Politics of Downloading

[Robot DeNiro]

An argument might be that as cash is an incentive for making music for some, illegal downloading is purifying music, filtering out those that don't think it is worth making music unless there is a financial reward. The point has been made that music is now really quite cheap to produce and distribute. Perhaps the future will offer up music made by people who genuinely only care about their self-expression and the (non-financial) rewards that produces. We certainly would have been spared U2, who would not have had any kind of career to retire from, becoming investment bankers or stock brokers instead.

I can't help thinking that Sergeant Pepper or The White Album might have suffered if they were recorded of an evening after The Beatles had worked in proper jobs all day.  Artists supporting themselves by creating art can have positive effects as well as negative ones.

Also, there comes a point when money is important.  When Stewart Lee was asked recently what he's going to do next, one of the first things he said was "I'm not going to work for free any more."  If you've got a mortgage to pay and a family to support, spending your life making stuff only to give it away for free is quite hard to defend.  The music scene will become much poorer if musicians who learn their craft while living cheaply in their twenties have to give it all up when they hit thirty and they take on some responsibilities.

As I say, I don't pay for music myself, so I'm part of the problem.  It just annoys me when people think there isn't a problem. 

[NoSleep]

An argument might be that as cash is an incentive for making music for some, illegal downloading is purifying music, filtering out those that don't think it is worth making music unless there is a financial reward. The point has been made that music is now really quite cheap to produce and distribute. Perhaps the future will offer up music made by people who genuinely only care about their self-expression and the (non-financial) rewards that produces. We certainly would have been spared U2, who would not have had any kind of career to retire from, becoming investment bankers or stock brokers instead.

What is "purifying" about having to work out how you're going to live in order to make your music better? I assume you think all musicians magically have all the time in the world and an inheritance to fall back on. Naming one shite band doesn't prove that argument.

[Johnny Townmouse]

What is "purifying" about having to work out how you're going to live in order to make your music better?

Well I wasn't talking about a person being purified, I was talking about music generally. Put forward as a possible argument.

I assume you think all musicians magically have all the time in the world and an inheritance to fall back on. Naming one shite band doesn't prove that argument.

Yes, you did.
Assume, that is.

[Famous Mortimer]

From my point of view, that is complete nonsense.  My band released three albums between 2002 and 2008, and each one sold half as many as its predecessor.  That's despite the fact that our fanbase clearly grew over that time, with gigs of increasing size, large festival crowds, myspace and youtube promotion etc.

Did you make more money from the live performances in that time? I remember trying to buy one of your albums and failing miserably - even asking you after I'd exhausted all other options. It sucks that costs and returns mean you're not going to be making any more albums, as I am a huge fan of yours.

Now it's been a long time since I've paid for any music myself, so it would be hypocritical of me to be bitter about this, I just accept it as the way things are these days.  But you're kidding yourself if you think illegal downloading doesn't have a negative effect, and it hits the smaller players first and hardest.

I do think there has to be a moral decision on this. It certainly has a positive effect (albums made up of samples from downloaded music, for example), but I think there's a new business model needs drawing up. If I could download top-quality audio files of Robot De Niro's stuff from his website, for example, I'd happily pay for the privilege. I don't know if it would work, but with that, live performances and radio play, I'd hope bands could make a decent living.

[thugler]

From my point of view, that is complete nonsense.  My band released three albums between 2002 and 2008, and each one sold half as many as its predecessor.  That's despite the fact that our fanbase clearly grew over that time, with gigs of increasing size, large festival crowds, myspace and youtube promotion etc.

We never expected to make a living from releasing albums, but getting a bit of cash was a definite incentive for making music.  It's got to the point now where it's simply not worth making another album, so we've effectively retired.

Now it's been a long time since I've paid for any music myself, so it would be hypocritical of me to be bitter about this, I just accept it as the way things are these days.  But you're kidding yourself if you think illegal downloading doesn't have a negative effect, and it hits the smaller players first and hardest.

Or maybe each album you released wasn't as good as the last. Possibly because you were so concerned about making money off of it.

How about the fact that you may never have been noticed in the first place without the internet? and all that internet based promotion you mention.

Plenty of bands don't make much money at all from albums since they are expensive to produce, but make it touring, I thought that was how it worked pretty much everywhere except with large bands.

How can you not come across as bitter when you blame internet downloading for your failure without any evidence whatsoever.

As I say, I don't pay for music myself, so I'm part of the problem.  It just annoys me when people think there isn't a problem.

It annoys me when people assume there is a problem based on nothing. The majority of records I have bought for a long time I wouldn't know anything about without the internet.

[thugler]

I can't help thinking that Sergeant Pepper or The White Album might have suffered if they were recorded of an evening after The Beatles had worked in proper jobs all day.

Wasn't Sgt. pepper basically recorded on a four track?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I believe there was a little spoken of 5th track on that which never got as much credit as the other four.

[Famous Mortimer]

Or maybe each album you released wasn't as good as the last. Possibly because you were so concerned about making money off of it.

How can you not come across as bitter when you blame internet downloading for your failure without any evidence whatsoever.

I'd rate his albums (in descending order) 2nd - 1st - 3rd, and although I'm too lazy to do the research, I'd like to see if the downturn in people buying those albums as they went along corresponds with a more widespread downturn of people buying CDs. I'd bet the numbers roughly correspond, and once you've eliminated drop-off in quality (there wasn't one, really) there's not a lot else there. I saw their second album in HMV when it came out, which certainly indicates it had better distribution than their first.

