And even if a downloader doesn't buy an album, it's very likely he'll tell his friends (or just plain everyone) about an album he loves, which can lead to purchases that would've never happened otherwise.

And this this crap right here is why a small movie place like the one my aunt and uncle own have to up the ticket prices. It's why CDs cost so much and so on. You sir are any asshole for doing that. It's why families can't even go to the movies any more.

Well the movie theaters only get 8% ot the ticker sells that is it not whole lot of money.

Ever one illegal downloading is a damn sorry good for nothing. And you are all part of the reason we get crap and why people can't even go to the theaters if there is a good movie. You keep jacking up the damn price ever time you illegal down load stuff.

It's people like you that put record stores out of busniess and why people have to go to fucking Wal-Mart. Thank You thank you very much for doing that shit. You people are runing the music busniess not Century Media.

Ever wonder why there are very little to no music stores you all put them out of busniess you dumb asses.

And how many of those labels last when you illegal download the bands music? HOw many of the bands last? Oh that's right none of them do. So they sign deals with big labels and go bye bye. Really many of you need to stop and think about this one a lot harder.

Cost of a music album in 1975: $5.99
Cost of a music album in 1975, with inflation calculated for 2010: $24.00
Cost of a music album today: $14.99

Cost of a movie ticket in 1975: $2.05
Cost of a movie ticket in 1975, with inflation calculated for 2010: $8.21
Cost of a movie ticket today: $8.50

Illegal downloading jacking up the prices, you say...?

For the second time in this thread I have to say, butthurt much?!

For god's sake get a grip will you? Do you honestly want me to believe that cinemas are expensive because people download movies? Have you taken a look at the revenue for the major blockbusters recently???

You want to talk about people not going to the cinemas, you know why that happens? Because the last few years have been horrible in cinematic terms. The amount of crap and bullshit movies that has hit us ever since Avatar revolutionized the 3D panorama is preposterous, to the point where a remake of Total Recall is now available. I'm talking about a movie which is 20 years old, does it really need to be revamped and butchered to appear in an almighty 3D gloss? Fuck me, next you know they'll be doing the same to Terminator, Aliens and whatnot because kids today can't see a movie which is more than 5 years old and the movie industry is so lost at heart with a lack of ideas that all they can come up with is lame remakes/reboots and more 3D CGI bullshit.

You want more people on the cinemas? How about they start with doing good movies in the first place?

As for the music part of your statement, I admittedly download music to browse my future purchases and check out OOP stuff. I buy my share of records and merch from the bands when I can. What do you do to support bands? How many CDs have you bought during the past year? Stop flinging bullshit at those who admittedly BUY music will you?!

Cds are too expensive. Cut the cost and sales will go up (which also means more popularity, which leads to publicity, tours and etc for the band). I really feel that the cost of Cds is a factor that leads to downloading. So eventually with the cut cost, the sales should increase to the point where they make up that lost profit with the cut. Sure their is no guarantee there. But hey, I know I would buy more Cds if they were cheaper.. and I'm just your average consumer. But for the record, for all the downloading I do, I'd really prefer to own a copy. Not that the split-up generic teutonic heavy metal band or their label from the 80s is missing my dollar anyways.

Prices have changed, situations have changed. The issue here is that suing a couple thousand people for illegally downloading albums is not going to fix the problem that the label faces. The issue of disenfranchising fans from a label that markets itself as a niche extreme metal label might drive fans away, to the narrower niche labels, which is now a reality because it's so easy to hear so much music now. Wonder what Shadow Kingdom or Dark Descent sounds like? Check their MA page, spent a few minutes searching, and half an hour later you have a dozen albums from each ready to listen. It takes less time to go from never having heard a band to being in possession of a listenable copy of an album than it does to listen to the album itself. These labels that I truly admire put out a product that makes you want to go back to it.

This is true to some extent, but I don't think it is a practical business model. While I think a few albums that I bought have had big sales numbers being driven by $6-8 CDs (shipping included), sometimes from Amazon, I think that's simply one tool that works to move a lot of units of a respected but marginalized band's music.

The issue with large record labels not selling is that people can now survey the scene for music and hear stuff without purchasing it. The consumer clearly doesn't want to buy every album from a name they know when they are disillusioned with it. Everyone here who buys music owns anywhere from a few to a couple hundred CDs that they don't really listen to, but bought because it sounded good at the time.

