(OT) An open letter ... regarding file sharing

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:01 pm

oh, one more thing for tonight: i really find this discussion here usefull and interesting. It is not that I think your perspective on this is completly wrong, it just has lots of moral implications....

Robert

xzusa8ky · Post by **xzusa8ky** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:02 pm

ya that's a nice way to treat all the other journalist who actually do some good work for Monolake or not?

I mean i would not do it like that that's for sure!

If you are a pro, and i thought you are, this is all day music business problems you are talking about, and not only a journalists problem i guess.

and i guess that you are not the only one here who runs a studio! Do you also think that we all here at this board are amateures or what? I spend all my time and money on Live and in my studio, and yes i know the business too!

i guess it's is better to Calm down and sleep a bit...

Regards

djsentinel · Post by **djsentinel** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:07 pm

horselesspaul wrote:Mixes have become a way for talentless no marks to tell everybody "I'm a DJ and here's the URL for one of MY mixes".

1. There are plenty of DJ's, myself included, that produce their own stuff.
2. There are plenty of DJ's who play a good mixture of their stuff and other people's stuff.

And Mixes are meant to be a way for a DJ to play music through the night without having the music stop. I agree that people who just do mixes using their mouse is retarted and stealing music and calling it your own is stupid, but don't go insulting dj's.

You really have that much balls eh?

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:10 pm

xzusa8ky,
calm down. I was not saying everyone but me is an amateur. I just argued from a label perspective and not from an artists / producers persepective. It is important to discuss these topics, especially in the light of DRM. If we give up arguing on a moral level we end up with technical solutions for social issues and this must fail.

Of course every journalist I know personally and who supported me will still get copies. But if you run a label you are confronted with a more complex situation, including distributors and people you have never talked to personally but who are super very important and need to get a copy right from the distributor ASAP.

Robert

kent_sandvik · Post by **kent_sandvik** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:16 pm

If I was in this situation, in future I would give MP3 files with individal id3 data information, if one leaks out, it's easy to find out wherefrom it arrived (assuming the other part does not know about the secret id3 tags and removes them), and thus they are not part of any next round of seedings. --Kent

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:19 pm

did anyone ever think that these guys might have accidently shared the stuff on soulseek? I mean you rip a cd and sometimes you have a default location for ripping them and then you forget about the fact that it's a soulseek share file and you're not even thinking about it when you sign onto soulseek. I imagine this is what happened. which still sucks and they should have been more cautious but I'm betting they didn't intend on giving it away free to the world it just ended up in their share file cause all the music they have is in there.

I'm not saying it's ok, but I'm saying you could view it as a fumble of sorts.

xzusa8ky · Post by **xzusa8ky** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:20 pm

yes i get the point....wish you luck

regards

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:39 pm

Hey Robert.

My first label was run by my then girlfriend and I totally appreciate how hard it is to run a label, how much work it is & how expensive it is to send packages with expensive (heavy vinyl international postage) promos around the world.

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..

I am not saying it went like that, I'm just saying you might never find out what happened. I thought it was very interesting what you wrote about cracks of Live the other day. You said something like, most people are decent and we have a bit of copy protection but we believe in putting our resources in support rather than policeing copyright violation.

I'm not so sure it would be energy well spent into mistrusting every jourmalist from now on and giving them music with serial numbers etc.
I also find it weird that a journalist himself would put your music on Soulseek. After all they're in the same business as you. They wouldn't want their review out on the net as a PDF before the magazine as out surely?

Anyway who knows these things? Interesting discussion indeed. Will be interesting to know what you decide to do fot the future. Much respect for all your work!

horselesspaul · Post by **horselesspaul** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:42 pm

David wrote:
horselesspaul wrote:We're a long way from the circulated amongst mates mixed tape now.
Mixes have become a way for talentless no marks to tell everybody "I'm a DJ and here's the URL for one of MY mixes". None of them have ever produced anything creatively and steal other people's intellectual property at will. W@nkers all. Go do something for yourself. Oh, you can't.
If they had to pay royalties (which they should) they wouldn't bother and would stick to their boring IT numedia w@nk jobs. If you want to hear new music before you buy it there are numerous ways today to do this. Claiming that you are promoting other people's music is spurious at best. Ask them and see what reaction you get BEFORE doing it. Gah!
Rant, off. And relax.
Lol, is that the best you can do ? sorry mate, it takes a lot more than that to wind me up, nice try though.

Didn't actually mean you, David. I'm sure you're talented and the fact that you've taken them down suggests you are not a self-obsessed pr*ck either.

horselesspaul · Post by **horselesspaul** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 8:51 pm

djsentinel wrote:
horselesspaul wrote:Mixes have become a way for talentless no marks to tell everybody "I'm a DJ and here's the URL for one of MY mixes".
1. There are plenty of DJ's, myself included, that produce their own stuff.
2. There are plenty of DJ's who play a good mixture of their stuff and other people's stuff.

And Mixes are meant to be a way for a DJ to play music through the night without having the music stop. I agree that people who just do mixes using their mouse is retarted and stealing music and calling it your own is stupid, but don't go insulting dj's.

