, but remember they designed a system with a centralized server specifically to maintain this sort of control. I'm very glad to see people like Chuck D supporting them now because it will make it harder for them to do things like sell favoritism later. The future of all musicians depens on awair musicians watching the bigwigs (labels or internet companies) very closely.
My personal favorite (at the moment) is Rapster, since it gives you the choice of connecting directly to any of the known Napster servers, as well, as the OpenNap servers. Btw, the MacStar page doesn't appear to be working at the moment.
Napster is big news these days. Anyone mentioning napster is guaranteed to plenty of free publicity. As far as I am concerned, this is nothing more than a publicity stunt to get his name in the papers, and to sell more albums.
To be honest, I never tried napster until two days ago, and that was only to see what all the huballoo was really all about. I must say that I was extremely disappointed. There were many artists who were not even listed in the database. When I found artists that were listed, there were usually many copies of just a very small set of unique tracks. And then when I went to download those that I was actually interested in, I discovered that most of the sites were down or otherwise unavailable.
Eventually I wound up doing random searches, and then downloading all of the responses just to find sites that were alive, and then queried to see what that site had, which pretty much defeats the whole point of napster in the first place.
I found the whole excercise basically a waste of time. Time that would have been better spent earning a living and then just buying the CDs that I want to hear.
Chuck supports the freedom napster offers!...it offers me freedom as the consumer. It offers me access to vast libaries of free copyrighted music. It does not offer the artist any freedom that i can see. The artist can not control how or who gets hold of their works (the music). But i do agree with chuck that power need to be restored back to the recording artists, but i dont think napster does this. Im a big fan of mp3's and im a big fan of smaller record labels but but i don't see how napster and mp3's are really empowering artists. Shore a musician could make a cd and release a few free tracks on mp3, but we all know that the whole album will be online for download without the artists permission within hours of release in the stores, and the artist is not making any money from this. Only postive I can see, and its seems like Chuck can see aswell is that mp3's and napster have made record companys think about the out dated business models they use, and some are attempting to work out new ways of music delivery. But alas most are going down the predictable path of just trying to sue everybody and anybody they can.
I was never a fan of rap. Classic rock, oldies, classical music, modern rock, metal, etc. That was my musical world. I'd never have even considered giving Public Enemy a listening. But when they had those MP3's on their site waaaay back, I decided to grab a couple and listen for fun. That's when I realized how much ass this group really kicks. Powerful lyrics, an awesome sound -- I'd for the first time found myself really enjoying music that, if it weren't for free MP3's, I'd never have given a chance.:}
That Steve Albini article was very enlightening (and depressing). He doesn't propose any alternatives or solutions to the major label problems. With his experience in the music biz, shouldn't he have more to say? Is the answer to simply avoid major label deals and work with indie labels? Or is his answer to simply work for 7-11?
The alternative may mean a more modest income than Maddonna's, but I don't think it has to be US$7.50/hr. Local musicians have a lot to offer their fans that you just can't get anywhere else. For example, I love Pink Floyd, but none of them have ever bought me a beer:) In addition to that you don't have to wait for local musicians to tour to see a live performance.
The same thing that has the major labels screaming now offers a great opportunity for musicians to possibly make enough to earn a living doing what they love. There's no need for a major label to distribute your music for you. It's pretty easy to do it yourself now, and it's only going to get easier.
The big labels have a lot of power to promote the music over the airwaves and cable TV, but if you can download a full CD without paying in less time than it takes to buy one in the store then why go to the store? I'd wager that if it's still easier for you to run to the store and buy a CD, that will change soon. I guess one reason to go buy a CD anyway would be that you like the CD enough to want to own it even though you can download the music for free. Complaining about people sharing the music without paying for it is like complaining about the weather...you might not like it but there's not a damned thing you can do about it. This sucks for the people making a decent living off their music. For those that aren't (the majority of musicians) it's a good thing. They now have a way to get their music to their fans without a major label. Musicians can still sell their music, but now they'll only be able to count on their loyal fans to pay them for it.
It will probably be harder to make millions off their music but at least they'll have a better chance at making a living from their work. There's a much better opportunity to maintain contact with fans and potential fans now than there ever was in the past.
Promoting the music is the hardest part because it takes money. Sponsorships from local businesses would help a lot. It helps local businesses if people spend their money on music locally. If the local musicians are making money, the local music stores, bars, and coffee shops (to name a few) are making money. Think of it this way: it might be hard for a single band to promote their music, but it would be a lot easier for local businesses to promote the local music scene.
Better promotion of local music, more contact between musicians and fans, and independence from the major labels could all lead to a solution.
Public Enemy also made their latest album available exclusively available for download from the web almost a month before it was released on cd or vinyl.
The "missing" Public Enemy album that was removed from the website by the label and never released subsequently was mainly an album of remixes and updated versions of old PE tracks. Some very good stuff, I've downloaded a good part of it and enjoyed hearing classics updated to reflect the music as well as the political climes of 1998, which was when it came out.
Someone else may remember the details more clearly, but I seem to recall that a couple of years ago PUblic enemy posted their new album in mp3 format on their website for download something like a month before it actually went to stores. It's great to see Chuck D continuing to fight Recording Industry fascism (OK, allow me some hyperbole here). Public Enemy: Not just lyrics, a lifestyle.
Make no mistake, the "artists" are in for the money. They spend years of their lives living in a buss, playing dives for little or no pay, and strugle to make a meager living.
Given the countless undertakings one can pursue in life, why do they choose to torture themselves with this particular pursuit?
Some responses include: "It's all for the people" "We just want to bring happieness to people's lives" "We just want to keep the fans happy" I'm sorry, but like an MS press release, I just don't buy it. Chuck D and any other establish artists has no interest what-so-ever in giving away for free the very thing that provides for him and his family. After spending years and years of making sacrifices and finally "making it" you're going to tell this veteran road-warrior artist that he should be happy his record company is giving it all away? Me thinks not.
Record companies and hundreds of thousands of bands that beat down their doors daily exist because bands seek them out. The Bands want to be rich, and "Pimpco records" can provide.
I welcome the new distrobution model (free MP3s) and look forward to a day when the wealth is spread across many, many artists instead of being concentrated in the hands of few. After all, is Madona so skilled in her art that she deserves so much money? _______________
In conclusion, this "CDs are too expensive" rhetoric is totally bogus. If someone was capable of giving the artist more money and getting the music to consumers for less, we'd see the record companies go out of business. But they're not.
Ah, but it is possible. A few years back here in Finland, a new record company called Levy-yhtiö ("The Record Company") signed up a few obscure punk bands and started releasing their singles for $2 a pop (a fifth of the $10 or so charged by the major labels) and even full-length albums at a 50% discount. Nothing unusual about this so far... except that one of those punk bands, Apulanta, managed to become the biggest seller in Finland for that year and is still going strong. The major labels went ballistic, but the company refused to sell out. After its initial success lots of other promising bands wanted to sign up, so quite a few more hits followed and everybody was happy -- except the majors, who were eventually forced to lower their prices as well!
The problem is that the retail style distribution model is inefficient.
But this is still true, and the above is the exception that proves the rule. In Finland, the market is small enough that it's possible for a small company to break a song on radio or get their record into all the stores, but this just isn't going to happen in the States... until the Internet lets the consumers bypass the stores entirely.
Chuck D didn't have anything to do with MP4; that was the CEO of MP3.com you're thinking of.
Chuck D rules. He pioneered a lot of Internet music technologies, and his work with Public Enemy is top-notch.
His label, Atomic Pop, was one of the first labels to ship a CD to internet purchases over a month before it was available in stores, and he's been a really strong supporter of MP3 technology for a long time.
....but is this guy going to start giving out Public Enemy music as MP3's? That would be even better then just saying something's "good" and semi-supporting it.
But, if Napster and other anti-establishment geek stuff is getting to people we wouldn't have thought of... it's going to go a hell of a long way. Things will definalty change.
But u c, theu're doing it for marketing reasons... to get you hooked on it so you will want to buy there album.
Chuck D is doing for political reasons. The only reason why he hasn't put a database of his stuff up is because his record label is giving him shyt about it.
I dislike napster. The primary reason napster was created, the way I see it, is so that more people can pirate music. Not that I like the music industry, but artists should be paid for their work. Also, its frickin annoying because of all that wasted bandwith. Slower school connections because people are looking for that last Brittany Spears or Backdoor Boys song.
I think Chuck D's blind enthusiasm while nice isn't the right attitude. He's been talking about digital music the whole time, but so far the visions that he's talked about have yet to come. Blame it on the record companies attempts to slow digital music's evolution if you want, but it could also be because that's just not going to happen.
The biggest problem with digital music aside from artists getting payment, is that it's damn hard to get recognition. Take mp3.com. The top 10 charts rarely change because they are based upon dl's, and they're also not even close to accurate of the quality. Getting on those is hard, and mp3.com recognized this and now offers payola where you pay money to put your tracks alongside those top10 tracks. How many DL's you think that's gonna get? A bandname and songname suddenly become really tough to choose, because that's all a listener will base their choice on for even visiting the page of the artist.
Digital music has indeed opened the floodgates, so much so that it's the equivalent of sticking a firehose in your mouth and opening the valve. It's damn near impossible to discern the good from the bad. So what's going to arise? Review sites may pop up, ditto for radio sites, but they're just as inundated as us. You watch, soon after the 'revolution' there will be big promoting labels pulling evil trickery all over again.
