
10,000 Artists Sign Up for Pirate Bay Promotion - anons2011
http://torrentfreak.com/10000-artists-signed-up-for-pirate-bay-promotion-121103/
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fjorder
As Neil Young put it, "Piracy is the new radio".

A pirate torrent site providing promotion for artists at the artists' request
is not something new. Private music torrent trackers have been doing this for
several years now.

For example, take Anamanaguchi (a NY based band). Their 2009 album, "Dawn
Metropolis" was featured, at Anamanaguchi's request, on Waffles and soon
became the #1 most downloaded album on that tracker. A year later Anamanaguchi
was cutting the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Yes, this kind of
promotion _really_ works.

What scares the big record labels is not that piracy is the new radio, but
that _they don't control it_. It becomes very difficult to predict what will
become successful if music trends are left to arise organically from the
listeners themselves rather than board-room focus groups. A lack of
predictability is bad for an industry that is in the habit of throwing
millions of promotion dollars behind artists in order to manufacture success.
If the labels can't predict the trends, how do they know which horses to back?
While theft of music is certainly an issue, I think it's of secondary concern
to labels. It's the unpredictability that piracy is injecting into popular
music that is really going to mess up their business.

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CJefferson
Something about this rubs me up the wrong way.

Certainly I can imagine many bands would like to be mentioned on the front
page of the pirate bay, it is a major website and a major piece of free
advertising. However, the first sentence:

"While the major record labels and movie studios do what they can to shutter
The Pirate Bay, thousands of lesser known artists are eager to become featured
on the site’s homepage."

Seems unreasonable to me. I have no problem with bands who want to be on the
pirate bay being there. I don't think even the music industry would complain
about people giving their music away for free if they want to. The problem is
putting up the music of people who don't want to be there.

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goldfeld
Only people who don't want to be there or also people whose contracts keep
them from being there? Danger Mouse and his Dark Night of the Soul is a good
example.

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aw3c2
I haven't heard about it, mind to elaborate? People who sign with commercial
labels, feed on their promotion etc and then say they want their music to be
free are hypocrites to me. If you want to release your music for free, then
choose a CC license and share it. Easy as that!

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mindslight
How is that at all hypocritical? Signing to a major label and publishing
torrents are both ways of giving your recorded music away for free, hoping for
publicity that will make you money on tour.

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aw3c2
Conventional labels needs the revenue of record sales. So if the artist gives
away the music for free they might ruin sales. The label would still pay for
promotion etc so it would probably be a loss. Touring money is usually more
going into the artists' pockets, so that would not do the label much good.

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mindslight
You're purposely missing the point - Artists have been giving away their
recorded music for free ever since Hollywood accounting was invented.

Much as how labels didn't care about properly compensating artists, artists
don't care if the labels make bad investments by relying on projected figures
that no longer correspond to reality.

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rohamg
Panacea is when more artists can give more music away and still profit.
Freemium based on consumption, or increased reliance on alternative revenue
channels. Either way, IMHO the technology exists today to disaggregate the
middlemen in music, lower the price point for customers, and still net profit
to artists. In particular, I believe almost every function of a label can be
crowd sourced or productized. Vested interests are what have gotten in the
way.

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gavinlynch
Sure, who wouldn't want free advertising on a highly trafficked site with no
strings attached?

