In my opinion, the best solution to artists supposedly losing money from downloads of their music is legalizing free downloading but in turn charging an extra amount in ISP costs as compensation to the artists. Why? If we arrested or fined everyone who downloaded files "illegally", prisons would be way more overcrowded than they already are, and many people would lose their way in life from poorness.

Wireless routers are so easy to hijack that they could never make it stick.

The onus is on the prosecuter to prove guilt.

_________________
No no and no

What I mean is charging extra charges for everyone for good measure.

And how will that stop those that buy music and pass it around to all their friends?

Sorry... there is no easy fix. IMHO

_________________
You're only as strong as
the drinks you pour,
the tables you dance on,
and the friends you roll with.

I'm talking about the ones that people go after the most...the ones on the internet.

So the car parked outside your house with a laptop downloading 3gig of movie, is doing so at even more of your expense.

It's punishment before the crime, assumed criminality and morally wrong on many levels.

All because the music industry is a farce. I for one am in favour of abolishment of the current music industry. Wipe it out I say, anything that brings that about faster is a good thing in my book. Let everyone go back to earning from performance and keeping 90% of their wages. Rather than slogging their guts out, competing with over marketed boob shaking tin eared talentless dancers. To get what? 1.5%-3% of the money from their sales.

_________________
No no and no

Who's to blame? The RIAA!

There's no way we can possibly separate everyone who does it from those who don't.

But I LIKE the boob shaking dancers!

_________________
You're only as strong as
the drinks you pour,
the tables you dance on,
and the friends you roll with.

+1



Andy

_________________
Pending Greatness

I don' t like this idea of having people pay for something they may not even do or use...

To me thats like saying lets let the credit card companies charge an extra fee for those who pay on time just for good measure to make up for the people who don't pay in time....

If I don't do the time, I'm not willing to do the time just for good meaure in order to make up for those who should be doing time but don't...

_________________
RAMA LAMA FA FA FA

Not only the RIAA are largely to blame by constantly turning out substandard tripe just to get a sale. Accountants and share holders with about as much knowledge of music as I have about the mating habits of snails. The fact is (as reported by Panorama BBC1 at 8:30pm this evening) is that 42% of illegal downloaders do so with a view to buy what they enjoy. I see that as a reaction to music lovers being sick of being constantly served tripe. Try before you buy.
The fact is that music piracy has existed since tape recorders were first invented and probably before. I'd hazzard that its not much worse now than it was in 1985. Just that less people have to take a chance buying music from a (unknown to them) artist than they did back then. The current abysmal standards of modern music are far more to blame for a lack of sales than piracy.
On the aforementioned Panorama program they had various interviews with various musicians. Dave Stewart (ex Eurhythmic and producer extrordinaire) is completely opposed to the proposed invasion of civil liberties by the music industry. Stating pretty much what I wrote in previous posts.
Make no bones about it, their talking of constantly monitoring your internet usage in the UK. Hows that for a sheer invasion of privacy, and quite illegal without my consent.
How does that conflict with the American constitution?


And that makes it right to punish everyone? Lets just re-enact the Nurembourg rally with the CEO's of Time Warner and Sony giving the speech. May as well go the whole hog with corporate facists seizing control. When do you think they will invade Poland? My mistake, they already have.

I can promise you this. If my privacy is impaired by internet monitoring I will never buy another CD, DVD, Itunes download ever again. I'll completely remove myself from new media. What do you think will happen if half the record buying public do the same? The simple fact is that the recording industry has conned us into thinking thats what music is. That little 5" wide bit of plastic sat in your machine. They were in uproar a few years back because of Itunes and legal download sites. They weren't making money off the plastic.

_________________
No no and no

That's a very long debate and I support 1000% Niki's point that more control and punishment is only meant to aggravate things.
The whole music industry is going through a fundamental shift and is getting more fragmented by the day. My prediction is that we will see less and less million sellers and a whole lot more of niche artists.
Actually, more music is being made today than at any other time in history. The problem now is how do you get to find those artists that you’d really like.
Traditional music recording sales are declining, digital sales are on the rise, but are not making up the decrease of traditional media sales (interesting though, there are more and more vinyl sales).

To keep things short, what I would like for myself:
- To be able to find those artists I might be interested in
- To be able to preview the music
- To be able to purchase, as I see fit, at a reasonable price

First point is tricky, it’s trial and error, associations, friends and peers recommendations… Overall, I find it an exciting process and worth pursuing, whatever the sources might be.
Second point varies wildly, from full preview to the crap 30 sec useless samples.
Third point is actually the problem. I usually buy my music from traditional stores, from the Internet (mostly from the Amazons - .com, .uk, .fr, .de) or the artists’ sites. Sometimes, the releases are only available as digital downloads and here we have a problem – iTunes has become a de facto standard for distribution in digital formats; however, iTunes will only sell music in the US, UK, France, Germany, maybe Italy. The same for the Amazon downloads (.com will only sell to the US, .co.uk to the UK, .fr to France, .de to Germany…). That leaves the rest of the world out. If I want music and it’s only available as a digital download, tough luck, I either have to give up on it or pirate it, there’s no third option.

