(OT) An open letter ... regarding file sharing
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kent_sandvik
- Posts: 489
- Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2003 6:45 am
kent_sandvik wrote:I have a hard time seeing any decent journalist thinking that putting music on shared service is providing a service to the originator... --Kent
So do I ....
Then again certain issues of 'respect' I raised with regards to this forum and certain topics seem to fall on deaf ears also.
My aren't the wings of butterflies beautiful and do they not make wonderful perturbations.....
That's pretty crappy ...Robert Henke wrote:Well, as I said before,
it is not the fact that the music is available, it is about the state of mind a journalist has to have to act so disrespectful. It`s plain wrong.
Robert
I mean, they should have at least ASKED if it was OK with you first.
It's your intellectual property and you have the right to control it's distribution.
Audio Watermarking is definitely the answer I think.
I have an anecdote myself on this kind of thing.
I recently found a girl on MySpace had created a profile in my artist name and had uploaded my Do What U Want tune! After contacting her and asking her nicely to remove it (and to give up the myspace.com/jasefromouttaspace URL which I really would have preferred to use) she was very apologetic and basically loved the tune so much that she wanted to add it to her profile. I guess I should be flattered that poeople so far away have enjoyed the piece ... I've since started building a myspace presence and, in return for her giving up the URL, have started rotating different remixes of DoWhatUWant each week in return for the favour. I don't mind letting these out since after music goes through myspace's compression it sounds pretty shit anyhow.
It's the double edged promo sword ...
; )
JaseFOS
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oh yes that is rudeRobert Henke wrote:Well, as I said before,
it is not the fact that the music is available, it is about the state of mind a journalist has to have to act so disrespectful. It`s plain wrong.
Robert
plus for me it was an old track that I wouldnt see any more money from - very different case
for someone like me it was exciting to see it was out there enough to be on Limewire
journalists... mmmh.... like I said you need them, I need them.
But music journalists are for the vast majority not really journalists. Nor they are specialized in music, nor do they have a music culture. Too many don't have a litterary culture either.
Most of them are freelance and do whatever they're given to review, a bowl of soup @ 3PM, the new Monolake @3.05PM, they're paid badly, do the reviews in a hurry because they have more serious stuff to do.
Listen to so many records they don't know what's good and what's not, follow or oppose themselves to trends created by bigger magazines or taste makers.
Journalist ethics ? the only respected ethic of a journalist is to stand for his peers. Attack a journalist and you're in trouble.
I've had good reviews, I've had bad reviews, in both cases most of them were totally inaccurate.
But if you read a story in the papers you personnally knew about, don't you nearly always find it's a lot of bullshit, errors and false informations ?
What can you expect from a profession that pretends to inform you objectively but hardly ever does (let's face it, it's impossible) without ever admitting it
The position of a reviewer (reviewing an album can't be called journalism) is the assumption that his taste are valuable enough to enlighten the world with his opinion on a product.
let's quote Zappa and replace "Rock" by your own style of music :
"Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, in order to provide articles for people who can't read. "
So basically don't expect anything from a reviewer and you'll never be disappointed.
But music journalists are for the vast majority not really journalists. Nor they are specialized in music, nor do they have a music culture. Too many don't have a litterary culture either.
Most of them are freelance and do whatever they're given to review, a bowl of soup @ 3PM, the new Monolake @3.05PM, they're paid badly, do the reviews in a hurry because they have more serious stuff to do.
Listen to so many records they don't know what's good and what's not, follow or oppose themselves to trends created by bigger magazines or taste makers.
Journalist ethics ? the only respected ethic of a journalist is to stand for his peers. Attack a journalist and you're in trouble.
I've had good reviews, I've had bad reviews, in both cases most of them were totally inaccurate.
But if you read a story in the papers you personnally knew about, don't you nearly always find it's a lot of bullshit, errors and false informations ?