As far as thugler saying the majority of records he's bought come from knowledge gained from the internet, it's a fair point and one I agree with. But the fact remains, fewer people are buying records. Good riddance to most of it, I say, but the figures are there. And I'm not sure what how many tracks "Sergeant Pepper" was recorded on has to do with how long it took to create.

[Robot DeNiro]

Thanks for your comments Famous Mortimer.  I'm sure we'll still do tracks every now and then, because we enjoy it, but if I was able to treat the band as a fulltime job I'd obviously be creating a lot more.

Or maybe each album you released wasn't as good as the last. Possibly because you were so concerned about making money off of it.

Well, that's always a possibility.  Although the tracks off our later albums get better responses when we play live, have more hits on youtube / myspace and are the ones people always mention when they contact us. 

How about the fact that you may never have been noticed in the first place without the internet? and all that internet based promotion you mention.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.  For our first album we played virtually no gigs and had no internet promotion whatsoever.  For our second we played quite a few gigs and festivals, but again no internet presence.  For our third we had youtube videos, a myspace page and played more gigs to bigger crowds than ever before, but we sold less albums. 

Plenty of bands don't make much money at all from albums since they are expensive to produce, but make it touring, I thought that was how it worked pretty much everywhere except with large bands.

What about bands (like mine) that can't recreate their tracks live?  What about bands who just don't like playing live, or bands who are unable to tour because they have to work full time to support themselves?  Should they just give up?

How can you not come across as bitter when you blame internet downloading for your failure without any evidence whatsoever.

Er, you're the only one who mentioned failure.  Artistically I think our last album is more accomplished than the other two, and I'm pretty sure it's been widely listened to despite not selling very many copies.  I just thought the discussion could benefit from a real world example of how illegal downloading has discouraged artists.

It annoys me when people assume there is a problem based on nothing. The majority of records I have bought for a long time I wouldn't know anything about without the internet.

Well I'm genuinely pleased that you still buy records, but I think you must accept that you are in a minority there.  Our last album had twice as many illegal downloads from Mininova as it did sales, and that's not taking into account  any downloads from Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, WhatCD, Soulseek, Limewire etc.  Surely you can see that there is a problem with lost revenue for smaller artists?

[thugler]

I'd rate his albums (in descending order) 2nd - 1st - 3rd, and although I'm too lazy to do the research, I'd like to see if the downturn in people buying those albums as they went along corresponds with a more widespread downturn of people buying CDs. I'd bet the numbers roughly correspond, and once you've eliminated drop-off in quality (there wasn't one, really) there's not a lot else there. I saw their second album in HMV when it came out, which certainly indicates it had better distribution than their first.

As far as thugler saying the majority of records he's bought come from knowledge gained from the internet, it's a fair point and one I agree with. But the fact remains, fewer people are buying records. Good riddance to most of it, I say, but the figures are there. And I'm not sure what how many tracks "Sergeant Pepper" was recorded on has to do with how long it took to create.

Even if there is a decline in record sales, It's another thing to suggest it's largely due to free downloads. Hasn't the majority of that decline been in big artists on big labels and things like cd singles losing popularity, which I believe was happening before the downloading boom.

As far as I can tell the music industry is still making a shitload of money..

[thugler]

Thanks for your comments Famous Mortimer.  I'm sure we'll still do tracks every now and then, because we enjoy it, but if I was able to treat the band as a fulltime job I'd obviously be creating a lot more.

Well, that's always a possibility.  Although the tracks off our later albums get better responses when we play live, have more hits on youtube / myspace and are the ones people always mention when they contact us. 

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.  For our first album we played virtually no gigs and had no internet promotion whatsoever.  For our second we played quite a few gigs and festivals, but again no internet presence.  For our third we had youtube videos, a myspace page and played more gigs to bigger crowds than ever before, but we sold less albums. 

What about bands (like mine) that can't recreate their tracks live?  What about bands who just don't like playing live, or bands who are unable to tour because they have to work full time to support themselves?  Should they just give up?

Er, you're the only one who mentioned failure.  Artistically I think our last album is more accomplished than the other two, and I'm pretty sure it's been widely listened to despite not selling very many copies.  I just thought the discussion could benefit from a real world example of how illegal downloading has discouraged artists.

Well I'm genuinely pleased that you still buy records, but I think you must accept that you are in a minority there.  Our last album had twice as many illegal downloads from Mininova as it did sales, and that's not taking into account  any downloads from Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, WhatCD, Soulseek, Limewire etc.  Surely you can see that there is a problem with lost revenue for smaller artists?

Well I'm fairly sure it's been the way it is in terms of bands making the bulk of their money from playing gigs rather than record sales for quite some time. If you can't recreate your songs live (Not quite following why this is since I popped onto your myspace and heard a bit of one of your songs, it's a fairly standard band set up isn't it?). Those that don't want to gig or are unable shouldn't expect the music industry to change because they aren't making enough money from album sales. I'm not saying anyone should give up due to not making money. Thats just the way it is due to the expense of recording.

I didn't mean artistic failure, but you were clearly seeing your band in terms of a business, you didn't make enough from sales, and your goal was to, therefore you quit/fail. I've nothing against your music.

