About links to albums to listen and review: The Final Rules Please

[Drealm]

This thread is for everyone, to make something clear once and for all:

What is ok and what is not?

A link to a Myspace page is of course ok. The band himself put his work so no problems.

A youtube link is also ok.

I've seen links to mediafire (or rapidshare and the others) zip: is that ok? Basically, we can't rip our cd and put it on internet, it's copyright infringement, right?

I don't want to hurt the Music-Discussion reputation by doing something against the rules.

So please, can a moderator say clearly what is tolerated and what is not? A list of do's and don'ts wound be great.

[gryphon]

I'll share my views and reasons on this

I think that what I say needs abit of background:

I've been involved in buying music and promoting it for around 30 years or so......I'm not vastly experience but I have seen a few things that made me look at these matters a few times and react to what I see.

There are many sides to the problem

In the late 80 we had a music business that swore to us that they needed to charge high prices for their products to maintain A ad R , research and development of digital technology and to cover cost and we paid very high prices and bought the stories ...................In this time I came across artits who seemed to have one or two products who made it big on the financial front and one wondered a bit about it and hey this was rock and roll!!!!

IN some era saw saw the Independent record labels who for a modest investment helped sell their artist and there was success..........you did not need to be a multinational paying ;lots of suits to do the job for you ..........you could do it yourself and do a good job ad make money.

ON the promotional front : I know that artist are usually willing to promote their product by allowing copies of it to go free of charge to journalist pluggers , DJs radio stations and up to a point any publicity helps .....................

There are people who have paid for their collections of of tracks but listen to downloads for free as away of getting o know about new things .............eventually they put money back into the system because they buy more CDs downloads etc ad hats life........................

I have been lucky enough to know a few artists too in my time too

I 'm not lucky enough to know he Paul McCartney's or Micheal Jackson's to whom a few downloads and rip ffs just adjusts the decimal point a little on their massive turnovers ..............

I do know people who ave made ten or more good selling albums which can be ordered from amazon or the equivalent and have played a significant part in Music history . I have talked to them on this fron and see how this affects them:................

The first thing I would say is t that they all gave me copies of their own work for free and were happy o do so . They told me that mostly any publicity is worth having and hat they knew that the copies of their works that they shared with me would have long terms benefits for both of them.............they agreed that the only way your work gets heard is by people listening to it on the media of the ay and afew copies here or there makes little difference..................Youtube etc is great for them and one or two actively put things on it themselves. They had not remove anything and only would if it were being exploited for a lot of money by a third party

What I did want to come to was the circumstances they lived in......................most people would think that ten or so good selling albums would mean a great standard of living and be enough to make it good............................

Artist one ..................I met this person at their home which was modest to say the least............he had been diagnosed with MS a few years before I met him and was no in a good state of health........he shared with me a few of the details of his career and I was shocked to see how little he did get from his efforts ............most went to his publishers and the managers that had ripped him off and still did.......the only cash he did get was a small percentage of the royalities and the money he could make from selling the material he did own rights to.............which was not much............He has a friends of society who helped him get what he could ( and they were just simple people who did what they could ....I became one and helped him too ..................and he died in total poverty and yet his work was world class.

Artist two has been in the business for forty years or more made many albums and three or four are gold records standard....................He too lives in a simple way , not what you would expect and has not a great deal to show for his hard efforts in the business...... Again e did not get he money he should beacuse the business was just not set up that way then. He has rescued some of his assets but mainly has to work hard and live off his state pension to make ends meet.....................And yet this guy is known in 61 counties and has hsoi works quoted in International English language exam papers .

So..................That's where I come from

I think we should be sensible , I don't mind using things for the reviews that I feel are fair..........MY Space has tracks their because the artist stands a chance of wanting them there...............so too with Youtube up to a point......................Downloads .........well I'm not a fan because members have to pay ad hey are dubious ...........I find many are quickly closed down by some artists and I don't like he feel of that ..................I know hat we can help people y featuring their tracks.................Half Past Four wanted us to help and supplied downloads etc ...................I used them and will not distribute or use them further but we got and album to review and hey get whatever we can give them and I fel both sides were happy.

So that's where I stand:happy: I guess we all have our own view points and that's what I feel.........

I am interested to see what others think:happy::biggrin:

[Music Head]

Obviously with Half Past Four, we had their consent, so that should not be an issue.
Other artists, do I experience some guilt, yes. Call me stupid, whatever. I don't care.
Of course it's not the same as going in to a retail outlet and ripping off a cd.
I do participate in the reviews when a download is involved.
Let's just say I rationalize.
The only time you are doing harm to the artist is if you would have purchased the album without benefit of hearing it first.
That is not the case with any I have listened to.
In fact I purchased an album that we reviewed.
I would not have done so without the review.
So at least in my case, the download inspired a purchase.
I have also purchased another album we reviewed, but it was not a download.
Others I will not purchase as a result of hearing via the album review, but I would not have purchased them anyway.
No blood, no foul.