I agree Zodi. Back in the day one was accustomed to buy stuff from XYZ label and you'd know it was probably cool because they were the ones with the big guns of the scene. Nowadays you get so much shit releases from bigger labels and so much cooler and killer stuff from independent small time labels that sales on bigger ones will eventually fall.

What I find more hypocritical about CM is that they're riding the wave of OSDM revival as hard as they can to milk some more bucks from fans. As if Miasmal, Morbus Chron and Sonne Adam wouldn't be able to release their stuff on other labels without worries. Then it's reissue, reissue, reissue, compilation, compilation, reissue, compilation... ad aeternum. OK I get it, they're trying to get some street cred with those bands one could say, then bam, lawsuits on those who fuck around with them. Kind of hypocritical of them to act all cool and "true" (I do hate the term but it provides some meaning in this context) only to give a big fuck you over the curve. It's all about money so why not boycott a company which doesn't give a shit about the music, the musicians and the scene but only dollars?!

Bottom line, there are plenty of labels that do things right towards musicians and provides us with great and lasting releases. And those are the one which deserve our money!

Yo Oxenkiller, in the US we would call illegal downloading and file-sharing infringement rather than stealing in a legal sense. Most states also use the term theft rather than stealing, and theft can be broken down into a bunch of technicalities that no one here cares about. In short, the big intellectual property rights are infringed upon: patents, trademarks, and copyright. Trade secrets are typically theft situations though, and moral rights don't really exist in the US, but I have seen other countries refer to those being infringed.

While I don't think that a legal definition is a substitute for a moral discussion on whether it is stealing I thought some people might find the distinctions interesting. My take on it is that the statutory damages in the US of $750-$30,00 per infringement are wildly draconian and the cap of $150,000 statutory damages for willful infringement is absolutely mind boggling.

I used to have more of an issue with downloading that I do now, but I'd be lying to say I've not downloaded stuff in the past (movies in particular), but for music I've only ever downloaded out of print or demo material which isn't available elsewhere. I'd not download a 'new' album though, I generally find out what I like from knowing a band already, youtube, spotify (for more mainstream stuff), myspace or bandcamp (the former two often have bands streaming their entire new album anyway). Besides, I don't have an issue with blind purchasing things I like the look of or hear good things about via word of mouth. I don't have to be thoroughly convinced via multiple listens of something before purchasing like many seem to be. If it turns out I buy then don't like it - I sell it on and spend my money on something different. No big deal.

This is why I don't understand the argument "I only download to see if I like something" - there are so many other ways of hearing stuff to test it out, so I can only presume these guys are the sort of guys that used to walk into HMV back in the day, and stand in the 'headphones' booth listening to albums in their entirety for days on end before deciding they like something and then purchasing - hahahah.

Also, the argument that 'downloading is the new tape trading' is way out. Tape trading was limited to your contacts and friends, working together for mutual benefit, with music from a limited number of bands and albums spreading slowly throughout their contacts and friends. With downloading, EVERYTHING is available to anyone who has the internet instantly - it's not even on the same scale.

Either way, you'll never stop downloading. Free and instant is hard to compete against for the labels, and they're struggling. I'd be interested to see Lacuna Coils take on this (I heard Iced Earth weren't particularly happy with it). It's interesting, because it seems to be the major label artists who seem more bothered about downloading eating into their income, even though they're making more money than the likes of Iced Earth, who seem pretty nonplussed about the entire situation.

That's fine for you, but for others, with all the different metal albums competing for your $, there's absolutely nothing wrong with skipping blind-buying in order to dl first, and then buy the records you WANT to buy. It's only fair that you as a consumer get what you actually want, and you shouldn't have to sacrifice your hard-earned money in a blind, trial-and-error system just because that's the way it was before the Net; a lot of things used to be different in the world, that doesn't automatically make them better.

This is going to annoy you, so I'm sorry, but CDs are not expensive. On average, they have gone down in price over the last few years, against inflation. I paid around £12 for Fat of the Land in 1997. A comparable album today would be around £10 on release. How is that expensive?

Yeah, I wasn't preaching that everyone should blind buy - it just works for me on occasion and I was giving my perspective.

Purely out of interest, why do you have to download if you only do so to test things out? Why not just stream it, or check out a few tracks on youtube, bandcamp or myspace? How many times do you have to hear something before you decide you like it? Tell me it isn't just me where (generally) I can decide if I like something or not pretty much instantly? Do you have to like every single thing about the album to buy it?