What can you expect from a profession that pretends to inform you objectively but hardly ever does (let's face it, it's impossible) without ever admitting it
The position of a reviewer (reviewing an album can't be called journalism) is the assumption that his taste are valuable enough to enlighten the world with his opinion on a product.
let's quote Zappa and replace "Rock" by your own style of music :
"Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, in order to provide articles for people who can't read. "
So basically don't expect anything from a reviewer and you'll never be disappointed.
Quad 6600 Intel, AsusP5Q, 2Gb ram, XP sp3, Evolution MK361c & UC33e, Line6 UX8
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noratronika
- Posts: 134
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- Contact:
I actually added her to myspace thinking it was you (lol) I thought there was something odd about that page, pm me your real one Jase. Luv Cinda's.
Hey that’s really crappy for you Robert I go with what Jase suggested with the Audio Watermarking (although in this case its too late). No respect and being a person that spends obscene amounts hard earned CA$H on hardware and software (as Jase can confirm) it pisses me off, no end. I'm sick of all the hacks boosting up prices so all the honest consumers feel the pinch.
btw hows your holiday going...
Hey that’s really crappy for you Robert I go with what Jase suggested with the Audio Watermarking (although in this case its too late). No respect and being a person that spends obscene amounts hard earned CA$H on hardware and software (as Jase can confirm) it pisses me off, no end. I'm sick of all the hacks boosting up prices so all the honest consumers feel the pinch.
btw hows your holiday going...
jasefos wrote:
I recently found a girl on MySpace had created a profile in my artist name and had uploaded my Do What U Want tune! After contacting her and asking her nicely to remove it (and to give up the myspace.com/jasefromouttaspace URL which I really would have preferred to use) she was very apologetic and basically loved the tune so much that she wanted to add it to her profile. I guess I should be flattered that poeople so far away have enjoyed the piece ... I've since started building a myspace presence and, in return for her giving up the URL, have started rotating different remixes of DoWhatUWant each week in return for the favour. I don't mind letting these out since after music goes through myspace's compression it sounds pretty shit anyhow.
It's the double edged promo sword ...
; )
DellXPS M1710-2.16GHz//Event 20/20's//A LIVE6//Cubase L3//Reason 3.04//NI Electro Instruments//Motu UL FW//M-Audio FW 18/14//KorgRadias//KorgKontrol49//M-Audio Axiom25/UC-33///KP3...Robert,Robert Henke wrote:None of you guys seems to run a label. None of you spends a huge amount of time and money to send out CDs and vinyl around the world to journalists.
I'm sure this is very frustrating and perhaps even insulting to be treated this way by people that you've trusted and to see your hard work treated with such disregard. I'm sure it's also frustrating to see people steal copies of Live and I'm sure it must be discouraging at times to have no control over your creative work.
However, I hope you know that there are a lot of us out here that deeply appreciate your work, both for Imbalance and for Ableton, and also really respect your decision to keep your work free of DRM and crippling copy protection schemes. So please don't let this get you down too much. For every immoral journalist there are a thousand of us that you never see that have been hugely influenced by your work. Your Floating Point album opened up a lot of new ideas about ambient music for me and Live continues to be a source of inspiration every day.
I agree with you, Robert, completely disrespectful and wrong of the journalist to do this, and against their own code of ethics. I run a label and am a journalist and I see your point absolutely. Why should anyone put a product that they were trusted with online like that?
I feel the only way to deal with this kind of behaviour is to name and shame the journalist in question. Digital watermarking is probably the best way to track your promo's in the future and then you could be aware of which person broke your trust. I would let their publication know about their indiscretion, which would lead to them being disciplined and probably fired. This would be justifiable, especially since they are supposed to follow a strict code of ethics.
I feel the only way to deal with this kind of behaviour is to name and shame the journalist in question. Digital watermarking is probably the best way to track your promo's in the future and then you could be aware of which person broke your trust. I would let their publication know about their indiscretion, which would lead to them being disciplined and probably fired. This would be justifiable, especially since they are supposed to follow a strict code of ethics.
"It's better to burn out than to fade away!"
