A lot of bands nowadays are shying away from record labels and promoting it themselves. They don’t gross as much, but they tend to net more.
That’s who I support. There’s a small coffee shop in my town where they have live shows every Friday. If I like them, I buy the CDs that they almost always have on sale. 100% of the profit to the artist.
iTunes and before I buy youtube
Itunes for stuff i really like Grooveshark is very useful and i also get stuff from the artist wecsite since i love music by people like charlie mcdonnel and alex day
I actually download a lot from bandcamp. I’m not sure how the percentages work there, but it’s a platform for indie artists and I’m sure most of the money goes to the artists.
The artists there get to choose how much to sell their work for. Some is for free download, some is dirt cheap, and some is around $10 an album. I’ve even downloaded stuff there for free that I’ve liked so much, I went back a week later to “donate” to the artists and pay for my copy.
Sure, there are lots of “crap” bands there trying their luck, but there are also some fantastic artists who are trying to make an honest buck from their talents.
As far as the big record labels go, it’s true that the artists get almost nothing. A couple of years ago I helped develop a product (not music industry, but similar setup), did all the work and was “the face” of this particular campaign. By the time everyone got their cut, I ended up with something like 0.25% of the wholesale price. I as getting around 0.05c off every $20 product sold.
Certainly not worth the effort.
I don’t get music.
Spotify is a good way of getting rid of piracy. It supports the artists through ads, and makes downloading music anywhere else pointless. It’s a win-win, and it amazes me that more people don’t use it. Guilt free unlimited music.
FINALLY! someone who understands that vinyl is the best!!!
Yeah, and quite a difference too. Take Dark Side of the Moon on CD and then on Vinyl and play it on the same stereo and tell me that the vinyl doesn’t sound better.
That’s great to hear, because I own a record company specializing in vinyl!!!
where is it??? is it in new england??
Check your facts.
Baby artists make less than 1.5% AFTER all EXPENSES have been recouped. This is why touring is so important and where the vast majority of the income earned is in live show, from which the record company doesn’t make huge dollars. Once the recording loan is paid off, the record company is unable to grab their fill and then must take the contractually agreed upon amount.
There are also common deals where “you make ZILCH during the first 90 days”, which is why groups like Criss Cross and their smash hit JUMP killed them(that and their cousin manager). They came and went fast, and through contract, made ZERO and still owed the record company over $100K at the end.
Also, managers and the like get their take on a separate contract, and if done properly, the money flows from the record company to the artist and then through the artist to a manager.
Many dud artists are given a second record deal with the concept of “we need to recoup our losses”, which rarely pans out, but sometimes does. Successful artists(and I use the terms success and artist very loosely these days) are able to negotiate better deals.
So, you don’t want to support the “record label fat cats”. Yeah, can’t blame you. But, your previous boast of greater than 99% illegal downloads, well, you’re stealing. I am someone who relies on royalties to make some of my income. But that’s OK. I mean, you’re only stealing from people like me, who need to put food on the table, take care of kids and has a mortgage.
So, keep this in mind:
If you don’t want to support the suits in the high-rise office, then so be it. But if you don’t support the artists, they’ll not be funded to continue. So, you can go indy, and when they don’t see money coming in, they aren’t inclined to produce either.
Record companies aren’t in this to make music, they are in this to make money. The artists aren’t in this to make music, they are in this to make money too.
Support the arts. Yoyos ain’t cheap and my kids want to eat!
Thanks to the internet and self publishing, there are no filters. Quality has dropped in all aspects: sound quality, content quality, artistic quality, talent quality. We used to get the cream of the crop. These days we find ourselves listing to the scum that used to be collected away and quietly disposed of.
