If an artist is A) not super rich, B) on an indie or self-owned label, and C) his records are available where you live, is there any excuse for downloading them instead of buying them?

Nick actually makes a good point re valuation being based on how long it takes to experience something once. Is this a fair method? Still not sure.

― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:45 PM (1 hour ago)

It's not just the value of "time it takes to experience once", though - it's about how often you go back to something to repeat the experience. I must've played THOUSANDS of hours of ISS and never touched another computer game in the last 5 years. Total cost, if I've played 3,000 hours, is £0.0083 per hour. Can we do the same with a DVD? An album? A book? I've watched The Dark Knight maybe five times on DVD, it cost me about £15, and it's 3 hours long, so that's £1 an hour (so far). I've listened to MPP maybe ten times since I bought the CD, the CD cost £8, it's an hour long near enough, so 80p an hour (so far).

well indeed. the market kinda sucks because all works of the same format have to cost roughly the same, regardless of both wildy varying production costs and single/multiple experience duration.

lol are you guys talking about the ethics of filesharing again

http://www.richthofen.com/france_at_war/dead_horses.jpg

if we could download dead horses we would

Pretty sure I downloaded the Junior Boys' Dead Horse EP.

all of these media share characteristics in terms of how they're produced, levels of personnel involved, means of distribution. what else would you base it on?

A) no they don't. i mean, they really, really don't

2. you're positing a version of competitor indexing as the only determinant of pricing. Other commonly accepted models: cost-plus, demand-based, value-based pricing, rate of return

goddammit tuomas

im more willing to "donate" to the artist (i.e. buy a cd that i already downloaded even tho i know i'm not going to do anything with the physical cd except but it on a shelf) if the artist is on a major label. especially for r&b/hip-hop, it's very likely that a label is going to look at the artist's album sales and say "well, you only sold 120,000 copies in the first month, so we didn't make any money off this record, and you probably won't be putting one out for another 2-3 years" whereas fatcat didn't look at the sales of animal collective's 'feels' and go "well, you guys only sold 6,000 copies of this record this month, so we probably won't be putting out any more animal collective albums for a few years"

― hazmat yayo (J0rdan S.), Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:28 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

which i guess i mean to say that i know that the neither a large or mid-sized indie band nor a major artist is going to make money off of my singular purchase, but that my "vote" so to speak matters much more frequently when it comes to artists on major labels than ones on indie labels

― hazmat yayo (J0rdan S.), Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:32 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

umm j0rdan.. this is kind of nuts. if you think sales don't affect what indie labels release, you are very very wrong. and since you are most likely in a smaller pool of "voters," your "vote" will count way more!

what Jordan's describing is a little backwards, but he does have a point. major label artists can get their next album shelved for 4 years if they don't sell enough, indie artists are generally going to release stuff regardless fo how it sells.

plus there's the even more twisted logic that word of mouth matters more in indie, so just downloading but also reviewing/blogging/raving about an album but not buying it has more positive impact w/ an indie artist than a major label artist

I've actually bought major-label albums because they weren't as easy to find download links for as Pitchfork-approved indie releases generally are.

hey kids, stop all the downloadin'!

it's kind of an underlying assumption to tuomas's argument, and a lot of the corollaries, that music (& other cultural products) are directly comparable with other life-improving luxury goods like, say, cadbury creme eggs

i mean, sure, maybe a new single is worth more than two cadbury creme eggs, just saying it's kind of wack that you can make the comparison

barff

i would also like to point out that the number of people in anglophone countries who actually have enough money to keep buying records in significant quantities continues to fall year-on-year

this is why sales keep falling guys

ur welcome

puke

also, hands up who in this thread refuses to buy second hand records

ps. if u raise ur hand ur gay and a liar

I download like a sonofabitch but, being that probably 85% of *actual* record purchases are/have always been from the used market (just cause I'm a cheap bastard and all), I don't think my role in the game has changed much. Plus, I hype music I like on Facebook & in the blogosphere, attend concerts & occasionally buy merch. So I like to think I'm erring on the right side of wrong, or thereabouts.

we get it, you don't like cadbury creme eggs

xpost

no you don't

jokes bruv

i'm a computer

can you YSI me some candy?

i would also like to point out that the number of people in anglophone countries who actually have enough money to keep buying records in significant quantities continues to fall year-on-year

what.....the......fuck

This thread has gotten me curious about Finnish rap. What's the best examples right now?

re: "they don't like people downloading that stuff because they're trying to make a living with their music, and filesharing hurts that"
How do Finns (or Finnish rappers in particular) feel about the sale of virtual items in general?
I kind of had this idea that there would be a perception of virtual sales as being in the same category of "American consumerism spawning degraded versions of regular things" like wonderbread and lite beer or something equally tacky.

the second-hand records question is kind of interesting. not that it validates downloading in some backwards way but is it "bad" in the same way?

re: 2nd hand records, I know of no society on Earth that believes that once you buy a physical thing, you have any obligation never to resell that thing.
If buying 2nd hand records is "bad" that would tend to imply an obligation that no one thinks anyone has.

