A Long Perturbed Rant and an Offer to Bands
August 7th, 2005
So…
I just left some pretty negative comments on a site that calls itself an MP3 blog. This site hosts MP3s that the artists have not licensed to them in any way. Nor are these tracks made freely available by the bands elsewhere. They even have tracks from the unreleased Death Cab and Dandy Warhols albums. Incidentally, these are all very well established bands.
Now… there’s actually a lot of blogs that do this. There’s even some dubious services which will allow you to upload and share any file for a limited amount of time and a lot of these blogs use these services.
Whenever I find these sites, I generally shrug and go my own way. Most of these people are doing it out of ignorance, naiveté, or a sense of rebellion.
In this case, however, I felt it was necessary to leave the comments I did. Why so? Well, the site also sells advertising to bands for $25.00/week. In exchange the bands get two MP3s hosted and a link to their site (if they have one). This website is literally promoting already established bands for free by offering illegal downloads, while charging up and coming bands. WTF?
To any bands looking for new streams of promotion: you can host as many MP3s as you’d like, get far more exposure, and promote your outfit in a much better light for free at places like garageband.com, and myspace. Think about it. If it costs more in a week to “advertise” than it does for a month of hosting at Dreamhost (where you would have plenty of bandwidth to host your own MP3s), something is amiss.
You could also have your music hosted for free at the Podsafe Music Network, and have podcasters everywhere help promote your music and shows. You could promote yourself by adding some of your tracks to the opsound project, the Association of Music Podcasters, the Internet Archive, and a million other places. Try getting in touch with some of the podcasters at Odeo or Podcastalley. Trust me, there are tons of them that would love to play your music for you.
This has all got me to thinking…
I’m redesigning iPod Nirvana. I have the new layout all sketched out, but now I’m going to alter it a bit. I’m going to find an area on it to give bands a little promo space. I’m thinking I could put up 3 bands a week. I’ll do this totally for free.
Here’s the catch: you have to offer at least one free MP3 somewhere. It can be at your own site, or someplace like what I mentioned above. It can’t be a streaming file or WMA or anything like that, and it has to be of decent quality (that is, it should be 128 kbps at 44.1 khz). Also, if I like your music, I’m going to play it on my podcast. You have to be okay with that.
If you’re interested in this, drop me a line.
August 7th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Right. See, then the band has to pay for the bandwidth to host at least one of the songs and when you’ve got no traffic to your site, it won’t matter anyways. It’s then just being hosted for free on yet another website that has no traffic. That’s a noble idea you have, but if you’ve got no traffic it doesn’t matter who you’re hosting songs by.
By the way, I have an idea for you: why don’t you call up Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Ben Gibbard and ask them if it’s okay since you seem to know so much? Make sure and give them my full name, and reference my websites and URL’s when you do. I’m sure they’ll take your call right away, LOL.
Love the site.
August 7th, 2005 at 11:37 pm
You make no sense… first off, I do pretty decently for a site that just started, but if you really want to get down to… okay… yes… you can piss farther than I can, m’kay?
Secondly, they would not have to pay Garageband.com, nor Opsound, AMP, Odeo, nor any of the other sites I mentioned which do get far more traffic than you.
Also, as I said at your site, if you offer me proof that you have the rights to offer up all of the music which you do, I will gladly sit down to a dinner of humble pie and crow.
August 7th, 2005 at 11:41 pm
And just like I said at our site, suuure. I’ll just hand over my contacts in the industry to you so you can call or email them at your will. Mmm hm. Yeah. That’s gonna happen.
It’s not a pissing contest, you’re just barking up the wrong tree is all. I don’t think anyone would argue with you about any of the methods you mentioned being legitimate, but you have a fucked up way of voicing your concerns so you get no play. Sorry, dude. Good luck, seriously like the layout of this site.
August 7th, 2005 at 11:44 pm
Also, good for you for standing up for what you believe in. But I’d like to direct you to this article from The New York Times regarding the recent MGM v. Grokster decision which pretty much levels the playing fied for everyone. Enjoy the read.
http://forum.ev1servers.net/showpost.php?p=354425&postcount=1
August 8th, 2005 at 12:10 am
EJ,
You’ll note that the article talks about the commercial end of things. It’s still considered illegal to profit from sharing those files. That’s exactly what you are doing. I also find it interesting that you’re using the Grokster case as “permission” when you have said that Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Ben Gibbard themselves have given you permission to “share” leaked songs… to “thousands” of visitors.
The reason I question your validity, honestly, is because I find it very hard to believe that these bands would say, “Sure EJ, since your site is soooo successful, we want you to promote our bands with MP3s that we have not made available anywhere else, including our own sites.”
The thing that concerns me, is that if my suspicions are right, it will just continue to make music on the internet this thing where people are afraid to download *anything* and bands are afraid to make *anything* available without DRM.
So, really, I hope that you do have explicit permission to share these songs on your site. I’ll even actively promote it, like I said (even though my traffic doesn’t seem to live up to your standards), but if you’re relying on the Grokster decision, you’re on shaky ground.
August 8th, 2005 at 12:29 am
You can question my validity or the validity of my site. Like I said, I told you to call Courtney and Ben and ask them personally. I’m sure they’re both a single phone call away from you right now.
Scenestars doesn’t turn any profit. Money earned from the site pays for hosting and back-end. We’re not raking in the huge bucks promoting music, and maybe in your figmented understanding of what MP3 blogs do, our site looks good, has good content, and in your mind it stands to reason it should be making money or something.
We host everything that we as writers enjoy. We don’t simply promote big artists, and the majority of the bands on our site (if you would dig deeper) are unsigned or indies. Cross-pollenating indies with big acts promotes music and gives all artists a voice. Nobody is a bigger gun than anyone else, and almost all traffic from the big stuff helps out the little guys.
If you missed that part, then you missed the point of the article I gave you, the point of our website, and there’s no explaining to you about the rest of it.
If you have any further comments or questions, you can address them in person at CMJ. I’ve been invited to be a member of the panel “Credibility in Criticism: Responsibilities of the Music Media in the Age of Blogs and MP3s” on Friday, September 16th.
See you then.
August 8th, 2005 at 8:13 am
Offtopic - your 5 Qs 4 U are ready ;-)