SlipLive

Yep, downloaded 118 time on the rapid share link that people posted. Fucking losers. I am pretty fed up with the entitlement people have to music. "it is digital and available, so I should be able to get it for free". It sucks that you have to have ethical fans who desire supporting you to sell records nowadaze. The kids posting know that the record is not out and that the band is unsigned but still steal the track. Pisses me off to no end. Good thing the whole album hasn't leaked.

at least a lot of people are liking the song?

I don't know where they got that track (I'm antitheft on there) but it is not even the final final version. I d/l to figure out if it was a rip from myspace, or that game somehow. You can hear brads amp being noisy on this one at the beginning and end but not on the final mix. That's effed up. This track is at least 10 seconds short too, nothings missing though. I REALLY wonder where they got that.

not that i agree with stealing from unsigned indie artists, hell, anyone who looks at my cd collection would know that, but part of me has this thought that maybe this could be a great thing for them... maybe this is the pre-release leak they needed to get some buzz generated around the album... i mean, its not like its the whole album... and, it's inevitable that people ARE going to get the album for free as soon as someone buys it, rips it, and puts it up somewhere, but maybe a small leak like this will get more people buying initially? i dunno, just a thought...

buys it, rips it, and puts it up somewhere

I had never seen Slip albums shared p2p ever. But then again I'm not into p2p at all so that might be why. I wouldn't condone it myself thats for sure.

Both 'Does' and 'From the Gecko' were both being shared on OiNK a week ago.

Oink needs to be destroyed. I haven't checked it out but isn't it ALL copywritten official releases on there? What are we gonna do? It wont be long before bands cannot make enough money selling records to support themselves. It's one thing to become super rich like rappers or huge rockstars but it's certainly another to simply make a nice living ($100,000 to $500,000 annually) as a band. What is gonna happen? All these kids coming up have no ethics. It wont be long before things are really fuct up. Whats gonna happen?

whats gonna happen is people are gonna have to get REAL jobs

It's not that part that I'm worried about (accept in my own life) it's the effect it will have on bands and music creation. Is it going to evolve into a hobby only and bands will have to have day jobs because they are only able to give thier music away as a passion and not support themselves enough to focus on music alone? That is gonna suck.

Hey Now,

Well, it's like that already (day jobs to pay bills). Most musicians don't make enough to earn a living, but it's a complicated situation.

Some bands just suck and don't deserve the dough. Others are amazing but don't have the connections. Some are "pretty good" and make it big due to chance, fate or having relatives in the music biz. Life is like that.

It's not as simple as just stealing studio albums: it has to do with the way media distribution changes and how the big rollers (Sony, etc) try to control an industry that doesn't want to be controlled. CDs are still $15, but they are produced for like a buck or two. The middle men get the rest, but even big bands give a large amount to the megopolies that hold the ropes.

Now there's obviously a difference between commercial releases and home-grown live recordings (I prefer the latter, but still pay for both). I think that even live shows should cost a token amount split evenly between the recording engineers and the bands. Fundamentally the only difference is that one you pay more for because it's an "official" distribution, but musically there is not that much difference to most ears. Pros can appreciate the work that goes into all the mixing and mastering, but the majority of listeners don't care and will take the music, only will pay for it if they can afford it. But if the music megopolies try to bleed the buyers with $15 CDs, who's going to be dumb enough to pay big bucks for something that should be only 7 or 8 bucks (maybe cheaper if you join a club, but not retail...rents and inventory management are big costs here).

With electronic distribution, someone else pays for the costs (service provider, server admins like Jeff, Dan and Booty ;-})...eventually this money comes back around to the band in the form of fans...but it seems to attract the high school kids who don't want to pay for anything. Given that they only make $5/hr, this makes sense. If they were given the option to buy cheaper CDs, I bet they would scrounge up the dough. Maybe as they get older and have better incomes they fork over for the real thing.

There are millions of kids who want to be rock stars, but the economy can only support so many. Kids pick up guitars at age 7, get very good in their teens, some make it big and others just barely pay the bills...seems the ones who start earlier have a better chance like any career.

So, I think it's quite complicated and these are just some of the issues. It would be nice if the industry also supported the free recordings that people like Cleantone provide for all of us (rather than just a select few individuals who feel it's fair to compensate). The problem is when all the middle-men get involved, there's 10% here, 20% there and the band and engineer are left with peanuts. The more people who get involved, the more the pie is divvied up. This is an unfortunate situation in any business relationship. But it is reality for the current music industry, and it won't get better anytime soon. One way to help is to simply kick down. But it's not just a factor of asking or begging here -- another major factor is the amount of "disposable income" that's in the market at any given time.

