March 19th, 2007
Mixed Feelings About a Blog Giving Away the Entire Love Me Destroyer Album
I received an email this weekend from a good friend alerting me to the fact that this blog was giving away the entire Love Me Destroyer album we recently put out, “The Things Around Us Burn”. The blog post compares LMD to The Loved Ones, A Wilhelm Scream, and None More Black which are all great comparisons. The post also has the track listing for the album and the release date, January 30th, 2007. It offers a link to the band’s PureVolume page and then a link that says Sharebee. Sharebee, I find out, is much like Yousendit.com which allows you to send large files to others. Clicking the Sharebee link allows me to download the entire album and there is a counter on the page. The Sharebee link has been accessed 80 times so far.
As a label I have some reservations about a site giving away the entire album that I am attempting to sell. On the flip side, it is nice to see a blog noticing an artist we put out and wanting to share that band’s music with others. The site says this about the albums it has available for download:
This blog does not store any files on its server. The postings are for promotional and preview purposes only and all the albums downloaded from here should be deleted within 24 hours. If you like the albums you downloaded here please support the artist by buying the original cd.
I don’t think the fact that this site isn’t hosting the material frees them of any responsibility, but if they are only allowing downloads of the album for 24 hours, should I really be concerned? This then begs the question: if music fans have unlimited access to download pretty much any album, why wouldn’t I or any label for that matter offer full, free downloads of our albums with the hope that music fans will consider buying the albums? Would our sales increase or decrease if we decided to give away downloads of our albums? The truth is it really couldn’t go down much more as our bands don’t really sell a ton.
This then leads me to a recent encounter I had by a potential investor. I was contacted by someone who works in the business of investing into other businesses. His idea was that he would invest into a new venture run by myself where we would actually give away the music by our artists. The hope would be that we could work out deals with the artists where we could get a percentage of the band’s other revenue streams (touring, merchandise, etc) and that giving away their music might allow the band to become bigger and the percentage of their other revenue streams might make for a profitable company. We have been sharing ideas and with some luck, this is a company that might get off the ground.
The reoccurring theme here, unfortunately, is that Suburban Home and all labels need to adapt to life in the post-file sharing age. What do you do when your label seems to have more momentum than it has ever had, but you know that this momentum doesn’t translate to record sales?
Written by Virgil Dickerson
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On March 19th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Corey said:
Virgil,
I think this person’s blog is complete BS, primarily this statement: “The postings are for promotional and preview purposes only and all the albums downloaded from here should be deleted within 24 hours.” Obviously this blog has not contacted the labels that are releasing the albums they are posting, so it can not be called “promotional or preview purposes.” Also, the word “should be deleted” really gets to me. If these files were encrypted or had some sort of license, I could see how it could possibly work (for example, like all of the Suburban Home releases on Ruckus), but it seems like they are posting full mp3 downloads with no real “evidence” that someone is going to delete the files after 24 hours. In fact, anyone that would would probably do so because they didn’t like it. If they liked it they are much more likely to just keep the files - who is gonna know?
I also see a few titles that haven’t even been released (the Waking Ashland cd doesn’t even street ’til April 17th, and he acknowledges it!!!) yet so either this person is abusing his advance promo privelages or is simply downloading the songs from a P2P or FTP and posting them on sendspace. I would think that a label could at least protect their releases from blatant things like this, and I myself would have an extremely hard time not coming down on it if I were in your position.
On March 19th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Virgil said:
It is a frustrating time for music sales and this “blog” is only one example of it. If I were to come down on this site for posting Love Me Destroyer’s album, it wouldn’t stop the millions of other potential file-sharers who will download the album elsewhere. I was surprised to see that the site did have albums by major label artists and like you said, Waking Ashland which isn’t due out for a while.
And yes, the 80 people who have accessed the link can easily turn around and share the album with more and more people. It is a tough time.
On March 19th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Volkher Hofmann said:
Hm.
I could probably write a mile-long reply here, but I think I’ll reserve those thoughts for my own site.
To be totally honest, I both abhor and love sites that give me a chance to download stuff, but I think I need to clarify that statement.
I am a) a collector and b) someone who knows how important royalties are for musicians to survive and for labels to put up an effort getting (good) music released to the public continuously.
Offering music for free, music that is readily available for purchase at adequate prices, is something I think should be punished severely. Fact is though that there are hundreds if not thousands of blogs out there that break the rules every single day. Somehow, the music industry has not been able to devise a viable business strategy to counter these illegal activities (aside from locking away grandmothers and scaring the bejesus out of ordinary citizens).
There is a point though at which downloading becomes excusable (and yes, I’m stepping outside of the legal boundaries here) and that is when previously unreleased or extremely expensive material is made available that labels are either sitting on, are hiding in the vaults or are allowing to drift off the marketplace..