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pucklermuskau
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robert, if i may suggest that all this situation implies to me is how unnecessary 'professional' music journalists are from the perspective of promotions. Instead of prerelease copies, why not hold back everything until your chosen release date, then submit singles to the p2p networks and over your website? Instead of a half dozen reviews from the so-called experts, invite the public to comment, review and promote your music themselves. By building a community directly, rather than expecting one to form around a positive review, you should find increases in both sales and concerts. And you dont have to feel betrayed by the very people who obviously appreciate your music. Just my CAN$0.02. Good luck...
...lo.
...lo.
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pxruthlessruler
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2006 2:06 am
everyone agrees this sucks. just a couple thoughts
1) in this day and age, it's hard to imagine journalist needing full length lossless advance copies. send them a "sampler" and have the rest available via streaming or something along those lines. trying to put a semi-positive spin on this... this just defines a need in the marketplace that requires a business solution. the problem with watermarking is that someone has to spend time policing P2P sites and time is money :(
2) to the best of my knowledge *any* unlicensed use of copyrighted material is illegal. period. (side note: it's gonna be interesting to see how google resolves youtube's illegalities. 1.6 billion for a video napster seems like quite a bit of money. but anyway...). in fact, technically if you play a song in public (e.g. a club, a wedding, etc) the artist is supposed to be compensated for the same reasons they get paid for radio play. this is why chainstores have music services, because just playing CDs would technically be illegal (or so i've been led to believe)
1) in this day and age, it's hard to imagine journalist needing full length lossless advance copies. send them a "sampler" and have the rest available via streaming or something along those lines. trying to put a semi-positive spin on this... this just defines a need in the marketplace that requires a business solution. the problem with watermarking is that someone has to spend time policing P2P sites and time is money :(
2) to the best of my knowledge *any* unlicensed use of copyrighted material is illegal. period. (side note: it's gonna be interesting to see how google resolves youtube's illegalities. 1.6 billion for a video napster seems like quite a bit of money. but anyway...). in fact, technically if you play a song in public (e.g. a club, a wedding, etc) the artist is supposed to be compensated for the same reasons they get paid for radio play. this is why chainstores have music services, because just playing CDs would technically be illegal (or so i've been led to believe)
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drumroll57
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 12:13 pm
Robert,
I really feel your pain and frustration with the lack of ethics which some people can display.
Yet (being more or less in exactly in the same boat) I must say that we all may be coming to the same realization. The record business isn't what it used to be. People, however, haven't changed, and greed, profiteering and everything else is still the same, but just a bit more acute and faster than ever, because ->
...one major thing has changed: Technology!! All of this liberating technology we have created and benefited from has had some very unforeseen effects, none the least the fact that everyone has access to any digital content, and that it can instantly be disseminated. Certainly you've heard of what happened to Weird Al Yankovic not a month ago, where his sponsor's promotional tie-in was cancelled because his video showed up on YouTube several weeks ahead of the official premiere.
IMHO, nothing will ever save that aspect of the 'record business' like it used to be 'back in the day', and FWIW, I think that the records are becoming nothing more than a free promotional vehicle for live gigs and a reason to get press in magazines!!! And in the same step, the model of 'official release schedule' and everything else seems to be slowly going out of the window as well.
As I said above, I feel your pain, as I share it everyday, when I try to make payroll for my label's staff (cut in half since what it was 4 years ago) and have to sacrifice some of the income I get elsewhere to keep that boat afloat, with the same exact nagging and frustrating situations you are describing.
But honestly, if we take a little step back from the hurt, as music creators we may all have to find the Zen in this, and agree that we have created a situation where there is no turning back, and rather than worrying about what many at major labels are doing with losing battles like DRM and the likes, come to realize that an over-abundance of content has created such a glut that no one really cares about recorded music anymore the same way they might have a generation ago. The flipside of this story is that there is already so much music out there that some of us who have invested very, very large sums of $$ in record labels are starting to think that any press, any publicity, any notice (and yes, p2p are some form of viral promotion) is better than getting another one of our records buried by the other 300 other releases that came out that week, and whether or not it is a good song, DJ's won't even have time to make it a hit because there will be an undending stream of other records vying for their time and attention, which will make it impossible for it to stick into people's minds long enough for it to become known.
