the RIAA strikes again

[sTuPiD-gErBiL]

Originally posted by Jerome Scuggs
STOP ILLEGAL BOOK SHARING -- SUE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY

hahahahahahaha.. that's good stuff

[ÆNIMA]

There is some good mainstream music. At least there was, and those bands deserve the credit.

Stupid-Gerbil, that's how most underground musicians are still thriving. They get a good recording, they get their artwork and name published, but they'll never get the wide recognition that a recording company can offer.

Recording companies wouldn't be the evil you think they are today if they allowed the artists to have complete creative control, look at Radiohead for instance. Their company knows that every album isn't going to be a hit, they're taking a chance...and they're doing just fine. My point is that you all have the impression that any recording company is evil, they're not, if they just sticked to distributing the music, and not getting as much money as possible, t hey'd be OK.

Tyson, my main beef is with those who download a whole entire album. I've got even more beef with those who upload an entire album. I believe it's ok for someone to download 2 or 3 songs, just to preview the album, but to download entire albums, just to avoid paying the cost, that's stealing.

Ask yourself this. And I've posed this question before. Do you feel bad about taking an apple from a large grocery store?

If you do, then downloading albums is the same thing. A grocery store like Food Lion is large corporation, probably bigger than production companies, it's the same thing...morally anyway.

Another thing you can't get from mp3s is quality. You lose quality with mp3s because of the compression. Granted, a 128kpbs (right?) mp3 might sound a lot like a CD, but the truth is, it still has less quality.

Especially if the band made their cd a High-Definition CD (HDCD) which only certain CD players can offer the whole experience. For example, Tool's album Lateralus is an HDCD, if you haven't heard th e actual CD on a player that has t hat capability...you'll notice a difference.

If you get nothing from this post...just ask yourself, would you feel bad taking that apple?

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
There is some good mainstream music. At least there was, and those bands deserve the credit.

There are going to be less and less. The truth is, record companies don't care about artistry or breaking new musical ground. The only thing they care about is the bottom line--how much money the company will go home with at the end of the day. And because it's this way, those stupid teens who buy dumbass singles of Ruben Studdard singing "Sweet Low, Sweet Chariot" will dictate where the "music industry" (read, "corporate music industry") goes. Point in case (and it's been made many times before, but it's a great analogy), Wilco's recent album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The record company wouldn't release the record, simply because they couldn't wrap their simple minds around the girth of what was one of this century's greatest albums. In the words of David Fricke (whom I can't really stand, but he at least understands music fairly well), there was too much there to really market the album towards any single demographic. That's what record companies do--market any single piece of merchandise towards a single demographic.

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
Stupid-Gerbil, that's how most underground musicians are still thriving. They get a good recording, they get their artwork and name published, but they'll never get the wide recognition that a recording company can offer.

Wrong. They won't get the radio play that they would with a recording company, but all radio is pretty much the same schlock these days, as Clear Channel owns and operates a decent percentage of all US (and some foreign) radio stations. Radio play is a completely different monster with it's related problems (payola is still a reality, folks--even with college stations). So what's this "wide recognition" you speak of?

MTV? Shit, MTV has sucked for a few years now. Unless you're "totally into 50 Cent" or "want to give a shout-out to your girls back in Sherman Oaks", no one gives a shit. Even videos have gotten boring, with VERY few exceptions.

Are we talking about print media? Because print media doesn't rely solely on submissions from established record companies. I'm with Gerbz--a band that's motivated enough to do it's own mailings can get an album review or full-page ad in a magazine (or newspaper, or what-have-you) with little or no trouble.

Buzz can be created around the fanbase of a band. Plain and simple. Most simply, this is because a lot of people can't stand what is shoved down their throat on a daily basis by conventional media. And seriously, if I have to hear any more about Hilary Duff's new "album", I'm going to fucking lose it.

