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Re: [microsound] boris + sunn o))) collaboration



I read up on this converation last night before I went to bed, and I was
too tired then to throw in my 2 cent, but here's a morning look...

What you are refering to is completely "new" music to the listener. And
this aspect, or at least some cases of it, you're not completely off. Last
night I went to see Joanna Newsom perform and in this particular case,
there is two sides to it. When her first record came out, no one had heard
of her and thus filesharing of her album might have increased sales of her
record significantly due to the fact that most people would never had just
bought her record on impulse, but that many people bought it after they
found they liked it. I'm sure it's hard to actually tell if this is really
paper proof, but it seems realistic to me. And in your case (David
Powers), as a fairly unknown artist, free music is the way to introduce
you and get yourself some fans. But then there is the next step, which in
Newsom's case. For every person who had heard her first album and enjoyed
it and went on soulseek and just grabbed the new one, it's a lost sale.
And in a perfect world all of those fans would just go and buy the album,
but the truth is that most people won't. And there lies the trouble.

It's true that in some cases the lack of FM radio and even MTV has cost a
lot of musicians money. I think that's frankly Metallica's problem more
than anything. They don't get even a 1/100 of the play time on TV or Radio
on a new album like they did when the black album came out. So of course,
they point their fingers at filesharing, when it really comes down to a
lot of different things that's troubling the "mainstream" music scene
aside from filesharing. But I doubt anyone would ever adknowledge that
it's quite easy to blame poor sales on the internet. It reminds me of a
Simpsons episode where Marge asks Homer who is picking up the children
from school and Homer answers "I don't know, the internet?"

Back to where the thread started, it's a dilemma I encounter a lot. I
collect old rare records like so many of us. Some records are so extremely
rare that I'll probably never be able to find them, or if I do, I can't
justify to my wife to cough up the dough for it. So, downloading the
record doesn't sound like really a big deal. Boris and Sunn O might be
this rare, I don't know anything about it. But even modern music has this
problem. I know a lot of people put out extremely limited tour CDRs and
what not. Rare releases kind of build up for eBay and Soulseek. But then
in those cases, the artist doesn't make any money on it.

Okay I'm rambling now. But filesharing can give new artists a boost, I'm
sure of it. It's odd, but in some more mainstream genres, yes radio and
even TV has killed the music industry. But let's face it most of us don't
really make or even listen to much music that ever was on radio and TV.
What's important is that if you find a new artist you like on soulseek,
support them. Unfortunately most people don't.

Man, I only got a few hours of sleep last night...

Johan.




> I do use soulseek to check out new music. It is by far the most
> efficient way to search for and try out 20 + albums at a time. As I'm
> very busy this is pretty crucial for me.
>
> So we are agreed I might find a couple of releases out of these I want
> to buy. What about the other music I'm "ripping off"? Well to start
> with, it's not good enough to buy, so it gets deleted, either
> immediately of whenever I have a hard disc cleaning session. I really
> don't have much need to keep around a bunch of music that I didn't
> like all that much.
>
> I fail to see how an artist's sales are decreasing, when I listen to
> their work and determine I don't want it. Nobody is being ripped off.
> This is a sale that never would have occurred to begin with! Why is
> this simple concept seemingly so difficult for some people to grasp?
>
> I'd suggest that a better way to think about things is to compare the
> practice to radio. If I hear a new song on the radio, and I don't own
> the album, am I "ripping off" an artist? No I'm not. If I don't like
> the song much, I'll do nothing, but if I hear a song I like, I'm going
> to go look for it. Even though I could sit around taping radio shows
> instead of purchasing the song, if I really wanted.
>
> I'd also point out, many of those who download stuff and never
> purchase any of it, are probably those who usually just can't afford
> it. So maybe these people are indeed stealing. Even so, the artist has
> not yet lost money, because this is a sale that in all likelihood
> would not have ever occurred.
>
> Anyway I buy the releases I like, in part because I do want to support
> artists. But note that beyond that, a digital download from beatport
> is normally of higher quality, especially since I usually buy WAV
> rather than mp3 for instance. So all ethics aside, there is, in fact,
> good incentive for a discriminating consumer to buy legal digital
> copies of files.
>
> ~David
>
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