I'm glad Chuck D loves digital media. I just wish he'd figure out the best way to make it work for the consumer and the artist, because right now I don't think we have that perfect 'good artists get recognition' liquidity that's needed. Sheer volume is preventing that.
Every kid has a rock n' roll role model who they think is the totally pure representation of righteous rebellion...I remember Chuck D being this for me when I was 15. And of all the people who filled the role for me through my adolescense, I would say Chuck D is the only one who is still around and keeping the fight up.
Those were pretty simplistic days, and I hoped that the great revoloution would come and we would all be free...just as long as we had good beats to chant along to, "The good would get even"...well, many people have dreamed that dream, but Chuck D has really matured to be an intelligent, important part of the technology, music, politics, etc. scene. As long as he keeps it up, hip-hop won't go all bad.
I used to troll a couple of Chuck's sites at my while I pretended to work at my last job. From what I recall (long vacation making memory hazy) PE came out with new album called "Bring The Noise 2000", basically a bunch of remixes with one or two new tracks. Label (I think referred by Chuck as "Def Scam") didn't wanna release it, so he released it as mp3s on his site. Leader of Def Scam, mentioned as "Hustle Simmons", didn't like this so came up with some legalese and made PE take the tracks down. By this time they were downloaded by a bunch of people, and were put up on GeoCities and other free web hosting sites. I got the notification on the Enemy Board and actually have a copy burned. Pretty good, with the "More Hype Believers Than Ever in '97" being my fav. Hmm, substitute an IRC channel for the Enemy Board, have a new protocol with mp3s based on your hard drive instead of free web servers and you may see shades of Napster, so calls of bandwagon jumping are kind of mislead.
Even though others had his back, Chuck didn't stand still, he released as a free track "Swindler's Lust" as a direct stab at the record labels.
If you don't own the masters
The masters own you
I don't remember legal issues, but it was available as an mp3 and "mp4". The mp4 was actually a windows executable with embedded audio, and had cool graphics, web links, yadda yadda. Mp4 never had anything to do with MPEG, or MP3 (it had it's own codec, called a2b I think), the naming just was a bandwagon thing to become the "next" mp3, just as mp3s were blowing up. Since I haven't played any other mp4s, mp3s are still here. By this time, everybody on the Board had mp3 players, so the mp4 kinda went away.
Soon after that, Chuck and PE broke from Def Jam and went to Atomic Pop, where they still are. They released an additional single free "Do you Wanna go our way", the main single off their album "There's a Poison Going On". You could download the whole album for $8, but I actually paid the $10 so I got an autographed CD sleeve. Since "Poison" contained 2 tracks freely downloadable, it's fairly safe to say he's still on the free music bus. Again, calls of bandwagon jumping again may be mislead.
One thing to think about is the cost of CDs. "There's a Poison Going On" sold for $10, plus shipping. How come it costs $17 over in the stores here? CDs are overpriced, and meant to be. No moving parts, but still cost more than tapes. Weren't they supposed to go down once economies of scale kicked in? How come a burnable CD (a more expensive technology than a prerecorded music CD) is cheaper than a blank tape, but the Sam Goody CD costs more? I'm not advocating piracy, hell Chuck *wants* you to copy his stuff and that's all-important, but the economics need to change. I seem to recall some label getting on Garth Brooks' case because he wanted to release an album for under $14. Nope, you need to charge more. Now AOL has Time Warner, it's a brave new world.
"Mr. D" fits right in here on Slashdot, I like that DIME-WARNER reference.
It's good to see an artist who understands that the problem isn't the sanctity of copyright, it's the corruption of the music industry. Now that an alternative exists, no one wants to help support an institution so foul that some people would even go to illegal means to do so.
Personally, I've been thinking of signing up for one of those music clubs--"11 free CDs for the price of 1!" Assume shipping and handling, and ~15 for a CD, and it comes out to between $2-3 for each CD. I consider that to be a fair price. It's way above manufacturing costs, and still mostly profit. The problem I'm having is finding enough CDs that they offer, that I actually like. But I could at least fill out my collection some, since I haven't been buying anything new for a while. (once it started getting over $14, I said "fuck it", and only bought used stuff...)
I'm sure precedent has already been established somewhat. Back in the early days of British radio, there was heated dispute about whether radio could play songs off of records. The BBC would actually bring in big acts to record sets so that they could play them on the radio. These weren't acoustic versions or even live versions, but full-fledged recordings (perhaps you've seen some of them in the, ironically, music stores -- Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, etc.) that sounded great and were produced, mixed, etc. etc. etc.
So, basically, radio has gotten to the point where it can do whatever it wants (besides swear, apparently). The RIAA recognizes the important role that radio plays in establishing pop hits and in marketing new young hits. It's not about to destroy that relationship by doing stupid things like telling radio to stop releasing music that can't be accurately owned by the studio (hence studio and live recorded tracks).
Read the liner notes to Jimi Hendrix's BBC Sessions dual CD sometime (don't let the store owner catch you opening the case, though, heh). It's extremely enlightening.
Napster is big news these days. Anyone mentioning napster is guaranteed to plenty of free publicity.
True, but read on...
As far as I am concerned, this is nothing more than a publicity stunt to get his name in the papers, and to sell more albums.
I doubt it - Chuck D is very vocal against the RIAA and released a few songs free on the internet awhile back (1998?) They weren't mp3's, but this was before mp3's became so popular. They were some self-playing Windows programs or something like that. The RIAA quickly made him take them down, and he posted something on his web site encouraging people who had downloaded the songs to spread them as much as possible.
To be honest, I never tried napster until two days ago, and that was only to see what all the huballoo was really all about. I must say that I was extremely disappointed. There were many artists who were not even listed in the database. When I found artists that were listed, there were usually many copies of just a very small set of unique tracks.
This is because of the sheep-like behavior of most people in this country - they all listen to the same goddam songs. What's listed in Napster is what is available on people's computers who are currently logged on to Napster.
And then when I went to download those that I was actually interested in, I discovered that most of the sites were down or otherwise unavailable.
Wierd - I've always had pretty good luck with songs being online when it says they are.
I found the whole excercise basically a waste of time. Time that would have been better spent earning a living and then just buying the CDs that I want to hear.
Hahaha what did you expect? Napster is just a big waste of time, if you're spending a significant amount of time on it. But if you're just looking for a particular song or small group of songs, it definately pays off to check Napster first before going out onto web sites to find them, because if they're there it's much easier to find them than searching online (and don't even try to tell me that scour.net [which I haven't used in months, but last I checked only 1 out of maybe 5 songs listed was actually there] is better, because it's not)
You "didn't notice any of his songs available for download on his web site" because he's been locked in battle with his record label for years over that. Public Enemy tried to release a record for free on the internet, and their label made them remove it.
When he says he's all about free music, he's the only artist I know who really means it. He's trying to educate with his music, and he sees it as a soapbox, as free speech. For a brief period in the late 80's, a lot of people called it "edutainment" with a straight face. Chuck ended up feeling handcuffed to his record label, though, because:
If you give speeches for a living, and you decide that you want to stand on the corner and talk about politics to a group of people, you're allowed to do it.
But if you're a musician, and you make music for a living, your label doesn't allow you to create songs for fun (or whatever reason) and not give them a cut of the profits. It doesn't even matter if the label has nothing to do with the production or distribution of the music - they still want a piece of the action.
You can make a case for the labels: they have an investment in your success, and they put a lot of advertising dollars into getting your name out there. By releasing stuff for free, you're devaluing their investment and reducing their ability to recoup their costs.
So anyway, that's where Chuck is coming from. He sees the potential of Napster to distribute music as a real freedom-of-speech thing. He wants to bitch about the system, and this is the only way a lot of small artists are going to be able to do it. Of course, in reality, the small artists really just want to get paid....
Given your comments: And then when I went to download those that I was actually interested in, I discovered that most of the sites were down or otherwise unavailable. Perhaps a better understanding of what napster is and how it works is in order.
These aren't "sites" in the normal sense of a 24/7 web site, they are OPC (Other Peoples' Computers). These OPCs pop on and off-line all the time. If you happened to do your search when 20 other people each had a copy of the same song, they will show up in your search. You're relying on the kindess and generosity of other napster users to share a lot of files for long periods of time.
Given this arangement, it's in your own best interest to share a lot of your own MP3s for a long period of time, thus making the searching and downloading of your files an enjoyable expierence for other users (and vise-versa). On any given night, there can be over 4000 users sharing 1,500 GB of data. If 4000 people all got on napster and shared one MP3 file (like I_want_to_be_a_cowboy___neal.mp3) it would loose it's interest very fast.
The old saying "You only get out of it what you put into it" applies in this case.
As for "There were many artists who were not even listed in the database." This is partly due to the small search result of 100 responses to a search queary. I would agree that as the user base grows, and duplicate files increase, there is almost as much noise as signal. However, I like the small search size for legal reasons. I don't want other users (read RIAA lawyers) to be able to pull down every single user name and slap a seace and desist order on them.
P.S. Have we gotten so spoiled that the ability to quickly search and download positivly *any* song our hearts could desire from 2Tb of music on a distributed world wide network for free...Sucks? _______________
Recording studios are like guitars: people will buy them and use them for the sheer joy of making music.