I don't accept I'm in the minority, since everyone I've met who is a big downloader of music, spends a heap on money on records too. I've also seen reports that this is the case on a wider scale, that downloads increase sales rather than diminish them.

So twice as many people heard your album than were prepared to pay for it, how terrible. These people may have not bought/heard the album otherwise. Having heard it downloaded, they might go to your gigs and you would've made money off them.

I don't see the problem as on the whole I don't see how internet downloads can do anything but help smaller bands in terms of exposure.

[chand]

I don't see the problem as on the whole I don't see how internet downloads can do anything but help smaller bands in terms of exposure.

The internet, yes. Whole albums being distributed on torrent sites and peer-to-peer networds are a bit different though. If bands were in control they could put six songs on their myspace which would act as a representative sample, and that would lure people in, who would then buy the album.

Even if there is a decline in record sales, It's another thing to suggest it's largely due to free downloads. Hasn't the majority of that decline been in big artists on big labels and things like cd singles losing popularity, which I believe was happening before the downloading boom.

As far as I know, album sales have gone down as well. Single sales tanked ages ago because unlike albums they continued to get more expensive. I think singles had been loss leaders for a while anyway, they didn't make any money and existed to promote albums. On top of that there was the change in chart rules that made anything with more than 3 tracks and 20 minutes charts-ineligible, and the trend towards just sticking live tracks or dull remixes on instead of proper b-sides didn't help.

[Famous Mortimer]

Whether you accept it or not, you're in a minority. A few examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_in_music_industry
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=14758

and a lot of other evidence. They're cheaper, and they're selling less. There doesn't seem to be a lot of debate in this.

I'm a big downloader, and have bought three albums in the last 2 years. Your experience, no matter how much you're convinced must reflect on the wider public, does not. As chand said, CD single sales dropped through the floor years ago, and have been a loss leader for even longer. The 3 track, 20 minute thing was their attempt to make more money from less product, and all it did was put the first nail in their coffin.

[thugler]

Yes CD sales appear to have gone down, but as a whole the music industry isn't exactly falling apart. And there doesn't appear to be a concensus. There are 2 studies cited, the most accurate one appears to state an statistically insignificant effect. You can't blame something that was happening anyway on downloads. Does the list of record sales going down account for downloads?

I've seen other studies which show how those who download a lot also buy a lot of music/related stuff. Those who download a bit casually probably wouldn't buy much music anyway.

I don't understand how downloads can be anything but a positive for small bands and labels overall. They are getting heard by far greater numbers of people. You can't blame not making much money off of album sales on downloads, because thats been happening for years. Plenty of bands had full time jobs well into their careers, it's not a new thing.

Popular CD's are cheaper, but they are still overpriced. We have been ripped off on CD prices for years.

It's silly using downloads as the scapegoat for not making enough money from album sales, this has been the way for bands for ages, and it's an incredibly competitive market anyway.

[confettiinmyhair]

The Cost of Living, and at the same time being in a band full time is surely a hell of lot different now then it was in the past, especially when you consider in the sixties, seventies and eighties a lot of bands took advantage of student grants to fund themselves, not everybody was Tony Iommi losing the tips of his fingers on the factory floor. We can probably agree that not everybody is going to earn a living from their music, however there is an argument that the cost of living is quite possibly hampering creativity, meaning that potentially some great artists are lost to the 9-5 way of life.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yes CD sales appear to have gone down, but as a whole the music industry isn't exactly falling apart. And there doesn't appear to be a concensus. There are 2 studies cited, the most accurate one appears to state an statistically insignificant effect. You can't blame something that was happening anyway on downloads. Does the list of record sales going down account for downloads?

I'd disagree that the music industry isn't falling apart. Shops selling music are closing right, left and centre, sales are down and labels are laying off staff. It seems a large amount of evidence to me. Do downloads account for the reduction of music sales? Given that the cost of your average CD is less in real terms than it was in 2000, and fewer of them are being sold, I can't see any other option.

I've seen other studies which show how those who download a lot also buy a lot of music/related stuff. Those who download a bit casually probably wouldn't buy much music anyway.

Some people do, undoubtedly. I've used myself as an example of someone who doesn't. There are no hard-and-fast rules to be set here. Your experience is not the typical experience, as the figures show.

I don't understand how downloads can be anything but a positive for small bands and labels overall. They are getting heard by far greater numbers of people. You can't blame not making much money off of album sales on downloads, because thats been happening for years. Plenty of bands had full time jobs well into their careers, it's not a new thing.

You've had first-hand evidence in this thread from someone who's album sales have dropped, and he tols us that that was to do with the number of people getting it off torrent sites. It's certainly not a positive for him. They're getting heard by more people, but for people who want to make money that's not really the primary concern, is it? Of course you can blame a reduction in sales on downloads, it's been going on for years but being able to get an album off a blog in about 90 seconds (2009-era downloading) makes downloading a lot easier than grabbing the odd track off Audiogalaxy (2000-era downloading).

It's silly using downloads as the scapegoat for not making enough money from album sales, this has been the way for bands for ages, and it's an incredibly competitive market anyway.

So this competitive market has only existed in the last 10 years? I don't think there's another reason for album sales declining year-on-year. What do you think the reason for this is?

