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'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
The music producers are starting going amok against the P2P users who download MP3s...
Look at their new ad http://www.journaldunet.com/images/snepnon.jpg Translation: www.share.mp3 FREE MUSIC HAS A PRICE sharing music on the net is thievery and from now on it's UP TO €300,000 FINED AND 3 YEARS INPRISONMENT (art. 335-4 of the Code of Intellectual Property) - National Union of Phono Record Producers - Their market has dropped for more than 25% last year due to increasing concurrence of P2P music downloads... I don't worry for them, they must still make enough money to smoke their big cigars and continue exploiting their artists... but if it's no intimidation I guess they'll have to fine 2 million frenchmen for €300 000 each and start building quite a few new prison complexes ! Place your bets, people... will this be enough to discourage wannabe downloaders ? 8) |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
nope most likely they will only laugh...until they get busted......what they need is a few "examples"
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
probably not...
practicly everyone downloads music... are they just going to arrest the whole world? [edit] I downloaded SoUlFaThEr's music :D [/edit] |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
They're starting to actually fine people...
5 of them have been fined lately in France 2 teenagers, 2 adults and even one grandpa who was downloading divx movies for his grandsons. I don't know the results of the judgment but it must be nowhere near the €300,000 fine they claim for. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
Its going to get to a few people anyways.
The way they are handling this is just plain wrong though, how many people keep that amount of cash lying around? The one thing I can say about this is I cannot blame them for wanting to take some action. I do however blame them for being stupid and greedy. See, we get upset if someone robs a chain of convienience stores. If someone downloads a song they never paid for, how is that different? I'm not siding with anyone but how can we curse one type of theft and defend another? Theres a compromise to everything, instead of finding one they have decided to "cash in" and sue everyone they can catch. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I think the smarter thing for them to do is target the P2P servers.
like the Kazaa servers. Then make software of their own to let people dl music for a price. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
if you think about it people have been DL music and software sence there where computers!!! The only reason it is a big deal now is because people have made programs that make is easyer to DL stuff like Kazaa and the one and only Napster. Besides think of how many people DL crap i bet 1 out of ever 3 people have DL music before (that is only counting the us)
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I'd say more..
Almost all my friends that have computers have dled music at least once... Infact I think all my friends have... |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
But all in all, the music industry makes 4 mistakes:
1) Look at the big record labels. What kind of artists did they have some 20-30 yrs ago? Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, etc. etc. . Those were bands that had time to evolve, to develop and to experiment. And what a result: They set standards, wrote music history and are great to listen to even 30 years after - they created timeless, good music. Or timelessly good music, if you prefer. However, label bosses admitted in interviews that nowadays bands that would sound like these would get kicked out sooner than you can say the f-word. Anybody know the first Pink Floyd album? N-O-B-O-D-Y of those "big cigar" guys would sign such a band today! They wouldn't stand a chance. It takes some guts to sign music that's not directly to the taste of the broad mass, support a band over some years and, with a bit of luck, be rewarded by having artists under contract that are recognisable because their music has some character and doesn't just blindly obey market rules. And this kind of music tends to be the one that prevails... Nowadays, 90% of what they sign is musical fast food. Artificial casting marionets, empty masks, soulless and characterless muzak. Who gives a damn about all those casted bands after 5 years? Do you think ppl will enjoy listening to a boy group album in 30 years? Ridiculous! And then they sell their CDs for prices that make you cry... and I'm lucky enough to live in a country where it's not THAT bad... but still. 2) By "protecting" their CDs more and more, they are getting an increasing number of ppl angry at them because often they can't even play a CD they just bought legally (i.e. too expensive)! 3) Their attempts to offer a P2P alternative are half-baked and uninteresting because a) they can't come up with something central. They are all mistrusting each other and jealously guarding their profits against others, just like dragons guarding the heap of gold they're sleeping on. Fire up Kazaa or whatever, and you can get ANYTHING, from ANY time and ANY label. Try to use a big label's service and you'll find out that they only have their stuff. b) they often cripple their download and player software so that you are dependent on it to d/l and play their songs. But if I PAY for a d/l'ed song, I wanna have the fucking right to play it wherever I want and with whatever player / playing device I like! c) they make songs so expensive that in the end a CD costs just as much as before - the only change being that you don't have a nice CD layout, no booklet, no cover, no lyrics, no nothing. Great! 