My recording studio [airwindows.com] cost money, and for commercial work I'll charge $75 an hour for it, which isn't even that high of a figure.
For people who are on my side in this mp3, open source, freedom to express thing, I'll literally let them use my studio FREE. If you are going to be releasing all your stuff as mp3s free (NO holdouts) and will allow purchase of your CD to be strictly voluntary (as mine are- nothing is withheld from the free downloads or will ever be), then I will be delighted to work with you for free. You merely have to call me, email me, set up a time and get yourself to Brattleboro, Vermont. (I obviously can't gallivant all around the country recording people for free!) As to other costs, hell, I can probably throw in the tape if that's a problem. (New Maxell XR-S Black only please).
As to how downloading an mp3 supports an artist? DOWNLOAD MINE and find out!! Please? Do I have to _beg_ people to listen to the artform I've been doing for almost 20 years? Do I have to tantalise people with the studio of which the 'anima' album is a good demonstration of the sounds I can get? It's not like this is crud- nearly broke top 20 in Instrumental Rock with _no_ promotion, up against much more established artists such as Carmine Appice, Dweezil Zappa, Richie Sambora and Brian May (all of whom I beat in the charts, in various combinations) and Wolf Hoffman (who I haven't beat- yet). It's not like it can be less expensive because I've been a slashdot-reading, GPL-using, linux-booting creativitysharing geek for years, and the CDs I have up there are all the minimum of 5.99 that mp3.com will allow (think about THAT for a minute. That's presumably the price at which they are still making some money- how much lower than the mainstream is that?) and there's nothing that I won't freely GIVE to someone who doesn't have the money or just wants to be given stuff.
And all I'm really asking in return is for people to DO THAT- download the mp3s [mp3.com], what, do I have to PAY people to listen to music that's not off the major labels? If this is not supporting the artist then WHY are 90% of the songs on the mp3.com artist boards "Please download my song, I want to be in the charts, I want to be heard"? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to be an artist supporting the mp3 revolution and feel like anybody is listening, is accepting what you're giving?? It's like that scene in Cryptonomicon- "Accept one of our free army tanks! They get 2000 mpg and go 500 miles an hour playing quadrophonic stereo with air conditioning!" and everybody wants the station wagons:P
I _beg_ people, follow those links, download my mp3s paying me nothing. If people desperately want to pay me they will eventually get their chance but for now I ask _nothing_ more. If you don't like people who rant on slashdot, go there and download somebody _else's_ music out of spite- as long as it's not "Rolling Stones Interview" or something! Do you know how irritating it is to have some rock dinosaur major label appendage open an account at mp3.com alongside you, put out some _soundcheck_ or radio station promo and then instead of using the medium (like Chuck D.!) and putting the whole album up, putting up the ONE TRACK (like Robby Krieger) and withholding the rest, or putting up INTERVIEWS (Robby, the Stones, the Eagles) so then you end up having some rock dinosaur's PRESS CONFERENCE beating you to death in the charts and staking out the top places for weeks on end? A _press_ conference? That's like listing IE service packs right alongside Freshmeat packages, complete with hit ratings. I don't know how better to express how insulting and damaging this is. "Gee, Martha, looks like many more people like and enjoy the latest NT service pack than this new linux program- looks like we should be running that!" feh.
And then I come here and read the question "And how does downloading an mp3 support an artist"? Yeesh, stand aside for venting- I apologize for freaking right out at you, because you meant no harm and surely were trying to encourage people to support artists _more_ than that. But, man! If you had any idea how badly I wanted people to just plain hear what I'm doing with this wizzy new studio I've built, how I want to be supported and respected for how seriously I'm taking the new paradigm- rather than ignored- "Oh, he has all his songs available for download, he must suck if he's not on a major label or at least trying to sell his albums by forcing people to buy them in order to get every song!" "Oh, he has all his programs open source, they must suck if they're not proprietary or at least crippleware that will shut itself off if you don't pay for it!" Can't you even see the parallels? Wouldn't you want Linux to 'be higher on the charts'? Is it so hard to understand that music operates on a similar economy of respect and status, and is equally hard to bullshit about, and is equally threatened by a totally hostile and corrupt culture that's got most people unaware there is even a better, more open, more community-oriented way?
*sigh!*
So maybe my only answer is the sheer desperation and intensity of this rant. _Please_ go to mp3.com (or some other indy-artist site if you prefer another one) and download some artist who is _not_ signed to a major label and polluting the music charts with _interviews_ and crap like that. If you do nothing else, at least take what's being given. There's damned good stuff out there. I happen to think my stuff [mp3.com] is good stuff, but I've heard _lots_ of other acts who had terrific music up there- and I can be pretty certain that they would _all_ love to be heard, if nothing else. Half of them beg constantly in the artist bulletin boards _just_ to be downloaded, and that includes damn good artists whose music I really liked.
Please go and listen to us rather than questioning whether mp3 will help us... and listening only to major label shite! Thank you. -chris
To so many artists (TMBG [tmbg.com]), their relationship with their label is like that of an indentured servant and their master. Though the servant is grateful for what they receive, the indignities of day-to-day living could never make up for it.
To artists that have such awful contracts, each time that a song of theirs is transferred via Napster must feel like a small victory, a mini-uprising. Naturally, the artist can't cheer this on, nor can they even really acknowledge it. It's a rare gem like Chuck D that is willing to cheer on the revolution.
My favorite radio station, NYC's 92.3 K-Rock, has AC/DC doing You Shook Me All Night Long acoustic (performed live in the studio with some guitar that had just been laying around, from what I gather), as well as a song from Blink 182 and one from Limp Bizkit. You can download these songs for free from their site [krockradio.com]. They aren't the highest quality, but at least it's something. I wonder what kind of legal hoops they had to jump through to get this up on their site?
Anyway, this is a sign, I guess, that some people at least have a clue. I mean, AC/DC's been around for what, 25 years? If they can come around and see the benefits of distributing a promo song for free, even if it's low quality, there may yet be hope for the industry. Of course, for every AC/DC there's a Ricky Martin and an N-sync whose contracts would never let them do anything like that. And there are far more Ricky Martin-esque filler type bands that need the quick buck than proven ass-kickers like AC/DC, so maybe the industry as a whole is doomed--but we can still have hope for the quality bands [creednet.com] of today.
PE was one of the first major acts to put free, full, downloadable tracks online (not in MP3 format, unfortunately, but as self-playing executables. I'll forgive them for this lack of cross-platform savvy, given that this was in 1998, early in the MP3-era). The tracks lasted all of a few days before their label ordered them removed, under legal threat; thereafter, Chuck D posted a message on the website exhorting fans who had managed to download the tracks to spread them far and wide. He's a long-time fan of downloadable music and a longer-time critic of the RIAA!
Chuck D spoke today at a conference I went to called "Music to Whose Ears" put on by the law journal. He was the keynote speaker, and raised a few good points in the measly 20 minutes they gave him:
Unlike when CDs came out, the "new" media is in the hands of the consumers, not the record companies. That means that the companies don't have the consumers by the nose: no more paying $18 for a CD that costs The Internet allows music to be globally produced and globally heard. Instead of having 5% of the music out there being heard, the other 95% has a better chance, due to the fact that it costs very little to produce and promote music on the Internet. MP3.com is free. In the Record Company's world, to promote a CD costs millions, including thousands for magazine ads, radio play, and the like. So, with the Internet, there are fewer barriers, which enables more music to be produced and heard.
Chuck D says Napster is a Good Thing. For the past decade or so, the record company's have been forcing consumers to pay large amounts of money, often without giving them a chance to hear it first. Not all CDs are in the little listening kiosks. With this new media, you can actually listen to the music and decide whether to consciously support the artist with your money or not.
The record companies cannot be allowed to win. The jacking of the consumer cannot be allowed to go on. Instead, the Internet will force them to come up with new paradigms of selling, and force the courts to come up with new paradigms of copyright protection. Maybe record companies will become what they should have been all along, collectively owned by the artists with profit sharing, instead of management getting the big bucks at the expense of artists.
Chuck D had a lot more to say (and said a lot more) but I think this is the gist of it. It was an incredible little talk, but I wish they'd given him more than 20 minutes. All in all, Chuck D showed the knowledge and insight that made PE so far ahead of its time.
Steve Albini wrote an article [arancidamoeba.com] some of your may be familiar with, but others may not. The famed producer details exactly how a new band can sign a contract, record an album, have a hit and tour...and wind up oweing money to the record company and spend a year making a third of what they would have if they had spent the same amount of time working at a convenience store.
It's a lovely answer to those who argue that Napster and free distribution are a worse deal than they have currently. Read this and you'll see it's not possible to have a worse deal than you'll get from a major record label.
Wired Magazine has this interview [wired.com] with him. This is from March 1999. Also, kind of offtopic, but did you know his position on the MS trial "When someone comes along and dominates an industry, of course you get a whole bunch of losers screaming, hoping somehow they can beat 'em down. Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser. Bill Gates is Michael Jordan" and on software pirates: "To the pirates, I say the more the merrier. Success comes from the fans first - if someone is going to pirate something of mine, I just have to make sure to do nine or ten new things. I mean, you can't download me" You might want to check Public Enemy's website [public-enemy.com] too.
Another vote for independence! (Score:1)
Napster is everything I want to see and Chuck D is more than just another moron.
