If you give this man ,000 he will MC your fucking wedding. I don't know if this clip warrants a real judgment call on copyright law.

Now he'll go on Howard Stern and talk about how he did it because he'll shill anything for a paycheck

In fact; it did used to be just that. Studio albums were often the teaser to get you to go to a concert, as it was well understood that the musicians would be performing much more elaborate pieces than what you heard on the album. Compare for example, Iggy Pops "Passenger" from the studio album, to his performance Oct 77 @ Manchester Apollo ( both via Youtube ). That's Bowie on bass BTW, looking like Christopher Walken. That's also what was called "stage presence". Something sorely lacking today.

This who situation is just our generation's version of the steam-powered wheat thresher. Except instead of unemployed farm laborers throwing riots and breaking machines, record execs are suing people. At least this time around it's a bit less violent and orderly.

I'm not saying I don't download, but "well music doesn't have any value anyway" argument is such rationalizing bullshit. There's more than enough music out there that's worth paying for.

And nobody has stage presence today? What. The. Fuck.

And there is no music industry apocalypse. The industry is big enough that they can invest in whatever they want. If somehow all the money turned out to be in selling ads on webcast concerts, that's what they'd do.

No, what happened is now small artists are even more reliant on the label. At least when the label steals they leave a percent or two behind.

When the label steals, it doesn't just throw you a percent or two. If you ask the label to produce your albums, don't expect to see a cent from their sales. They give you maybe 12% in royalties (in a good deal) but those royalties don't go in your pocket. The top 3% of that 12% goes to your manager and/or producer. That remaining 9% goes against the deposit the label put down to record and produce your album. So if the record cost ,000 to make, it has to sell 0,000 worth of albums in order for the royalties to pay it off and for your band to break even and finally see some royalties, but wait a second... 12% of those albums are going to be taken off the top to anticipate "breakages" in shipping and another 12% is taken off the top for "free merch" to give away. They've begun rewording this as PPD now (instead of retail price you only get royalties off of the dirt cheap wholesale price). So you have to make up the difference with another 5,000 or more in sales. Then, keep in mind that they'll charge other things to that account, like independent promotion companies and ANY video media pertaining to the band. That original ,000 that the recording company charges against you ends up being more like 0,000 and so on. The only thing they DON'T charge against your account is in-house promotion. When you sign with a label you better be pulling in a lot of sales already or you will stay in their pocket forever. You could sell a million copies and never see a dime for it. Your second album could sell a million and a half copies and you won't see money for it either. Worse yet, they'll dump you on your ass because you're not showing enough growth. Keep in mind that you don't go into 'debt' with these accounts. They just make it so you never get money out of the cd sales at all. This is the backhanded shit that record labels do to the artists all the time.

I don't even want to get started on the 360 deals... "record sales these days are poor... how about we just cut chunks out of everything else you do, ticket sales, t-shirts, book sales and dvds included and leave you the crumbs?" Fuck.

The only way for a band to deal with a label and not get their ass handed to them is to do everything on their own and sign with a label ONLY for the advertising and promotions. Even then, they're going to make 95% profit off of all your hard work just to get your picture in the very back of a magazine.

Unfortunately, you can't just do everything on your own and pay the independent promoters directly to get your face in the shitty magazine without signing away your copyright to a label. The record labels own most of the ins and outs of the music scene and you aren't going to be able to make a dent. You can hire a booking agent, but he won't be able to get you into any big music festivals no matter how good your band is unless it's signed with a label.

Musicians fucking hate the labels. It's run like a mafia business. Heck, the mafia started this freaking business. It's like existing in a world where you have to rent everything you 'own' just to live.

If you're jiggling your tits on tv and selling twenty million copies a year, then record labels are just the bees knees... you can't get that high up in the food chain without them. But for everyone else who wants to play music and share something with people and make a modest living, it's a fucking nightmare. Fuck the fucking fuckers.

So true, S. So true.

@ PastorOfMuppets : Well go ahead and turn me on then. The recent posting of Sun City Girls really got me excited; not much of that "stage presence" but boy their music was beautiful. Wish I had known about that earlier.

The problem with the recordings-as-concert-promotion angle is that there are a lot of people who don't go to concerts, and just want to listen to good studio recordings at home or on their iPods or whatever. And there's a lot of musicians who do amazing studio work but can't play live for shit (unless they're an electronic musician who is basically just pressing buttons to start playback of their pre-sequenced patterns or whatever, in which case they'd might as well just be playing their CD for all the difference it makes). But unfortunately that's never been a very lucrative part of the music industry anyway.

Counterpoint: recording technology has been getting progressively worse, and there have been few well produced albums since the mid 80s.

I know how shitty the industry is, but couldn't resist being melodramatic.

My point is that, even though downloading music isn't the worst thing in the world, rationalizing it after the fact by with "all music sucks anyway" is horrible logic. Plus it isn't true. I listen to a lot of music, and enjoy it greatly.

Blaming the label: also crappy. Order it from the band.

Finally, if everybody "supported the bands in other ways" as much as is claimed in these piracy arguments, everybody on CD Baby would have a yacht.

Nothing is free. Somewhere, somebody is getting screwed. I'm not saying that anyone who pens a song is entitled to certain rights or money or whatever. I'm saying specifically that once you strip away the bullshit reasons people come up with for downloading, you're left with the truth: because hey, free music.

Oscar: there's no accounting for taste, but I really like these guys, and they're on tour right now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2DFGkXgpuw

go somewhere with a bar :)

well, assuming you're in the US, which is a big assumption

Very reminiscient of The Band; good times drink music for sure. Here's a buddy of mine from my NYC days, do check him out if you're in the metro area.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsPpAitcX1c

Also, he should have used his real voice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdbElWMnkyY

Let me just explain; there is an entire *decade* of people who personally know someone who was screwed over by Victory.

I just read up on them, and holy shit. What a bunch of scumbags.

Don't worry about me, Mr. Woodruff, Pens and Needles was actually a really catchy song...

Since I'll no longer spend money for CD's I purchased 15 years ago, you better believe I'll be downloading California Takeover, among others when I want to.

Also, Gilbert's analogy falls flat. Human beings relate to art differently than we do food, and food services. The necessity to eat is what drives the necessity to play by the rules for acquiring eats, and the economistic measure of value we apply to eats.

Art has often, traditionally even, been thought of as an end in itself, inherently valuable, outside other methods of valuation. Refusing to pay money for art is, then, a rejection of the commodification of art and the associated system of valuing that comes along with it.

So go on young pirates, download that music, and show the artist you appreciate their work in a way that transcends commodification.

They also treat independent music retailers like trash. I've purchased product from them under three different companies, all of those times I've either A.) had to return >50% due to incorrect product sent, B.) Dealt with delayed or non-existent invoices (which sucks when handling large orders; in general), or bonus C. option) I still have unsold inventory from my last store that, even with a contract stating otherwise, cannot be returned due to the band/act leaving the label and that contract being "only valid to active roster acts." That wouldn't be a problem if they didn't sign, milk, and drop bands at a frantic gazelle's pace.

I suspect all these unsold screamo records are going to sit in my storage space so long that another civilization will find them and think we're all really, really stupid and overwhelmingly upset.

Also, Gilbert Fuckin' Godfrey?