Piratebay (Page 2 of 8)

If songwriters, musicians, etc. get no money for their work there will be no good music. People have to live. Not all music makers work for corporate machines. Of all the professions on the planet.... why is it not ok for a songwriter or musician to get paid?

SOME music is free. If the songwriter DECIDES that it's free. No one is stopping you from putting out free music on the web, and no one is stopping anyone from downloading that, but please respect the intentions of other people as well.

I think too, it should be an individual thing. If an artist is pro copyright, it is his right to defend it; if one decides to share, he is free to share it. Nowadays world is all about individualism, no? If someone creates something, it should be his decision how to sell it. Nobody is forced to make music or art, true, but nobody forces you to buy, right?

@poodle: in the first sentence you say that some of the best artists never got paid a cent, and in the last sentence you say a good artists will always be able to make money. I don't think you can measure a good artist in money, unfortunately it is not that easy

+1 to Decoder, You're right when you give away your music for free it's your choice. But it being YOUR choice is the key. The problem we have is that the choice is being stolen and the artists are not being given a choice.

Almost all the artists I know are highly active, hard working people who do it for all the right reasons (and not just money) but accept that they have a relatively insecure future and to stick at it for years requires a lot of faith in yourself AND the people who support you as an artist.
Someone spreading your albums around the net can make the difference between meeting all your bills at the end of the month or not (I speak from experience) and we aren't all single teenagers living at our parents place who don't really need a reliable income and are making music so we can tell everyone on countless forums how cool we are. We do it because we think it is of value to others and to ourselves.

But of course, the world is different now and we have to move with the times (which is why so many artists are looking into new ways of scraping a living with their music).

Good that I made you laugh I was speaking from a general perspective; I guess artists from the cbs-scene (clone, creme) didn't have that great sales figures to begin with (thus they don't earn their living at all with the records) but I remember even 3-4 years ago or so a great release on Clone could sell 2000 copies or even more. Plus all the mechanical royalties etc. But I doubt you can pull it off today. So that was enough with the gigs to make your living even as a quite underground electronic musician. But now the sales ... Pfft

this is just typical example about being dumb about technology. you cant continue to compare how things were with how they are now. too many variables.

more people had record players back then etc etc.

the record industry always says "ohhh my god i remember 1989 (or what year it was) that was a good year" so what happened then? people were buying CD players and had to buy all the Mozart and Beatles all over again. you dont have to be sherlock holmes to figure out that this will make sales go up.

I wonder what is smart nowadays regarding (digital) marketing. To sell at places like beatport is obviously not enough to many artists. When i hear from friends what they earn there, it is peanuts. You read everywhere "downloads and vinyl are only for promotion today, sot that you have to live from your gigs nowadays", but to me this is not realistic for many independent artists. So, what are the new ways to go beside using legal download portals?

In general, i seperate private filesharing from "big style" file sharing. I don't care about friend-to-friend filesharing, cause it is not different from earlier tape sharing, but those who do it in big style and even make money with distributing stuff in the net, i don't like to see supported.

@decoder, musicians and artists could make a living before the record came (many even tried to stop it) so what's the point again?

musicians even tried to stop the synthesiser ffs.

I agree with poodle. The issue of sales going down is far more complex, then what many people who accuse filesharing for it tend to believe. There is constantly new music coming out, new labels being added, and something else that you can see very strong here: Old music being rediscovered.
It's all much more open to see how many sorts of different music there are, and if you know about more different stuff than your choice is also more likely to be broader.
I think thats one of many reasons, that selling music nowadays is just not that easy anymore as it was back then, change in technology might be another one.

no one could make money off of it if only you make it available to everyone for free

I can't imagine any electronic musician raising a family on what he does.  He probably has a real job on thr side.  Professional musicians, graphic artists, these guys make a living selling out

I'm a business analyst