My partners and I have been in the music business for 15 years, we've probably been playing for 25. We own two recording studios and an on-line independent record label. One of my business partners has achieved the ultimate dream a "major label contract."
The following numbers have probably been posted far to many times but they bear repeating. One of every 1,000 artists signs a contract. Of that group about one of every 100 releases an album. The lucky few who release an album make about
Two years ago Mohtown had $150,000.00 of my partners money. About six months back his lawyer discovered this money and of course requested that they recieve it and asked why they hadn't. Mohtown said, "We lost your address and didn't know where to send it." This isn't a unique experience, it's the norm within the music business.
The majors have artificially inflated the cost of product production. To think that bands spend over a million dollars on average quality studio productions is enough to make me sick. Of course it's easy to understand, the major labels own the damned studios where their artists work. High quality production is being done in basements within studios where the total gear and room investments come in under $50,000. Many of these cost around $35.00 an hour. If each song on the album requires 10 hours of production time that's $350.00 per song. So, a ten song album can be produced for $3,500.00. Let's double it just because we can, $7,000.00.
The end result of this is some blood sucking executive is vacumeing out the fans wallet with an artist's product. Fans and artists are both be wripped off.
An interesting phenomena for me is to observe artist ignorance. My forays into the mp3.com artist message board have awakened me to the fact that the majority of us still want that god damned major label contract. Mp3.com and the majority of their artists treat that site as a window mall where they can display their wares for interested major label artist representatives. Mp3.com is the crap hole of the internet. I'll say they've done a couple things right but Napster is going to sink their ship and rightfully so.
I don't blame fans for stealing music. I don't personally do it but I encourage everyone of you to content your hearts/ears.
I don't blame fans for stealing music. I don't personally do it but I encourage everyone of you to content your hearts/ears.
I want you to buy my music and it's my challange to produce something you want and to hope that a fair price will warrant an exchange of my goods for your money. Is
Remember everytime you steal a song, an undeserving executive is denied their legal right to fill the fuel tank of her college kid's BMW. Meanwhile the artist who produced that song is trying to sell enough dope to pay their rent.
I've gotta go to work, I'd love to finish writing and even spell checking my pissed off montra but then I'd have to "kill da landlord." As a side note: I couldn't afford to run an independent on-line record label if it wasn't for Linux, apache, php, midgard and the entire OSS scene.
I hate the major label business model, I love the independent music scene.
Re:Take the power back (Score:1)
*ROFL!* Though I suppose inadvertently MAKING EVERY WORD A FSCKING LINK might give some idea of it... furrfu! how embarrassing! What the hell? Must be from posting 'UBB' code on the mp3.com boards and forgetting to close tags. Oh well *hehehehe* ok, so click somewhere in the general vicinity of that post... (skulks off embarrasedly :) )
Re:Chuck D's strong and original opinions (Score:1)
Says "Bill Gates is Michael Jordan"...
...but likes the pirates.
Bill hates pirates.
Bill hates you, D.
Re:I know this won't get read but... (Score:1)
You're right, of course. Unfortunately, the answer will probably be the dirtiest word known to an artist:
Marketing.
I remember some TV news "magazine" doing a documentary on marketing in the music business--"whoring" a song, if you will. Okay, this will show that this was a long time ago, so here goes: the band in question was Jesus Jones (remember "Right Here, Right Now"?) Essentially, the band was picking up a little of a cult following, got picked up by a label, and wanted a hit, I suppose. So, what happened? The label's people started cutting deals with stations to get the track "Right Here, Right Now" put into heavy rotation.
What's that tell ya? To get recognition, you have to go through sources that can shove your music down people's throats. Sadly, even PE was that way: if "Fight The Power" hadn't been bashed into my head my numerous media (mostly because Spike Lee, film god, made the video) I probably wouldn't have known Public Enemy from Al Capone (nor the difference.)
Oh yeah, and to all you folks who say PE sucks: listen to the rhythmic content of the tracks, and not just the sampled beats. The lyrical rhythm is something to make a white guy like me jealous.
One more thing. Chuck D may go on about the plight of his people. I admire him for that. But it bothers me that so many members of the African-American community continue to make race an issue after we've attempted to make children (my generation was one of the first, with limited success) fairly "race"-blind. Case in point: the NAACP is bringing up charges of racism in the local police force. Are the police unduly harassing black community members? Hopefully, no; AFAIK the police "harrass" problem folks regardless of race, sex, or creed.
Re:Take the power back (Score:1)
In my mind, all those options are far better than the slavery he's rebelling against.
The worst: White Boy Slavery. Which we as 'enlightened individuals' are trying to tell black america is a better option than what they have now.
When the empowered are themselves enslaved, as they are now, it is indeed time for rebellion!
Get a Usenet feed, Kidz. Read some ASR.
LEARN what whiteboy slavery is!
You'll take up the gun with chuckD to merely LESSEN your suffering!
Pete.
Re:Chuck D's strong and original opinions (Score:1)
YOU LIED!
Ready yourself for the cosmic consequences.
Get a fucking grip on actual reality.
Lubricate. Liberally.
Pete.
Re:I still want to know one thing. (Score:1)
Re:Take the power back (Score:1)
It does not offer the artist any freedom that i can see.
It does when you support the artist!
Re:while we're off-topic about commerce (Score:1)
Back when Slashdot was a few college kids living on Ramen, selling blood to buy parts for a server in someone's dorm room closet, or something similar, this made perfect sense, kinda like the PBS and NPR mail order sweatshirt, poster, and coffee mug catalog, but now that this is a "real grown-up business", is it still appropriate?
They aren't still dependent on donations, are they?
Re:Fight the good fight. (Score:1)
Something that I haven't heard mentioned here is that the label refused to release the album, then PE put it up on the net.
Whatever (Score:1)
IIRC, the Sultan of Brunei is richer. BTW, this says very little except that your resources are distributed inequitably.
and has the most intelligent and inventive people in the world.
Yeah -- the immigrants ! Seriously, your kids are stupid. Read any stats on education, or try teaching in America then teach abroad and compare.
BTW, did you mention -- it has the highest per-capita prison population in the world ? Did you mention that your kids are among the dumbest among the industrialised nations ?
its language is also the primary language of the world. and most cultures mimic us.
Americans invented the English language ? ROFL ! The reason that English is dominant has as much to do with the size of the former British empire as anything else. This is also why almost all East Asian writing is Chinese ( essentially ). Most cultures mimic America ??? Yeah, whatever.
jealous of America. i want to live there but can't because they don't want any more stupid foreigners like me."
Last I heard, the high tech industry were begging for H1Bs because there aren't enough intelligent Americans around. PhD programs are also recruiting foreigners by the ton. It's kind of funny that the "stupid foreigners" are being recruited near the top of the intellectual ladder -- research and high tech.
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:1)
In conclusion, this "CDs are too expensive" rhetoric is totally bogus. If someone was capable of giving the artist more money and getting the music to consumers for less, we'd see the record companies go out of business. But they're not. The problem is that the retail style distribution model is inefficient.
Electronic distribution might or might not prove cheaper. However, what the slashdot community seem to like most about the internet distribution model is that they can freeload and circumvent copyrights.
BTW, see further up and hear what he has to say about Microsoft. I bet if those comments were posted, we'd see all the anger of slashdot directed his way.
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:1)
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:1)
I'm not clear that prices really have increased. I can still get most of my CDs for $11-14 or so. It's only if the retail outlet overprice that I need to pay much more. When I was in the US 10 years ago, I paid $8-11 for a cassete. Allowing for compounded price increases over 10 years, I don't think the increase is enormous.
Moreover, you offer no evidence that the record companies are charging double, and I'd argue that it's the middlemen who are screwing you as much as anything else.
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:1)
The record companies don't break even on the cassette sales alone. They obviously recover manufacturing costs, but they rely on CD sales as their main revenue source. In isolation, cassetes are a losing proposition, but a lot of the costs are shared by the CD thing ( staffing, distribution, administration/accounting, marketing ).
Like I said, if you have a business plan that gives more back to the artists and gives the consumer better prices, by all means, go for it. However, all I've been seeing here is a lot of hot air and no business plans.
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:1)
Re:Whatever (Score:1)
Re:so fuck the middleman (Score:1)
The problem is that when you go through a few chain of middlemen, you get exponential price increases. It's not that each middleman is inefficient, it's that routing through a few layers of middlemen is. That's why businesses that sell things online (like Amazon) can always get better prices to the buyer -- they cut out middlemen.
In any cases, if the artists learn to either promote for free or sell online ( I know that slashdotters hate the idea of paying for something though ), it would be a good thing.
Re:Whatever (Score:1)
Check the statistics. American kids are dumb ( ie they score poorly on international tests ).
They are being taught basically to survive in today's and tomorrow's economy which was built by American business and economical principles.
What ? The Americans also invented capitalism ? Yeah, whatever.
Foreigners will do the same work for less money. An average American computer science or engineering grad expects 40k a year and up right out of college. An engineer from India will work for half that salary.
Bzzzt -- you can't legally pay a H1B that low. There are minimums that you have to pay H1B workers, and I know a lot of those workers -- the minimums in question aren't that bad. So no, it's not about cheap labor. BTW, you don't even address my point about academic research, which also takes in a lot of foreigners.
Re: Disclaimer (Score:1)
IMO, the main reason America is as succesful as it is has a lot to do with the fact that it has a very solid political foundation, and there are enough smart Americans to make sure that the foundation (usually) doesn't rot. There are other countries which are also good politically and economically, but because they are smaller, they are also less visible/influential.