And this this crap right here is why a small movie place like the one my aunt and uncle own have to up the ticket prices. It's why CDs cost so much and so on. You sir are any asshole for doing that. It's why families can't even go to the movies any more.

Well the movie theaters only get 8% ot the ticker sells that is it not whole lot of money.

Ever one illegal downloading is a damn sorry good for nothing. And you are all part of the reason we get crap and why people can't even go to the theaters if there is a good movie. You keep jacking up the damn price ever time you illegal down load stuff.

It's people like you that put record stores out of busniess and why people have to go to fucking Wal-Mart. Thank You thank you very much for doing that shit. You people are runing the music busniess not Century Media.

Ever wonder why there are very little to no music stores you all put them out of busniess you dumb asses.[/quote]
For the second time in this thread I have to say, butthurt much?!

For god's sake get a grip will you? Do you honestly want me to believe that cinemas are expensive because people download movies? Have you taken a look at the revenue for the major blockbusters recently???

You want to talk about people not going to the cinemas, you know why that happens? Because the last few years have been horrible in cinematic terms. The amount of crap and bullshit movies that has hit us ever since Avatar revolutionized the 3D panorama is preposterous, to the point where a remake of Total Recall is now available. I'm talking about a movie which is 20 years old, does it really need to be revamped and butchered to appear in an almighty 3D gloss? Fuck me, next you know they'll be doing the same to Terminator, Aliens and whatnot because kids today can't see a movie which is more than 5 years old and the movie industry is so lost at heart with a lack of ideas that all they can come up with is lame remakes/reboots and more 3D CGI bullshit.

You want more people on the cinemas? How about they start with doing good movies in the first place?


Couldnt agree more as far as movies go. Film budgets/actor salaries have gotten so ridiculous.

Speaking purely as a buyer for a UK indie online retailer here - the prices could easily be cheaper but it's all down to the labels themselves to regulate it. Prices have dropped in high street stores for new releases, but this is only because they were profiteering hugely back in the days, and had to do something to counteract their losses to the likes of Amazon online who were offering things at 8.99 that used to be 14.99 in HMV. These days, the retailers themselves make bare minimum on CDs, so the cost is pretty much entirely down to the labels pricing, and due to the drop in physical sales (which a large part is down to illegal downloading, there's no two ways about it) it looks unlikely that labels are going to start dropping prices any time soon, as they're selling less and less (in the UK, overall CD sales are down 25% in 2012 over the same period in 2011).

CDs have 'dealer prices' which is the generic price a label will sell to a retailer for. For example a new release from Universal Music would be £9.17. If you're lucky enough to have enough clout as a retailer to spend a good amount regularly with Universal, you will get a set discount off the dealer price (our company gets 10%, but the likes of HMV & Amazon would get up to 20% due to the bulk quantities they buy in). So, on new release titles, even the likes of Amazon (who sell at £8.99, say) would actually be making a LOSS selling these titles when you consider they have built in shipping and handling into the cost price, as well as tax, warehouse space, wages, packaging etc etc. The thing is, they actually class this 'loss leader' way of selling as marketing as they believe having these low prices on the new release titles will bring people to the site to buy things which make larger margins. They mainly counteract this on the music side by marking up their back catalogue titles by bigger margins (say, an old Bob Dylan album would be £3.20 cost to Amazon, but they will sell onsite for £6.99).

Re: CD pricing, there's a copy of Watain's Lawless Darkness special edition in my local HMV that has been there since release as far as I know. And the price has remained constant too - £20 (about $30 I think). So, for one bonus track we're paying £5 more than the standard album, which has also been there since release as far as I know. One copy of each. Really?

Speaking purely as a buyer for a UK indie online retailer here - the prices could easily be cheaper but it's all down to the labels themselves to regulate it. Prices have dropped in high street stores for new releases, but this is only because they were profiteering hugely back in the days, and had to do something to counteract their losses to the likes of Amazon online who were offering things at 8.99 that used to be 14.99 in HMV. These days, the retailers themselves make bare minimum on CDs, so the cost is pretty much entirely down to the labels pricing, and due to the drop in physical sales (which a large part is down to illegal downloading, there's no two ways about it) it looks unlikely that labels are going to start dropping prices any time soon, as they're selling less and less (in the UK, overall CD sales are down 25% in 2012 over the same period in 2011).

