Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorB
Part of that had to do with the fact that when Metallica started out the not only allowed but ENCOURAGED fans to copy their albums and even record their live shows and share them with friends then after they became big then they wanted that to stop. That's called being hypocritical.
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No, that's called the difference between people recording a show on a cassette tape and listening to it with their buddies VS People ripping their entire albums and giving them away for free to MILLIONS of people they don't know.
All bands encouraged fans to share the music within their immediate circle. That's simple marketing strategy. You make new fans who will BUY your music.
Marketing suicide is having your product given away for FREE without your consent.
Now if you can come up with a viable plan and a publicity campaign and public image management team to make you appear to be something to a large amount of people then you can get real slick like Radiohead did and make good money by giving it away for "free".
But anybody with any background in the entertainment business realizes that the Radiohead stunt isn't much different than an evangelical preacher doing his song and dance.
It was slick, pulled off great, and pure genius on their part. Can it be replicated by other bands? Maybe, but it won't be a common thing. You can only pull that kind of PR stunt once. Then it becomes harder to paint yourself as some kind of underdog to trick folks into giving you money voluntarily.
I had NO problem with people downloading my content and handing it around to their buddies. None. But once I saw my stuff stolen and given away for free and downloaded hundreds of thousands of times...I put an end to that shit.
As I said over a year ago...Stop crying about piracy and DO something about it. And the only thing you can do is lock your content down. Stop making your content downloadable. The only stuff you find of mine out there now is our old scenes that were originally on the site as downloadable .wmv's And even those get yanked down by removeyourcontent.com as quickly as it can be done.
They don't get our new scenes. And "no" you can NOT currently steal my stuff with any software available. None. I've tested them all. Encrypted streaming, multiple layers of scripting in the background, and the users username and ip showing up randomly onscreen (to deter screen capture) combine to keep things under control.
That's why I'm still growing a paysite while others are scrambling to stop the bleeding. It doesn't take a genius to understand that the only paysite that will have value is the one that is NOT available for free.