People sharing your album: how to react?
Danno3000
2,850 Posts
People have shared my Cuban comp on a number of Internet forums. I get fairly peeved when I see someone raving about the CD while offering a yousendit link so his buddies can download it. At first I called up the website admins and had them remove the links, but now I wonder whether I should just let it go. It'll be some time before I don't feel the loss of every CD that is downloaded instead of purchased. I haven't heard any convincing arguments for why I should countenance people stealing my music. It's not as if I'm an artist who can tour or finds comfort in the idea of people listening to my work even if they don't pay for it; I spent a lot of time and money to reissue otherwise inaccessible music and I feel that if people want to hear it they ought to fork out the very reasonable tax. Should I continue with my threatening phone call rampage, or should I just hope that if people like what they download they'll buy a copy? Yes 
Comments
two.. are you gonna keep putting more out? If you have a next tape ready to go, free publicity is good and it will probably eventually catch on and start selling well to the point dl's won't bug you.
three.. if you stop it, will anyone buy it??? Is getting your name out more important then sales?
It's tough. If I were you, i would just post on each site a link to where they can buy it and tell them if they like, PLEASE buy it.
Well, that's the theory, but I don't think anybody's ever come up with a way to obtain sufficient data to "prove" it. There's no question that DLing in aggregate has hurt the music industry, but I think the jury's still out on whether or not it actually benefits very well-done products that appeal to a niche market.
For your own peace of mind, consider that not everybody that DLs it would have been inclined to purchase it otherwise, so every DL does not by any means = a lost sale, and some of those people probably never even would have become aware of it otherwise, or at leats not gained sufficient awareness to actually consider a purchase.
How about registering on the forums yourself and making a post along the lines of "Hi--I'm the guy that put this comp together and if you enjoy it, I hope you will support it. I'm not getting rich off of this and my ability to do more such comps is dependant upon the success of this one."
Putting an in-print CD up on an internet forum is real low.
This isn't a mixtape that he's talking about though. This is a proper compilation that was (I strongly assume) properly licensed and all that. So there are a whole lot of expenses that a mixtape DJ does not have to account for. I would be pissed too but at the same time I would not be exactly surprised that people share music outside the legitimate channels in 2007.
The only really great thing about sharing is that it turns people onto the record. People you probably won't reach through conventional publicity. This is the future of media, instant and peer driven. Find away to embrace it or get out now. This will only get worse, and the heartache of lost sales will never go away.
I wish I had better advice, but buddy, you just boarded the fucking Titanic.
BTW: I dropped a copy of Bahamas in the mail to you Friday.
Yeah, but beyond being pissed--which I fully agree he has the right to be--the question is what kind of a response minimizes the damage? I mean, this is the reality today. CDs are already pretty much obsolete. I don't think Best Buy etc. will even be stocking them three years from now... or at least their stock will be limited to schitt targeted towards very old and very young people.
I can't argue with that!
I guess I'd better get with the future. I'll just tighten my life jacket and jump off the sinking ship (and hope I get into one of the cushy life boats).
good luck, and I really hope you are planning on another release. someone's gotta give soundway a bit of competition.
That said, it is very true that a lot of the downloaders wouldn't be spending money in the first place, so I wouldn't take too much time trying to convince them otherwise.
just sayin'
Oh yeah? I haven't been on in a minute. I guess it's a little flattering in a way, but still--I've gotta pay off the Cubans!
TNG is right, I think. When I get a review in a national magazine that caters to a general audience, a lot of people may want to download the album who wouldn't in the normal course purchase it. Meanwhile, the 'heads', for lack of a better word, will want my oh-so-snazzy liner notes and burlesque's quality design and will buy a copy anyway. It's not as if the CD isn't selling well beyond my expectations, I'm just still too green and naive not to take it personally when folks steal instead of buy.
Danno... your comp was a labor of love for you so don't just give in to the times, work with the times. Take a personal approach with those that are sharing it and maybe they'll take it down. You won't be able to get everyone, but it's worth a shot. When you assign a human aspect to a piece of music, original or not, some folks are reluctant to just give it away.
Which I also think is lame as fuck.
Rewarding the licensor over the creator = 2007 MO
In any case. I didn't download it, since I have most of the tracks anyways. I dunno if I would have felt bad if I had though. Since it's not illegal for me to download music for free in Canada. But, I would have never upped it.
It's a pretty great comp. You did a good job.
HA, nice!
Oh snap, where!? Im kidding. Danno, I should take the time to get me one of those discs. I promised I would before, but have been caught up in life. On a positive note, at least people are freaking out about it and looking for it. Even though it is very necessary to pay up on someones work.
I will be ordering soon.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070209/082603.shtml
This is just one example of several recent studies that have concluded file sharing does not hurt music sales. Consider the attention your release gains from appearing in blogs.
A major flaw in RIAA-sponsored 'studies' has been treating each download like a lost sale, which it is not. Just because someone downloads a record for free does not mean they would have bought it. Even if 10,000 people download your compilation, chances are those that like it will end up buying a legitimate copy.
I also said I pay dudes for these dj mixes all the time - boolumaster, dj lil john, other dudes who sell mixes @ gramaphone in chicago
nothing to do with sampling rights or imagined personal grudges or whatever
Definitely fully-licensed.
Oh, I wasn't doubting it. Just amazed that it was possible.
It's like, if you legalized drugs nobody would go to jail for possession anymore. duh
If some guy sees a CD he never knew about on a blog, and downloads it, the reasoning follows that since he never knew about it before, he's not a potential customer. But that's faulty reasoning to me. From behind the counter, it just doesn't follow that people who are unaware of a certain release are therefore *not* potential customers.
Also, from behind the counter, as soon as a mixtape gets uploaded I can forget about moving copies. I get a good two week window after the thing drops, and then it's a wrap.
They're clearly bullschitt--I'd like for the "has no effect whatsoever" folks to tell me why, exactly, the music industry is on the way out. And plaese to not cite "bad music," because bad music has been the norm for the industry's entire history.
Right.
A guy at my mechanic tried to reason that it was just like dubbing tapes; however, back when I dubbed tapes, I did so with the knowledge and understanding that it was a poor excuse for the real thing. While 126 bitrate MP3s might be similarly poor facsimiles, the young youth seem not to give a schitt, as they no longer identify with having the *actual object*.
And would that help indies "sell" in the same manner as the "label" artists on the EnderNet?
The studies are junk, most of them are done by people with a vast misunderstanding of how music downloading actually happens.
However, I'd say that a significant portion of blog downloaders are not customers, because the status quo gives them so much music for free. Say I post two tracks from Danno's comp on a blog somewhere, and someone downloads them. They dig it, and would be interested in hearing more. But what incentive do they have to buy the comp when there are millions of other files waiting to be downloaded at their fingertips for free? Sure, they will probably never come across quality Cuban music of the sort Danno has compiled, but to people for whom music is disposable, and who tend to just plow through new songs and listen to everything once, there just is no incentive.
Right, but the people trolling blogs for whole albums to download are for the most part not interested in buying music.
Exactly.