[thugler]

I'd disagree that the music industry isn't falling apart. Shops selling music are closing right, left and centre, sales are down and labels are laying off staff. It seems a large amount of evidence to me. Do downloads account for the reduction of music sales? Given that the cost of your average CD is less in real terms than it was in 2000, and fewer of them are being sold, I can't see any other option.
Some people do, undoubtedly. I've used myself as an example of someone who doesn't. There are no hard-and-fast rules to be set here. Your experience is not the typical experience, as the figures show.
You've had first-hand evidence in this thread from someone who's album sales have dropped, and he tols us that that was to do with the number of people getting it off torrent sites. It's certainly not a positive for him. They're getting heard by more people, but for people who want to make money that's not really the primary concern, is it? Of course you can blame a reduction in sales on downloads, it's been going on for years but being able to get an album off a blog in about 90 seconds (2009-era downloading) makes downloading a lot easier than grabbing the odd track off Audiogalaxy (2000-era downloading).
So this competitive market has only existed in the last 10 years? I don't think there's another reason for album sales declining year-on-year. What do you think the reason for this is?

Sales are down, but not a huge amount. The music industry is still making huge amounts of money. Plus there is a recession on..

You can't claim that downloads are the cause of this however, because sales have been falling for years.

All the figures show, is that cd sales have been falling a bit for many years, it's not like they are a disappearing. This doesn't prove that downloads caused it.

A fall in album sales doesn't prove that downloads were the cause. Those extra people who heard the album without paying for it may have not been willing to buy it in the first place. There are tons of reasons why albums sales may vary. And as I've said many times, most smaller bands don't make much at all if anything from album sales, they make it from touring.

Expecting to make enough money to live on from selling albums alone as a small band is extremely wishful thinking. Many successful popular bands still had full time jobs even after really successful albums. It's a bit sulky to assume that because your band didn't make enough money it's the downloaders fault. No, it's just incredibly difficult.

There are many other reasons why album sales are declining. How about the fact that cd's are still overpriced, that a great deal of music purchasing is going on digitally? CD sales is not the whole picture. Also, people have been increasing spending in other areas like dvds while reducing spending on music in general.

[Robot DeNiro]

It's a bit sulky to assume that because your band didn't make enough money it's the downloaders fault. No, it's just incredibly difficult.

I'll try not to take that personally.  But I'm not being sulky about this, as I've already said I accept that this is the way things are now.  I know it's incredibly difficult to make money from selling albums, and I never expected to make a living from it.  If our gigs hadn't got bigger and our online activities hadn't received ever increasing numbers of hits, of course I would assume that our decline in sales was because we weren't good enough.  But the fact remains that over the last six or seven years our fanbase has grown massively and our album sales have declined by up to 75%.  More people are listening to our albums, but less people are paying for them.  How is that not the downloaders' fault?

Also, people have been increasing spending in other areas like dvds while reducing spending on music in general.

Yes, I think that's the point the rest of us have been trying to make.  People spend a smaller percentage of their income on music than they used to, and this is bad for musicians and the music industry. 

This decline has coincided with changes in technology which mean that almost all music is now available in perfect quality, within seconds, free of charge.  You seem to think that this is a coincidence, but it seems like a pretty obvious case of cause and effect to me:

- Person is used to paying for a product
- Product becomes available free of charge
- Person no longer pays for product

Surely that's human nature.  Now you and everyone you've ever talked to about this might be the good guys who still pay for the product, but that's not a representative sample.

Also, most people seem to listen to MP3s these days.  If you've downloaded an album onto your ipod a month before its release date, why spend a tenner to own it on CD a month later, when your CD collection is now just an increasingly dusty waste of space and plastic?  Or why pay to download the official MP3s from iTunes when you've already got an identical string of zeroes and ones? Again, you're clearly one of the good guys, but most people would rather spend that money on something else that they don't already own.

Sales are down, but not a huge amount...cd sales have been falling a bit for many years, it's not like they are a disappearing.

The following quotes are taken from a Rolling Stone article from 2007:

"U.S album sales have fallen 25% since 2000.  In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 785.1 million albums; last year, they bought 588.2 million (a figure that includes both CDs and downloaded albums)...Digital sales are growing -- fans bought 582 million digital singles last year, up sixty-five percent from 2005, and purchased $600 million worth of ringtones -- but the new revenue sources aren't making up for the shortfall."

And then a bit more up to date, a report on the sales for 2008:

"Overall album sales, which includes all albums and track equivalent albums, fell to 535.4 million units in 2008, representing an 8.5 percent decline from 2007. Total album sales, which include CD's , cassettes, vinyl albums, and digital albums, also dropped 14 percent in 2008, with 428.4 million units sold. "

I'd say that definitely counts as "a huge amount."

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/15137581/the_record_industrys_decline/2

http://blog.artistforce.com/2009/01/05/nielsen%E2%80%99s-numbers-are-mixed-for-2008/

Edit:  Ha!  While I was typing all that lot, I received an email telling me that someone has ordered our album online.  Only the fifth one this year mind.

[thugler]

I'll try not to take that personally.  But I'm not being sulky about this, as I've already said I accept that this is the way things are now.  I know it's incredibly difficult to make money from selling albums, and I never expected to make a living from it.  If our gigs hadn't got bigger and our online activities hadn't received ever increasing numbers of hits, of course I would assume that our decline in sales was because we weren't good enough.  But the fact remains that over the last six or seven years our fanbase has grown massively and our album sales have declined by up to 75%.  More people are listening to our albums, but less people are paying for them.  How is that not the downloaders' fault?