Being that you had the foresight to associate yourself with one of the planet's foremost young and successful software companies, one would argue that you have already seen the 'recorded music for sale' exclusive model as something that unfortunately is increasingly obsolete, and perhaps devoid of any real 'value' on its own. (Besides the satisfaction of having made a fantastic and timeless record, the income and licensing opportunities that will undoubtedly arise from interactive media, advertising and movie use, as well as the many gig bookings that will come from maintaining a presence as an active artist out there)
Wish that I could find any comforting words out there, or constructive suggestions to alleviate such problems. This is the bed we've made, we all have to sleep in it. Undeniably, the bootleggers and inveterate file-sharers know all too well that in the long run this will stop motivating the creators to come up with stuff, but they have the same lack of long-term foresight that even governments and elected officials seem to have in many places around the world.
Selfish, short-term oriented, greedy, ungrateful. That pretty much describes a great percentage of the human race's behaviour. Nothing new at all, I'd say.
So, perhaps you should resign yourself that from now on, after you created it and gave others copies of it, you should be at peace that the worst WILL happen. When looked at it from the perspective of your entire career and creative output, it might not be of enough importance to register of blip on the radar as to what it all really meant. Hope that you don't find this offensive, it certainly wasn't meant to be.
Still very much looking forward to hearing your record when it comes out officially!
The Alaska one was so great!!
Much respect, always.
D.
I really feel your pain and frustration with the lack of ethics which some people can display.
Yet (being more or less in exactly in the same boat) I must say that we all may be coming to the same realization. The record business isn't what it used to be. People, however, haven't changed, and greed, profiteering and everything else is still the same, but just a bit more acute and faster than ever, because ->
...one major thing has changed: Technology!! All of this liberating technology we have created and benefited from has had some very unforeseen effects, none the least the fact that everyone has access to any digital content, and that it can instantly be disseminated. Certainly you've heard of what happened to Weird Al Yankovic not a month ago, where his sponsor's promotional tie-in was cancelled because his video showed up on YouTube several weeks ahead of the official premiere.
IMHO, nothing will ever save that aspect of the 'record business' like it used to be 'back in the day', and FWIW, I think that the records are becoming nothing more than a free promotional vehicle for live gigs and a reason to get press in magazines!!! And in the same step, the model of 'official release schedule' and everything else seems to be slowly going out of the window as well.
As I said above, I feel your pain, as I share it everyday, when I try to make payroll for my label's staff (cut in half since what it was 4 years ago) and have to sacrifice some of the income I get elsewhere to keep that boat afloat, with the same exact nagging and frustrating situations you are describing.
But honestly, if we take a little step back from the hurt, as music creators we may all have to find the Zen in this, and agree that we have created a situation where there is no turning back, and rather than worrying about what many at major labels are doing with losing battles like DRM and the likes, come to realize that an over-abundance of content has created such a glut that no one really cares about recorded music anymore the same way they might have a generation ago. The flipside of this story is that there is already so much music out there that some of us who have invested very, very large sums of $$ in record labels are starting to think that any press, any publicity, any notice (and yes, p2p are some form of viral promotion) is better than getting another one of our records buried by the other 300 other releases that came out that week, and whether or not it is a good song, DJ's won't even have time to make it a hit because there will be an undending stream of other records vying for their time and attention, which will make it impossible for it to stick into people's minds long enough for it to become known.
Being that you had the foresight to associate yourself with one of the planet's foremost young and successful software companies, one would argue that you have already seen the 'recorded music for sale' exclusive model as something that unfortunately is increasingly obsolete, and perhaps devoid of any real 'value' on its own. (Besides the satisfaction of having made a fantastic and timeless record, the income and licensing opportunities that will undoubtedly arise from interactive media, advertising and movie use, as well as the many gig bookings that will come from maintaining a presence as an active artist out there)
Wish that I could find any comforting words out there, or constructive suggestions to alleviate such problems. This is the bed we've made, we all have to sleep in it. Undeniably, the bootleggers and inveterate file-sharers know all too well that in the long run this will stop motivating the creators to come up with stuff, but they have the same lack of long-term foresight that even governments and elected officials seem to have in many places around the world.
