Gene Simmons is an idiot...

[Bluesburst]

But the artist themselves make WAY more money on tour then compared to album sales.. It's the corporate part of things. Bands should learn to sign with an indie distributor for the albums and give the middle finger to the bigger labels. Headlining your own sellout Stadium tour across North America will give you way more cash then selling 1 million albums.

Gene needs to accept the fact that times are changing and he's an old man. There is a youth of bands, take Heavens Basement for example, a band in the UK. They refused to sign to some bigger labels if I'm not mistaken. Sell the albums at your show.

Gene doesn't loose that much money from album sale losses. Plus maybe his last KISS album would have sold more if it wasn't so god damn dated.

"Times are a' changin"

Edit:
And to answer your question I do keep the track files up on Itunes. I download, but I don't upload.

That's the point Slash1337, to get on tour you need to be a proven commodity commercially and one way you do that is to show your music sells in the first place

Yes it is a corporate thing, like them or not it's all about risk. They put money up to record and or tour a band, if it flops they lose.

That's the way the world works, period.

If you're in or know of a band that has potential, go and borrow $100,000 to invest in them to get them going...

Then you come back and tell me how happy you are about others getting stuff for free that you have for sale to make more money to reinvest in the band etc etc etc while you're sweating on how you're going to pay that back.

I suppose you're thinking that corporates have lots of money?, well some do and they way they got there was by being shrewd. And all it takes is for a few bad investments to change course of the finances really quickly.

I'm not being aggressive here, just realistic.



-- Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:24 am --

Yeah the thing is, is that it isn't actually theft... Its a copyright infringement. Its different and not quite as serious. the information isn't being stolen, but copied. Wonder if as a kid Gene or any of the record co execs can say they never taped an LP or taped off the radio, because its the same thing.

I don't really download stuff much at all coz the quality is poo but i'm all for the idea as far as a way to distribute a product.

Our bass player is an avid downloader being a computer geek and stuff. He downloads computer games. Apparently they have started doing this thing with many games where you have to be online and connected to some server to play it. So if you didn't have internet or it was down you couldn't play it. Because of this its also prone to running slowly. Some nerd invented a patch to get around this and its in all the illegal copies of this game and doesn't have the other issues. So the free copy is better than the expensive genuine. so all they have effectiviley done is piss off the people doing the right thing and kinda passivley caused piracy to be necessary.

I'm not the full quid on this but another company have alowed games to be purchased in a downloaded format for a fraction of the price. It has got my mate paying for games legally in the first time in ages. He'd rather do that than illegally download becaus the quality is better and the price is reasonable as oppose to $100.

Over here most CD's are 30 bucks, many pop artists have 2 songs that are good and the rest are filler so your paying 15 bucks a song. Obviously its now more popular to download the 1 maybe 2 songs for 99c each, but this is only fairly recent. The artist and companies get most of that due to no distribution or packaging costs.

there are also sights that have legal free downloads where advertisers pay for the songs to have there ads on the web page.

My point is the internet should have been embraced long ago by record companies. instead they continued to rip people off with CDs instead of listening to customers who didn't want to be ripped off and wanted the convinience of downloads and as a result people are used to downloading stuff for free. Many of these bands have to realise that maybe they wouldn't have had as many fans rock up to there gigs if it wheren't for file sharing because they'd have never heard of them. There are a ton of bands i would've never have heard of had it not been for the internet and mates of mine who file share.

Ppl like gene, The've gotta stop fighting it, they will loose! The unreasonable idea that if you buy the CD, you should buy from i tunes again so you can have it on your ipod is stupid.

Sorry tramp but that is wrong, if the owner of the copyright prohibits unauthorised copying then it's theft.

[tramp]

[quote="Bluesburst

Sorry tramp but that is wrong, if the owner of the copyright prohibits unauthorised copying then it's theft.[/quote]

My point was purely technical. The Law doesn't consider it theft. It is copyright infringement. (Which is still obviously illegal)
The crazy thing is that if you've ever taped an lp or taped off the radio or even taped tv programs... you are just as guilty as an illegal downloader!