I know it is illegal, but if someone makes, for example, the “Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury” available for DL at a time at which the material is OOP, not likely to be reissued and only available at outrageous prices (let’s say, several hundred dollars for 2 to 4 CDs), the labels are making a huge mistake: People will and do seek out downloads that can let them have the material. There’s no way of stopping them.
I love music and I think it is a disgrace that both the artists and the labels are cheated out of their justified income, but current (re)issue policies are horrible. Works of art are kept in the vaults or are (re)issued in such low numbers that average fans with an average income are practically forced to look for illegal alternatives (just take Verve as an example, although they have started offering rare material for DL only - a good business strategy, although not for real collectors).
Let it be known that I would be the first one - but certainly not the only one - ready to shell out quite a lot of hard-earned cash for stuff that is simply made so rare that it is unaffordable.
Count Basie (Mosaic) live recordings going for anywhere between $400 and $1000 on eBay? WTF? The aforementioned Dinah Washington run of reissues would cost me equally much. And more.
Lastly, I am of the opinion that - business model or not - it is the plain duty of labels to keep masterpieces of (American) music in print at somewhat affordable prices. If they don’t, they are asking for it (and they are burying themselves).
I tried really hard to find some of the above examples, and I was even willing to pay what other people could probably live an entire year on, but it simply wasn’t available. No hay. Niente. Zip. Not available although I spent months or years looking for the damn stuff.
And that’s the real shame.
Just some thoughts … that aren’t necessarily directly related to this post.
On March 19th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Volkher Hofmann said:
I’ve posted some thoughts on my site as a reaction to this post here.
Thanks for the incentive.
On March 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Jack said:
“The hope would be that we could work out deals with the artists where we could get a percentage of the band’s other revenue streams (touring, merchandise, etc) and that giving away their music might allow the band to become bigger and the percentage of their other revenue streams might make for a profitable company.”
I have read this business model in several places. This is not unusual but is considered ‘The Future” new business model for selling music.
The future is giving away music digitally and/or just selling it digitally as a loss leader and focusing on other revenue. You know, adapting like any normal business.
In fact David Byrne spoke about this at SXSW, where he also admitted he illegaly downloads.
On March 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Rob said:
Team Love Records is the model my partner and I are following with our label.
Give away the music for free and use it a promotional tool.
We also manage a band not on our label, and I see being a music manger or some other such entity being the future more so than running a label. As you noted, getting into band’s other streams of revenue is more a management take on things than a label. We plan, once we’re established, on simply using our business skills and contacts to manage companies handling everything for each of the bands we work with and take a cut of overall revenues.
As far as our first release coming out this spring/summer, we’ll be releasing it on vinyl primarily with a limited run of CDs and making all the songs available on our site for free once they’re ready.
It’s a slippery slope though with free downloads and devalued music and, well everything…
Hope this blog is around in 5 years and we can see where people ended up
On March 19th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
chris said:
“The hope would be that we could work out deals with the artists where we could get a percentage of the band’s other revenue streams (touring, merchandise, etc) and that giving away their music might allow the band to become bigger and the percentage of their other revenue streams might make for a profitable company.”
I see this being an extremely viable alternative for labels and bands alike. Remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for?” If you download all you get is the music, you don’t get a physical copy of the album artwork/lyrics/pictures to admire and stash in your CD collection or hang on your wall. So the customer is left with 2 choices: Do I download the music and only the music, or do I buy the cd/record? Clearly a label needs to offer both options nowadays, and with the reinterest in vinyl I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
I’ve also considered charging dirt cheap prices for albums ($1-3 range), which might be a hassle, but less of a hassle than paying $10 for a downloadable album, and I think fans wouldn’t mind supporting the artist in this way–or encouraging donations.
Really, this is a wake-up call for us. We need to get our shit together, let music be free on the internet, and make our money with material items and playing shows.
On March 21st, 2007 at 10:07 am
Sean-Michael Dore said:
Monday morning I removed 17 postings of the forthcoming From Autumn To Ashes record… all from blogs like this one. I think it’s disgusting that this happens and I spend a lot of time each week removing releases from the file hosting people… the only responce I get from the blog owner is….
This blog does not store any files on its server. The postings are for promotional and preview purposes only and all the albums downloaded from here should be deleted within 24 hours. If you like the albums you downloaded here please support the artist by buying the original cd.
On April 19th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
IndieHQ [Eyeball Records brings down music blog/pirating site, Kinixtion] said:
[…] On March 19th, I made a post explaining my frustrations with a website giving away the entire Love Me Destroyer album. Looks like I wasn’t the only one frustrated with this happening. Marc, label manager at Eyeball Records, wrote the webmaster an email which eventually led to the site taking down all of the pirated music they had up. Pretty incredible. Good work Marc, now if you can get to work on Limewire and all of the other peer to peer sites, the industry might have a chance yet. […]
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