Yes, I think that's the point the rest of us have been trying to make.  People spend a smaller percentage of their income on music than they used to, and this is bad for musicians and the music industry. 

This decline has coincided with changes in technology which mean that almost all music is now available in perfect quality, within seconds, free of charge.  You seem to think that this is a coincidence, but it seems like a pretty obvious case of cause and effect to me:

- Person is used to paying for a product
- Product becomes available free of charge
- Person no longer pays for product

Surely that's human nature.  Now you and everyone you've ever talked to about this might be the good guys who still pay for the product, but that's not a representative sample.

Also, most people seem to listen to MP3s these days.  If you've downloaded an album onto your ipod a month before its release date, why spend a tenner to own it on CD a month later, when your CD collection is now just an increasingly dusty waste of space and plastic?  Or why pay to download the official MP3s from iTunes when you've already got an identical string of zeroes and ones? Again, you're clearly one of the good guys, but most people would rather spend that money on something else that they don't already own.

The following quotes are taken from a Rolling Stone article from 2007:

"U.S album sales have fallen 25% since 2000.  In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 785.1 million albums; last year, they bought 588.2 million (a figure that includes both CDs and downloaded albums)...Digital sales are growing -- fans bought 582 million digital singles last year, up sixty-five percent from 2005, and purchased $600 million worth of ringtones -- but the new revenue sources aren't making up for the shortfall."

And then a bit more up to date, a report on the sales for 2008:

"Overall album sales, which includes all albums and track equivalent albums, fell to 535.4 million units in 2008, representing an 8.5 percent decline from 2007. Total album sales, which include CD's , cassettes, vinyl albums, and digital albums, also dropped 14 percent in 2008, with 428.4 million units sold. "

I'd say that definitely counts as "a huge amount."

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/15137581/the_record_industrys_decline/2

http://blog.artistforce.com/2009/01/05/nielsen%E2%80%99s-numbers-are-mixed-for-2008/

My point was that there are other reasons why people are spending less on music in general than they used to other than the rise of music downloads. First of all, the majority of people are not aware of how to get hold of good quality versions of anything, or not interested enough to find out. While music sales have fallen, many other forms of entertainment have grown and take up more of peoples time, including television, internet, dvds/bluray, and video games. Given this, it's not surprising that music sales have fallen a bit. But they aren't going away.

Also, the majority of casual music downloaders won't be downloading the latest robot deniro album. It will be the proper music fans, who often happen to coincide with those who download a lot.

I'll have to find a particular study that I read, but it shows that the average music fan is actually less likely to spend more than a music fan who is also an experienced file sharer.

I'm willing to admit that perhaps casual music fans who might buy the odd major label release might instead download it, but I think the problem of downloading is frequently blown out of proportion and made to account for a lot of things it has nothing to do with.

[lipsink]

Edit:  Ha!  While I was typing all that lot, I received an email telling me that someone has ordered our album online.  Only the fifth one this year mind.

Out of interest, can I ask what the band was?

[buntyman]

If I've not mistaken the identity, Robot De Niro is one half of the brilliant Cassetteboy. Coincidentally, I bought the new album two days ago before stumbling on this thread (the sleeve notes acknowledge CaB!). This is the first album I've bought of theirs despite having been a fan for a good few years after someone at work tipped me off about them and seeing Aphex Twin play their tracks live. The other albums are unavailable anywhere it seems and I wasn't aware of the new one until reading that it was out on MySpace. Judging by your MySpace updates, it's not a huge surprise that CD sales aren't particularly high, it seems the album was released with no build up or details until the actual day of release. Surely with the importance these days of getting your name about on the internet, it's important to keep the fanbase updated of a significant development?
My spending on music generally has probably increased over the last few years despite not spending much on records. I do a shit job in the arse end of nowhere so to keep sane I try to go to as many gigs as I can afford. This means looking out for various recommendations from the media, friends and internet people, downloading some stuff for free and basing my decision on what to see from there. I think if I had some good record shops near me, i'd buy a lot more physical release music but, with so much floating about I tend to find that unless I 'acquire' a record soon after i've thought of it, i'll probably end up forgetting about it and missing out altogether.
Generally, I like to think it's not human nature to shaft people they like but it is human nature to be sceptical. If there are rumours that a certain record label are being greedy or unsupportive to their artists, it's easy to generalise and say that this is the case with all music and then justify downloading (what you know deep down isn't very honest). I think if buyers are confident that the money they're paying is going to the artist they like (especially smaller artists), they'll be far more likely to pay. I have no idea what Cassetteboy would have eventually made off my £10 purchase off Amazon. £3? Maybe an increase in advertising and selling on MySpace type sites through Paypal type sites would reduce the freeloading.

PS. That track with shoving the carrot up the arse bit had me laughing a lot.

[chand]

My point was that there are other reasons why people are spending less on music in general than they used to other than the rise of music downloads. First of all, the majority of people are not aware of how to get hold of good quality versions of anything, or not interested enough to find out. While music sales have fallen, many other forms of entertainment have grown and take up more of peoples time, including television, internet, dvds/bluray, and video games. Given this, it's not surprising that music sales have fallen a bit. But they aren't going away.

Also, the majority of casual music downloaders won't be downloading the latest robot deniro album. It will be the proper music fans, who often happen to coincide with those who download a lot.

I'll have to find a particular study that I read, but it shows that the average music fan is actually less likely to spend more than a music fan who is also an experienced file sharer.

