[trash-talk] I may be a pest pointing this out... BUT

[Shell Bryson]

Okay a brain dump of things, in a random order, vaguely in reply to Elfie
:-)

 

 

I don't think the music industry is particularly smart, but this discussion
was about the legality of taking copies and distributing them. Buying second
hand albums is not illegal. Downloading them and sharing over them over the
internet IS illegal, and does nothing at all to encourage people to buy
legitimate copies. It doesn't encourage (as you suggested) people to buy a
ringbones, because they can download those the same places they download
their MP3s! You have to sell a LOT of ringtones to turn over the sort of
money made from an album sale.

 

However, concerts and live appearances are the place where the band makes
real money, so from THAT point of view any promotion is good promotion (even
if it is in the form of people downloading tracks). I find it a slightly
strange thing to say "well I don't buy them to punish the record labels" -
the record labels frankly don't give a shit, and unfortunately it's the
BANDS that get hurt the most. If the label has less money, they sign less
bands, release less singles etc etc. Ultimately it's the bands that are hit.
The fault lays completely at the feet of the labels themselves. They are
stupid and arrogant and utterly blind when it comes to the way people use
technology. But, I really don't know if this is an excuse.

 

It's funny really, as I have a lot of MP3s here and we rarely "buy" new
music, apart from Garbage (and we work for them!) or second hand albums. I
guess we're in the same boat as Elfie, in that frankly it's too expensive to
buy new albums all the time and I refuse to download legitimate MP3s (via
iTunes etc) as the quality SUCKS.

 

I just find it funny the way people justify it. We all KNOW it's illegal and
we should NOT be doing it, and we find all these convoluted ways of
justifying it ("teach the label a less", "force them to cut the price of
albums").

 

Here's another spin on the videos:

 

The band have paid a lot of money for a sexy new web site that has videos on
it. When you go to the site you get to see what other singles are, read the
latest news etc etc - all that nice marketing stuff that is designed to
encourage fans to think about Garbage more often and buy more records. You
don't get ANY of that when you download a copy of a video. for better or
worse! :-) If you want to watch these things you should go to the site, as
the band have PAID for those copies to be put there. If everyone is just
going to download the things, what's the point at all? It costs the band a
lot of money, and you can get it free elsewhere.

 

I think it's really easy to forget about the truth of a band, any band.
Behind it all they are a company, just like any other company - and as
unsexy as that might be, every rock and roll band needs to make money to
exist. This means marketing and sales are really important. It's dull,
unglamorous, and fuck-all to do with the music, but if money isn't made,
albums aren't made either.

 

  _____  

From: trash-talk-bounces at tcp.com [mailto:trash-talk-bounces at tcp.com] On
Behalf Of Queen Helen fanclub
Sent: 07 May 2005 10:03
To: trash-talk at tcp.com
Subject: RE: [trash-talk] I may be a pest pointing this out... BUT

 

Oh yeah, and I'm so annoyed at that "you're bad and we're losing so much
money because you're downloading music" crap that whenever I can, I buy my
original cds and album second hand so they don't get the money. I'd rather
buy it new, but most of the time it's too expensive, and it's a way to
punish them, record companies, etc. People who think that way. Until they
change their views and realise and open their eyes, I will keep doing it
(buying second hand records). OR I buy them in another country that France
so that France don't get the sales. Because I hate Pascal Negre the boss
from Universal. 

  _____  

Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour
<http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://tcp.com/pipermail/trash-talk/attachments/20050507/53a73b5e/attachment.html