If you pinched a cd from a shop... that'd be theft.


Fow what its worth Blueburst i know where you guys are coming from, and i do feel sorry for some great independant record stores that are obviously gonna loose out. but i think an industry should be flexible enough to keep up with the world. Not be a technical dinosaur and piss and whine when they get left behind.

You know all the people that the RIAA have sued over downloads? not one cent as been passed on to any artists! Which is interesting given that they claim that is one of their motivations for persuing legal actions.

[dos]

There is nothing to be said that can convince those who have determined that downloading is ok, they have to justify themselves and their actions.

They apparently own the right to define, for example, KISS´business model ("because - wake up - it´s the internet!").

A test though; assuming you have a job - you please go ahead and do the work, but send your salary to someone else.

Do the work, but don´t get paid. Ok with you?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

[Bluesburst]

[quote="Bluesburst

Sorry tramp but that is wrong, if the owner of the copyright prohibits unauthorised copying then it's theft.

My point was purely technical. The Law doesn't consider it theft. It is copyright infringement. (Which is still obviously illegal)
The crazy thing is that if you've ever taped an lp or taped off the radio or even taped tv programs... you are just as guilty as an illegal downloader!

If you pinched a cd from a shop... that'd be theft.


Fow what its worth Blueburst i know where you guys are coming from, and i do feel sorry for some great independant record stores that are obviously gonna loose out. but i think an industry should be flexible enough to keep up with the world. Not be a technical dinosaur and piss and whine when they get left behind.

You know all the people that the RIAA have sued over downloads? not one cent as been passed on to any artists! Which is interesting given that they claim that is one of their motivations for persuing legal actions.[/quote]

In both cases tramp you're depriving the owner (regardless of how wealthy they may be) of revenue. We can play semantics all day long on this but it doesn't change base facts.

-- Wed Oct 27, 2010 2:36 am --

There is nothing to be said that can convince those who have determined that downloading is ok, they have to justify themselves and their actions.

They apparently own the right to define, for example, KISS´business model ("because - wake up - it´s the internet!").

A test though; assuming you have a job - you please go ahead and do the work, but send your salary to someone else.

Do the work, but don´t get paid. Ok with you?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

Agreed

[Slash1337]

There are other ways of showing popularity now a days. Hits on youtube, you can track downloaded numbers, facebook, followers on twitter. The Charts are dieing along with the Record Companies. Because of the internet you no longer need a booking agent cause you can contact and share your music with every bar in town and send 3 songs to each in a matter of seconds. Recording a pretty damn good quality album in your bedroom is WAY easier that it was in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's.

Downloading free music for young guys like me is almost a "right" for us. There is no way of getting rid of it, if you make it illegal people will still download. Are you gonna take a bunch of people who download music and probably have most of their music on hardcopy CD's to court/jail?

Look at radiohead... last album was offered online and you paid how ever much you wanted. THAT's how it should be, how much is this art WORTH to you. Paying $20 for a shitty album is happening far to much, and 15 years of mediocre pop music is what is killing the industry. Not downloaders.

[tramp]

people have been illegally sharing music since tapes were around. You’re never going to stop people from getting music they want for free. If people don’t want to pay for something, it’s not lost revenue. They were never going to buy it anyway. It may however result in them sharing the music with friends who would otherwise never have heard it, or purchasing merchandise\tickets. You know Lars Ulrich? Before he was in metallica, in the San fransico area he was the biggest distributor of tapes of british heavy metal, he'd pass these on to friends so they could hear a whole bunch of bands they never would have before... all completely illegal. So I was suprised when he kicked up a stink about napster.

