Trent used to have an Oink account. I wonder if he's gotten on one of the replacement sites.
Steve Albini on file sharing
I am not a musician but do have certain talents that relate. About a year ago I had a friend in Boston tell me that a larger size, hipster clothing store were using my posters as a backdrop and wallpaper in their displays and around the store. They never asked permission to use my design work nor did they get the bands permission to use their name which are two forms of copyright violation. When I called the store (after getting proof from a good natured Uncle who lives down the street from them) the manager said how they got it off the internet (because a 600 x 800 jpg blown up to poster size looks real swanky) and I should be grateful as it was great promotion for me.
The idea that someone could take my work that is hand done and screen printed and do a crappy print it out for their business bothered me. The idea that they thought it was okay disturbed me as well. I understand as an designer people sometime take my work without paying (I have a lot of people tell me how they rip my posters down when they see them so they can frame them at home) but to be so cavalier about it shocked me. I did not get an extra rush of sales from the Boston area, that poster did not sell any more (it was already sold out), and my work looked like garbage because it was pixilated.
I do posters on a tight budget often just recouping costs and sometimes being able to make a small profit to help defray the cost of the next project - much like most indie bands. If everyone just decided to hit PRINT and no longer purchase my posters then I would stop doing them (to the joy of my wife I suppose). Much like some of the bands I have met, they get dropped from labels or have to tour all the time to make a living because people see the music as free and open to taking. Just my two cents.
The idea that someone could take my work that is hand done and screen printed and do a crappy print it out for their business bothered me. The idea that they thought it was okay disturbed me as well. I understand as an designer people sometime take my work without paying (I have a lot of people tell me how they rip my posters down when they see them so they can frame them at home) but to be so cavalier about it shocked me. I did not get an extra rush of sales from the Boston area, that poster did not sell any more (it was already sold out), and my work looked like garbage because it was pixilated.
I do posters on a tight budget often just recouping costs and sometimes being able to make a small profit to help defray the cost of the next project - much like most indie bands. If everyone just decided to hit PRINT and no longer purchase my posters then I would stop doing them (to the joy of my wife I suppose). Much like some of the bands I have met, they get dropped from labels or have to tour all the time to make a living because people see the music as free and open to taking. Just my two cents.
Andy Falkous of Future of the Left on filesharing
It's difficult to express exactly what I felt when I found out, last
wednesday, that the album had made it's way onto the internet. 22nd
april - approximately eight and a half weeks before release and only
three since the fucking thing was mastered and whilst members of the
band don't have shiny little embossed copies there is a promotional cd
of the record on sale at ebay for twenty five quid.
I drank a bottle of Jamesons and began to lecture the cat on copyright
control. To her credit, she simply fell asleep as Law and Order went
about its business in the background.
Myself, Kelson and a couple of the guys at Beggars spent 72 hours or
so pissing around, sending angry emails to proud bloggers (and oh, the
fucking pride of the feckless thief) and, amongst others, a Russian
website that was already charging people for the songs. Motherfuckers.
I guess that since the bottom has fallen out of the arms trade, any
collection of notes, however obscure, is a legitimate income source.
So, anyway, the fucking thing has leaked despite our desperate
delaying tactics and you may have listened to it / be dowloading it
this second / have taken the position that you'd rather wait for the
actual release - regardless, it feels that getting annoyed about
downloading in this valueless modern age is like taking issue with
water for being wet or night for gradually turning into day because
ultimately the entitlement that most people feel for free music
completely overshadows any moral or legal issues and conflicts that
may arise in the hearts and minds of better people, people who
understand that actions, on both an individual and group level, have
consequences far beyond that moment of instant gratification.
There's so much to say with so little effect on this issue, so many
well-intentioned but wasted words devoted to it … but anyway,
thankyou for downloading in barely a minute something that we poured a
year of our lives into, attempting (successfully, I believe) with a
great and furious pride to better our previous low-selling (and leaked
three months early) album, a record which flew under the radar for
many reasons but mostly because most of the goodwill poured on it
happened and had dwindled several months before it was available to
buy.
