Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

Exactly my feelings.

In terms of posting links anyway.

In terms of downloading, I think it is a completely legitimate way to hear before buying. I have downloaded many things that I bought and many more things that got deleted after one listen.

I wish iTunes would make full songs available, instead of 30 secornd clips, at low bit rate, say 64 kbps. It would save downloading the whole album to see if it is worth buying.

"Digital boom helps British music sales hit record"

"2008 was the biggest sales year on record in terms of singles sales in all formats, with 115 million single tracks sold."

"While downloads of single tracks have soared, the market for albums has also been helped by growing online sales: some 10 million albums were sold, a 65 per cent increase on 2007."

"The industry has struggled in recent years to adapt to rapidly changing technologies, and has been hit hard by illegal downloading of music via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing websites."

This last paragraph is what drives me crazy! The industry HAS NOT been hit hard. They had a fucking RECORD year! P2P is GOOD for the music industry. I have bought at least a dozen CD's that I would never have heard of without Private Bit Torrent Trackers.

Copied and Pasted to a new Topic.

Please Reply there. Not Here in the Plone topic.

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)




I thought I was going crazy last week when these figures were released. I thought, "have I just been imagining those crazed rants from music-biz execs. in recent years"? Of course the figures give an industry-wide picture. I am sure the boom isn't equal among all bands/labels/genres. Can we presume from Laetitia's comments in 2008 that she feels Stereolab are losers in all this? Impossible to quantify, for sure.

Surely it would be OK to share Stereolab (& related) live shows/sessions etc on here?

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

My opinion: Posting out of print, really old, or never released stuff is ok. Posting new releases, not ok on Stereolab's own forum. Realize that this particular forum is quickly spidered by google. Also, if you don't change the http to hxxp or something, they'll definitely know where the traffic is coming from. I think to respect Stereolab's site, we shouldn't do a lot of blatant current or leaked links. Either mask them, or direct people to the place they could get them, or email them. It's still illegal regardless of opinions about it being ethical or not ethical.

And basil, about your thing about them not being hit hard... I don't know anything about whether the industry has been, but I believe Stereolab itself has been affected, so individual bands can be.

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

Live stuff would be great though!

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)



Stereolab being hit hard might or might not be true. It is hard to tell. I am not saying sales are not down, but to attribute it directly to P2P is an assumption that I do not believe. The most popular torrents on a private tracker that I know of are also the best sellers.

The "industry" get numbers (estimates) of how many illegal downloads there are and considers these losses. This is simply NOT TRUE. And I think they know it. Many people who DL a record or piece of software would either never have bought it or buy it anyway. For example:

"Software piracy losses in India above $3 billion"

http://www.domain-b.com/infotech/itnews/20080318_software_piracy.html

They make a sweeping assumption that every pirate would buy every piece of software (or music cd) that he or she downloads. That is ridiculous, yet it has been accepted by the media, governments, police and public since the beginning. So the guy making $200 / month in India who uses Photoshop CS3 is going to pay $999 for a legal copy of the software! WHAT?

Now I am not saying it is ethical or legal, I am saying that I think it has HELPED the music industry as a whole. People are LISTENING to music again. EVERYONE has an iPod.

RANT RANT

I am probably completely wrong. Show me why.

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

according to the "business software alliance and piracy":

IRAQ: $124 MILLION SOFTWARE PIRACY LOSSES.

BAHRAIN: $27 MILLION SOFTWARE PIRACY LOSSES.

EGYPT: $131 MILLION SOFTWARE PIRACY LOSSES.

LOSSES?! If piracy were stamped out, the industry might see 1% of that in sales.

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

Well, I am pretty sure that everyone has been hit hard in the last few years from a mixture of music blogs, p2p, and everything else that contributes to not buying music.

Just a few things to note about the article...it said it was the best years for "singles" downloads, and also that album buying is up from 2007. That'll be like saying "employment is up 60% from 2009 to 2010"." That is, if the economy bounces back that quickly, but that's another topic.

And although I think it's great that singles are making a comeback in some way, many of those singles would have translated into actual album sales were we still in the habit of buying full cd's or records. Not that it's good or bad, but it's just different, so therefore it's up because it's a new model.