CDs have 'dealer prices' which is the generic price a label will sell to a retailer for. For example a new release from Universal Music would be £9.17. If you're lucky enough to have enough clout as a retailer to spend a good amount regularly with Universal, you will get a set discount off the dealer price (our company gets 10%, but the likes of HMV & Amazon would get up to 20% due to the bulk quantities they buy in). So, on new release titles, even the likes of Amazon (who sell at £8.99, say) would actually be making a LOSS selling these titles when you consider they have built in shipping and handling into the cost price, as well as tax, warehouse space, wages, packaging etc etc. The thing is, they actually class this 'loss leader' way of selling as marketing as they believe having these low prices on the new release titles will bring people to the site to buy things which make larger margins. They mainly counteract this on the music side by marking up their back catalogue titles by bigger margins (say, an old Bob Dylan album would be £3.20 cost to Amazon, but they will sell onsite for £6.99).[/quote]

While cd sales are down from illegal downloading, I think it's more down because people are buying digital albums instead.

Thanks for providing some really useful information. It helps to know the facts in a debate like this.

...and this will be one of the titles where HMV will be hoping to make some good money. The digipak Lawless Darkness is a 9.99 dealer (cost to retailer) price from Plastichead wholesale, but HMV likely deal directly with each independent label (Season of Mist in this instance), so they could get it a few percent cheaper for sure. Add on VAT of 20% to the main dealer price, then add in their general day to day costs (transport, staff, rent), and they'd likely be breaking even selling at... hmm... £13-14 - something like that. But, as Seasons of Mist are a French label, they probably class it as an import, hence nudging the price up even further again. Either way, they'll be making a few quid profit on that. Compare that to a new release title for... I don't know... Job for a Cowboy or whoever the flavour of the month is, they'll likely go £9 which will be around break even pricing for them on a £6-something buy price. Again, this is just to get the punters in and hope for repeat custom.

Also, HMV will have full sale or return on a lot of stuff, so there's no point marking down the price on Watain when they can return it and get what they paid reimbursed. They'd rather have the range of title, and to let it fester on a shelf for a year in the chance they could make a few quid off it.



While it's true that digital sales are up year on year again, it's not as much so as to offset the drop in physical sales - hence why the market is in turmoil. Interesting fact (well, for a music geek like me anyway), a few weeks ago, Rihanna got the number one album spot in the UK chart with the least number of overall sales since 1994 (less than 10k). For a major AAA artist like her, this is horrific believe it or not. There's a tangible feeling of unease in general, especially amongst the majors. This has now drilled down to the labels like Century Media, who although are fairly big in the realm of metal, are relatively small fry in comparison to the likes of Island, Epic etc. But will labels ever drop prices? I doubt it. Too archaic and set in their ways.

Perhaps we should not think of an homogenous model for all physical formats of music. I have noticed metal fans (in a vast majority) support physical releases in general, whereas pop music fans just go and download their favorite songs. What I mean to say is that metal-focused recording companies are probably doing far better than some of the bigger companies, because metal fans tend to buy. And perhaps that should be the basis for a new sales model for our genre, and maybe other genres should do so as well. Note that the genre factor is just an example of the many ways these model could be differentiated from one another.

What I find a bit odd is that with all of the downloading that is been going on for years and now Century Media decides to do something about it now regarding their releases. In the end I think Century Media's plan to sue downloaders will backfire on them.

I have to say Daemonlord, you know your shit man!

With that being said I wanted to make just a couple of remarks on your first post in this discussion. First, when I said that I download to check out a new album, which I normally do, is not because I'm not aware of what I actually like or not or that I have to take several spins to decide if it's a keeper or not. The simple fact is that the time it takes for me to search and stream a couple of songs on Bandcamp/Youtube/Soundcloud/whatever is more or less equivalent to googling up the album and downloading it. Call me old fashioned but I like to take a global look at it because even metal seems to becoming single-oriented nowadays, to the point where teaser tracks are often not indicative of the quality of an entire album. It's more of a matter of simplicity in procedure more than anything else, and I guess many people will think alike. It's not like me or others are reuploading those albums, we just check them out and then delete the digital files and buy physical copies.