I have three examples:
1. Kings Of Last Call’s From Memory
Found about it from these very forums, was able to listen to the music on their site (great job, Brad), wasn’t able to purchase the digital versions from iTunes or Amazon.com, but I was able to get it from CDBaby, both as a CD or as a digital download.
2. Buckethead’s Shadows Between The sky
Found about it again in these forums, somebody had uploaded the music on You Tube, was able to buy it from Travis Dickerson site, as a physical CD.
3. Willy Porter’s debut album Trees Have Soul
I wanted it just because I love what he does and I have all his other albums.
Unfortunately, this one is only available digitally, on iTunes and Aamazon, therefore I am unable to buy it. Willy, I love you dearly, so I have to give up on this album rather than stealing it, there is no other option available to me.
So, two fortunate examples and an unfortunate one.

And I can keep on going, I haven’t even mentionned yet the case where you actually want a single song (I wanted to buy Willie Dixon’s Violent Love; tough luck on buying the song, now I have to get the whole box set).

To sum it up, my point is that we actually need less control and more availability and education. Education because music and film piracy is theft, there is no such thing as a victimless crime.
Give me a fair chance at getting what I like at a fair price and I’ll buy it. All of it.

_________________
La vie est belle, le monde est pourri, make the most of it!

Without having a load of options that you dont want forced on you, whilst the ones you do want to hear are nowhere to be found.

I agree completely with you purple. Your point was far more eloquent than mine.
Everybody and his dog is recording at the moment. I want to hear it before I buy it. I've currently bought two albums through this site alone. Soul To Strings's self titled release and Kings of the Last Call. I plan on buying Heustis's avant garde whacko jazz album too. Simply because theres genuine stuff on there.

When I bought the Kings album, I even told Brad what I'd paid Sterling and Dollar amount. So he could check out that the band were getting their fair cut of the sale. I fully believe in artists getting paid. I have first hand experience of funding recording then selling it myself. I know exactly how nerve wrecking that can be when your a kid with no money. I fully support bands, I dont support CEO's, A&R people, PR people and accountants that you pay when you buy from huge multinational record corporations. Their useless, have no taste and think they know what we should be listening to better than we do. How else do you explain the likes of Leona Lewis getting in the top ten sales. It's not even because artists are popular anymore. It's because record companies pay for the exposure of artists. The top 100 record sales being based on actual record sales ended some time in the 90's in the UK.
So yeah die quick time warner, long live Myspace.

_________________
No no and no

There are some shades of grey here.
I totally agree it take sthe reosurces of a major to put some crap out there and have it hailed as the new coming.
On the other hand, the majors have the system in place to help an artist break worldwide.
An interesting phenomenon we see more and more is indie labels being distributed by majors, which I don't think it's so bad. After all, I'm old school, I still love the feel and looks of the physical thing.
I have no problem with the indie ethic of inide artist - indie label - indie distro, but it's a lot more difficult to bring something to a large audience.
I think we'll see a lot of new combinations and various distribution models evolving in the very near future.
What we can already see is the increasing importance of indie labels and I can only salute this.
After all, not all artists like to handle the business part of things; so, if it's a fair deal, why not leave all the marketing and distro to the label and have the artists focus on the music?
And we do have quite a few examples of succesfull indies - Epitaph, Roadrunner... And I know I bought some great blues both from Alligator in the US and Ruf Records in Germany.
And Niki you're also right about performances. Recording sales are declining, gig tickets sales are on a spectacular rise; bands losing money on record sales and making money on tours (even the latest U2 tour apparently managed to break even after the first three months, quite a feat). It's almost like the album is becoming a promo for the tour (quite a spectacular turn of how things used to be only the day before).
It sure is a very interesting moment in the history of the music industry.

_________________
La vie est belle, le monde est pourri, make the most of it!

Sorry, that's just stupid. Why should someone who doesn't illegally download pay for someone who does? The recording industry brought this on themselves. Overcharging for for CD's and concerts then making it easy for people to download music one song at a time. What people did when I was kid was buy an LP record it on your reel to reel or cassette and make copies for you friends. A record store around me used to let you exchange LP's for fifty cents for something else. You can't stop it. Never could.