[Sunday Business Post] Irish music industry hit by downloading (1 Viewer)

[egg_]

this is just one new change that might cause a few casualties

And we're not going to among those casualties, snaky, wha? Cos no-one listens to the like of us one way or the other

(not being sarcastic, just celebrating the futility of our artistic endeavours)

 

[Pantone247]

And we're not going to among those casualties, snaky, wha? Cos no-one listens to the like of us one way or the other

(not being sarcastic, just celebrating the futility of our artistic endeavours)

to be fair I think downloading can only benifit the likes of Stoat and Groom

I can't explain why right now cause I'm quite tired after a big lunch, but trust me on this one

 

[snakybus]

And we're not going to among those casualties, snaky, wha? Cos no-one listens to the like of us one way or the other

(not being sarcastic, just celebrating the futility of our artistic endeavours)

ah y'auld cynic, you

 

[hermie]

do people here really feel the same attachment to some intangible digital file on their computers/iPods that they do for the records/cds they've paid for? Even when people give me a lend of albums that they think I'll like, it's lovely but i won't put the same amount of time and thought into those as the ones that i sought out and purchased myself.

I'm not saying that people won't value their music, of course they will but possibly a whole lot less. You see it every house you go into: Records and CDs stacked in racks and shelves, ubiquitous looking writable cds without covers flung anywhere, scratched and gathering dust. Files unattached to anything tangible at all are valued even less. This is particularly disheartening as often the music you come to love the best is the stuff that grated at first; perhaps because it was something new or unique and it takes a while to get your head around (for me examples would be Fennesz or the Dismemberment Plan). If i hadn't invested something in them i wouldn't have taken the time and probably wouldn't be listening to them at all now.

 

[Pantone247]

Okay - so you're working on stuff, recording at home, hoping that someday you're gonna put out a record. Would you still have the same ambition and enthusiasm if all that record was gonna be was a few files on the internet?

I record all the time and just give the stuff away to whoever asks for it. I've been doing it for three years previous without letting hear anything, and could argue that it was more fun back then cause I was less self concious about it all...

I don't think I could ever justify putting down the $$$ to release a record myself, there are too many other places that the 1,000 quid or so it would cost should really be going, it'd be cool to do a 7 inch for something to have one day, but it'd be cool have a decent holiday too, but I probably won't do that either.

I'm fairly impressed that people still release music and think anyone who has that much belief in their work to stick on a shop shelf and go to head to head with all the other records in their, or feel they've hit upon something that really deserves to be heard by a wider audience is pretty deadly

So I'm not knocking anyone, I'm just saying it can work different

Fifty or forty years ago everyone bought singles, most people heard stuff off the radio, teenagers in the states would pump 'quarters' into jukeboxes to hear songs, then that changed and albums were the main delivery medium, the format allowed longer songs, concepts, mythologies, great asthetics and so on and so forth... now we have a new delivery medium and a new method of distribution and something well develop to fill that gap as well.

 

[Flux]

Music fans over, say, 20 who have grown up buying records and cds will always have a higher regard for physical product, but I'm sure we've all had many friends, pre-mp3, who claimed to be into music but who bought little or nothing, just copied your stuff. It's not really that different these days, only those people have a lot more music to pretend to be into.

It's "the kids", who will never know the "High Fidelity"-type buzz of waiting for a record to come out or of searching high and low for a rare record and finally getting your hands on it, that I feel sorry for.

Sort of.

 

[Pantone247]

It's "the kids", who will never know the "High Fidelity"-type buzz of waiting for a record to come out or of searching high and low for a rare record and finally getting your hands on it, that I feel sorry for.

Sort of.

thats like people hundreds of years ago feeling sorry for us cause we don't know how good water tastes when you have to walk five miles with a bucket on your head to get it

the real issue isn't the inherint value of a physical product, it's the fetishising by males in their twenties and thirties of over priced pieces of vynil, plastic and cardboard

 

[Flux]

thats like people hundreds of years ago feeling sorry for us cause we don't know how good water tastes when you have to walk five miles with a bucket on your head to get it

the real issue isn't the inherint value of a physical product, it's the fetishising by males in their twenties and thirties of over priced pieces of vynil, plastic and cardboard

If I want to buy an album and support an artist, I do not at all begrudge paying €15-€20 for a vinyl copy or €10-€15 for a cd rather than €9.99 to Steve Jobs. It's not really fetishing plastic and cardboard, it just sounds better.

 

[hugh]

The whole question about whether physical formats are better or not isn't really that relevant to this discussion (or at least it's a separate one). The important thing is that there is a model whereby artists can receive some compensation for sales of physical formats that hopefully allow them to continue doing what they do. There is no viable or working model (yet?) for how this can happen with non-physical formats.

 

[Flux]

There never will be a working model. The entire world isn't going to have a big soul-search(seek?) and suddenly go, "oh you know what, we're being right cunts about this. The poor lads on thumped will never make a penny from their art".

Karmafan or similar setups might make a small difference but people can already contribute to the artist if they are so inclined by legally downloading or buying physical product. It's not exactly a radical new model.

 

[Pantone247]

There never will be a working model.

I seriously disagree with that, so long as there are smart enterprising people out there who want to make a buck models will be set up (iTunes, eMusic, Radioheads thingy) and eventully one of them will stick, outlast the rest and become the norm for our kids... or maybe bands will realise their revenue comes from touring, and rather then touring to promote an album, the album becomes the promotional tool to draw folks to the gigs (one could argue this is already happening), or maybe it's something completely different that we can't think of cause we're old codgers who are too busy dusting down are Neds Atomic Dustbin 12"s

the heavy handed pesimistic idea that this is somehow "the end of music" or something equally as dramatic is alarmist, reactionary and small minded, I'm pretty surpised to see being pushed around so here will nilly

 

[billygannon]

Music, as an art form, is more popular and has a wider appeal than other art forms.
If bands had to give up recording because they would be losing lots of money, then this will force the market in to having to come up with a way for them to do it - pop/rock/indie/electronic etc. music is simply too popular.
It won't mean a return to physical recordings, because Mp3's represent the cheapest and easiest way to replicate music.