On the MP3 being the new tape-trading I have to say that I don't think it's a far fetched sentiment as you say. The major difference nowadays is actually the scale of things, so if tape-trading was to exist today it had to be in a way that it eliminated the waiting time for snail mail and the actual reach of each individual. MP3s and the Internet have been the provider of this new vehicle that is now carrying music all around the globe. Sure the scale is way larger but the principle is the same, people are sharing copies of music between themselves. Of course that with the scale being so big the process becomes impersonal and more an acquired fact rather than the personal thing it was back then, but again I reiterate that the basic functioning principle is the same.

On the digital vs physical sale I have to say that 2011 was the first year where the global annual market of music sales had more digital files sold than physical. Sure it was like a 51-49% win for digital, but it only reinforces the growing tendency of past years. But let's not forget the fact that while mainstream artists tend to sell more digital than physical, being that people only want the radio hits and prefer paying for a couple of songs rather than an entire album, when they sell they do sell. All you need is an Adelle or similar new hip singer to sell 10 or 20 million copies. How many years does CM have to work to sell that number?

Haha Well it is all perspective then. I find Cd hunting to be an expensive hobby and my complete Running Wild collection would back me up there. I'm looking at my iTunes and am seeing that I have 1600+ albums. Do the math, no matter what I could never afford that. So my options are to either download, download and buy (what I do), and buy only (never hearing all of that other music). I don't know what the solution is, truly, but I am starting to think that there isn't one. There will be some sort of compromise that patches up this problem until the next thing starts to ruin the music industry again.

Heh, thanks!

RE: Downloading to check out rather than to stream - yeah, that's fair enough. I figured it'd be something like that, or for the fact that MP3s are portable to take around with you on iPods and suchlike, hence being the preferred method. Speaking on a strictly larger scale though - people who actually have the full album downloaded are a lot less likely to buy if they enjoy than someone who has heard in passing, or streamed. There'll still be a good percentage of people like yourself and I who enjoy the physical format, or are willing to support the artist by paying digitally, but they're far outweighed by the people who download and give nothing back.

RE: Downloading new tape trading - I agree that the principle is the same in the fact that it's a community of people sharing music, but I was thinking from the perspective of the label, artist and industry as a whole. Take Century Media. A few thousand people taping an Asphyx album for their mates makes far less of a dent to bands, retailers and record labels in comparison to millions of people taking illegal streams constantly and instantly 24 hours a day.

RE: Digital VS Physical - I was talking mainly from an album perspective. Metal is more of an album genre, whereas pop is very much song/single based. The main reason the global digital sales have ramped up so much in comparison to physical is because labels rarely make physical singles any more - it's 99% entirely digital based. The singles market is huge in the pop world as you say, so all the physical sales which used to come through singles have now switched to digital, skewing the figures to seem like "digital is the more popular format". Even sales of singles have dropped off over the years though, and research suggests that even if people buy pop singles via iTunes etc, they're liable to follow that up by illegally downloading the same artists album of material rather than paying for it - it's a pretty sorry state of affairs for the majors.

I agree, it's a 50-50 situation where people will either be educated in the sense that they know they should buy/support the artist versus the easiness of the situation where they already have the album so why pay for it in the end. I'm positive though that many people are still educated enough in that the physical format is seen as a natural thing. This takes more prevalence in metal where people are "taught" to buy stuff to support the bands because of the huge market difference towards mainstream artists. At least that's the general sentiment, I hate when so called metalheads bitch about MP3 "collections", that's just so not metal, eh.


True, the dent is bigger. And yet the marketing ground also is. Tape trading (forgive me my early misspellings) was a way for people to get a hold of what was going on in the music business, but in a way it was also free publicity for the labels that were being ripped-off. If you think about that in a larger global scale you'll see what I mean. Again it's the 50-50 of downloading and buying or just downloading, but it's true that many smaller labels have had their lives made easier due to the advent of the MP3.


I see what you mean. Still I think that piracy on metal, with the no buying clause included, is more oriented towards bigger acts and labels rather than the smaller ones. Hence my reasoning on the previous quote, and actually why it's CM who's bitching and about Lacuna Coil. If it was about Asphyx I'm pretty sure they wouldn't give a rats ass, but since it's the golden goose who's being targeted they get nervous. Again I think that the ones being hurt are the bigger labels whereas the smaller ones have a more loyal following and provide for more attracting prices, which in turn only reinforces their stature with their paying customers. When a small label is doing good stuff and you like how an order has gone with them you'll order regularly with ease. People only buy at CM, NB and the likes of those every now and then when a big name releases something or there's a huge discount sale.