And I have a number of very close friends who are serious music collectors who have no shame about the fact that they download shit for free all the time, and have no intention of buying the record.

I heard an interesting thing the other day, whereas when an indie band in the 90's could sell 40,000 records and have a modest success, that's the modern equivalent of selling 20,000. Don't quote me on those numbers, but you get the idea.

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)



It is just NOT TRUE! 2008 was a RECORD YEAR! P2P has ZERO effect on music sales.

Here are two studies to demonstrate.

ARTICLE 1: hxxp://www.undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=7275

Music sales have topped 1.5 billion units for the first time ever in the USA.

Despite the perceived drop in the music biz, digital sales have fueled the most successful year ever for total sales in the US music industry.

1,513 million sales were tallied during 2008 according to Nielsen SoundScan. That was up from 1,369 million last year or a 10.5% increase.

While overall album sales were down 8.5%%, digital album sales were up 32%. More people bought albums digitally than ever before last year. Digital albums accounted for 65.8 million sales.

The real surprise was the increase in vinyl sales. They were up 89% this year, albeit on a small total figure of 1.88 million.

More than 1 billion tracks were sold digitally in 2008. Digital track sales sold 1,070 million last year.

ARTICLE 2: hxxp://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

Just one more example:

LBO just had this post:

"Any fans? I didn't know them until last night. Cryptacize is a 3-piece band, kind of minimal, spacey, with introspective yet vibratoey female vocals. They opened for Danielson. It seems like there are a lot of cool things happening in Oakland, CA."

Now, I have never heard of Cryptacize, but they sound very interesting. Would I go to the shop and pay $15 for the CD. Not yet. Instead, I download the album, check it out, and if it sounds good, then I might buy it AND their next ten albums, see them when they come in concert, etc. But without the ability to download it, I'd forget about LBO's post, and Cryptacize would be lost to me.

If there were and easy way, like iTunes (they are on there), to listen to the whole album, low bit rate would be fine, then it would save me the trouble, and I might buy it immediately. But the 30 second bites, like "cosmic sing-a-long" and "heaven is human" just get started and then cut off. I hate buying an album and finding out it is no good. I shouldn't have to! What other product do you have to buy before you know what it is?

Re: Posting of Links, OK or NOT (from Plone Thread)

Well, I'll just have to disagree with you there.

Firstly, the argument that downloading and "sampling" an album is simply an idealist argument in support of getting music for free. I tend to think that people are selfish, and if they can get something for free, they ultimately won't buy it. Most people don't have the morals you might. I like to think I have morals, but there have been times I've meant to buy a band's album, but just haven't. It happens to the best of us all the time, so I think that argument is a bit of baloney.

Secondly, the figures that this is the music biz's best year are skewed in those analyses. It would be like saying "this is a great year for T.V. because ABC made so much money." Trickle down economics doesn't work, and that's what's going on here. Rhianna as the best selling single, (no surprises there) but this is downloaded by people who probably: a)spend a total of $20 a year on music, and b) haven't got enough knowledge to join a torrent community. What about how many indie and lesser known bands make up the pie of those singles sales? Plus, that second study claims that they only tracked 680 albums. So, what albums were they? Rhianna? Of course people have trouble dl'ing that illegally, the record companies put tons of money on the piracy of high profile people like her.

I'm not trying to have a pissing contest here, or claim that I know more, but I have a lot of friends in fairly well-known bands, and am myself part of a group of "indie musicians" in NYC. And all I know is that every single one of my friend's bands who are on labels are barely making anything on their records. Myself included. Most of them actually pay for their recordings and the printing of their cd's. And these are bands that I'm sure people on this board have heard of, and record labels that people know and love. Getting someone behind you that supports you and will pay for your expenses is next to impossible these days, and it's due to the lack of album sales and music sales in general. While Best Buy are "downsizing" their inventory, independent stores are closing their doors entirely.

I don't think it's entirely to blame on file sharing, and I personally think that file sharing is a great thing. I found my album on a music blog and decided to leave it on there. If more people hear my music through that, then I think that's great. Maybe one day it will translate to having some support in another way.