On unauthorized downloading
May 5th, 2009, 14:44 | posted by NS | category: Musick, OtherLeech of Navicon Torture Technologies blogs about something I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few months. Myself, acting as all three roles of the artist, the record label and the consumer, I’ve yet to come up with definite answers on how to deal with the issue. But what I know is that while our (being myself and fellow artists on Some Place Else) music is apparently more and more loved, respected and listened to than ever before, the actual record sales are getting noticably worse than before. Something is wrong with the equation.
It’s not that we’re making the art for money. But as long as the world is run by money, some amount of it is also required in order to be able to create and produce the art in question. It seems music is underrated these days: For many, it’s too much to pay 10-15 euros for a music album, but at the same time one has no problem spending more than that for beer in a bar. (And end up with a hangover…)
Not that I’m eager on blaming “illegal” downloaders. In a way it’s understandable: as long as it’s faster and easier to download something via a blog or p2p than actually taking the trouble and ordering & paying for it, people will do it regardless of whether it supports the artist or not. And of course there’s the bonus that the easy way doesn’t cost anything. Let me add I’ve downloaded a handful of albums myself, however most if not all of them have been out of print for years and otherwise only found on ebay for three-figure sums (none which would go to the original artist of course).
Personally, I don’t know how to solve this thing. I’m considering, among various other ideas, the option of going the free download route for my musick, but that is likely to prevent me from affording to produce the physical edition. How then satisfy the people who still prefer the physical product? How to fund the various things required to keep on making music? Double the prices? I don’t think so. If there’s anyone with ideas regarding the issue I’d be eager to hear about them. Comments welcome.
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Um, let me guess: Your sales have been getting worse since you cut down severely on playing gigs, attending gigs with your CD boxes, closed your street shop, moved out of Turku and apparently dropped some old customers from your mailing lists (I think I went a year or more without SomePlaceElse newsletters before I re-registered – or perhaps they fell into a spam filter)?
While I’m sure that all this marketing was stressful and possibly more trouble and expense than it brought in, you can be sure that sales will fall off when it ends.
And that goes even for free downloads. My Track Suite has seen nearly 13,000 downloads on Archive.org, but the flow has dropped to nearly nothing since I stopped playing gigs and linking to it occasionally but all over the place (emails to friends, Usenet, my blog, mailing lists, even on my posts on Slashdot.org). I got a couple of complaints about being too full of myself, so I dropped it. Can’t deal with attention anyway…
But I don’t know. Perhaps my way of low cost production and no cost distribution is the future. And thee I thought I was being nihilistically self-destructive…
But it’s sad. I like buying records and will do that again now that I’m not borrowing money for food anymore. Still, running a small business usually involves working ridiculously hard for ridiculously low pay. Ask any kiosk or bar owner.
Good luck!
Comment by Rene Kita — May 5, 2009 @ 17:21
Thanks Rene for your comments. I’ll address some of the points you brought up:
“Um, let me guess: Your sales have been getting worse since you cut down severely on playing gigs, attending gigs with your CD boxes, closed your street shop, moved out of Turku and apparently dropped some old customers from your mailing lists (I think I went a year or more without SomePlaceElse newsletters before I re-registered – or perhaps they fell into a spam filter)?”
Ok, let’s get into the details. Moving away from the city and closing the shop actually didn’t affect the sales at all. Well, maybe a little, but it was more than compensated by cutting down the monthly expenses by half. The general mailorder sales have gone down noticably only since the new year. Our own releases still do quite well but the rest is not moving the way it used to. There may be many factors to this, and as I said I’m not blaming anybody. Nor am I complaining, I’m merely observing and reporting what I see. And please note that my scope is wider than than my own label’s sales, I do read the news and I keep hearing similar stuff from several colleagues here in the underground.