So I really think that MP3s help the business to a certain point. Now if big labels don't realize this and change their marketing attitude a bit they'll continue suffering losses and bitching about it.

I doubt that millions of people will take illegal streams of Asphyx albums.

Joke aside, which downloaders are to be sued? Lacuna Coil and Iced Earth's ones, not Asphyx or Sonne Adam ones.

EDIT: Androdion was faster, god dammit!

Maybe, CM should revise its business model (big shitty overhyped bands trying to sell most through agressive marketing in metal medias, small underground bands here for street cred) and get back to their early 90's roots when a huge number of their releases were to become classics...

I smell a big corporation trying to set a precedent.

For the record, I do buy a fuck-load of cds (well over 200 albums now), but sometimes I don't want to wait the weeks it takes to have them delivered. I don't see the harm in having those files downloaded on my pc in advance, not to mention albums I downloaded and never listened to more than once because I just didn't enjoy them. I know some people just will not support bands they pirate from, but I do buy their cds and merch, go to gigs... I'm sure there's plenty like that too. Suing thousands over one or two albums that I'm sure many would buy anyway is not the best way to deal with piracy and is just pure draconian.

I'll tell you how I shopped for CDs before illegal downloading. I heard something on the radio, MTV, or VH1, and if I liked a song, I'd buy it. Think about that. My music library was limited to what I heard on radio, MTV, and VH1. The BIG big labels aren't getting my money not because I download their stuff illegally, it's because I discovered a whole new world of music through the Internet. I don't need their crap anymore, I've got more independent labels to buy from now. I think that's a big factor on why music sales are dropping for these major labels, they no longer have a monopoly on what music gets heard and released to the public.

As for streaming, that's fine with me, as long as it's the whole (or nearly whole) album. I usually go to google first, because that's the easiest way. If I can't find an album like that, I'll go to youtube. Unfortunately, it seems damn near every time I go to youtube for an album, only one or two songs are on there. Like I said in my first reply here, I've gotten burned time and time again on a CD because I heard one or two songs I like, then when I listen to the album, I don't like anything else from it. Bandcamp is fine, again, if the whole album is there. I listened to the entire album of Hooded Priest's Devil Worship Reckoning, and decided I wanted to buy it based off of that, so I did. I listened to Altar of Oblivion's Grand Gesture of Defiance on bandcamp, and decided I didn't like it, so I have no plans on buying it.

And you mentioned that if you don't like something you bought, you sell it. I do that too, but I only get $1-3 for something I paid like $15 for. All those dents from buying CDs I don't like really add up, and the money I get back from selling isn't much. With downloading, I can make sure I only spend my money on music I know I like.

same. i usually download an album and then if i like it i will buy it if not i delete it. i did download dystopia from iced earth(not from a bit torrent) just to see how it was since i was not sure how stu would sound. after i heard the album i went out and bought the deluxe verision of the album

First off I have to say that what Century Media is doing is absolutely bull shit and just another way to exploit lost revenue from the masses. That being said they do have a point if you participate in illegal downloading and file sharing then they do have the right to sue your ass just as FYE has the right to sue you or atleast prosecute you if you were to just go in and take the cd. Obviously Century Media is trying to make an example of people with ridiculously high fines and over the top punishment and by doing so they are just shooting themselves in the foot and they will loose what little fan base they currently sustain because let's face it their roster consists of mostly garbage. And there in lies the gorilla in the room, if only CM would take a look at themselves and sign some decent bands they wouldn't be losing as much money. As far as a solution to the whole "why should I buy something without getting to demo it first" problem goes record companies should probably take a look into a compromise of sorts. Something along the lines of offering competitive price for digital downloads and letting us demo a decent portion of the albums on their websites for free would be a nice start. I do agree with the fact that the metal community has a tendency to buy whole albums and not just singles and you would think that major labels would try to cater more towards a crowd that wants to give them their hard earned money. Finally as somebody who unfortunately owns the entirety of Soilwork, Arch Enemy and most of In Flames's albums (just to put a face on some of my wasted money) it does suck ass wasting your money on shit hole albums but unless you want to either go through extensive leg work or risk being sued by some asshat from Century Media that's just the way it is for now unfortunately.

