What's your opinions on illegal downloading?

[dustywingfield]

Now considering this is an entirely indie label, i can pretty much guess the response, but i'm still askin.

Now as a whole concept, i'm not a fan, it's a bit of a bitch move leaking albums and shit. But i can remember a fucking bundle of times i wouldn't have heard of certain artists, (labels) or crews without some blogspot making it readily available, and giving me a chance to hear it before spending hard earned cash on a release. So while it's a cuntish thing to pull, i know for damn sure it's helped out a few times.

Shit i wouldn't have gone and bought two copies of Dream Dentistry, if i hadn't managed to hear it from a blogspot, i tend to trust the quality of J23 enough now that if it's new, it's worth the cash. But with the music industries churning out album after album of shit that's not even worth my time, let alone my money, if i find it available to download? You know i'm going to get it there first. If i like it enough, yeah i'll go buy it, one, two or maybe even three times. But it's extremely rare i'm going to do that based on an album cover or one leaked track over myspace y'know?

TL;DR PIRATES. DISCUSS.

[mujina]

If it's a label I know, I'll do blind buys with no problems.

If it's a label I dont know, I wont cop, download or steal either way.

Simple as that; there's so much bullshit music out there that I've pretty much dropped it in total. I'll cop shit from artists I know, but other than that, I'm done with checking for new artists and all that.

But as far as downloading goes.. if you really need to download and listen, and can't depend on the snippets (cdbaby, cduniverse etc.) - the emcee/producer prolly aint worth checking for in the first place.

[magowl]

With the possibility of shooting myself in the foot here I have to agree that downloading has some upsides, as well as down of course (which ought to be obvious).

I did have quite the debate/dialogue about this last week so I'll just recap...

There are several gray areas concerning downloading imo.
Downloading for preview, and buying it if you like it. I used to spend a couple of hours a day at the local record shop, just listening to music and buying very little (records are expensive after all, specially when you don't have a lot of money). To me downloading for that purpose is ok, no need to keep ish around that you don't like and if you do like it you buy it. It just saves one a couple of trips down to the record store. And no.. snippets don't cut it, not for me at least.

Downloading because you can't afford it, because you're curious, for the hell of it, in which case the person probably wouldn't have bought it anyways, but might turn a few fans/potential buyers towards the artist that would've never found out about him/her/them otherwise.

Downloading music you could only dream of hearing before, because it's too expensive and/or hard to find (the big upside of this download business imho).

And you got the marketing aspect of it, if you use the bloggers and downloaders right.

I think it's important to realize that all downloads don't equal a lost sale, because that certainly is not the case. But people are greedy you know, which is nothing new, they'll download just for the hell of it, just because they can, the more the better... doesn't matter if they like it or not. And of course it hurts artists because people are lazy and once they get the album downloaded they don't think twice about it, "why buy when I already have the whole thing" type of deal.
People say things like "go on tour", "play live shows", "sell merc" aso.. but I'll go out on a limb here and say most artists don't have the opportunity to do a lot of that, so downloading does hurt the artists.
What really annoys me tho is that a lot of people nowdays are expecting ish to be free and sort of "demand" it, very strange... and I know I'm not alone in thinking that.

Aug 3, 2009 13:53:12 GMT -5 @mujina said:

Simple as that; there's so much bullshit music out there that I've pretty much dropped it in total. I'll cop shit from artists I know, but other than that, I'm done with checking for new artists and all that.

But as far as downloading goes.. if you really need to download and listen, and can't depend on the snippets (cdbaby, cduniverse etc.) - the emcee/producer prolly aint worth checking for in the first place.

I, for instance, am a total music geek. Which means I'm always looking for new music. I agree that there's a lot of shit out there, but there's also a lot of good stuff.. if one cares to look :)

As I said above, snippets don't cut it, say I'm looking to buy a jazz album and i get to preview 20s of a 15min tune... not gonna happen. I wanna hear the whole tune in good/ok quality, don't matter what genre, that's how I've always decided what music to get. What it boils down to once you downloaded something and you like it is basic morals, ethics & economics.. if you like it you pay the man who made it so he can make more. Not the hardest concept in the world heh.

[mujina]

Well.. I agree that it's great for discovering shit, and great for sampling stuff; but at this point it's waaaay past that for most of the online leeches.

Just look at RRT for gods sake, it's like a giant p2p network with the added bonus of talking to the rest of the users. That's basically what its come to these days.