Yes, buy. Such a dirty fucking word. Currency exchanged for goods and
services. Food, Clothing, Butt-plugs and fucking H2O. How far, I
wonder does this entitlement for free music go? My guitars, should
they be free? Petrol to get us to shows? Perhaps I should come to an
arrangement with my landlord, through the musician-rent-waiver
programme.
Perhaps he should pay me, for his ninth-division indie-cred through association.
You will have to excuse me, people of the internet. It turns out that
I just wanted a big party with balloons and streamers to celebrate
everything we put into this thing, released into the physical world
with a fanfare and fuss befitting its status. I'm not angry (in fact I
don't blame you, unless you leaked it, in which case I WILL KILL YOU),
just a little worried that the record we made will get lost amongst
the debris and leave us playing shows like we just weathered at the
laughably bad Camden Crawl this last weekend - fifteen people and a
world of disillusion.*
Anyway - please be careful, or we'll get the world we all deserve.
Hobby bands who can tour once every few years if they're lucky, and
the superstars, freed from such inconvenient baggage as integrity and
conscience, running the corporate sponsored marathon of £80-a-ticket
arena tours and television adverts til their loveless hearts explode
in an orgy of oppressive branding and self-regard. Some of us, in all
honestly, just want to make the music we love and play it around the
world without living in poverty.
We'll be announcing some deal involving pre-orders of the cd/lp with
an immediate download in the next few days.
Do consult your surroundings before proceeding.
falco
*Next time somebody tells me that i can't drink my rider in the
building I'm playing in I'm going to fuck them with their own shoes.
It's difficult to express exactly what I felt when I found out, last
wednesday, that the album had made it's way onto the internet. 22nd
april - approximately eight and a half weeks before release and only
three since the fucking thing was mastered and whilst members of the
band don't have shiny little embossed copies there is a promotional cd
of the record on sale at ebay for twenty five quid.
I drank a bottle of Jamesons and began to lecture the cat on copyright
control. To her credit, she simply fell asleep as Law and Order went
about its business in the background.
Myself, Kelson and a couple of the guys at Beggars spent 72 hours or
so pissing around, sending angry emails to proud bloggers (and oh, the
fucking pride of the feckless thief) and, amongst others, a Russian
website that was already charging people for the songs. Motherfuckers.
I guess that since the bottom has fallen out of the arms trade, any
collection of notes, however obscure, is a legitimate income source.
So, anyway, the fucking thing has leaked despite our desperate
delaying tactics and you may have listened to it / be dowloading it
this second / have taken the position that you'd rather wait for the
actual release - regardless, it feels that getting annoyed about
downloading in this valueless modern age is like taking issue with
water for being wet or night for gradually turning into day because
ultimately the entitlement that most people feel for free music
completely overshadows any moral or legal issues and conflicts that
may arise in the hearts and minds of better people, people who
understand that actions, on both an individual and group level, have
consequences far beyond that moment of instant gratification.
There's so much to say with so little effect on this issue, so many
well-intentioned but wasted words devoted to it … but anyway,
thankyou for downloading in barely a minute something that we poured a
year of our lives into, attempting (successfully, I believe) with a
great and furious pride to better our previous low-selling (and leaked
three months early) album, a record which flew under the radar for
many reasons but mostly because most of the goodwill poured on it
happened and had dwindled several months before it was available to
buy.
Yes, buy. Such a dirty fucking word. Currency exchanged for goods and
services. Food, Clothing, Butt-plugs and fucking H2O. How far, I
wonder does this entitlement for free music go? My guitars, should
they be free? Petrol to get us to shows? Perhaps I should come to an
arrangement with my landlord, through the musician-rent-waiver
programme.
Perhaps he should pay me, for his ninth-division indie-cred through association.
You will have to excuse me, people of the internet. It turns out that
I just wanted a big party with balloons and streamers to celebrate
everything we put into this thing, released into the physical world
with a fanfare and fuss befitting its status. I'm not angry (in fact I
don't blame you, unless you leaked it, in which case I WILL KILL YOU),
just a little worried that the record we made will get lost amongst
the debris and leave us playing shows like we just weathered at the
laughably bad Camden Crawl this last weekend - fifteen people and a
world of disillusion.*
Anyway - please be careful, or we'll get the world we all deserve.