I wasn't talking about real DJ's for f*ck's sake. Why be so sensitive? I was talking about the very people you have called retarded. Perhaps I should have been clearer for you.
You are being creative and not passing others' work off as your own.
Mixing in a club situation is an art.
Point and click with a crack of Live or Traktor and then Soulseeking it is not. It's stealing imo.
O.K?

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:48 pm

I think the issue is the timing, and the nature of the effort. The promotional cost is borne by the label, as part of an investment.

What most people find distasteful about the Major Labels/mainstream popular culture is that they contrive to invest in that product which has questionable artistic, expressive and/or cultural merit because it is most like the last thing that made money.

A label like the one Robert is involved with that eschews that formula, but it stills bears the cost of promotion as part of being a label. You are taking a chance that some positive buzz will be generated by your promotional effort.

There are companies that will do promotion for any of us that put out CDs independently, send these to radio stations, follow up with calls. You have to make a bunch of duplicates for them to send. The cost is reasonable for that kind of work, direct mailing, telephone followups, office work. The cost is reasonable for making the bunch of duplicates-- but it ranges in the thousands (which you hope to get back from gigs and CD sales).

The people who upload records for illegal filesharing tend to self style themselves as eschewing the major labels' formula, also, and the people who you involve as part of your promotional effort are supposed to uphold some journalistic standard of integrity.

So it is a betrayal on a few different levels.

Chris J · Post by **Chris J** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:32 pm

Like DJ synchro said you can't be sure it a journalist who did it, there can be so many explanations not involving the journalist.

But even if it is, like someone else said he's also creating a buzz by sharing it before release, and finding it good enough to take the time to share.

But if you look at promo you NEED the journalist much more than he needs you. How many CDs did he receive the same day as yours ?
So when you say :

"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"

this is bribing ! a guaranteed review. Will you ask for a GOOD guaranteed review ?

"or we will send out CDRs with excerpts"

waow, you're being too hard.

Seriously it's the name of the game : you're making a nice package to hopefully stand out from the rest, hopefully make him want to listen with a nice disposition. You're trying to trick him, to seduce him. I don't think you're in an equal position at all, nor in an agreement of mutual respect.
You're in business, trying to get good reviews to get more famous through his writing and sell more records.
He's got power and you need his influence. The measures you plan to take would only affect you. It wouldn't be a "punishment" for him.
There's enough music for him to do without your next record. But can you do without journalists and reviews?

I'd love to see the face of a journalist when you tell him : "look I'm releasing a new album in a month, I'll send you a copy if you promise to make a review."

If he accepts your deal, I think you shouldn't bother sending a copy, just send a check. or a bag of cocaine, journalists love that form of bribing ( but it has to be done more tactfully)

drewbixcube · Post by **drewbixcube** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:43 pm

Actually, As far as major labels go, promotional costs are usually tacked on to an artist's advance. Rarely will a label ever just give money away for promotional reasons. Yes, a label will help with promotions, but they will always recoupe. The only thing an artist can do, if signed to a label, is hope that enough records are actually sold so that they can get out from underneath the label. This is very hard to do when the record you are trying to make money from is being distributed illegaly.

P2P filesharing is illegal! It infringes on the copyright owner's right to reproduce and distribute.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:45 pm

Chris is on the money here.

Robert, you are in the same position as every film studio on the planet. It's going to be impossible for you to stop piracy. Even with your fancy tracking stuff, all it may take is some journalist to load your CD in itunes and some schmuch to burn it off from the network computer or whatever... Maybe some music journalists do use Soulseek to find the latest music to write or check up on and put all their mp3s in one folder and yours got uploaded by mistake... whatever.. you can't stop piracy through accidents or purposeful means.

What you can do is apply some eastern philosophies and take advantage of the opportunities presented by piracy. Don't worry about the ethics stuff.. I can't believe you even think someone in media is required to have ethics, just get your shit out there, get famous and get a busload of people to your shows and make your money.

dave999z · Post by **dave999z** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 12:58 am

Chris J and mikemc have together made important points, I think.

Chris, you're dead on that one download does not equal one lost sale. Not even close. If anything one download is more likely to equal one gained concert ticket. This provides logical and moral (forget legal) justification for downloading overpriced content, from a record industry convicted of price fixing, which gives hardly any profits to artists anyway.

mikemc, you're right that this justification breaks down when applied to smaller independent labels.

Robert, if you feel betrayed, try for a moment to place yourself in the shoes of the journalist that did this. When you provided the material, I assume you did not expressely instruct the journalist not to disseminate it. Rather, you assumed that the journalist understood that he should not disseminate it. IF he understood that and then dissminated it, then yes it's a betrayal and karma will get him. But is it possible that he did not understand he was not supposed to do that? That may sound ridiculous--I mean who wouldn't know not to distribute someone else's music without permission, right? Actually, I think disregarding copyright is so commonplace now that he may not have given it a second thought. Sure maybe it's careless, but it may not have been a malicious act. Given today's environment, where every new release is available illegaly before it's available legally, people just don't fucking care about paying for music anymore. Really hardcore fans of a given artist will want to buy the music. Others will suport the artist by going to shows. The rest would not have bought it anyway. You even stated that you are not angry about lost sales. You're angry about a betrayal. But if the journalist didn't think he was costing you any sales, he may have thought he was not costing you anything.

Just my take on it.

Dave