Something like karmafan is a sensible option. At the moment it's relying on the goodwill of people.
However the market will realise that music can't be produced for nothing, so a subscription-based service, or something along these lines, actually makes sense in that music fans will have realised they have to do this in order for their favourite bands to continue to make music.

What it will mean is that less bands and musicians will be able to make a living from music. But it will mean they don't actually lose loads of money producing it.

 

[Flux]

I seriously disagree with that, so long as there are smart enterprising people out there who want to make a buck models will be set up (iTunes, eMusic, Radioheads thingy) and eventully one of them will stick, outlast the rest and become the norm for our kids... or maybe bands will realise their revenue comes from touring, and rather then touring to promote an album, the album becomes the promotional tool to draw folks to the gigs (one could argue this is already happening), or maybe it's something completely different that we can't think of cause we're old codgers who are too busy dusting down are Neds Atomic Dustbin 12"s

the heavy handed pesimistic idea that this is somehow "the end of music" or something equally as dramatic is alarmist, reactionary and small minded, I'm pretty surpised to see being pushed around so here will nilly

Ha, mine were flogged in Freebird once I heard MBV.

I would love to see something happen that would properly compensate the people who create the music, don't get me wrong. I just think that the technology being what it is, people will always find a way to get their music for free.

It's not the end of music, there'll always be niche markets at least until our generation are penniless OAPs, but maybe properly marketing a well-packaged cd or vinyl (with free mp3's), making the product desirable from an aesthetic point of view will slowly grow the niche into something more significant.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Sorry, it was a bit of a loaded question but here goes anyway:
Okay - so you're working on stuff, recording at home, hoping that someday you're gonna put out a record. Would you still have the same ambition and enthusiasm if all that record was gonna be was a few files on the internet?
Someone could download one track and judge you solely on that and decide that you were rubbish, never giving your work another chance. In the context of the album that one track might work really well but out of context might seem different.

is it not the case anyway that once you've spent all your time crafting your album into a sequence of songs that you feel make sense together and add to something greater than a collection of individual songs (the way i like to listen to albums myself) and then you release it on a record or cd you then loose all control over how it is appreciated or listened to anyway. you've done your best for it and its out on its own now. you can still craft an album and release it online as an album, its up to everyone else how they listen to it. i reckon there will always be people who like to listen to it all in one go. how many records or cds do you have that have only a few songs on them that you like and bother to listen to?

The important thing is that there is a model whereby artists can receive some compensation for sales of physical formats that hopefully allow them to continue doing what they do. There is no viable or working model (yet?) for how this can happen with non-physical formats.

There never will be a working model. The entire world isn't going to have a big soul-search(seek?) and suddenly go, "oh you know what, we're being right cunts about this. The poor lads on thumped will never make a penny from their art".

Karmafan or similar setups might make a small difference but people can already contribute to the artist if they are so inclined by legally downloading or buying physical product. It's not exactly a radical new model.

surely it just needs time to establish itself, its still very new. i do think that the karmafan-type model could be workable, and that smaller players could do better out of it financially than they could under the old way of selling a cd and getting a few pennies of the price back

 

[hugh]

the heavy handed pesimistic idea that this is somehow "the end of music" or something equally as dramatic is alarmist, reactionary and small minded, I'm pretty surpised to see being pushed around so here will nilly

Ah, I don't really think that .. I'm really just arguing a position on this and trying to point out that there are serious potentially negative consequences of file-sharing that, by the evidence of a lot of things that have been said on this thread, many people don't really think about that much.

Of course the music will survive, but it may evolve in a way that is not really in the best interests of music fans or artists. The initial reaction to discovering filesharing is "Hey! Deadly! I can get all this shit for free" (that was certainly mine) but there is a serious downside.

Having said that, it may evolve into something better and I'm hoping someone on this thread will say something to convince me that it will ... but so far no.

 

[hugh]

surely it just needs time to establish itself, its still very new. i do think that the karmafan-type model could be workable, and that smaller players could do better out of it financially than they could under the old way of selling a cd and getting a few pennies of the price back

Possibly. I certainly hope so.

 

[timbot]

I'm not saying that people won't value their music, of course they will but possibly a whole lot less. You see it every house you go into: Records and CDs stacked in racks and shelves, ubiquitous looking writable cds without covers flung anywhere, scratched and gathering dust. Files unattached to anything tangible at all are valued even less.

As someone who buys CDs regularly but is hard on them (I am careless what can I say) digital files were a godsend. Being able to back up all my music is great. And my files are well organised and looked after.

Then though I have never really gotten into the packaging as fetish item idea. It is like the way collectable toys are worth more in the original packaging but who cares about the packaging, I want to play with a wookie!

 

[theoootini]

Then though I have never really gotten into the packaging as fetish item idea. It is like the way collectable toys are worth more in the original packaging but who cares about the packaging, I want to play with a wookie!

you can play with my wookie any time...

 

[snakybus]

I like to be able to read the lyrics, you can't do that with an mp3

 

[nlgbbbblth]

do people here really feel the same attachment to some intangible digital file on their computers/iPods that they do for the records/cds they've paid for?

definitely not. mp3s for me are a stop gap, a last resort.