I can certainly see how MP3s could help smaller labels, bigger exposure likely does mean more sales for labels which do 25 units a week of their top selling releases - which ties in to what you say about the bigger marketing ground. The thing is about the likes of Century Media, and the Iced Earths and Lacuna Coils, is that the way they perceive illegal downloading with the bigger label mentality due to the way they market these bands. These bands already get mainstream advertising, magazine adverts, get pushed on radio shows, do big interviews, get big production videos made for their 'singles' (just like major labels) and generally have a stack of money invested by the label in them - something which doesn't happen on the smaller labels. Because of this way of marketing, more people would have exposure to these more mainstream bands anyway, and thus the law of averages say that more people are going to jump to download their albums as soon as they leak without any intention of ever paying for them. This sets them apart from the tiny labels who it'd be likely that only a few hundred people would be downloading the albums on a whim, to create a handful of extra purchases in the future. Extra sales through illegal MP3 exposure doesn't make much of a ripple in the pool of Century Media due to the numbers they're used to dealing in, and for what has been invested into these bands.



Hahah, yeah maybe Asphyx was a bad example (I was listening to them at the time of typing!). The thing is labels push their popular and mainstream artists to the moon, not only to make money, but also so they can bankroll the labels entire roster - thus there's a serious argument that without the required sales numbers on the Lacuna Coils, Iced Earths and the list of terrible deathcore bands, the likes of Asphyx & co wouldn't be getting studio money to make more albums. It's a similar reason why the likes of Season of Mist are no longer taking on 'new' bands, only pushing established acts which can make money to bankroll the operation going forward. Unfortunately, this means great new bands who would normally get more exposure through the more renowned labels now will not - because the aforementioned labels will be picking up even more mainstream shite just to keep the coffers full. It just makes the great stuff even harder to find, with even more shit to sift through.



If Century Media did that, they wouldn't last to the end of the year. They're distrubuted by EMI in the UK, so firstly they'd get dropped by them, and then they'd quickly fall into a tailspin through sudden lack of income due to lack of distrubution and massively decreased sales



You need to sell things quicker once you realise they're pure bullshit - haha. To be honest, selling a CD I've paid $10 for on eBay which has come out within a month or two of release, I can usually make 60-80% of my money back every time. Maybe I'm just lucky.

I'm going to have to disagree with this, especially now that Megaupload is down and other big file sharing services have increased their removal of copyrighted material. With the average computer now it usually takes a minimum of 5 minutes to go from searching for a download to being able to play it. Most of the time it's much longer due to huge amounts of dead links and slower download speeds. I've been coming across more and more albums that are available on streaming services but can't be downloaded because all the links are dead. On the contrary, it takes about 10 seconds to go on youtube or spotify and search for an album, and only a few more minutes to use the ma page or make a google search to find a facebook/myspace/bandcamp/reverbnation/soundcloud/etc. The vast majority of music is way easier to find streaming than downloaded, especially for artists on big labels like Century Media. And you don't run the risk of getting sued for it.

Speaking from my perspective/what I do now, there are really only three instances I can think of that would warrant a download: If I bought the vinyl or tape version of an album and didn't have the means/didn't want to take the time to rip it (95% of my downloads), if the album is out of print and is only sold on ebay and similar sites for obscene amounts of money, or if it's literally not available for streaming anywhere, which is increasingly rare and also more of a grey area since bands obviously aren't required to make their music available for listening before purchase.

As for downloading and then buying if you like it, it's really really easy to end up with way more albums than you can afford this way, or to intend to buy an album and then not do so for any number of reasons, and then to continue listening for years while saying "I'll buy it with my next order!" over and over again. I'm sure some people who do this actually have control over it and delete what they don't like and always purchase what they do, but in general I don't buy this argument at all.

That's a pity, because you'd be right if you did.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/ap ... more-music

CM is distributed by EMI in the UK? Eh, that surprises me and yet it doesn't at the same time.

I understand your reasoning and I agree with it. The golden geese give the labels money and then they can uphold the remaining roster, it will always be like that unfortunately. I too have seen that tendency on SOM in the past couple of years, they are currently signing a lot of underground and more hardcore/punk oriented acts but they're very rarely newcoming bands, rather bands releasing their third or fourth album by now. Some underground units to the Underground Activists part to be filled with some "truer" stuff but a lot of big names on the main side, as well as some hideous trendy shit.