As for gigs, in the last couple of years I’ve actually taken more gig offers than I’ve turned down. Granted, I’m not promoting myself for gigs at all, it’s not something I’m eager to do but if someone expresses interest I’m usually available. Anyway, I see a general decline of gigs for “our kind of music” (roughly defining that as experimental electronics, post-industrial, ambient, noise) in Finland — haven’t the recent times been rather quiet compared to the period of 2003-2006, or is it just me living in the middle of nowhere not being aware of what’s going on?
The mailing list issue you mention must have something to do with spam filtering, I cannot think of anything else. Sorry to hear about that.
“While I’m sure that all this marketing was stressful and possibly more trouble and expense than it brought in, you can be sure that sales will fall off when it ends.
And that goes even for free downloads. My Track Suite has seen nearly 13,000 downloads on Archive.org, but the flow has dropped to nearly nothing since I stopped playing gigs and linking to it occasionally but all over the place (emails to friends, Usenet, my blog, mailing lists, even on my posts on Slashdot.org). I got a couple of complaints about being too full of myself, so I dropped it. Can’t deal with attention anyway…”
I guess that’s why many choose to hire someone else (record label, etc.) to promote their works, self-promotion is a pain in the ass. :-)
“But it’s sad. I like buying records and will do that again now that I’m not borrowing money for food anymore. Still, running a small business usually involves working ridiculously hard for ridiculously low pay. Ask any kiosk or bar owner.”
Yeah, I know something about that, having run a record label since 1994 and worked as a sole entrepreneur for a few years now… Still, all things considered I’d rather do what I do now than something else. Either way, life is hard and you’d better enjoy it whichever way suits you. :-)
Comment by NS — May 5, 2009 @ 20:02
You know, I just noticed that I’m nearly always happy to be proved wrong. Perhaps it’s time I got myself a new set of silly opinions. :-)
Comment by Rene Kita — May 7, 2009 @ 11:32
“while our music is apparently more and more loved, respected and listened to than ever before, the actual record sales are getting noticably worse than before”
-> niko, that’s the whole point: people don’t wanna PAY for music, they just wanna LISTEN to music (and yeah, when it’s available for free the “audience” grows = catch 22). selling cd’s is passé. none (literally none) of my close friends buy music anymore (plague included) and i don’t blame them. 99% of them have spent 10(0).000’s of euro’s during the ‘80 and ‘90. they all have between 2500-11.000 units (vinyl and cd) in their collection and if they wanna check out something new they D/L it from blogs or newsgroups, soulseek, torrents, etc. easy come, easy go. not BUYING music means saving 1000’s of euro’s/year which they spent on undownloadable stuff, eg. vacation.
plague 013 is a free digital D/L. > 200 people downloaded it within the first 24H, no promotion was made, just a single post on MS and the plague site… this is 2009, why spending money on something u’ll be playing 5 or 10 times in your life. i agree in full what the beer-drinking argument is concerned but as stated above, beer can’t be “downloaded” for free (if it could people wouldn’t BUY beer neither).
small labels releasing unknown (”unhyped”) artists can’t make “money”, especially not when the activity is done officially (which is truly an exception) like in our case. on the other hand, let’s be honest, when i do 300 CD’s i only need to sell a relatively small part to reach break-even as i’m fully DIY and don’t have to pay employees etc., so … personally i don’t care about “profit”; as long as i don’t lose money i’m happy. what does bother me though is the time i spent on it (unpaid), eg. packing, promotion, administration, etc… no idea how long i’m willing to deal with that part any longer, especially in this banana-republic i live in, time will tell… more and more i prefer sitting in the sun reading a book.
conclusion: eventually stopping releasing PHYSICAL albums isn’t a shame…
cheers fré
ps. and there is another, at least as important “issue” too which u didn’t mention above: 99% of similar labels (and mailorders) don’t work officially, they press 1000 cd’s for 1000 euro (or less) of which they trade 950 and then start an unofficial mailorder where they can sell traded cd’s for 5 euro and still make 4 euro profit … this will eventually kill small labels that work officially.
Comment by plague recordings — June 6, 2009 @ 22:54