This gets into macroeconomic theory and you can look at any other industry with regards to the amount of money that's "floating" in that specific market. Take gold for instance: when markets collapse (likes ours did in Y2K), people move the equity investment into fixed income (money, gold, bonds, real estate, etc). We're talking trillions of dollars here and the jobs and other types of income flow shifted dramatically, the few conservative investors that had anything left put it all into "tight" markets like real estate (where it's much harder to spend that money because it takes longer to settle any transaction). This effectively slows money down on a global scale and the crusty bastards who are hoarding wealth really won't let it go until the market rekindles or they die (more likely they will die first in this atrocious economic environment). So you take a music industry with a net cash flow of hundreds of billions and you shave off a few hundred billion and you're lucky to have 50% of the net disposable income from pre-crash days. This takes decades to sort out, and when the money comes around, bands will also have a better time.

So you can't blame it all on demand--there are supply factors involved. How many people you know tell you "I can't go out again, I went out last night and spent a lot of money so I'm broke". This happened much less often in 1998 than it did in 2002 or even now. So these people will think about buying a beer or three instead of a CD since the CD is 3 beers and they can't drink it. Of course it's easy to get the music anywhere...we used to listen to the radio...but some college bands play only indie music, so you can find it through analog sources which are good enough for free for most people.

The trick is increasing the amount of disposable income (entertainment is not food, clothing or shelter! Except for musicians, obviously)...that means straightening out the atrocious conditions that cause the current economic stagnation. This means new industries and promoting national goals that we do not seem to have any kind of plan. The plan is cheap mexican labor (and China and India) -- this is only to make the super-rich richer and the poor can all get landscaping jobs. Musicians are very much screwed until we get a leader who cares about the arts (there is art in technology, too, which has largely been left by the wayside as we train kids to be bartenders instead of engineers, "math is hard" and all that crap).

In the meantime, please kick down if you can. Get another job or study and get your degree so you can get a real job and then you'll have more "disposable income" to support the arts. I think we all pitch in considerably (given this is a music-related site), but spreading the word also has great effect and these conversations are a way we can all get our stories at least to a plausible level. There are way more issues than we have already examined...dealing with economics on a large scale involves considerable research but also realizing some general trends with the economy.

The other factor is those who say "oh, the economy is fine because *I* have a good job" which is total selfish bullshit. I have a decent job but I can see many of my friends who are still struggling, and they are very smart hard workers who have been displaced by the wrecked market and certainly aren't splurging like they used to on CDs and such. A very large aspect of spending on music has to do directly with the state of the economy, and it's going to be a major struggle until the ship starts sailing out of the reefs again. That won't happen with the monkey captain...he just cares about bananas and the little people are just to trod upon. This is perhaps a larger influence than just the ease at getting material (though both are factors, as is the luck with hooking up with big labels, other direct and indirect factors and I haven't even gotten into what the band wears on stage ).

Things do suck right now and too many bands are forced to pull second and third jobs just to make ends meet. However, I was in this camp myself a few years back right after the collapse, and it wasn't because I sucked with computers. These jobs were just hard to find (still are, but slowly have improved) as are good-paying gigs and clubs that don't have to worry so much about rent and insurance that they can "kick down" themselves to the bands larger percentages and all that jazz. All industries were sabotaged, but because music is seen as "entertainment" and religion is far more important to this administration, they would prefer to see clubs shut down and turn into churches so their rich buddies can get all the tax breaks. Don't get me started!

Another root cause is the whole "moral majority" (really a minority with inordinate power) who see music as a threat to religion. Given the amount of energy we put into our favorite pastime (listening to music and going to see bands), an external observer could see this power-grab situation as a legitimate social problem (in either direction). How many of us attend church regularly versus going to see live music? Obviously we do this because we enjoy one a lot more. You can take that argument into other social institutions -- education, law enforcement, media, etc. You can't spend a lot of time in one without neglecting the other. However, on a personal level I only see the faintest value of any kind of organized religion. Others see tremendous value in knowing more about god -- but I feel we can only know so much and the rest is just intellectual masturbation (call that sacrilege if you want).

Now there are many who believe strongly in music as well as religion, art and science equally...but we don't see such a balance in modern-day society (nor in the ancient societies who try to argue their religion is better just because it's older). Gospel and blues took root from soul-searching that has an explicit religious source. Many musicians will argue (correctly in my view) that music stems from a divine source. These are just ideas and noone can say who's right or wrong. But I do know from living with these religious nutbags (I'm biased of course) that they see music and any kind of fun as a threat to their power structure. If they say they get orders from god and we get orders from Mick Jagger, that's fighting words. Then it gets down to my-god-is-better-than-your-guitar-god scenario and it's war all over again.