Part of the underlined speech on my responses to you meant also that bigger labels aren't really a necessity nowadays, in the sense that they're producing more bad than good and the better stuff on their rosters would have a decent place otherwise. Sure no one can top NB or CM in terms of distribution/marketing and established bands wouldn't want to leave their pedestals there, but we could all have a bit more mid-profile labels doing a better work rather than a couple of high-profile ones that run their business around the hyped up acts to fund the ones that give a crap about music. But that would make a lot of blood run on the streets I reckon. And yet we have Immolation's example, where they are low profile on a label but considered one of the best bands on the scene. They run actual day jobs and still deliver on the studio and live. If more established bands gave a shit about music like that we could well have a different business model on mid-profile labels, with an orientation more towards music itself rather than first week sales figures.

But this is a utopic dream as it will never happen... Oh well, at least we still have the underground!

PS: @ Krav

That's OK, it's your stance and I respect it. Although I have to say that if I'm googling in order to download it's usually stuff from smaller labels rather than big ones, and that's due to personal taste. I can assure you though that it's easier to find a quality MP3 rip than a streaming one, and honestly I don't even listen to YT streaming because it sounds like shit most of the time. People complain about MP3s being compressed but streaming sources are more often than not shittier than MP3s.

It can happen that one downloads more than one can chew and that the "to buy list" gets increasingly larger, though that doesn't mean it will be put on halt. I've discussed this whole "do we have the right to download or not" issue with Napero via PM and the fact is that in a perfect world everyone would have enough money to purchase everything they really want and some more to be able to commit errors, i.e. buy shitty albums by accident. Matter of fact is that reality tell us otherwise and I have too little money to be spending it on trial and error runs. So do I download to avoid that? I do. Am I doing something wrong? Objectively speaking downloading illegally shared albums is wrong, but doesn't the fact that I only do it for personal use (instead of divulging it to friends and acquaintances) and to be able to know what to buy or not compensate that? Some will say it does and some will say it doesn't. Have I bought everything I've downloaded and haven't deleted because I liked? Nope, but I still intend on doing it despite how much time it may take. So does that make my actions condemnable in the end? Some will say it does some will say it doesn't. I don't actually need to justify myself as I could very well just say "fuck you I do what I want" but I'm a pretty rational guy that is able to see both sides of each question and find some truth in both of them.

In the end it will be up to each individual to make up its own decision, no one has to agree with the next one, although I believe some sort of mid-ground can be achieved. If people are doing to download the albums anyway, and labels know this firsthand, why not stream the whole upcoming album for a week or two? Let people know what they can expect and cut them off after a while so they buy it if they want to listen to it. Why not stream full albums to avoid leaking and downloading, which is going to happen anyway? The fact is that labels are dealing with this in a caveman way, "you steal, me crushes". What are they, twelve?! Don't they have marketing departments? Maybe they should do their jobs better.

Or maybe I'm just pissing in the wind, I don't know... Everyone will have a different opinion on this and people more often than not prefer confrontation to resolution, so in the end I doubt we'll be seeing any major changes in the next few years.

So if this poll of 2,000 people is a decent, true and honest cross section of illegal downloading society, why are the likes of Century Media having to sue their fans, and why isn't the music industry in general flourishing?

The article mentions that they're more willing to buy "digital files", not physical ones.

This one though has made lose a few minutes reading it, kind of interesting actually.

Because less non-pirates are buying CDs. I know no-one that buys music anymore, barring the odd folk that hunt down albums because they're that much more into it.Also, a lot of people are now cherry-picking songs from the likes of itunes, or at least that's the suggested reason. If you doubt the validity of the study, it says in the article that pirates had to show proof of purchase. As for Century Media, they are attempting to crush a perceived threat.

Well there are a few ways that getting the actual files has a big advantage. Firstly, I don't spend too much time around a computer, so the ability to stick something onto my mp3 player and go for a walk/play it in my car while driving is a huge advantage. Secondly, my internet can be shitty, and having youtube dropping out whenever the shitty wireless does is annoying, while a torrent doesn't give a shit if the net drops out for two minutes. Plus on youtube you need to keep going through and picking each song which is a tiny bit more work, and breaks the flow. Bandcamp does stream much better, faster and lists all songs in an easy manner, so if I do have access to a computer and internet I have been going there of late, but a full on illegal download will always be easier.

I can sympathise. Youtube vids stutter whenever I click on something else like another tab. That's no way to enjoy music.