Hobby bands who can tour once every few years if they're lucky, and
the superstars, freed from such inconvenient baggage as integrity and
conscience, running the corporate sponsored marathon of £80-a-ticket
arena tours and television adverts til their loveless hearts explode
in an orgy of oppressive branding and self-regard. Some of us, in all
honestly, just want to make the music we love and play it around the
world without living in poverty.
We'll be announcing some deal involving pre-orders of the cd/lp with
an immediate download in the next few days.
Do consult your surroundings before proceeding.
falco
*Next time somebody tells me that i can't drink my rider in the
building I'm playing in I'm going to fuck them with their own shoes.
The old model of promoting an album for six weeks between when mastering is finished and when the album is actually released has GOT TO GO. CDs can wait but if you want to sell a record, don't give it the chance to leak! Put it on iTunes as soon as it's finished!
Yeah, the best way to combat leaks is to do away with the idea of promotional copies of an album as a whole.
Either go the Itunes route or offer free and/or cheap downloads of it on your site ass soon as it's mastered.
Either go the Itunes route or offer free and/or cheap downloads of it on your site ass soon as it's mastered.
hey, el jefe . . . i'm curious, is there anything you can do legally about your situation? or is it because the fact "they got it off the internet" make it somehow seem ok in the eyes of the law? i would do something just based on the "rude" response you got.
could he do something? sure, call in the lawyers.
will it be worth the money, effort, time, aggravation? probably not.
will it be worth the money, effort, time, aggravation? probably not.
My lawyer said he could pursue it and win but it would take time and effort. Was not worth it and it would be hard to prove damages outside of what they would have had to pay for the posters (couple hundred plus damages). I think the manager got in trouble but the place store has a long history ripping off artists and getting away with it. Oh well. I take it as a compliment in a way.
I'm sorry but there has to be a better electronic distribution model than iTunes…. Whats the point of spending money on recording an album, having it mastered only to have it turned into lousy sounding compressed files. Haven't listened to a lot of FLAC encoded material but the difference in sound quality over even LAME VBR encoded MP3s is very noticeable. Guess people have gotten use to listening to crappily encoded songs on their shitty earbuds they don't care anymore…
kosmo wrote:
I'm sorry but there has to be a better electronic distribution model than iTunes…. Whats the point of spending money on recording an album, having it mastered only to have it turned into lousy sounding compressed files. Haven't listened to a lot of FLAC encoded material but the difference in sound quality over even LAME VBR encoded MP3s is very noticeable. Guess people have gotten use to listening to crappily encoded songs on their shitty earbuds they don't care anymore…
you might be amazed how many people violently defend the 'good enough' nature of mp3s and act like the only things that can hear the frequency differences between flac and mp3 are woodland creatures.
"enjoy your half a gig albums", etc. people are really fucking stupid.
Compressed files are fine for listening at low to medium volume in noisy environments or as background, as long as they're not overly or badly compressed. What's truly dismaying, however, is that Young People Prefer "Sizzle Sounds" of MP3 Format. Fortunately, I use AAC, with which the sizzle problem is far less pronounced.
Anyway, I believe that file compression as a standard practice is temporary. As download speeds and storage capacities increase, the need for compression declines. A 1TB drive can hold upwards of 2,000 average-length rock CDs in standard 16/44.1 CD WAV form. Many people now have download speeds that can allow for WAV streaming. A 25Mbps connection can download a 50 minute CD-quality WAV in three minutes.
Anyway, I believe that file compression as a standard practice is temporary. As download speeds and storage capacities increase, the need for compression declines. A 1TB drive can hold upwards of 2,000 average-length rock CDs in standard 16/44.1 CD WAV form. Many people now have download speeds that can allow for WAV streaming. A 25Mbps connection can download a 50 minute CD-quality WAV in three minutes.