There is another war going on and that is for the hearts, minds and souls of the people...music is just another casualty on the megopoly superhighway. As long as we "worship" big business and think our leaders have a hot-line to god, we're in for a rocky ride that is on the cliff to disaster valley. We are not in a vacuum and this is far worse in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere where we could be jailed for talking like this. Fortunately we still have enough freedom to bring these ideas into the public "forum" so we can try to figure out alternatives and decide how we are going to fix the problem (problems are many, music is pretty trivial next to tne environment, but they're all related).

In summary, I think it's a little simplistic to just blame the kids. I blame the leaders, and I think the kids' reaction is more of a symptom of a much larger economic problem. Convenience is only one side of the die...relative wealth and the disappearing middle class is a larger factor in the long run. It's hard to look at bigger pictures because of the complexity, but I think focusing just on one angle is ignoring all the other angles that lead people into buying decisions. Do you buy gas for your car? Do you travel less now that gas is more expensive? By looking at the decisions themselves, we begin to see the relationships that comprise the complicated beast we call economy. Exit polls are very valuable...if those selling CDs asked "why" people don't buy, they'll get a better indication of the root causes instead of just complaining about microeconomic factors (like kids don't buy cds because they're online). For every download there are some eager ears willing to buy a ticket--what goes around comes around--but in a depressive economy, less disposable income is the major factor and convenience really is a minor factor (in my estimation, we all have our own opinions).

Shall we blame it on Steve Jobs and the iPod generation? Now let's say he starts a record label for indie bands to make money on downloads. Well, this has started and I don't have stats yet on the trend from plastic source (CDs) to electronic (net), but I'm going to track these down and see what others think about this whole deal.

From my own music acquisition, I can say that the stuff I like I eventually buy. I get random sources from people who share this music, but in many cases I have both bought tickets and CDs from bands I would have never heard of if it weren't for this "informal" distribution network. I would guess that more than 90% of what I have in my collection is legit, and the rest I back-fill with purchases the more I like something (best is first, why spend money on crap and maybe 3% of that I just delete because I think it sucks). In some cases I buy a CD and lose it, or give it away, other times I can't fit it in my pocket or there's no ATM and I spent my last buck on an overpriced beer (I'm not an expert at spending my own money ;-}). So this is a microeconomic factor, very much supply-side, but it's not because I don't have the money at all...it's just not convenient. This is a case where convenience is limited by the supply-side (lack of ATM) and think about that next time you visit the merch table.

There's other social factors like if the merch dude/dudette is a jerk you just walk away...I think the better bands are cognizant of this just like they would be with a manager...but managment types can't be all smiles or clubs and record labels will take advantage. There's a balance in all things, but right now the balance is not in favor of the arts, and it will take a lot of time and major fighting to fix this deplorable situation. It's not just the kiddies downloading--this is a direct symptom of a much larger problem (limited and restrictive job market).

My bartender friends smile sometimes and explain that even in bad markets, people will still drink (wash away their sorrows?). Certainly there are markets that survive bad times better...but music is not one that is as resilient and then we get the factor of people getting older and living longer and how many octogenarians go out to see bands? So spend your money on biotech because that's going to be the hottest market in the next decade or more.

-Rock it downtown,

Phrazz

P.S.: Speaking of new media, this just in:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060108/wr_nm/digital_dc

Plastic is obsolete....

quick sidenote, phrazz, you should give motivational speeches to the youth of america on why its good to support the arts, and all the arts. Wanna kick down and buy some paintings??

Cleantone wrote:It's not that part that I'm worried about (accept in my own life) it's the effect it will have on bands and music creation. Is it going to evolve into a hobby only and bands will have to have day jobs because they are only able to give thier music away as a passion and not support themselves enough to focus on music alone? That is gonna suck.

dude, i think youre over reacting a bit. a couple of thoughts: i think this leak is a good thing. its one song, and its generating alot of buzz. what the difference between this and getting a live show. its not the official release and its going to help them out, b/c if one these peeps buys the album b/c they got even rats online, its a good thing.

about OINK, i fucking love it. i have no problem downloading albums in mp3, from bands like miles davis, zepplin and other classics. smaller bands i may download their album, like it, and make sure to see them live when they come around. realize that, the band makes more money from me going to a show, than me buying their cd from best buy.