4) With their current signing policies, they are actively teaching young folk a throwaway mentality towards music. They actively teach them that music is short-lived, trend-dominated sound junk. They hype and market, and then... let me quote the band "Poverty's no Crime": "Someday you find out it's plastic but they made it shine". No wonder kiddies don't see a value in music and d/l happily away, until they have their HDs filled with more muzak than they'll ever even hear! Quite interestingly, if you look beyond the major labels, you will find many actice scenes and communities that have a bit of their own infrastructure (mailorders, websites, CD fairs) and somehow manage to sign quality bands, put their music on beautifully laid-out CDs AND sell the whole stuff for reasonable prices, although they KNOW they won't make millions with it. And interestingly enough, both bands and labels involved in such a scene tend to give away free MP3's to people - and survive. And do you know why I think it works? Because these scenes are less dependent on shorttime trends and give a shit about the charts. This way, they focus on releasing good albums and make people feel that music still has a value. When I see that a band that will NEVER make much money releases a new album on a label that will NEVER become big and rich, I know one thing for sure: They don't do it for the $$$. And since they don't care about fashion and trends, I know that I will enjoy theyr music even many years later. The result is a rather solid community and a kind of mutual trust: Labels don't spoil theyr CDs with hundreds of copy-protection mechanisms (ruining theyr usability) and the corresponding logos and legal notes (ruining the layout), and most ppl know sooner or later that most of these labels don't sign much bullshit and really buy albums. Personally, I would buy less if I didn't have the possibility to d/l MP3's. How do I want to check out a band I didn't know so far? By listening to the radio, perhaps? Ridiculous. Radio = 99,9% chart muzak + 0,1 % 80's relicts you have heard so often that they have become a pain. But if I hear that a band is really good, I want to have the CD - IF I can get it at a reasonable price, and 18 euros for a normal album (cheap 2-page booklet, standard packaging, no lyrics) is NOT a reasonable price. Fortunately, in the styles I like, much attention is payed to the overall appearance of an album, and 90% of them feature nice artwork+packaging (often DigiPak editions with bonus tracks / video clips available), lyrics... everything you want. I have ~400 CDs, and 5 or 6 of these are copies. (Btw, I wouldn't have bought them anyway...) Phew. I feel better now. :D |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
My Oh My, I think T Wrecks has got THE point !!! 8o
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I think it's the whole culture that is being hijacked by the market. Look at movies: same thing. No way to produce a decent movie if you don't have millions of $$$ yourself and you refuse to be under the boot of a hollywood label. Other than that you'll be condemned to make yet another america-saves-the-world-again $2 movie :P (just kidding: not ALL Hollywood movies are like this... there are good ones... but less and less :)) /me reminds of SoUlFaThEr's bot chat :D Same thing for books. You can write basically anything you want, but if you want to make a living of it and be published, you'll have to write what the market expects, i.e, your publisher may like your book but if he doesn't think it will sell as good as another cheapass roman in the current fashion, you won't be published at all. All in all I think it comes down to the respect you have for art. Respect can't be forced, you can't force people to respect a junk music they don't make use of as "music" but rather like some sort of "ambient sound", through fines and inprisonments. I think this measure may have some effect of intimidation but the problem won't be solved like this for sure, and sooner or later when both the dissidence and the repression will have reached insane heights ... something will happen ... people will pull their mexican hats and riot together, ay caramba! 8D ...ah well, just kidding, nevermind, I'm talking out of my ass again :D but this thread looks sooo serious... :D |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
hmm.. maybe im only going to share movies in the future.. my collection 4008 mp3z isnt that big anyway..
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I personally think the music industry is making one of the biggest mistakes of all:
- TOO MUCH GREED. Seriously, the only reason why I would download music (which i dont do obviously, so i can not be held liable) is because it REFUSE to pay 40 € for a double CD sampler that cost maybe 0.1 cents in the acutal cd production and about 100.000 € in artist fees (if that). That is unacceptable. If they would sell the same sampler for, uhm lets say 5 €, i wouldnt bother downloading those songs just for the sake of having a pretty cover / proper CD - Case. Furthermore, industry has to realize that people no longer want to have CD nowadays. What tehy really want (thats the trend at least) is a legal, cheap, organized way of getting music over the net for REASONABLE prices. 10 cents per song would be reasonable. I dont know, i get really worked up about these things. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
very true.. the also say they have lost cd buyers since the download ERA started. but if you chech fact they sell more now then ever..