I'm willing to admit that perhaps casual music fans who might buy the odd major label release might instead download it, but I think the problem of downloading is frequently blown out of proportion and made to account for a lot of things it has nothing to do with.

I post on music forums and there are plenty of genuine music fans out there who admit their music spending has fallen off a cliff since filesharing and torrents came along. The problem with assessing the impact is that forums and the internet in general probably do wonders for promotion, but at the same time filesharing makes it very hard to even get an album out without people hearing the whole thing in full ages before. For example, the first Bloc Party album leaked online fucking aeons before it came out, and I know people who genuinely massively liked that record who never bought it because they'd heard it dozens and dozens of times when it actually hit the shelves, and it's hard to summon up the willpower to spend a tenner on something you've already got. Of course, at the same time, the buzz about the band online filtered into the press and probably helped bolster their relative mainstream, so it's hard to say what the total impact was and how well Bloc Party would have fared in a pre-downloading world if the NME still latched on.

[lipsink]

I'm ashamed to say that since just over a year ago since I discovered how to do it I've been downloading tons of stuff and haven't actually spent much on albums (except some Daniel Johnston CDs off his website and CDs from artists at their gigs.)

I played bass for a guy who gave up recently because he was so pissed off that no-one had downloaded his album from iTunes and became so disilusioned with the whole thing. But there is the fact that he downloads illegally too.

[Lfbarfe]

Wasn't Sgt. pepper basically recorded on a four track?

A pair of synced Studer J37 4-tracks. I think one track might have been used up in the synchronisation process, so, effectively, Sgt Pepper was done on 7-track.

Major labels deserve no further financial help from any of us. Musicians and smaller labels deserve ongoing support.

[Robot DeNiro]

Judging by your MySpace updates, it's not a huge surprise that CD sales aren't particularly high, it seems the album was released with no build up or details until the actual day of release. Surely with the importance these days of getting your name about on the internet, it's important to keep the fanbase updated of a significant development?

Well, it's true that our so-called web promotion was haphazard and amateurish (that's the Cassetteboy way, after all).  But my point was that this was the first time we had ever used any kind of web promotion to contact our fanbase, but our sales still declined.  The fact remains that over the last eight years our number of listeners has grown while our number of sales has dwindled.  Somehow our pesky fans have found a way to obtain our albums without paying, curse them.  I joke of course, I'm just as guilty as they are, and indeed the albums that I keep banging on about couldn't possibly have existed in a pre-filesharing world.

Incidentally, now I've been 'outed' in this thread, I'd just like to say again that, despite possible impressions to the contrary, our prime motivation wasn't making money.  If it was, we'd have given up after the first album.  Although we sold more copies of that that than any other, if you worked out our profits as an hourly rate it would be a very small amount.  Sure money was an incentive, but usually that money represented either time away from the 9-5 grind so we could focus on the next album, or new equipment that enabled us to get more ambitious with each release.  But that's enough about me, I don't want to derail an interesting general discussion by focussing too much on one specific example.

My point was that there are other reasons why people are spending less on music in general than they used to other than the rise of music downloads. First of all, the majority of people are not aware of how to get hold of good quality versions of anything, or not interested enough to find out.

I'm not sure how true that is any more, and the technical know-how spreads exponentially - one person discovers bit torrent, they tell five of their friends, who all tell five of their friends and so on.  Plus we're now entering a time when people in their teens and early twenties (presumably some of the biggest consumers of music) won't really have known life without the internet.  I'm sure most of them know how to type "Franz Ferdinand" into a search engine.

While music sales have fallen, many other forms of entertainment have grown and take up more of peoples time, including television, internet, dvds/bluray, and video games. Given this, it's not surprising that music sales have fallen a bit. But they aren't going away.

Well television is hardly a new invention, and you can listen to music while browsing the internet.  Video games have been around since the eighties and DVDs are just flatter VHS tapes, so I'm not sure that they can be held responsible for the sudden decline in music sales over the last ten years.  In fact the report I linked to previously suggest that, despite all these 'new' distractions, people are consuming more music than ever, thanks to myspace, youtube and so on.  They're just not paying for it.

I'm willing to admit that perhaps casual music fans who might buy the odd major label release might instead download it, but I think the problem of downloading is frequently blown out of proportion and made to account for a lot of things it has nothing to do with.

I think it's more likely the other way round.  People who only buy one or two albums per year (my dad for example) are less likely to have experimented with filesharing because music is a less important part of their life.  They're less likely to be hanging out with other music fans who might fileshare, they're not going to be trawling the net for music blogs, stumbling across those that host entire albums.  Also, if they only spend twenty quid a year on albums, it's not worth them investing the time in finding free sources of music.  Therefore the music sales which will continue are the mainstream artists, the music for people who don't like music, the stuff that gets advertised on the telly.  It's not the smaller, niche music that actually needs our support that people are still buying, it's the major label albums that my dad occasionally buys.

[thugler]

Well television is hardly a new invention, and you can listen to music while browsing the internet.  Video games have been around since the eighties and DVDs are just flatter VHS tapes, so I'm not sure that they can be held responsible for the sudden decline in music sales over the last ten years.  In fact the report I linked to previously suggest that, despite all these 'new' distractions, people are consuming more music than ever, thanks to myspace, youtube and so on.  They're just not paying for it.