My comments about the education system here still stand -- I'm not saying that there aren't any smart American kids -- but a lot of the bright kids don't know anything because they don't teach them anything. My experience in grad school has been that though some American guys are very bright, they have much less background knowledge than their European or Australian counterparts.
Re:SMG (Score:1)
Re:Great to see... (Score:1)
To add insult to injury many of the songs downloadable for free were critical of the recording industry's not allowing the songs to be downloaded in the first place. You can still find copies of "Swindler's Lust" floating around.
Hehe (Score:1)
Re:Americans (Score:1)
Huge...
Overbearing...
Sees only the good parts of itself.
________________________________
Re:Fight the good fight. (Score:1)
Yeah, and if I recall correctly, their record label eventually forced them to take the mp3s off their web page. Chuck D was not happy about that.
-BModerate up the parent post! (Score:1)
Re:Like Breaking Out of Bondage (slowly) (Score:1)
"Given the countless undertakings one can pursue in life, why do they choose to torture themselves with this particular pursuit?"
I think that's pretty revealing.
That's why you see so many lawyers waiting tables at night to support their day jobs, right?
Also, why do you have scare quotes around "artists"? That's not too friendly, man.
It's an incredibly hard life. I gave it a shot. I couldn't take it, so I'm in computers now.
Wanna know why?
I AM in it for the money.
Anyone looking for financial security gets out of that business and fast.
Borrowing for rent or going without a phone for a long while really sucks, especially if you know that you're good at what you do.
Re:Great to see... (Score:1)
However, to be fair, if you like something, buy it.
Chuck should be able to get his 000.1c royalties from a purchase.
Re:You are what you share (Score:1)
I list my box on Napster as a 56k conection. It keeps my get requests down to a low number
I list my 56k modem as a 56k modem and it does not help. I still max out the number of outgoing requests (10) relatively quickly whenever I'm on it. (Of course, a lot of people abort those transfers when they discover that my advertised 56k modem connection really is a 56k modem....)
Re:As I was saying about music... (Score:1)
I'm not a metal fan, but Bring the Noise rules, only reason I have Attack of the Killer B's By Anthrax. I don't find it odd that he supports napster. There is an article in Wired that says back in 98 he had new Public Enemy stuff posted on the PE websitebefore it came out, but the record label(Def Jam, aka Polygram, which got bought out by Universal) got pissed off and demanded that the songs be removed.
Here is the link : Wired Story [wired.com]
Nah, your taste in music sucks. (Score:1)
Well if you were looking for "The Best of Yanni," of course you were going to be disappointed. May I ask what kind of music you listen to? I get the feeling you like something wayyyyy out of the mainstram, like gregorian chants or techno-rap-bluegrass or something. Of course alternative (true alternative, not the nirvana/pj/aic definition of alternative) isn't going to be represented: Napster relies on the files on other people's drives. If nobody else listens to the crap you like, you're not going to find it!
Oh, you found multiple copies of some artists/songs? What a fucking revelation! You mean more than one person likes popular music? Do you think that's why they call it popular?
Finding obscure songs is inherently difficult on Napster: if it was on Napster, other people would have it. If other people had it, it wouldn't be obscure. Don't blame Napster for your bizarre music tastes.
(This is not to say Napster is perfect, but if nobody has the song it is not a shortcoming of Napster -- I was looking for Heart's rendition of Led Zeppelin's Rock And Roll today and it took hours and then I only found it at 96k. I can't blame Napster for nobody wanting that song besides me and whoever that guy was that had it.)
__________________________________________________ ___
Re:I still want to know one thing. (Score:1)
Depends a lot on the deal.
One friend of mine basically did it all on her own and pressed a 1000 CD's paying out of her own pocket. She expecpects to recover all her costs after selling 500 of them. Thus she pockets 50%, but she has to do all of her own promotion and has to put up money up front. Also if she becomes popular pressing more copies is relatively cheap since all the recording and mixing is done, thus she'll get a larger chunk of profit.
Another friend went the other way and got a deal with a largish record lable. For his first CD he gets a small amount of cash up front and hardly getting anything pr. CD sold. However he considers it worth it since it means he doesn't have to do as much of the promtional work himself, he will be on a recognized and well know lable and thus will probably get a larger audience. Also he has to put up a lot less of his own money, since the record lable is taking most of the risk and if his record doesn't sell, it doesn't mean he'll be sitting with a large debt he can't pay.
That's also some of what the record lables get paid for, to take the risk of losing money if the album doesn't sell.
Re:Like Breaking Out of Bondage (slowly) (Score:1)
I support mp3 trading. I have spent more money on cds since i started trading then ever before. With that said i think that we should expect more from "artists." The way i see it true musicians shouldn't be doing it for the money. Just like linux hackers don't don't expect "monetary rewards" for their deeds. I expect a true artist to want his music to be heard as much possible and not want to limit the means in which it can be heard. If mp3s offer a means of broadening the artist's audience then they should be for it.
So you are probably thinking "well full time artists need to eat!." fine they can make their money from performances, that is where the real money comes from anyways. "well they don't have someting that can be performed," fine then release a cd. If you are good, you will be supported by your fans.
I have more to say, but it isn't like anyone will get to read this as moderators never touch my posts.
Plenty of Mac versions. (Score:1)
Macster [macster.com]
Rapster [macnews.com.br]
There are a few more but I can't think of them at the moment.
Re:I always knew. (Score:1)
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Re:I always knew. (Score:1)
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Re:Americans (Score:1)
--
Re:Wrong guy (Score:1)
Pioneering internet music technologies would be using actual technologies of the internet for music purposes. Using the internet as a fancy mail order catalog isn't all that pioneering regardless of availability.
Re:Wrong guy (Score:1)
i love chuck d. (Score:1)
Pop quiz (Score:1)
Pop Quiz: who here knows what a backdoor man actually is? (Hint: it comes from the old, southern, black dialect. It is also used in a song called, appropriately enough, Backdoor Man. A line from it goes like this: "Well the men don't know but the little girls understand")
Bring da noise! (Score:1)
As a musician myself, I'm smart enough to realise that the more people who listen to my band, the better. ( http://enchanted.sinisterweb.cjb.net/ ) It's the ultimate memetic virus!
Do you work for the RIAA? (Score:1)
And your last line is a giveaway, suggesting SO CONVENIENTLY that I "just buy the CDs" I want to hear. Too bad only half the stuff I want is availble easily on CD, eh?
Re:Was it napster he liked (Score:1)
Goes to show there is often more to a story than initially seems.
<carl mode> I think I've learned something today.</carl mode>
Re:(Offtopic) Slashdot serving DoubleClick ads (Score:1)
First they put up pointless bandwidth wasting ads for gnu, wine, xmms, etc... Now they slowly started putting in real ads. Thankyou andover. I liked freshmeat much better when it was on redhat's servers.
Re:(Offtopic) Slashdot serving DoubleClick ads (Score:1)
If they're blocked completely at the client though, then the hits won't be logged and /. won't get money for those ad views.
--
(Offtopic) Slashdot serving DoubleClick ads (Score:1)
See sid=doubleclick [slashdot.org]
--
Re:(Offtopic) Slashdot serving DoubleClick ads (Score:1)
Yes, /. users are more likely to have DC blocked, but if everyone on /. blocked DC, then there would be no reason for /. to serve DC ads; the ad views would never get registered and /. would get no money. Therefore, slashdot is profiting by exploiting those who are less knowledgable, which is horrible.
- (or those who are knowledgable and don't mind DC (perfectly okay))
The problem with DC is that they're peering into something the general populace doesn't expect them to. While this isn't a priori a bad thing, most users are surprised when they first find out what doubleclick is doing, and they possibly would have not done certain things had they known. Therefore, DC is doing it without their knowledge or consent, and slashdot is assisting in that.(or those who are just too lazy (borderline))
(or those who don't have enough control over their machine to do anything about it (maybe bad))
Also, adfu doesn't keep DC from seeing your cookies; IFRAME, IMG, and SCRIPT tags are included in some slashdot pages (approx 5% of them) with direct URLs to ad.doubleclick.net.
--
Re:I still want to know one thing. (Score:2)
On the other hand with MP3 a lot of people may download them, but you get nothing. A large number times 0 is still 0.
Again how does the band benifit?
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
I still want to know one thing. (Score:2)
So where is the money to make these recordings?
The Band has to eat you know.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Re:Take the power back (Score:2)
It is great for the listener, but unless you go to a concert and buy a ticket its not supporting the artist. And quite frankly my favorite artist is Stan Rogers, and he is dead.
I think I am missing something here. But here is a fact, recording studio time costs money. That money has to come from somewhere. Where does it come from if we all download all the music we listen to? Please tell me I want to know.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Vicious Circle (Score:2)
I'm really hoping for the day when I can find music I like, easily, in legal MP3 form.
There are plenty of excellent bands and artists who are making their music as a hobby. In some cases the music they are making is of a higher quality than some of the stuff churned out by major labels.
Note use of "some". 95% of what's on MP3.com is crap, but then so is 95% of what you can buy in HMV.
The problem is, we have a large, established infrastructure in place to help us gain exposure to music we might like: radio, TV, the music press -- people who are paid to sift through the dross and present us with the cream.