Selfish, short-term oriented, greedy, ungrateful. That pretty much describes a great percentage of the human race's behaviour. Nothing new at all, I'd say.
So, perhaps you should resign yourself that from now on, after you created it and gave others copies of it, you should be at peace that the worst WILL happen. When looked at it from the perspective of your entire career and creative output, it might not be of enough importance to register of blip on the radar as to what it all really meant. Hope that you don't find this offensive, it certainly wasn't meant to be.
Still very much looking forward to hearing your record when it comes out officially!
The Alaska one was so great!!
Much respect, always.
D.
stay groovy!
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mercyplease
- Posts: 1003
- Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:22 am
- Location: Sent back to hell
Re: (OT) An open letter ... regarding file sharing
OMG, can no one get his point!!Robert Henke wrote:An open letter to music journalists regarding file sharing
Berlin, October 13, 2006
Our new release "Layering Buddha" has been put on soulseek already,
encoded by two different users (protox2 aka Maurizio and tipsch), more than three weeks prior to release date.
Less than one hundred music journalists got a copy of the finished product at this time. We are a very small label. We do promotion with nice and expensive finished products. We send out promo copies to everyone who asks for it.
We are embarrassed, frustrated and annoyed by the fact that two of you worked so massively against us. We at imbalance do not think DRM is the way to go and we believe in our customers as being honest and supportive. But:
This case changes the way we will do promotion in the future.
We will either give away CDRs with tagged versions for each individual journalist and we will only do so if we have a guaranteed review, or we will send out CDRs with excerpts. In the case of the tagged CDs we will be able to trace it back if the music appears online and we guarantee we will take every possible legal action against this person. This is sad for those of you who did a great job of supporting us for the last ten years, but we do not want this experience again.
Robert Henke
monolake / imbalance computer music
www.monolake.de
Robert sent out hard copy CDs to journalists for review and promotion purposes. Then he finds his CDs has been ripped and put on some file sharing network three weeks before the release date. Its obvious one of those journalists intentionally uploaded the album to the site and of course this should piss anyone off.
Maybe it wouldnt be so bad three months after release but three weeks before discards any notion of up-frontf exclusive promo CDs
The bottom line is that even jornalists cant be trusted and because the business is symbiotic its incredibly stupid and destructive to their own industry to do do such a thing. Oh the liberals among us will sit ehere and write maybe it wasnt one of them/ Shite!, it was one of them as they are th eonly people that got copies. Maybe it was Roberts dog in the middle of the night
Robert wasnt complaing so much that his music is on a p2p network. Its how and by whom this was done that pisses him off. There is no good side to this particular episode and I think many of you get carried away with the idea that anypones music on file sharing is a great thing due to increased exposure. The reality is there isnt any good side for a niche artist to find their unreleased album on a p2p network three weeks before its sold.
HA HA HA 
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mercyplease
- Posts: 1003
- Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:22 am
- Location: Sent back to hell
Aaaah fuck your politically correct bullshit. Thats the problem in todays europe, everyones blooody spineless. It was one of the journalists you can bet on it!!. He/she will get some secret little satisfaction knowing they were the first person on the planet to share someone elses music.djsynchro wrote: Anyway, I think you should maybe let go of ths idea that there is a journalist out there disrespecting you... you might be right of course, but it's hard to know these things. Maybe one of them made a copy for a friend, and made them promise not to copy of course! And they made a copy for someone... made them promise not to copy, but they don't even know it's a review copy and so on..
HA HA HA
yeah bet on it ! There's no way you'll ever know. The principle of betting is that in the end there's a definitive result.mercyplease wrote:Aaaah fuck your politically correct bullshit. Thats the problem in todays europe, everyones blooody spineless. It was one of the journalists you can bet on it!!. He/she will get some secret little satisfaction knowing they were the first person on the planet to share someone elses music.
OMG can't you get my point ?
it's a shame you haven't read any of the comments and understood them.
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