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
Where did you take this info ? From what I've heard it's quite the contrary, they would be selling 25% less than the past years...
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
thats what the music industry says.. its a quite common subject where i live.. so i heard it more then twice.. think once on tv..
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
thie music industry ( big label fuckers ) are fighting a battle they cant win... theirs no way to stop the internet its growing so fast... and with connection speeds only going to get faster and faster... how r they gonna stop people from d/l the lastest maybe next gen .mp3s ???
MIRC 4 LIFE !!!!! lol |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I agree. They are trying to win a race, but they cannot possibly be as fast as the ones they chase. How long did it take till they finally closed down Napster? And how many P2P proggies have emerged in the meantime? Not to mention web-based MP3 sites... you could post files there by channeling your browser / ftp client through a chain of anonymous SOCKS proxy servers in countries that don't collaborate with the US (for that's where 90% of the pressure on illegal copying comes from) - and then imagine this site has one or two gateways that point to the actual pages, which move every 2-3 days. And then several hundreds of such sites online... how are they gonna control that? Not to mention IRC clients and a source that's often forgotten but very hard to shut off - newsgroups.
Even if they get one site - the trial takes months, and in the meantime, what will happen? They're fighting hard, but they'd better get accustomed to the insight that they're fighting a Hydra... their only effective weapon is intimidation, and as PMB showed, they're willing to use this weapon more and more. Still, you can't intimidate everyone... |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
not everyone yes, but when a ridiculous small amount of people get caught and heavily fined, chances are that an inversely comparable ridiculously great amount of people will stop downloading not to be the next one.
Because *who* is downloading anyway ? |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
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one eyed pirates? |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
they started crackin down on peeps in The US. fining the hell outta them but it wont stop meh
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
congratulations! you just betrayed yourself :D
Fine AdrianShephard, he downloads illegal stuff all day ;) |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
The internet is d*mn slow here... downloading mp3's will take much more money than buy the music :)
btw, I haven't been listening to pop music for years |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I haven't bought a pop album in my life - nor d/l'ed a commercial pop mp3. But why would the whole stuff be limited to chart pop shit? The labels could also offer nice things from their entire repertoire... which they don't do.
In fact, in a recent magazine article they said that even top-selling stuff like for example the current Shakira / Anastacia / Britney Smears / whatever album is unavailable in most cases. And I doubt they will ever have stuff from the 70's or 80's, unless it's VERY famous and well-known. And yes, your music really becomes more expensive. In this article, the commercial MP3 download system was shown to reach shop prices in the best cases. In most cases, however, it was indeed more expensive. The most extreme case they had in their test was a double CD (some lame "best of" which the f***ing music industry sold for whopping 30 euros already) - a legal download would have amounted to 77+ euros!!!! Without booklet and case, of course. Yeah, right. They can just go soak their heads if that's the best they can do. Pathetic. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
ever heard of:
if you can't beat them, join them period! |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I'm impatiently awaiting the society where all access to art and culture will be completely FREE.
That is for sure one thing I dream of. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
Hmmmm... nice thought. But then the artists would need to be able to practise their art for free as well. And as long as a musician needs money for instruments, a rehearsal room, recordings, promotion and distribution, he will need to sell his art in order to continue - even if he doesn't make any profit himself, but only uses the money to compensate for his expenses.
Unfortunately, this is the point where he begins to depend on others: be it a label that wants to tell him what music to play in order to get better sales, be it some enthusiast who sponsors him but in return maybe expects certain things and wouldn't continue sponsoring the musician if he chose to play some different music all of a sudden... And if a musician would only record stuff at his own cost and make it all available for free, then only the better-off could afford to make music, and it could be damn hard to get access to somebody's art because without some good means of distribution you might not get it where you live or maybe you just wouldn't know it exists at all. But sure, the thought of walking into a museum or an exhibition and looking at some beautiful paintings or sculptures whenever you want and without having to pay... *sigh* I think you could even make much of our culture available to the public - the sad story is that people in total tend to be a bunch of selfish, careless, irresponsible, stupid, uneducated and destructive assholes - if you put up a famous painting for everyone to access (no museum, no security, no personnel = no cost), some shithead would be likely to steal or destroy it, unless of course one of those brainless graffitti sprayers had sprayed his childish tag on it first. >:( Likewise, if all music was legally available on the internet for free, but people would have the option to pay as much as it means to them, chances are that 20% would pay something whereas the other 80% would just grab all stuff and leave the musicians out in the cold. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
welcome to the world of internet... i have seen many bands producing their own music for 'free' using MP3 and such , and via this way they get more 'fame'. Well, its not 100% perfect. But i would imagine a sort of 'free music kazaa' would be great. You can download tons of music, that is really free. Perhaps a rating system can make it easier to distinguish good and bad music.