You choose which cream you wish to be exposed to, of course: if you like mainstream pop you listen to primetime commercial radio; if you like Hip Hop you listen to a specialist show; etc.
The thing is, selecting from the vast amount of music that's out there is a full time job. We *need* the press and broadcast media to make recommendations for us. We need someone do "discover" bands, so we don't have to.
Eventually, these media sources will get wise to MP3, and we'll start to see reviews in (say) NME for music which is only available as a freely redistibutable MP3. I'm guessing it'll be in one of the less mainstream genres to begin with.
For the moment, it's just too easy for a radio station to accept whatever the major record labels shove under their noses: it's usually polished, and has a nice video to go with it...
--
It did get read, but... (Score:2)
Napster isn't (in it's present form, anyway) a particularly well-suited distribution tool for independent/emerging artists. However, it is a great tool for getting people acquainted with downloadeable music. Let's just hope that once the record companies get properly euthanized, or people get tired of boy-bands and "best of the (insert ancient decade of your choice here)'s"-collections (whichever comes first), there will be services still in place telling them what music they should really be listening to...
Re:SMG (Score:2)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
SMG (Score:2)
There are other artists, though, that have wised up to the benefits of MP3. A few, like SMG [smg.org] have really embraced it. Dumping a brain-dead label and going independant isn't easy, but it's inspiring to know that the music is still flowing.
Good stuff, too, if you like the funky side of industrial.
What's really funny is, these days many of the larger artists could easily go independant and do well for themselves. If Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, or Pig were to go off on their own, their fans wouldn't forget them.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Like Breaking Out of Bondage (slowly) (Score:2)
Oh, of course they are. Hell, it's a business, just a little more touchy-feely than most. But artists are learning to exploit alternative channels of income such as t-shirts, videos, bumper stickers, concert ticket sales, etc. The music has become a freebie.
It reminds me of the model that the Internet appliance industry is limping towards (like Sega with Dreamcast) -- give away the method of access and charge for the service.
-Waldo
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:2)
You kind of make my point here -- the record companies do provide a useful service, and it's not that easy to provide the same service cheaper. Each layer of middlemen costs something. You haven't offered any figures on how much the record companies sell each CD for ( in volume to resellers I mean ). You just whine about prices without providing any evidence besides your "opinion" that $15 is "too expensive".
Why should I pay a $15 buck markup for some plastic disk?
Because that's how much it costs to distribute it ultimately ?
A "vast distributed system" used to "challenge the record companies" is all well and good as long as you don't put nonfree material on it. Stealing from the record companies is hardly a legitimate way of "challenging" them.
Right guy (Score:2)
Of course, this article does state that it was after getting in trouble for using MP3.
Re:Chuck D's strong and original opinions (Score:2)
Re:Get with the program, people... (napster sucks) (Score:2)
Recently, anything I try to download from Napster gives me a "cannot access file" error.
Keep in mind that you aren't downloading "from Napster". You're downloading from some other Napster user -- most likely a non-technical Windows 95 or Windows 98 user.
If you get that message when downloading one of my tracks, there are two probable reasons:
What is the alternative to a major label deal? (Score:2)
Re:Now All We Need Is A Mac Version (Score:2)
There already is one - there's one on this computer I'm using right now. I think it's called Macster, but I'm not sure where to get it (I'm pretty sure about the name, but I can't check now because I'm booted into LinuxPPC at the moment)
Re:indeed... (Score:2)
I mean the guy (Jordan) brings in roughly $10 billion to the U.S. economy, who is going to slam dunk him in the mass media?
--
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:2)
Re:The way the music business works (Score:2)
Whatever. I originally typed "owing" and it looked odd. Mea culpa. But, Mr. AC, I stand by my misspelled words.
Was it napster he liked (Score:2)
It seems that the Napster crew have made a bigger splash than I thought, because Chuck D was saying that it was talked about during a music convension.
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:2)
Pure BS IMO. Who is really able to challenge the record industries with their billions and ubiquitous commercial presence and voice? You really think that I will be able to challenge these guys sending my CDs off to be mass-burned? And how the hell am I going to advertise and distribute my CDs? Just buy a few million dollars worth of TV and ad space, right? CDs ARE too expensive. Why should I pay a $15 buck markup for some plastic disk? I am not buying the disk...I am buying the
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:2)
So it really costs so much more to distribute CDs than cassettes? Isn't it amazing how pirated CDs and cassettes are so cheap? I wonder how pirates distribute them. Even after adding the quarter of a cent that actually goes to the artist and other expenses (like billions on advertising), they are still amazingly cheap to produce in a garage. I guess the record company must really have some inept people working for them, hammering out each CD manually. As the internet CLEARLY shows, the real cost of distributing music is really close to NOTHING. These record companies need to recognize this and embrace it in order to succeed, or they will be eventualy be economically punished for attempting to keep their stranglehold on the market. People do not buy CDs. They buy music.
As far as stealing from the companies not being a legitimate way of challenging them, what do YOU suggest we do? Write letters telling them how displeased we are? As if they would give a shit? Remember the law is
I am very glad to see Chuck D doing this. (Score:2)
Clearly, Napster and Gnutella give them a chance to do better then they did under the recording industry promotion monopoly, but remember Napster and MP3.com are going to exploit the musicians too. No, I'm not saing that Napster and mp3.com beam-it are exploiting musician, but I am saing that Napster and mp3.com will try to monopolize internet promotion.
MP3.com is pretty much "just another label." The only real point to putting your stuff on mp3.com is for free bandwidth. I predict Napster will ry to monopolize internet promotion by selling "high placement in search results to bands with the money, i.e. $10,000 will buy you the first 10 serch results (and 75% of the total search results) for your song will point to copies containing advertising for your site (or someone elses) and 1% of al search results show the versions of your songs containing advertising.
Napster is one of the good guys now, but remember they designed a system with a centralized server specifically to maintain this sort of control. I'm very glad to see people like Chuck D supporting them now because it will make it harder for them to do things like sell favoritism later. The future of all musicians depens on awair musicians watching the bigwigs (labels or internet companies) very closely.
Mac version(s) of Napster (Score:2)
- MacStar [dyndns.org]
- Macster [macster.com]
- Rapster [macnews.com.br]
My personal favorite (at the moment) is Rapster, since it gives you the choice of connecting directly to any of the known Napster servers, as well, as the OpenNap servers. Btw, the MacStar page doesn't appear to be working at the moment.Get with the program, people... (napster sucks) (Score:2)
To be honest, I never tried napster until two days ago, and that was only to see what all the huballoo was really all about. I must say that I was extremely disappointed. There were many artists who were not even listed in the database. When I found artists that were listed, there were usually many copies of just a very small set of unique tracks. And then when I went to download those that I was actually interested in, I discovered that most of the sites were down or otherwise unavailable.
Eventually I wound up doing random searches, and then downloading all of the responses just to find sites that were alive, and then queried to see what that site had, which pretty much defeats the whole point of napster in the first place.
I found the whole excercise basically a waste of time. Time that would have been better spent earning a living and then just buying the CDs that I want to hear.
-p.
Take the power back (Score:2)
Burgatronics [burgatronics.net]
Thank you, Public Enemy. (Score:2)
classical music, modern rock, metal, etc. That
was my musical world. I'd never have even considered
giving Public Enemy a listening. But when they had those
MP3's on their site waaaay back, I decided to grab a couple
and listen for fun. That's when I realized how much
ass this group really kicks. Powerful lyrics, an awesome
sound -- I'd for the first time found myself really enjoying
music that, if it weren't for free MP3's, I'd never
have given a chance.
Re:What is the alternative to a major label deal? (Score:2)
The alternative may mean a more modest income than Maddonna's, but I don't think it has to be US$7.50/hr. Local musicians have a lot to offer their fans that you just can't get anywhere else. For example, I love Pink Floyd, but none of them have ever bought me a beer
The same thing that has the major labels screaming now offers a great opportunity for musicians to possibly make enough to earn a living doing what they love. There's no need for a major label to distribute your music for you. It's pretty easy to do it yourself now, and it's only going to get easier.
The big labels have a lot of power to promote the music over the airwaves and cable TV, but if you can download a full CD without paying in less time than it takes to buy one in the store then why go to the store? I'd wager that if it's still easier for you to run to the store and buy a CD, that will change soon. I guess one reason to go buy a CD anyway would be that you like the CD enough to want to own it even though you can download the music for free. Complaining about people sharing the music without paying for it is like complaining about the weather...you might not like it but there's not a damned thing you can do about it. This sucks for the people making a decent living off their music. For those that aren't (the majority of musicians) it's a good thing. They now have a way to get their music to their fans without a major label. Musicians can still sell their music, but now they'll only be able to count on their loyal fans to pay them for it.
It will probably be harder to make millions off their music but at least they'll have a better chance at making a living from their work. There's a much better opportunity to maintain contact with fans and potential fans now than there ever was in the past.
Promoting the music is the hardest part because it takes money. Sponsorships from local businesses would help a lot. It helps local businesses if people spend their money on music locally. If the local musicians are making money, the local music stores, bars, and coffee shops (to name a few) are making money. Think of it this way: it might be hard for a single band to promote their music, but it would be a lot easier for local businesses to promote the local music scene.