CD sales are dropping, but online music sales have increased dramatically over recent years (thanks to things such as the itunes store, etc). You would expect CD sales to be dropping, it’s old technology which is being replaced with portable music players which store hundreds\thousands of songs. The problem (if you can call it that) with online music stores such as itunes is that they allow people to purchase only the songs they actually want, rather than having to buy an entire CD to hear the 2 tracks that they want. This can be a good thing though, as it’s much more likely that a casual listener will pay $1 or $2 for a song they want rather than $20-$30 for a CD. The $1 or $2 transaction is a sale that otherwise wouldn’t have been made. It think that is a dam good thing.

Yeah dos that'd be true if the music was there only source of income. If they can use free downloads to reach more people they have a bigger market to sell concert tickets, merchandise etc. I'd think of it more like a company advertising or giving out free samples.
Reaching more people than you otherwise would.

I think the most brilliabt thing was whn Them Crooked Vultures streamed there whole album online before its release on youtube (then took it down once it was out), they also allow taping at there shows. This is the way to use the net. Its that whole try before you buy thing.

I'll concede bluebursts point about Gene, at the end of the day, it is his music and he has the right to be pissed off at people downloading his music. I guess kiss aren't an up and coming band who needs the net to promote them!! ha ha.

As i have stated before i have downloaded before, but i don't do it very much. I struggle with the quality. I've got a couple of hundred cds and a couple of hundred vinyl, I'm certainly a big supporter of the music industry!! I'm all for the idea of trying before you buy, especially given the limited commercial crap on the radio in perth! You simply don't have other options here! However, like slash 337, If you try and you really like a band, do purchase the music, purchase shirts and go see them live, show your support. There are soooo many bands i listen too which i would've never even heard of if it wheren't for filesharing. The bands i love, I get there albums and if the ever come to perth western australia (ha! not many do!) i will see them live.

[Slash1337]

^+1

One more thing I would just like to put out there, and I'm going to use my favourite guitarist as an example.

He releases his album
He then releases a deluxe album
He then release a deluxe album with vinyl
He releases a deluxe album + acoustic songs added
He releases deluxe album/acoustic + live songs added.

See where I going with that, now if I wanted to BUY all that, I would be paying probably over $100 for the same 13 songs each time plus 3 the next and then plus 3 more the bext time.

This is where filesharing comes in. I'm a hardcore Slash fan but he can just right F*&^ off with the different versions. I bought the original and the deluxe. the rest I downloaded.

[Spitfire]

[youtube][/youtube]

[Kyle]

Downloading free music for young guys like me is almost a "right" for us. There is no way of getting rid of it, if you make it illegal people will still download. Are you gonna take a bunch of people who download music and probably have most of their music on hardcopy CD's to court/jail?

You summed it up pretty good there, sense of entitlement is a real big issue with the current generation.

[surfnorthwest]

I would love to take this punk ass faggot wannabe commie and skull fuck him. Then take his confused ass over to Iraq to live and see how long it takes him to change his mind. It is simple to take talking points and hate your country. Piece of shit.

[TubeStack]

Thread title of the year!

[tramp]

I wonder if our Maoist friend realises the hypocracy of talking about genocide and imperialist in front of that flag. Stalin was as bad as hitler man!


I struggle with the idea that some people still believe in communism!

[Slash1337]

Jesus, that guys is retarded is shit. Get him outta my country.

[Kyle]

I wonder if our Maoist friend realises the hypocracy of talking about genocide and imperialist in front of that flag. Stalin was as bad as hitler man!


I struggle with the idea that some people still believe in communism!

I would go as far as to say worse, Stalin was killing his own people. That is not to say I look lightly on genocide.

[tramp]

I would go as far as to say worse, Stalin was killing his own people. That is not to say I look lightly on genocide.

That is a fair call Kyle! Millions and millions of people.

I can see why well meaning but ill informed people would get sucked in about communism. Marxs theories are nice warm and fuzzy ideas... but they are so detatched from reality!!