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
nad most band get money through tours..
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
true. Although i think bands also earn quite a lot from cd's and such.. :)
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
Well, a band like Bon Jovi (just as an example) sure earns loads of $$$ on a tour - but smaller bands often earn nothing more than the net revenue from their own merchandise sales (T-Shirts, Patches, CDs and stuff).
A free music platform would indeed be nice - especially since many smaller bands offer much stuff on MP3 anyway. However, it's difficult to dig through scores of band homepages to grab that stuff. A centralised platform with short genre info (or better, description), maybe even from the band itself, would be nice. And a rating system, why not. I mean, if I was a big fan of stoner rock and I saw some songs by a an unknown, but top-rated band that describes itself as a mixture of, say, QOTSA and Spiritual Beggars, I guess I'd go ahead and d/l that shit. And if they had a comment in their MP3 tag saying that you can get their entire album as a nicely packaged CD with some material not available on the net, complete lyrics and everything for a reasonable price (like 10-12 $) directly from the band, why not? But the music industry... nah. They'll never get it - and IMHO, they don't deserve any better if they can't come up with better stuff than what they're offering right now. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
you seem to know what you are talking about.. agree..
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
i think when there is a reliable system with the ease of Kazaa, you will get a cool set of free music. And probably that quality of that music aint that bad at all. Put in some band info , track info and whatever and i bet the music industry will gladly 'take a peek' in there, or hence, even begin to fear it because the artists do not need a music industry to 'sell' their records. Internet will be growing, and slowly replace everything... even the cd's, dvd's or whatever they come up with. I'd like to see dynamic, internet connected, shared, disks.. wohoo. I'd like to play something of my HD when i am driving in the car, just select 'my computer' and hit 'play music'. Ow well, perhaps within 500 years orso :D
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
ill give it 10 years.. max.. in 500 years internet is crap..
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Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
in 500 years this planet will be a desert with no life on it. OR
people will never actually SEE each other unless they have a job making stuff for your computers at hiome. i think the internet creates homebodies like all of us :) i dont mind .if someone makes me mad.....i close the window........if someone makes me mad outside my home.he gets bashed and i get fined..... back on topic tho: small bands like mine for example without a real big cigar label NEED to produce MP3's of our music just to get any pull at all.....i had friends add my music to thier libraries in the different download programs like emule and kazaa etc and after a while....they were noticing people actually downloading them.........so its a way to spread your name as a nobody on the world music market.... frankly i quit singing for a band to try to get a contract and get on big stages because its just not possible anymore unless you , as a girl have an awesiome body to show off, or as a dude are thin like a stick with a perfect looking set of stomach muscles.....i dont know many GOOD musicians that look like that.........and when you take Nirvana for example......they cant even play thier instruments live cuz they are are too fuckin drunk/drugged to see the monitor in front of them. but those bands sell........but then again not anymore because of techno/hip-hop/R&B who makes most of thier publicity on MTV showing off awesome looking MODELS. truthfully......i dont turn on MTV to hear the latest cool tunes.......i turn it on cuz im compiling a map and want to see some fine babes dancing around half-dressed. who doesnt want to see kylie minogue rolling around on the floor.......ummm what was the name of her songs? music is dead. i havent bought a CD in over 3 years besides from one single band. Dream Theater. and on top of that im starting a blues band project just because i can play on a stage with that...thats all i want to do is play live...rock died, which is my roots. cant play anywhere with that. its sad. life sucks for us creative and song-writing musicians....... |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
I beg to disagree.