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
Recording companies wouldn't be the evil you think they are today if they allowed the artists to have complete creative control, look at Radiohead for instance. Their company knows that every album isn't going to be a hit, they're taking a chance...and they're doing just fine. My point is that you all have the impression that any recording company is evil, they're not, if they just sticked to distributing the music, and not getting as much money as possible, t hey'd be OK.

But they don't--that's the whole issue. As I said above, large music companies don't give two shits about artistic merit.

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
Ask yourself this. And I've posed this question before. Do you feel bad about taking an apple from a large grocery store?

Yes, but that's a bad analogy.

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
If you do, then downloading albums is the same thing. A grocery store like Food Lion is large corporation, probably bigger than production companies, it's the same thing...morally anyway.

Morally, maybe, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince anyone that our "grocery store" is selling us anything but 95% rotten apples. Let's look at it like this. Apples are what, like 25 cents a piece or something? Now let's take our "grocery store" (let's call them Mr. Badfood for ease-of-reference) and say that they got in 40 bushels of apples. Now, 39 bushels out of 40 were blighted and semi-rotten. Instead of just throwing out the blighted apples, and cutting their losses, the manager of Mr. Badfood takes the opportunity to mark up apple prices. He states that since there's such a shortage of good apples (not to mention the "apple thieves" that everyone hears about, yet people are still buying apples), he's going to change the price of all apples to $1.50 a piece, and sells the blighted apples at a "discount price" of $1.25. There's your analogy, right there.

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
Another thing you can't get from mp3s is quality. You lose quality with mp3s because of the compression. Granted, a 128kpbs (right?) mp3 might sound a lot like a CD, but the truth is, it still has less quality.

Have you been living under a rock? You know that you can encode MP3s at a higher bitrate, don't you? Actually, most people already do that. And if we're debating the pros/cons of MP3s, let's talk about size. I have 900+ albums (the large majority of which I've bought) all available to me from any place in the world with an Internet connection. Can you carry around all of your albums for use at any time? No? You say you can't carry your all your albums around without a pack mule of some sort? Sucks to be you.

Originally posted by ÆNIMA
Especially if the band made their cd a High-Definition CD (HDCD) which only certain CD players can offer the whole experience. For example, Tool's album Lateralus is an HDCD, if you haven't heard th e actual CD on a player that has t hat capability...you'll notice a difference.

HDCD is one of the biggest failures of audio industry, and it'll go down in history with the likes of the laserdisc, digital casette tape, betamax, and the like. The only reason you brought it up is because you're a Tool fanboy, and anything that Maynard Keenan rubs his ass on, you'll buy. You're one of the reasons we're in this mess.

HDCD is a dying format (if it could really be considered "alive" in the first place). It's like the minidisc, without the recording capability or industry hardware backing. I just checked the HDCD main site. Who's the main partner? Microsoft. A software company that really has no business in tackling music. Who else are partners? Sanyo (WOOHOO, SANYO'S IN, BABY! WE'RE SET!!!), TI, Analog Devices, Cirrus Logic, and a handful of other no-namers.

Where's Sony? Where's Philips? These two were the pioneers of the CD (as well as DVD) format, and really are the main reason behind both adoptions. There's a saying in the recording industry regarding new formats, and that's if that neither Sony or Philips are behind it, it will fail. And for 99% of formats out there, that's proven to be true.

[Mr. Peanuts]

fuck the law, smoke the draw.

im a wannabe communist.
KaZaA lite 4 life

and why did they invent mp3 players and advertise them by saying: "download music from ur pc and listen to it anywhere"

its just sick how they sue kids.

[King Missile]

am i glad im not american...

they will never sue individuals over here for illegal downloading... at least not in the near future...

[Bilbo]

Conc, gotta hand it to you. You are the main man at dissecting dumbass posts. I wish other people would put in as much effort (including me) into their posts as you, maybe if they did the forums wouldn't be as boring to read.