Now, regarding CD vs. Vinyl: They have different sounds, and also this is a function of the RIAA curve and the mastering methods required to take advantage of the RIAA curve as well as the proper and best rendering methods for doing mixdowns for CD’s. CD’s are compressed(yes, they are, deal with that reality), while vinyl is not. However, CD has higher S?N that vinyl. But, vinyl is analog, and CD is digital, so then you get into the “you’re not hearing the whole thing” debate, which has merits on both sides. Vinyl is reproduced by amplifying a physical vibration(the needle bouncing in the groove) vs CD’s being reproduced by reading digital data. With CD’s, you’re depended on the characteristics of the converter, so in a sense, different brands and makes of CD players can sound different, even if you’re using the coax or optical digital outputs, since it still has to hit the converter on the read portion. Then there’s the “analog vs digital output” for CD players. With records, the stylus can make a massive amount of differences. I switched to an eliptical stylus for doing transfers and man, that made a mountain of difference. I also have a stylus for 78’s. In my case, my turntable doesn’t have a USB out, but rather a S/PDIF output, as well as the typical RIAA outputs that can be converted to line outs and use an integrated RIAA compensating pre-amp inside the unit(which is tied to the S/PDIF). The advantage I have is that while the RIAA pre is integrated into the S/PDIF output, I can then lock that clock to the ProTools interface, which if I had one and the capability, master clock lock that, which can clean up those transfers. I’m actually relying on the filters in the ProTools hardware, which I like the sound of. With the USB outs(which mine lacks) and S/PDIF outs, you don’t have to calibrate your capture input, which saves a load of time and helps preserve dynamic range by not have to insert a compressor/limiter/expander, or bringing the gain down too low to prevent overloads.
CD’s, if properly stored, should theoretically last a lifetime. PRESSED/STAMPED factory CD’s, not burned discs, which should ideally be replaced every 5 years. Digital, it is what it is. Vinyl, due to the fact that friction is involved, will wear and grind dust into the grooves, most of which can’t be removed and becomes part of the sound. Analog(and even digital) tape, while I feel sounds better than vinyl(I got some sweet 1/4" analog decks), you have print through issues, cross-talk issues and since we have to rub that tape over various metal, plastic and rubber elements, will wear. Tape can also stretch and break/snap. Don’t get me started on recorded wire.
We haven’t found the ideal method yet for storage and playback. 96K(96000 samples per second) at 24-bit resolution(approximately 144db of signal to noise ratio, far above what is normally needed) is headed in the right direction. We’ll always have the analog vs digital debate. CD’s are convenient, easy, portable and SHOULD be affordable.
Piracy doesn’t necessarily equal stealing. If the person pirating things would have never bought it in the first place, no one ever lost anything.
I forgot youtube lots and lots of youtube
There’s a little something called the vinyl trap that does exist. Vinyl does have something that CD does not. That doesn’ matter too much if it’s recorded digitally. Some record companies do this, and it is a shame.
sorry. i’m gonna have to say piracy is stealing.
I understand how this can be kind of confusing. If you go into a store and say “I’m going to take this chair without paying for it. I mean, I wasn’t planning on buying it anyways, so it’s not technically stealing.”
Well, that is stealing. The confusion comes in when you have an infinite amount of the item.
When you want to download an album of music, your copy doesn’t exist yet. You could choose not to download it (whether legally or illegally) and the source material would still exist, just not your copy. But if you were to download it, you would have a copy and the source material wouldn’t be affected.
Apply that reasoning to a real-life scenario.
Say you went into a store and ‘stole’ a chair, only this time when you lifted the chair off the ground, it was merely a copy and the original chair was still there. All you did was duplicate it.
Now is that stealing? It’s hard to say. You caused that chair to exist, and although technically should be considered the store’s chair, if you hadn’t done anything, they wouldn’t have that extra chair.
I think it has to do with the math of it all. Digital copies are very different from tangible objects. With a digital object, 1 can equal 1 billion, and human brains just have some trouble fully comprehending that.
Do I consider it stealing? Simply, no. Stealing is defined as taking something from someone that isn’t yours. But that implies that they’re losing that object, which in the case of illegal downloading, they’re not.
Some things that are illegal shouldn’t be. And some things that aren’t illegal should be.
Also, many artists are releasing their music on pirating websites as a way to ‘get their sound out there’. That’s definitely not stealing.
I can see where you are coming from, but lets look at your analogy of the chair.
lets say that someone comes to the store and “steals” the chair by duplication. then, more and more people come and duplicate the chair. the maker of the chair gets no money, yet is still providing people with chairs. the people who have duplicated the chairs do not pay the manufacturer, yet still have a chair that he made. the “consumers” who then have the duplicate probably then give their friends duplicates of the chair. there would then be a thousand duplicate chairs which, theoretically, might have been actually sold legally by the manufacturer. instead, he loses money because no one is giving him any money for his service.
Mediafire. By far the best download site out there. It’s really similar to Megaupload.
Or iTunes for my favorite bands.
But it depends on whether or not the consumer was going to buy the chair in the first place.
either way, he still has the chair.