Better promotion of local music, more contact between musicians and fans, and independence from the major labels could all lead to a solution.
numb
PE Track Available (Score:2)
Swindler's Lust [public-enemy.com]
Public Enemy also made their latest album available exclusively available for download from the web almost a month before it was released on cd or vinyl.
The "missing" Public Enemy album that was removed from the website by the label and never released subsequently was mainly an album of remixes and updated versions of old PE tracks. Some very good stuff, I've downloaded a good part of it and enjoyed hearing classics updated to reflect the music as well as the political climes of 1998, which was when it came out.
Re:Fight the good fight. (Score:2)
Fight the good fight. (Score:2)
Re:Like Breaking Out of Bondage (slowly) (Score:2)
Given the countless undertakings one can pursue in life, why do they choose to torture themselves with this particular pursuit?
Some responses include:
"It's all for the people"
"We just want to bring happieness to people's lives"
"We just want to keep the fans happy"
I'm sorry, but like an MS press release, I just don't buy it. Chuck D and any other establish artists has no interest what-so-ever in giving away for free the very thing that provides for him and his family. After spending years and years of making sacrifices and finally "making it" you're going to tell this veteran road-warrior artist that he should be happy his record company is giving it all away? Me thinks not.
Record companies and hundreds of thousands of bands that beat down their doors daily exist because bands seek them out. The Bands want to be rich, and "Pimpco records" can provide.
I welcome the new distrobution model (free MP3s) and look forward to a day when the wealth is spread across many, many artists instead of being concentrated in the hands of few. After all, is Madona so skilled in her art that she deserves so much money?
_______________
Re:Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:2)
Ah, but it is possible. A few years back here in Finland, a new record company called Levy-yhtiö ("The Record Company") signed up a few obscure punk bands and started releasing their singles for $2 a pop (a fifth of the $10 or so charged by the major labels) and even full-length albums at a 50% discount. Nothing unusual about this so far... except that one of those punk bands, Apulanta, managed to become the biggest seller in Finland for that year and is still going strong. The major labels went ballistic, but the company refused to sell out. After its initial success lots of other promising bands wanted to sign up, so quite a few more hits followed and everybody was happy -- except the majors, who were eventually forced to lower their prices as well!
The problem is that the retail style distribution model is inefficient.
But this is still true, and the above is the exception that proves the rule. In Finland, the market is small enough that it's possible for a small company to break a song on radio or get their record into all the stores, but this just isn't going to happen in the States... until the Internet lets the consumers bypass the stores entirely.
Cheers,
-j.
Wrong guy (Score:2)
Chuck D rules. He pioneered a lot of Internet music technologies, and his work with Public Enemy is top-notch.
His label, Atomic Pop, was one of the first labels to ship a CD to internet purchases over a month before it was available in stores, and he's been a really strong supporter of MP3 technology for a long time.
Thanks, Chuck D!
Actually...Right Guy. (Score:2)
Great to see... (Score:2)
But, if Napster and other anti-establishment geek stuff is getting to people we wouldn't have thought of... it's going to go a hell of a long way. Things will definalty change.
Re:(somewhat OT) Free AC/DC, Blink, Limp Bizkit MP (Score:2)
Chuck D is doing for political reasons. The only reason why he hasn't put a database of his stuff up is because his record label is giving him shyt about it.
- - -
Re:This is awesome... (Score:2)
I know this won't get read but... (Score:2)
The biggest problem with digital music aside from artists getting payment, is that it's damn hard to get recognition. Take mp3.com. The top 10 charts rarely change because they are based upon dl's, and they're also not even close to accurate of the quality. Getting on those is hard, and mp3.com recognized this and now offers payola where you pay money to put your tracks alongside those top10 tracks. How many DL's you think that's gonna get? A bandname and songname suddenly become really tough to choose, because that's all a listener will base their choice on for even visiting the page of the artist.
Digital music has indeed opened the floodgates, so much so that it's the equivalent of sticking a firehose in your mouth and opening the valve. It's damn near impossible to discern the good from the bad. So what's going to arise? Review sites may pop up, ditto for radio sites, but they're just as inundated as us. You watch, soon after the 'revolution' there will be big promoting labels pulling evil trickery all over again.
I'm glad Chuck D loves digital media. I just wish he'd figure out the best way to make it work for the consumer and the artist, because right now I don't think we have that perfect 'good artists get recognition' liquidity that's needed. Sheer volume is preventing that.
Of course, that's just my opinion....
I always knew. (Score:2)
Every kid has a rock n' roll role model who they think is the totally pure representation of righteous rebellion...I remember Chuck D being this for me when I was 15. And of all the people who filled the role for me through my adolescense, I would say Chuck D is the only one who is still around and keeping the fight up.
Those were pretty simplistic days, and I hoped that the great revoloution would come and we would all be free...just as long as we had good beats to chant along to, "The good would get even"...well, many people have dreamed that dream, but Chuck D has really matured to be an intelligent, important part of the technology, music, politics, etc. scene. As long as he keeps it up, hip-hop won't go all bad.
Old school news (Score:2)
Even though others had his back, Chuck didn't stand still, he released as a free track "Swindler's Lust" as a direct stab at the record labels.
The masters own you
I don't remember legal issues, but it was available as an mp3 and "mp4". The mp4 was actually a windows executable with embedded audio, and had cool graphics, web links, yadda yadda. Mp4 never had anything to do with MPEG, or MP3 (it had it's own codec, called a2b I think), the naming just was a bandwagon thing to become the "next" mp3, just as mp3s were blowing up. Since I haven't played any other mp4s, mp3s are still here. By this time, everybody on the Board had mp3 players, so the mp4 kinda went away.
Soon after that, Chuck and PE broke from Def Jam and went to Atomic Pop, where they still are. They released an additional single free "Do you Wanna go our way", the main single off their album "There's a Poison Going On". You could download the whole album for $8, but I actually paid the $10 so I got an autographed CD sleeve. Since "Poison" contained 2 tracks freely downloadable, it's fairly safe to say he's still on the free music bus. Again, calls of bandwagon jumping again may be mislead.
One thing to think about is the cost of CDs. "There's a Poison Going On" sold for $10, plus shipping. How come it costs $17 over in the stores here? CDs are overpriced, and meant to be. No moving parts, but still cost more than tapes. Weren't they supposed to go down once economies of scale kicked in? How come a burnable CD (a more expensive technology than a prerecorded music CD) is cheaper than a blank tape, but the Sam Goody CD costs more? I'm not advocating piracy, hell Chuck *wants* you to copy his stuff and that's all-important, but the economics need to change. I seem to recall some label getting on Garth Brooks' case because he wanted to release an album for under $14. Nope, you need to charge more. Now AOL has Time Warner, it's a brave new world.
Wow... (Score:3)
It's good to see an artist who understands that the problem isn't the sanctity of copyright, it's the corruption of the music industry. Now that an alternative exists, no one wants to help support an institution so foul that some people would even go to illegal means to do so.
Personally, I've been thinking of signing up for one of those music clubs--"11 free CDs for the price of 1!" Assume shipping and handling, and ~15 for a CD, and it comes out to between $2-3 for each CD. I consider that to be a fair price. It's way above manufacturing costs, and still mostly profit. The problem I'm having is finding enough CDs that they offer, that I actually like. But I could at least fill out my collection some, since I haven't been buying anything new for a while. (once it started getting over $14, I said "fuck it", and only bought used stuff...)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:(somewhat OT) Free AC/DC, Blink, Limp Bizkit MP (Score:3)
So, basically, radio has gotten to the point where it can do whatever it wants (besides swear, apparently). The RIAA recognizes the important role that radio plays in establishing pop hits and in marketing new young hits. It's not about to destroy that relationship by doing stupid things like telling radio to stop releasing music that can't be accurately owned by the studio (hence studio and live recorded tracks).
Read the liner notes to Jimi Hendrix's BBC Sessions dual CD sometime (don't let the store owner catch you opening the case, though, heh). It's extremely enlightening.
Re:Get with the program, people... (napster sucks) (Score:3)
True, but read on...
As far as I am concerned, this is nothing more than a publicity stunt to get his name in the papers, and to sell more albums.
I doubt it - Chuck D is very vocal against the RIAA and released a few songs free on the internet awhile back (1998?) They weren't mp3's, but this was before mp3's became so popular. They were some self-playing Windows programs or something like that. The RIAA quickly made him take them down, and he posted something on his web site encouraging people who had downloaded the songs to spread them as much as possible.
To be honest, I never tried napster until two days ago, and that was only to see what all the huballoo was really all about. I must say that I was extremely disappointed. There were many artists who were not even listed in the database. When I found artists that were listed, there were usually many copies of just a very small set of unique tracks.
This is because of the sheep-like behavior of most people in this country - they all listen to the same goddam songs. What's listed in Napster is what is available on people's computers who are currently logged on to Napster.
And then when I went to download those that I was actually interested in, I discovered that most of the sites were down or otherwise unavailable.
Wierd - I've always had pretty good luck with songs being online when it says they are.
I found the whole excercise basically a waste of time. Time that would have been better spent earning a living and then just buying the CDs that I want to hear.