While what you've said is partly true, the amount spent on these things, and hours spent dedicated to them have grown, while time spent listening to music, and amount spent on it has fallen.

Perhaps it might've been file sharing that was your albums downfall, but theres no way of proving it for sure really. But even if your sales had increased, album sales would still have been an unlikely source of a lot of profit.

Might actually check out your music now, so thats one new listener at least.

[Johnny Townmouse]

I guess my feeling about all this is simply that the music industry is changing, in response to the way that we as consumers choose to listen to music. There is a massive psychological change in the way we view the ownership of music. Even when I started burning CDs from friends, I would mock up my own sleeve, print it out and make a bootleg CD. This was because I have always valued the ownership of the album, whether it be copied or not, because I come from a background of fetishising the vinyl album. Basically, for me music was a solid object, a piece of artwork. That has all changed, as I start to readjust my view of this and see that recorded music is just zeroes and ones, and I have started to see that owning music is about storing information. Not very romantic but hugely liberating. Kids are growing up now with absolutely no sense of music, or even tv and films (and eventually books), as a solid, functional item. It is a file in a database to be opened by a piece of software.

The way music is produced is radically changing, and so will the way that we consume it. It won't be long now before iTunes launches a one-payment, access-all music database which will make my music collection look like nothing. We will be able to access almost all music, at any time, anywhere. Frankly, I would rather pay for this than for individual CDs and downloads, unless I am buying directly from the musicians themselves.

I think this will create a genuine music subculture, rather than the pretend, genre based subcultures that exist now. Musicians will start to push financing schemes more and more, whereby you donate to the production costs in exchange for the music for free when it is released. But why bother, if you have an access all iTunes account? You will bother because the musician will simply keep it off of iTunes.
This obviously does not deal with the 'problem' of illegal downloads. But the fact of the matter is that the production and consumption of music is changing now more radically than anything we have seen since the 50s. Musicians will have to respond to this in the best way they can. If that means stopping producing and performing music then fine. If this means that we don't get the 'next Beatles' then fine, I can live with that. Ultimately, I don't really have a choice, and nor does anyone else. The radical revolution of music and the music industry is not something that will stop because or moral, philosophical and political views about the future damage it will cause to the quality and volume of music.

But it is hard for me to not feel excited and positive about this, probably because I am not a fan of the Beatles, and because most of the music I listen to hasn't been for profit or to give the artist a lucrative career. On that basis I am biased.

Finally, I think the main 'problem' is that music is now digitised. Therefore an illegal download or burning a mate's CD, gives you the same experience as paying £15 for it. Bands may start simply performing their albums live instead - like a Don't Look Back performance - and then people can illegally download the recording. If there is one thing that can't be duplicated, it is a live band. I'm getting old, and find gigs horrendous in the main (unless seated), but for the 'kids' this is what music is all about. In this way, music might become about being live again, and small, local, myspace promoted bands might start to gain popularity and momentum.

Or perhaps the widespread production of music will simply die out due to the lack of financial gain? iPod killed the radio star. Oh, well. So it *was* all about money. However, like I say, most of the bands I listen to do not make any kind of significant money, and most have other jobs. They are very dedicated, and love the art of making music for musics sake. Given the rampant egotism, corporate careerism, autocratic profit making and cliche-hedonistic lifestyle chasing that has come to define the large bands in music (has anyone *seen* that latest Kings of Leon video?), maybe these radical changes are essential.

Next victim, the film industry? Let's hope so.

[Johnny Townmouse]

Incidentally, now I've been 'outed' in this thread, I'd just like to say again that, despite possible impressions to the contrary, our prime motivation wasn't making money.  If it was, we'd have given up after the first album.  Although we sold more copies of that that than any other, if you worked out our profits as an hourly rate it would be a very small amount.  Sure money was an incentive, but usually that money represented either time away from the 9-5 grind so we could focus on the next album, or new equipment that enabled us to get more ambitious with each release.

But perhaps the problem is that there is a presumption that the music will be better, more interesting, or more worthy, because you have been able to produce it with a lot of time and money, or with better equipment?

I really like Cassetteboy, for some of the the same reasons that I like Hideous Wheel Invention, http://www.myspace.com/hideouswheelinvention

But I don't think Keith from HWI would imagine that he would make any money from it, he just really likes doing it, and gets pleasure from it, as do many listeners. I would say the same for Negativland, who make their money from ventures other than the actual selling of their music.

Without getting too personal, which would not be fair (and again, I reiterate that I really like Cassetteboy), I do think that the type of music you are making, which relies in some part on copying, borrowing, taking and culling, is endemic of the type of thinking that allows widespread illegal downloading to occur. I mean, poor old George Michael?

[Robot DeNiro]

But perhaps the problem is that there is a presumption that the music will be better, more interesting, or more worthy, because you have been able to produce it with a lot of time and money, or with better equipment?

OK, banging on about myself for the last time in this thread, I promise.  The better equipment I mentioned was nothing more than a computer that wasn't made last century, with a hard drive that was bigger than 40 gig.  Our final album would not have been physically possible on the antiquated piece of crap I used for the first two.  Does that make it a better album?  I don't know, but I do know that we wouldn't have even attempted to make another album without an equipment upgrade, the old PC was too limiting. 