[Drealm]

.........

What I think is that the more something is listened to, no matter how, greater are the chances of someone buying it in the end. If a friend do me a copy of a CD he have, maybe I will love it so much that I will finally buy it. And there's a chance I play it while some people are present (at a party for example) and some people may end up asking about it, and ending up buying it, because it's not everyone who know and/or take time to actively "download illegally". So this person may just end up to the store on his next pay to buy the album. One can even get fan and buy other albums as well. If there was no copy from my friend in the first place, nobody would have known it.

The problem is abuse. It's normal to listen to an album before buying it. Who would really buy an album based on the cover? Or by knowing just one song? Just listening to 30 seconds extracts is clearly not enough to know an artist IMHO. Yes, some people enjoy mass downloading/pirating, and accumulating a hundred CDs they will never really enjoy. But I think most people may want to give a listen before, and end up buying it. Anyway, the goal is to spread the music the most possible.

So personally, I have no problem with any way to listen to a whole album. In my personal life, I don't know anyone who lives only with pirated/downloaded music; everyone buy an album once in a while. Also, everyone have some copied CDs; I think it's normal, we can't buy everything we listen to; there are some albums we enjoy less and just "possess" because someone made us a copy because we said "hey , that sound good", but in the end we nearly never listen to it. So, copied or not, we never bough it finally; but the copy helped to give at least a chance. Again: no copy=nobody know it. We can't just put our trust in the radio to help us discover new things!

So I think that as long as there's no abuse, it's just the normal flow of things.

And what about some discontinued stuff that no company ever produce? Here, it's obligated copy from the start. If we want it and nobody's making it, how the hell are we suppose to ever have it? And that's bring me to the main problem with big companies that want absolute control over copy: they want us to buy what they sell NOW, not what they don't produce anymore. They don't care about rare old stuff that just only few people want. Thanks god, there's always a way to copy things in the end. Imagine if companies could actually get the absolute control they want: our music life would be suffering a lot.

To conclude, for this music review thread, I think any way is good. As Music Head said, he ended up buying two albums he would never have if nobody could make it available. So go for what you want people.

But a last concern remain: can Music-Discussion be shut down by some police force if they discover we put some "album to review" online? (I think they will not be as philosophical as us about the subject...)

[gryphon]

I too wonder if we can be shut down by someone if we happen to fall into the category of people who an authority might look for.......................In someways it depends on a few things

• I guess where we are centered ............here in the mainland of Europe people are not that worried about minor infringements.............but that is not the same in all parts of the world
  
• The second point is who would be deemed responsible for MD ....who owns it? Who ever that may be should be entitled to formulate a policy with which they are happy .
  
• I personally feel that if we are seen to try and act responsibly then we are doing the correct thing.
  

mile:mile:mile:

[Tiggi]

This question has come up before, and one suggestion was that whoever picks the links sends them to participants via Private Message.

Don't know if this is of any use, or if it is more "legal" than what we currently do.

[Drealm]

I have a suggestion.

We should continue the way we are in. We are not doing it massively or for lucrative reasons. If we ever get "caught", they will probably (I hope) give us a first warning to not continue this way. If so, we will simply be forced to find another way this time around.

[Music Head]

.........

It's normal to listen to an album before buying it. Who would really buy an album based on the cover? Or by knowing just one song?

I know plenty of people who buy an album based on 1 song. I used to do that back before the internet. What choice did you have? That's all you got to hear was the hit single, unless you had a bud with a copy of the album. Nowadays of course, it's different. Unless you don't have computer access, which believe it or not is still true for many households. Even those who do have access, many casual music listeners don't use their computer to listen to new music. People have different priorities. They depend on the radio or other sources. Not everyone is a computer nerd, or a music junkie, like us.

[Drealm]

I know plenty of people who buy an album based on 1 song. I used to do that back before the internet. What choice did you have? That's all you got to hear was the hit single, unless you had a bud with a copy of the album. Nowadays of course, it's different. Unless you don't have computer access, which believe it or not is still true for many households. Even those who do have access, many casual music listeners don't use their computer to listen to new music. People have different priorities. They depend on the radio or other sources. Not everyone is a computer nerd, or a music junkie, like us.

Yes, in the past, we were forced to buy an album based just on one song. I think that basically, it was not fair, because you end up paying full price for one song in the end if you're not interested in the album. And yes today it's more fair, you can buy just one song on internet and pay just for this song. Still, you can't listen to full albums before buying them; I hope this will change in the future.

At least they could offer a bad sounding streaming of the whole album, what about MP3 at 80 kbps? At this rate, we could have a good idea of the album, but nobody would be satisfied enough to always listen to it that way. It would be better than 30 seconds extracts.

For those who don't have a computer, some music stores offer listening "in-store", so that's better than nothing.

[Jerome]

.........

Who would really buy an album based on the cover?

Me. Done it many times and been pleasantly surprised at the results.