[Jason]

I think I'm going to wear my "I fucked the RIAA." t-shirt around campus today.

[Bioture]

Originally posted by Jason
I think I'm going to wear my "I fucked the RIAA." t-shirt around campus today.

where can i buy one?

[Troll King]

You don't. You download the design and burn it onto a T-shirt yourself.

[bloodzombie]

Conc already said a lot, but a few more points...

"Stupid-Gerbil, that's how most underground musicians are still thriving. They get a good recording, they get their artwork and name published, but they'll never get the wide recognition that a recording company can offer." -Aenima


Now let's remove the huge recording corporations from the equation. What happens? do people stop listening to music because nobody's telling them what they should be listening to anymore? Granted, some casual radio listeners might, but most people enjoy music, and will seek out music. Maybe it's even possible that really good "underground" music would get discovered by word of mouth, and without having to compete with the big corporate bands that get shoved down our throats, maybe quality would prosper over limpbizkit.

And as for the apple analagy, let's not forget the part where all the grocery stores in the country are owned by the same 5 guys, and they all got together to decide that apples should cost $19.00. Price fixing is illegal.

[bloodzombie]

Sorry for posting again, but I'm just sitting here at my desk still thinking about this (beats processing invoices).

Let's imagine for a moment, a world without major record labels...

Nobody would start making music for money, not that you could make a decent living, or even get rich, but nobody's gonna come and offer you a 20 million dollar contract. People would do it for the rush of being on stage, and for the love of the music.

Without having to compete with corporate rock, I think more people could make a living as a musician. It might be hard to become known nationwide, but I think local scenes would explode. The internet would help people expand, but without any kind of ad campaign, it'd be hard to sell tickets for a world tour. Radio would probably turn a lot more towards their local scenes, I don't know what Mtv would do, but they'd have to adapt.. maybe they'd just stick to running "real world' marathons.

I guess it wouldn't really work though, because if someone had enough money, they could pay for national radio play and an ad campaign for their tour, so in comes the record labels, just with a slight twist. they'd take a bigger piece of ticket and t-shirt sales.. forget about selling cd's.

oh well.

[bloodzombie]

I got another idea... how cool would it be if we started a trend where everyone who d/ls a cd that they like would send a couple bucks directly to the artist?

[Black Alpha]

a "try before you buy" kind of thing? If there was some way that the music could be downloaded then played for a couple of days, but would either be locked or deleted after those days unless the downloader coughed up, it would be quite cool, and would be a good way for less mainstream artists to get their music sold.

[ZeUs!!]

From Fat Mike (head of Fat Wreck Chords, America's biggest independant record label I think) and lead singer of NOFX:

It’s newsletter time! Before we get to the latest in Fat Wreck happenings, Fat Mike has some more social commentary for y’all:

Yesterday the RIAA (Record Industry Asshole Association) filed suit against 261 internet song swappers. I thought people should know that Fat Wreck Chords has never been a member of the RIAA and more importantly, we think they’re dumb. Actually, they had falsely listed our name as a member on their website and it took nine months of letters and phone calls to get them to remove it. They think that by suing a few hundred kids, piracy is gonna stop. Why can’t they just accept the fact that the music industry as we know it is finished? Keg’s tapped and the cops are outside. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!

People steal and that’s how it goes.

I like to believe that punk kids like to support punk bands and therefore pay for the music. I like to think that punk kids know that when they buy a Good Riddance CD, a good portion of the money goes directly into hockey tickets for Russ. When they buy a Real Mckenzies CD, a few bucks go directly into Paul’s liver. And when they buy an Anti flag CD some of that money goes directly towards the revolution (power to the people). Yes, I may be an optimist, but I still have faith while major labels will most likely perish, indies will survive (at least for a little while).

[Facetious]

Originally posted by ConcreteSchlyrd
WOOHOO, SANYO'S IN, BABY! WE'RE SET

Hahahaha.