I think the general problem is that alot of labels are absolute shit at promoting their stuff. Johnny23 did a good thing with the Jak/Pestilence "trailer" - thats how you do it. CJM did the same shit with table of contents, and that turned out heavily rotated on various boards as well. I agree that 20 sec samples is some bullshit and pretty much completely useless. But if done right, samplers can make a difference.

[magowl]

I agree it's gotten a bit out of hand, my point was just to say that it isn't all bad and that there are big gray areas.
And I agree it's all about using the medium for promotion and marketing these days, which a lot of cats fail to do. I like this fairly new site called bandcamp for instance, good place to preview and sell ish for artists. Full previews in decent qual and all, right up my alley.

[mujina]

I dont know why promotion sucks so much these days though.

some of the illest lp's that i've copped in the last couple of years dropped without a word.. shit was like magic'ed onto the scene overnight. no flyers, no boards, no word of mouth, no nothing. but shit was better than anything that got like 200+ replies on forums.

i dont know. I just hope and pray cats step their game up a little in the big 2010.

[dustywingfield]

Yeah people's are lazy when it comes to promotion at the moment, they just seem to assume that everyone knows who they are and are circlejerking it daily over their latest myspace mixtape, with no plans to get their name known.

It made me smile when i last went out to NY wandering around Soho, a sticker promoting Lodeck - Behold was on nearly every single mailbox and streetlight, i don't know if it was J23 promotion, but someone had been putting in some work, and it was good to see.

[mujina]

I was walking through some outdoor skatepark once, and somebody had tagged huge mural for some new album coming out.. that shit made me smile all the way home.



TSOI got the right ideas.

[dknot]

Tho saying a lot of whats been said, my view point on the situation.

I really don't mind downloading an album that almost always has maybe 2 good tracks on it, would be a waste to spend hard earned money on some half assed product which is a recurring theme with most albums done in recent years. From artist i liked or whatever. I personally hate buying cd's because they just go to shit after a few spins, so i have to make copies anyway. Things i like i will support because i want the artist to do more and i admire their work and found them worthy of my money. A big problem is like with jazz/funk stuff.. finding physical copies. A lot of stuff is hard to find/out of print, so it really leaves you one option. To download it. the loss of sales bit i find to be mostly bs. i buy recs and very few cd's of stuff i dig, like omega's singles/album on vinyl, but i had them downloaded first. I love exploring new artist, grabted, most of the stuff i look for is older. So i do find some nice things. So many of these new cats i just don't feel. Tho i have downloaded so much music. Since my introduction to good hiphop around my area, i've put on so many people onto good stuff who in turn have purchased more than plenty, my main homie i chill with went from janky tunes to good music and has his cd book with over 80+ purchased albums, all which stemmed from the album i downloaded, and he's not the only one. There's tons of people who are now diggin it all thanks to a bootleg. And show's they go to where they cop merch and all that. So in my own sense i can only see positive effects of it. Tho it is bad when a good hard working artist doesn't get their dues. But in this day it's hard to take a gamble on someone. Better promotion and more artist/fan activity would def prove positive. So many artist i've seen that seem so inaccessible makes me re think in investing in them because they act like dicks, which i def don't want to support. Anyway, im stoned and should stop before i go in circles repeating everything i previously said. So, downloads to me = not so bad in the right hands. and like said before, your economic situation plays a major role in sales etc, because someone strugglin from month to month for rent/bills/etc might not have the funds they wish to purchase.. so they might bootleg and grab later, or not.. it all depends on the person, like everything else.

[enalist]

Excellent topic - coz as we speak i got a buddy who jus gets a thrill of downloading this ish on da net. I mus admit, da stuff he pulls outta his pc - is insanely ill.
Now, I get ta hear alot of the shit 4rm him, & which ofcoz dat paves da way for me 2 go choose which i cop & which i choose to ignore.

So 4 me - downloading is "ok" thats if ure not selling copies or sumshit like dat. But lyk Dusty says - it pains to spend $$ on dozen albums that r as worthless than a fly's shit! There is dozens of wack albums out there than is dope ones. And maybe the way to eliminate the wack frm the nice is ta download and hear it first, regardless if its an artist I know or respect. I've been dissapointed way too many times to trust anyone anymore. Ofcoz i got ma heavyweights of no doubt buys like - deck,jak,illogic,plead da 5,bluprint,starhh,aesrock&doom,e.t.c. But 4 da rest - no more wasted $$$. Thats ma persona view on it.