Floyd, if the bands wanted to give their stuff away. They would have done it. Plenty of bands have put out free songs on the internet. But by virtue of them putting them for sale as CDs, that means they'd like to make some money off them.

If an artist wants to sell CDs and get some repayment for all the hard work they put into writing and recording their songs, they should be able to do that without a bunch of pirate sites posting their music and giving it away to whomever wants to it.

If, however, the artist wants to give it away to influence people, sell more T-shirts, reach a larger audience, etc. They can do that pretty easily as things stand.

What's impossible right now is to put something out for sale without a bunch of sites putting it up for free. Obviously SOPA is not the answer and I'm not sure what is.

But in the end, it should be up to the artist. Wouldn't you want to make your own decisions with your own music?

i`ll admit to being quite angered by the opinion put forward by floyd (he`s merely the voice here, its a widespread opinion) that the current state of affairs is a good thing. But what i will say is that.. It is the way of things now. I honestly dont think theres any way of getting the cat back in the bag. And any attempt to go back to the old days (SOPA or otherwise) is admirable, but doomed. Unless we shut down all freedom and become communist china.... Which would kind of.. suck.

Unfortunately, i think we`d better grow to like floyds opinion as much as we can, or at least grow to live with it. Any profit from music now has to be from merch or live shows. Plenty of people back in the day used to moan about the fact that the music business was... .well a business!! They may have got their wish, its not going to be much of a business for long at this rate.

On the plus side, theres so much cr*p out there nowadays, everybody wants to be a rockstar. Maybe over the next generation when people realise theres rarely such a thing nowadays the playing field will become somewhat less cluttered again. We might even end up with less musicians, but most of the musicians out there having something they want to say again? Intead of just wanting to be doing it for the sake of it, because its cool. Musicians even be able to get work locally again instead of all the dreams of needing to be a touring star just to make a living.... Scenes might start popping up again instead of bands just copying the current trend... the whole thing starts moving full circle.. OK getting a bit carried away with myself now.

For the third or fourth time, on the site I use many artists upload their own releases. Most artists of this generation give their full support to piracy. In my experience (ie speaking to band members after shows) they rarely give a damn how you got the music, they're just happy you heard it and even liked it enough to come out to a show and buy a shirt. These are young people who are trying to make a living form their music, mind you.

I have refrained from getting into this one, partially because I said over 15 years ago that Digitazation of Music would be the death of music. And that is right were we are heading, we are so overloaded with "Hundreds" of new bands...that I would challenge and say 99% of those bands should stay annonymous. Most of the newer bands are crap...there are a few good new ones out there, but again most simply are not up to snuff...the reason so many of them want to put "Thier Music" out there on the web is because no record company or radio station would play thier crap.

Piracy is/was a problem caused by the 99% of musicians jumping headlong into a media that they did not think through. This includes those big name acts and those musicians that are good enough to play your local pub, but certainly do not have the talent to be "The Next Big Thing" and should only be heard in said local pub.

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle and there is not going to be a good outcome to any of this, we just have to deal it no matter which side of this issue you come down on, neither is right, it is just what it is...technology doing us in because we didn't fully understand it or control what we did with it...and we are doing the same thing with the internet, that doesn't mean it doesn't have some good uses, but not all the uses folks have come up with are good or valid.

FWIW

T2

The issue is not with artists who post their own work for the interest of the larger audience. The issue is with those who post an artist's work without consent for the interest of the larger audience.

The issue is not with artists who post their own work for the interest of the larger audience. The issue is with those who post an artist's work without consent for the interest of the larger audience.

you don't like them =/= they aren't good


Just because it's not the same blues rock guitarist for the thousandth time doesn't mean it's not good.