and what about used cds? how many us have bought those? how is the band making money from this, theyre not.

this is a tricky subject, no doubt.
do i download music? sure thing. mostly live show bootlegs, but also random songs here and there, usually a sampling to hear what a band sounds like, or get some old song that there's no way i'd ever buy the whole album for... but it's by discovering what you really like that serves as the impetus for buying cd's, going to shows, etc...

phrazz, thanks for your excellent soliloqy... you hit alot of good points.

it would be a Very Good Thing for some brilliant mind to figure a way for the bands/engineers to accrue compensation from all these online sharing things, without all the mess of the greedy middle-men and industry big-wigs... the money needs to go to the folks who made it.

It's both tricky and sensitive, but solutions do already exist (see link above). Legit (paid) downloading has exceeded expectations tremendously and this is hope for the future. The main problem are all the "middle men". Bands can set up their own pay-for-download service, but everyone has to understand that the current "model" of a buck per song doesn't work anymore. Getting money while providing no physical medium means dropping the cost to a 'reasonable" level and also expanding the market to make up for it (discovering what you like). Rhapsody is a good idea along these lines because with the subscription you get a certain amount for free each month, but the radio stations are free all the time. I've found some great music this way (finally signed up to Rhapsody, after testing the waters).

So, the brilliant minds already provide many solutions (subscription services being outsourced are also "middle men", but so are greedy web designers who charge too much for too little work). Take a look at SlipServer and Oz -- these are great services paid for by other fans -- with only a little work these could become paid services -- not sure why this hasn't happened already (I'm not complaining, I use both enough and feel buying all the official content and paying for tickets makes up for this in a couple of direct ways).

I also have been known to pay tapers directly for their efforts -- they can also get paid through the download services if everyone communicates. This can get "sensitive" if the band thinks the taper's making money off their hard work (while forgetting the tapers already shelled out many thousands of dollars for all that high-end gear). Some bands are better than others with helping out the tapers. With the Dead, the tapers got backstage access and many other "fringe" benefits, but a few were brought on board and became part of the official company (Dick Latvala, Betty Cantor, et al).

Now when we remember that a certain engineer/chemist by the name of Owsley Stanley helped finance and bulild the Dead's legendary PA (The Wall of Sound), we begin to see some intimate relationships that certain special engineers or archivists develop with the bands who care the most.

Other bands just assume people will bring recording rigs and out of the kindness of their hearts they let the tapers do their work so the word gets out, but it seems pretty rare that these tapers get any more than thanks or occasional "fringe" benefits from people who kick down for them at shows.

Which reminds me to remind everyone: kick down for your tapers or I will come after you!

Kick down for the bands, too. We hope we do that when we buy tickets and CDs...of course when we already own all the CDs there are only so many duplicate copies we'll buy (I buy at least 2 of each, it would seem...some I've given away and some I've lost).

There are many marketing ideas I'd like to see more bands implement. Frogville does a very nice job of this with the "Gold Crate" of Nathan Moore CDs. Very cool presentation and they even kicked in a couple extra. I get a good deal and end up buying many more than I would ordinarily. Economy of scale should benefit the consumer, and they'll tell their friends.

Now with badges, posters, stickers and T-shirts I could go on, but Dire Straits beat me to the song....

As the Internet and iPods proliferate, the old paradigm of all this wasted plastic is virutally obsolete. Still, people want the photos, artwork and lyrics (hint hint), but adding to production overhead also slows down the cycle (and isn't it slow enough already...nudge, nudge?).

Now here's an idea: a network of clubs like House of Blues who cater to independent artists (I avoided using the term "indie" since it makes certain people shudder). Coupled with a network of radio stations that are also "indie" (crap, I used the loaded term) there'd be a nice warm marketing stream for people to swim in.

However, the deal killer is still the economy, in my opinion. I know too many people who kick down much less these days, and that's directly due to extreme expenses and paltry pay (I'm hoping it's not strictly because of stinginess, I know there's an ulterior reason). I was there about five years back and only due to the magnificence of certain club managers and security personnel was I able to go out to shows at all (particularly the 20 plus dollar big ticket shows).

Because people actively think in terms of "big ticket" / "small ticket", it is even more important now for managers and marketers to realize the limits are much more stringent than they were in the gangbuster economy of the 90s. So, the ten dollar limit is a lot bigger for people now than it was five years ago. That's for CDs or tickets (even though people forget it's only about 2 beers).

Hopefully things are improving, but not like they could. But that goes way beyond this topic (though it's definitely related).