Punk rock at least is not dead. I've been going to punk rock concerts almost every weekend now for a couple months and I've found that this community is very tied. People write good songs, often auto-produce them, and make them available to people who want to hear them. They don't earn big bucks for sure, just enough for continuing... there are more and more of such concerts and punk bands around here, it's a lot of fun :D I don't see this as a "dead" music at all, I can assure you :) *edit* where can I download your music btw ? :D |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
Well, that "Rock is dead" thing is a complex matter to discuss. I guess it all depends on what you actually mean. One thing is for sure: The era of bands, mainly and especially of rock bands, is over and dead as a doornail. Just some dinosaurs (Stones, Purple) keep touring, but... nah, that's not really the same. You can't even blame them, I think. I guess they still like playing their music and stuff, but when they started they made something revolutionary. Now this aspect is lost. Alice Cooper put it in a nutshell when he stated something like this in an interview:
"In my early years, whenever I was in town, parents started trembling and fearing that their kids might go to my concerts and become corrupted. Nowadays, kids start trembling and sweating because they fear that their parents could drag them to one of my concerts"... 9_9 And really, the time when real, long-liviing bands released album after album and more or less regularly went in the charts are definitely over. The age of bands has died, and the age of musical laboratory products and short-lived fashion & trend vehicles has begun. But as Pierre pointed out correctly: This mainly (or even exlusively) applies to the mainstream - if you look beyond, you will find that Rock, for example, is definitely not dead! Listen to Albums like "Total 13" (Backyard Babies), "Payin' the Dues" (Hellacopters), the latest Gluecifer album or whatever, and you won't be able to say that the music itself is dead. I think it's more society and its relation to music (and, in fact, the interaction between society & music) that's dead. We are accustomed to seeing and hearing almost everything nowadays, but not to actually experiencing anything. We are a consuming society, no living society. I mean, back in the sixties or seventies, a rock concert wasn't just a concert - it was a statement! And the fans were not just fans, they were a social (and often political) movement! If you say that all this has died, then I'd agree. But the music itself, no... |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
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It's very true for french punk, since Bérurier Noir almost all french punk bands are touring along with the altermondialist movement - not to gain fame, really by conviction. I've found that english/american punk rock has a much more pessimistic eye on society and generally stays far from political problems - going like, "the world's fucked up, everything's fucked up, no future". There is never such a speech with french punk at least. These guys ARE engaged. |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
"Altermondialist movement" - hey, that's a nice word. A nice English / French combination. You know, I really envy you French for your effort to maintain your language - most Germans actively help in destroying their own language and replacing it with wannabe-English. There is no powerful commision that invents words or proposes German word creations in order find good expressions for any new inventions / technologies / phenomena.
But back to topic: I believe you that Punk bands are politically or socially engaged, and beyond pure "fuck society" (we live from it, but still, fuck it anyway) lyrics... many Metal bands are, too, although there are also Nazis around - which sucks big time. I just think that these directions have lost homogenity and importance. Maybe the relative (and in many cases, superficial) freedom of our current societies prevents the outbreak of a rebellious attitude and the uprising of a homogeneous movement just by making lives comfortable enough for most people to keep quiet. Besides, it's one thing to support an "altermondialist" attitude by going to a Punk concert, but it's something different to live according to that attitude. The Hippies, for example, had a whole lifestyle of their own - if they wanted, so what? They got stoned, put some flowers in their hair and walked stark nekkid through town - until somebody arrested them. They really started living in a different way, educating their children in a different way (by allowing them to do almost anything), and so forth. Nowadays, people go to a concert, shout some anti-globalisation, anti-capitalism, anti-[insert what you most hate here], and then they go home, get some sleep, and the next day you will see them sitting at their office desks with shirt and tie, doing what everybody else does. I wouldn't even exclude myself from that, btw. It's kind of sad, but then again I can understand quite well that many people simply have lost hope, while those who still keep talking about "A different world is possible" are a suspicious mixture of commie / anarchist relicts from the 70's, labour union guys and harmless, but also clueless and permanently stoned social work students with rastas, Bob Marley buttons and military jackets scribbled with age-old left-wing slogans - not to forget the mandatory Che Guevara flag over their beds... *yawn*. This is so outlived, so stale - I am yet to see a protest movement that has the potential to be taken seriously by those in power, that fights for realistic goals and is not necessarily either outdated left-wing or arch-conservative, stupid Nazi scum. Am I talking you guys down, btw? That's sure not my intention... you gotta kick me in order to get me to stop, that's all... :D just wanna keep some kind of debate alive - after all, that's the place for such stuff, right? |
Re: 'big cigar' guys not smiling at all
i dont know about you guys, but i kinda noticed that the society here is more like "i dont give a fuck how things are going, as long as I am going well". Sort off individualism.
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