Hahaha what did you expect? Napster is just a big waste of time, if you're spending a significant amount of time on it. But if you're just looking for a particular song or small group of songs, it definately pays off to check Napster first before going out onto web sites to find them, because if they're there it's much easier to find them than searching online (and don't even try to tell me that scour.net [which I haven't used in months, but last I checked only 1 out of maybe 5 songs listed was actually there] is better, because it's not)
Re:Was it napster he liked (Score:3)
When he says he's all about free music, he's the only artist I know who really means it. He's trying to educate with his music, and he sees it as a soapbox, as free speech. For a brief period in the late 80's, a lot of people called it "edutainment" with a straight face. Chuck ended up feeling handcuffed to his record label, though, because:
If you give speeches for a living, and you decide that you want to stand on the corner and talk about politics to a group of people, you're allowed to do it.
But if you're a musician, and you make music for a living, your label doesn't allow you to create songs for fun (or whatever reason) and not give them a cut of the profits. It doesn't even matter if the label has nothing to do with the production or distribution of the music - they still want a piece of the action.
You can make a case for the labels: they have an investment in your success, and they put a lot of advertising dollars into getting your name out there. By releasing stuff for free, you're devaluing their investment and reducing their ability to recoup their costs.
So anyway, that's where Chuck is coming from. He sees the potential of Napster to distribute music as a real freedom-of-speech thing. He wants to bitch about the system, and this is the only way a lot of small artists are going to be able to do it. Of course, in reality, the small artists really just want to get paid....
Re:You are what you share (Score:3)
These aren't "sites" in the normal sense of a 24/7 web site, they are OPC (Other Peoples' Computers). These OPCs pop on and off-line all the time. If you happened to do your search when 20 other people each had a copy of the same song, they will show up in your search. You're relying on the kindess and generosity of other napster users to share a lot of files for long periods of time.
Given this arangement, it's in your own best interest to share a lot of your own MP3s for a long period of time, thus making the searching and downloading of your files an enjoyable expierence for other users (and vise-versa). On any given night, there can be over 4000 users sharing 1,500 GB of data. If 4000 people all got on napster and shared one MP3 file (like I_want_to_be_a_cowboy___neal.mp3) it would loose it's interest very fast.
The old saying "You only get out of it what you put into it" applies in this case.
As for "There were many artists who were not even listed in the database." This is partly due to the small search result of 100 responses to a search queary. I would agree that as the user base grows, and duplicate files increase, there is almost as much noise as signal. However, I like the small search size for legal reasons. I don't want other users (read RIAA lawyers) to be able to pull down every single user name and slap a seace and desist order on them.
P.S. Have we gotten so spoiled that the ability to quickly search and download positivly *any* song our hearts could desire from 2Tb of music on a distributed world wide network for free...Sucks?
_______________
Re:Chuck D's strong and original opinions (Score:3)
NOT A DIFFERENT OPINION FROM THE SLASHDOT CONTINUUM.
Those, like all other opinions are entirely valid and subjective. There is no reason to argue over them.
Re:Take the power back (Score:4)
My recording studio [airwindows.com] cost money, and for commercial work I'll charge $75 an hour for it, which isn't even that high of a figure.
For people who are on my side in this mp3, open source, freedom to express thing, I'll literally let them use my studio FREE. If you are going to be releasing all your stuff as mp3s free (NO holdouts) and will allow purchase of your CD to be strictly voluntary (as mine are- nothing is withheld from the free downloads or will ever be), then I will be delighted to work with you for free. You merely have to call me, email me, set up a time and get yourself to Brattleboro, Vermont. (I obviously can't gallivant all around the country recording people for free!) As to other costs, hell, I can probably throw in the tape if that's a problem. (New Maxell XR-S Black only please).
As to how downloading an mp3 supports an artist? DOWNLOAD MINE and find out!! Please? Do I have to _beg_ people to listen to the artform I've been doing for almost 20 years? Do I have to tantalise people with the studio of which the 'anima' album is a good demonstration of the sounds I can get? It's not like this is crud- nearly broke top 20 in Instrumental Rock with _no_ promotion, up against much more established artists such as Carmine Appice, Dweezil Zappa, Richie Sambora and Brian May (all of whom I beat in the charts, in various combinations) and Wolf Hoffman (who I haven't beat- yet). It's not like it can be less expensive because I've been a slashdot-reading, GPL-using, linux-booting creativitysharing geek for years, and the CDs I have up there are all the minimum of 5.99 that mp3.com will allow (think about THAT for a minute. That's presumably the price at which they are still making some money- how much lower than the mainstream is that?) and there's nothing that I won't freely GIVE to someone who doesn't have the money or just wants to be given stuff.
And all I'm really asking in return is for people to DO THAT- download the mp3s [mp3.com], what, do I have to PAY people to listen to music that's not off the major labels? If this is not supporting the artist then WHY are 90% of the songs on the mp3.com artist boards "Please download my song, I want to be in the charts, I want to be heard"? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to be an artist supporting the mp3 revolution and feel like anybody is listening, is accepting what you're giving?? It's like that scene in Cryptonomicon- "Accept one of our free army tanks! They get 2000 mpg and go 500 miles an hour playing quadrophonic stereo with air conditioning!" and everybody wants the station wagons :P
I _beg_ people, follow those links, download my mp3s paying me nothing. If people desperately want to pay me they will eventually get their chance but for now I ask _nothing_ more. If you don't like people who rant on slashdot, go there and download somebody _else's_ music out of spite- as long as it's not "Rolling Stones Interview" or something! Do you know how irritating it is to have some rock dinosaur major label appendage open an account at mp3.com alongside you, put out some _soundcheck_ or radio station promo and then instead of using the medium (like Chuck D.!) and putting the whole album up, putting up the ONE TRACK (like Robby Krieger) and withholding the rest, or putting up INTERVIEWS (Robby, the Stones, the Eagles) so then you end up having some rock dinosaur's PRESS CONFERENCE beating you to death in the charts and staking out the top places for weeks on end? A _press_ conference? That's like listing IE service packs right alongside Freshmeat packages, complete with hit ratings. I don't know how better to express how insulting and damaging this is. "Gee, Martha, looks like many more people like and enjoy the latest NT service pack than this new linux program- looks like we should be running that!" feh.
And then I come here and read the question "And how does downloading an mp3 support an artist"? Yeesh, stand aside for venting- I apologize for freaking right out at you, because you meant no harm and surely were trying to encourage people to support artists _more_ than that. But, man! If you had any idea how badly I wanted people to just plain hear what I'm doing with this wizzy new studio I've built, how I want to be supported and respected for how seriously I'm taking the new paradigm- rather than ignored- "Oh, he has all his songs available for download, he must suck if he's not on a major label or at least trying to sell his albums by forcing people to buy them in order to get every song!" "Oh, he has all his programs open source, they must suck if they're not proprietary or at least crippleware that will shut itself off if you don't pay for it!" Can't you even see the parallels? Wouldn't you want Linux to 'be higher on the charts'? Is it so hard to understand that music operates on a similar economy of respect and status, and is equally hard to bullshit about, and is equally threatened by a totally hostile and corrupt culture that's got most people unaware there is even a better, more open, more community-oriented way?
*sigh!*
So maybe my only answer is the sheer desperation and intensity of this rant. _Please_ go to mp3.com (or some other indy-artist site if you prefer another one) and download some artist who is _not_ signed to a major label and polluting the music charts with _interviews_ and crap like that. If you do nothing else, at least take what's being given. There's damned good stuff out there. I happen to think my stuff [mp3.com] is good stuff, but I've heard _lots_ of other acts who had terrific music up there- and I can be pretty certain that they would _all_ love to be heard, if nothing else. Half of them beg constantly in the artist bulletin boards _just_ to be downloaded, and that includes damn good artists whose music I really liked.
Please go and listen to us rather than questioning whether mp3 will help us... and listening only to major label shite! Thank you. -chris
Like Breaking Out of Bondage (Score:4)
To artists that have such awful contracts, each time that a song of theirs is transferred via Napster must feel like a small victory, a mini-uprising. Naturally, the artist can't cheer this on, nor can they even really acknowledge it. It's a rare gem like Chuck D that is willing to cheer on the revolution.
-Waldo
(somewhat OT) Free AC/DC, Blink, Limp Bizkit MP3s (Score:4)
Anyway, this is a sign, I guess, that some people at least have a clue. I mean, AC/DC's been around for what, 25 years? If they can come around and see the benefits of distributing a promo song for free, even if it's low quality, there may yet be hope for the industry. Of course, for every AC/DC there's a Ricky Martin and an N-sync whose contracts would never let them do anything like that. And there are far more Ricky Martin-esque filler type bands that need the quick buck than proven ass-kickers like AC/DC, so maybe the industry as a whole is doomed--but we can still have hope for the quality bands [creednet.com] of today.
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He did, and the label stopped them cold! (Score:5)
-Isaac
Chuck D at Berkeley (Score:5)
Chuck D had a lot more to say (and said a lot more) but I think this is the gist of it. It was an incredible little talk, but I wish they'd given him more than 20 minutes. All in all, Chuck D showed the knowledge and insight that made PE so far ahead of its time.
The way the music business works (Score:5)
Steve Albini wrote an article [arancidamoeba.com] some of your may be familiar with, but others may not. The famed producer details exactly how a new band can sign a contract, record an album, have a hit and tour...and wind up oweing money to the record company and spend a year making a third of what they would have if they had spent the same amount of time working at a convenience store.
It's a lovely answer to those who argue that Napster and free distribution are a worse deal than they have currently. Read this and you'll see it's not possible to have a worse deal than you'll get from a major record label.
Chuck D's strong and original opinions (Score:5)