Surely second-hand record sales are collectively *tiny* compared to downloading?

haha did Tuomas really want to frame this thread so that we'd all just say "I guess not" and then lock the thing?

NB all these analogies about making prints of visual art are kind of off -- illegal downloading would really be the equivalent of if some other person had a print and you made a very high-quality copy of it

illegal downloading is wrong, etc., but for the record my suspicion is that the main thing that makes people feel okay about it isn't grand moral justifications or ethical gymnastics, it's sitting in front of your computer and not being able to see how it makes any difference to anyone in the universe whether or not your computer plays some record you want to hear at that moment -- I think this is why there's such a workable market for legal pay downloads, because the issue for (many) people isn't really free downloading versus paying eMusic $20 a month or whatever, it's being able to decide you want something and grab it right there in the moment

haha that said I probably do have moral queasiness about all the money I've spent in 99-cent increments on iTunes because I suddenly want to hear, like, "In a Big Country" while walking to work -- I should be filesharing that shit

Note that games are outselling music AND video

― Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Passantino (Tom D.), Thursday, May 28, 2009 2:48 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i find this really sad for some reason?

also just realised that i don't actually know what computer games look like in uh...physical form.

or even if they have a physical form, maybe they are like programmes that you install on the computer?

Buying an used album isn't the same as downloading, because it takes a physical copy of the music out of the marketplace. So the next time someone comes to the store asking for the same record, and they don't have any copies anymore, they might order a new one, or the person who asked about it might order one himself. There's a limited pool of physical records in the marketplace, whereas with filesharing the pool is unlimited.

(xxx-post)

here is a picture of one, lex:

http://www.volunteer.blogs.com/winewaves/images/starfruit.jpg

illegal downloading is wrong, etc., but for the record my suspicion is that the main thing that makes people feel okay about it isn't grand moral justifications or ethical gymnastics, it's sitting in front of your computer and not being able to see how it makes any difference to anyone in the universe whether or not your computer plays some record you want to hear at that moment

my suspicion is most people do it because it's free music!

and i do it most often to hear stuff that i might wanna buy, then i buy it and delete the old files--just like i used to tape stuff off the radio (or at the station when I worked at a radio station) and then buy the stuff that i really liked

but for the record my suspicion is that the main thing that makes people feel okay about it isn't grand moral justifications or ethical gymnastics, it's sitting in front of your computer and not being able to see how it makes any difference to anyone in the universe whether or not your computer plays some record you want to hear at that moment

I definitely agree with this. That's why hearing those Finnish rappers actually saying in their songs that people shouldn't fileshare their music, it hurts their chances of making a living out of music and continuing to release records. Because I like Finnish rap and I want to support the people doing it, I'm not downloading that stuff.

"That's why hearing those Finnish rappers actually saying in their songs that people shouldn't fileshare their music, it hurts their chances of making a living out of music and continuing to release records, was a sobering experience."

Do these rappers rap in English -- do you think their appeal could go beyond their local record-buying public?
(You might not want to disclose who they are because chances are, I may in fact download them)

lately when i've mentioned how it feels a little weird to be releasing a cd (because who buys cds anymore), i've had multiple people say things like "maybe you guys can give it away for free or use it as promotion to get people to the shows?" this frustrating because i thought that was the justification for not making any money playing club shows, to promote the album.

pretty sure the only way to make money in music these days is to play a lot of weddings and corporate picnics, so if you guys download something you like maybe you could just tell your fiancee or your boss about it?

"play a lot of weddings and corporate picnics"
Don't most weddings hire DJs now? And all the corp. picnics I've been to were at a venues that provided their own entertainment.

probably, but i'm playing a wedding and a corporate party (at a baseball game!) in the next week, so.

Do these rappers rap in English -- do you think their appeal could go beyond their local record-buying public?

No, 95% percent of them rap in Finnish, hence their potential marketplace is quite limited to begin with.

Anyway, if you're really interested in Finnish rap, here's a few of my favourite tunes and artists:

before I view any of those, I would like to be assured that they are on YouTube legally

Haha, I guess that's kinda hypocritical. Some of them are official music videos, but there's a few unofficially uploaded tunes too. Well, at least you can't download them from Youtube, so if you like the music you have to buy it.

before I view any of those, what's Finnish for "Yah Trick Yah"?