As far as time goes, in my case yes there is a bare minimum amount of free time that I need in which to create an album.  If I am working full time to support myself, it is very difficult to find sufficient time without either sacrificing some attention to detail in the creative process, or any kind of social life I might have, and arguably if I take the latter option the work will also suffer.

Without getting too personal, which would not be fair (and again, I reiterate that I really like Cassetteboy), I do think that the type of music you are making, which relies in some part on copying, borrowing, taking and culling, is endemic of the type of thinking that allows widespread illegal downloading to occur.

Yup, I'm a massive hypocrite.  No illegal downloading = no Cassetteboy, simple as that.  But I never expected to make any money out of it, er, until I made some money out of it.  From that point on it was kind of hard not to notice that the amount of profit declined as the audience grew.

In my earlier post I was probably exaggerating when I said we'd retired due to poor album sales.  We'll still do stuff now and then, but it won't be albums.  And without the need to create a group of tracks that work as an album, all released at the same time, I think our output will fall.

While what you've said is partly true, the amount spent on these things, and hours spent dedicated to them have grown, while time spent listening to music, and amount spent on it has fallen.

I'm really not sure that time spent listening to music has fallen.  What about the rise of the iPod?  I know a lot of people who have an mp3 player who wouldn't have dreamt of listening to a CD discman or minidisc player.  I certainly don't believe that the amount of time spent listening has fallen as drastically as the amount of money spent purchasing.

Perhaps it might've been file sharing that was your albums downfall, but theres no way of proving it for sure really.

So how else do you explain the fact that more people were listening at the same time as less people were purchasing?  I'm going to stop using myself as an example now because I think it's becoming detrimental to the thread, but you have yet to come up with a plausible explanation for this.

Might actually check out your music now, so thats one new listener at least.

Thanks.  If you search for "Cassetteboy" on btjunkie oh god no what am I saying I'm my own worst enemy...

[The Boston Crab]

I've enjoyed reading all this and I'll also check out Cassetteboy now, though I'd heard the name and knew who you were a long time ago. I just assumed for some reason that you were a bit like Osymyso, whom I can't stand. I apologise if I'm very wrong.

My own personal stance comes down to circumstance. As a student 99-03, I used to spend the majority of my spare cash on CDs. I say 'spare cash'...what I mean is 'my overdraft'. I didn't eat for over thirty-six hours because I knew I had to buy Daft Punk's Discovery as soon as it came out. In my final year though, I had my first PC at uni...and first free internet connection. There were days when I would download thirty or forty albums at a time. There were days when I would download thirty or forty porn movies at a time. The entirety of Futurama. Every Charlie Chaplin movie. Eight hundred eBooks on stuff I had no interest in. On top of that, I had a fairly small HDD, so used to have to run a pretty tight ship which made me ruthless about the content I kept. I used to set stuff to download in the mornings, anything which flickered across my consciousness, go to breakfast/fuck about for a bit, come back after dinner and check out a few seconds of a few albums/scrawn flicks which had already finished, scrunch my nose up, delete them and think of something else to download before going out to the bar. This was repeated ad nauseam throughout my final year. Obviously, I kept some of it. I kept the stuff which caught my attention immediately, maybe deleting it later if it didn't seem 'Essential'. 

Gradually, I realised this was a kind of modern-day sickness, a kind of consumerist decadence for data which slightly disturbed me. What had happened to those days of listening to 'I Should Coco' on cassette, day-in day-out until the songs were a part of me, part of my life? I couldn't even skip the songs I didn't like so much! I just grew to love them all, love their place in the album. I'd replaced this with a surface-skimming data-processing routine which offered no joy, only distraction, nothing more than filling time, sabotaging and repairing my car every night instead of spending time with my dog/wife/child.

For several reasons, and partly due to moving to China and not bringing/buying a PC here for the first year, I was pulled out of this habit and although at times I slip back into the 'download twenty albums at once' habit, I really try to give an album a really good shot these days. I do still listen to new (to my ears) music incessantly, I make sure I listen to something more than once all the way through. I'm still a little ruthless, especially with new music which just IS mostly shit but if a little something, a phrase, a chord sequence, a melodic pattern, if anything pleases me, I'll generally stick with it for a while. I'm currently revisiting 'The Band' for the third or fourth time, based on Gonzo's great Top Albums post. It's not something I'd ever have downloaded otherwise, it's certainly very little like the majority of stuff I listen to but I'm digging a lot of the vocal melodies and it has what I admire probably more than anything else in music, i.e. personality and definite aspirations.

Will I buy it though? Nope. My excuse is: I live in China. I simply can't buy an original CD here. I also can't order online as it won't get through. I could do iTunes but the quality is fucking balls. Sounds like some convenient water-tight bullshit, right? What I will do though - and get ready for the flimsiest disclaimer ever - is promote the music I love to my friends back home, some of whom might...probably won't...but just might buy it. I've never given Animal Collective - my favourite band, for example, a single cent. I have convinced several mates to buy their new album though and another two to go and see their gig. Does this justify my theft? Who knows? I'm unlikely to do the same with The Band, for several reasons, one fairly obvious...another because I doubt any of my friends would enjoy/buy it anyway.

I do wonder about electronic artists though, particularly those who can't really play a live set. Maybe that's the why the likes of Ed Banger records seem to constantly tour and show more interest in promoting their fucking jackets and trucker caps than getting in the studio to put out some records. I doubt a new Uffie single would fund the amount of coke Busy P needs just to tolerate the soft cunt's witterings.