this btw is the moronic that attempted to kill the vcr. Just becuase your friends are too clueless to adapt to the new technology (and the new fair uses that it brings) doesn't give them the right to destroy my rights.

Figuire out the "put your stuff on the tape cassettes and sell it to the vcr owners" solution to this problem.

The one that will turn torrents into the new biggest money in history of the music industry.

if you want could refer them to me, since i have already taught dozens of musicans on exactly how to do this.

They do not want to ban any new technology including your gooddamn torrent site, they just do not want their music on it. Can you fucking moron understand that much?

the problem with piracy is that nobody pays for crap anymore.
Everybody is afraid of educated customers because they'll be forced to think
and not just regurgitate some old shit and sell it as new.

For every story of an artist failing with CD's you have 10 more that made it big, with piracy, torrents, youtube, and the 10,000's of music driven websites online.

The music Industry is hurting in CD sales, but digital sales are up big time. Even without piracy, CD's would be going away.. they suck, they break, they breakdown with age. MP3's, don't.

You can find, untold numbers of people that could never sell one song before, now sell songs every day of the week.

You post some bullshit, and then say "search for yourself"... Yeah, that makes me look like a moron. :1orglaugh

The stuff you posted so far, is jurassic, and it does not even prove what you say. Go to the forums and blogs, and you'll see what pirates actually say today. If there are 10.000(??) researches, then please post 1 link, one only, to some economic peer-reviewed research.

I agree, however, that money are made out of piracy. But it ends up in the wrong hands. :2 cents:

If you and your friends are worried about the artists, then why don't you collect and send them money directly? Or start a website, where they can upload their music, and the downloaders pay? How about that? 0/100 split won't help them much. :2 cents:

How is to the end of 2005, Jurassic? That statement makes you look really stupid. It's about history, going back and looking... and it was the first result on Google.

US Movie Market Summary 1995 to 2009, the data is from the mpaa and 09 isn't done. Now... This a big overview, we can't see all the breakdowns within the market. That shows exactly where DVD sales went...


http://www.the-numbers.com/market/



How about this one.. "95% of all music is pirated" <-- damn!

http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_...s/dmr2009.html

"The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007. Recorded music is at the forefront of the online and mobile revolution, generating more revenue in percentage terms through digital platforms than the newspaper (4%), magazine (1%) and film industries (4%) combined."


Funded by the Gov, wanting to find problems with Piracy... oops.
http://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/vanei...ranslation.pdf

"The research shows that the economic implications of file sharing for welfare in the
Netherlands are strongly positive in the short and long terms. File sharing provides
consumers with access to a broad range of cultural products, which typically raises
welfare. Conversely, the practice is believed to result in a decline in sales of CDs,
DVDs and games."


Again... one search, all in top 5 listings.. if you want anymore data, you can read it by the 10,000's from every niche, sub-niche in the niches, across countries, languages, ages... technology based... so much, it's truly 10,000's of hours of data.

This time... why don't you do the leg work rather than spouting off again.

If the movie industry is doing so poorly then why were 2007 and 2008 record box office years?

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/20...ce-in-2008.ars

Don't blame on pirates what can be attributed to bad management and a poor business model. The movie industry through the MPAA has tried to litigate themselves into a lucrative business model for the better part of the decade. Only problem is the numbers don't back up the theory that piracy is what killed MGM and not just bad movies or poor business choices. The fact is most of the movie studios are late to the party. They should have had digital streaming movies based on subscription services like Netflix on demand 5 years ago. That would have stopped a lot of the DVD market loss bleeding and prepared them for the future. Instead they tried to stifle technology and sue people until they made their broken antiquated profit models work. Piracy is here to stay and that is a fact. So instead of crying it is up to smart business people to find models like netflix on demand which will allow the customer to get a high quality product without pirating.


http://torrentfreak.com/sony-ceo-ple...loaded-091027/

Here is the potential problem with this - I am not supporting the fact that record labels screw over just about every artist with their contracts - it is just a thought.

For every band that makes it big and sells a lot of records and gets famous, there are dozens that go nowhere.Yet the record label still took a chance on them and signed and supported them. Their records didn't sell and the eventually the artist was dropped or they quit or whatever. This happens all the time. So the big sellers end up supporting the unknowns and new bands. It is no different with movies. The big movies make the money and this allows the studios to take a chance and make other smaller movies, many of which end up making very little or no money.

So when the record labels stop making money they stop signing and developing bands/artists/ What you start go get is what we are seeing today which is where they sign acts to singles development deals. Instead of signing a band to a record deal and guiding them as they recorded a record and hit the road to support it and build up a fan base over a number of years they have an artist record a couple of singles, put them on itunes and other outlets and they see what happens. If the singles hit then they record an album and try to sell that, if not they drop/ignore the artist and move on.

So while established artists may make more money with piracy because it helps them grow their fan base (BTW they got famous using the evil system that screwed them over, but had the resources to highly publicize them and get them to start status) there are many acts out there that end up not getting a fair shake because they couldn't produce a hit single right out of the gate.

We are starting to see the watering down of the entertainment business. Everyone complains about shitty music and shitty movies, but these are now what gets made because the companies that put this stuff out there have a smaller margin for error or risk so they go with what they think can make money now, and they don't worry about developing talent. It is kind of like if you sell your house you paint the walls white or light brown or some kind of bland color that will appeal to as many people as possible. It doesn't have an character, but it appeals to the large group of the masses.

If you thought record labels screwed artists over before, wait until we get to the point where they just record an album and give it away for free and the label decides to take a piece of the band's merchandising and touring revenue. The reason you don't see many acts complain right now about piracy is because they make a lot of money touring and selling merchandise. When they lose a good deal of that to the record labels, you might start hearing more complaining.

Just a thought.

If you believe these numbers that were posted above:
2004 Total Movies Released: 567 Total Combined Gross: $9,327,315,935
2005 Total Movies Released: 594 Total Combined Gross: $8,825,324,278
2006 Total Movies Released: 808 Total Combined Gross: $9,225,689,414
2007 Total Movies Released: 1022 Total Combined Gross: $9,665,661,126
2008 Total Movies Released: 1037 Total Combined Gross: $9,705,677,862
2009 Total Movies Released: 1177 Total Combined Gross: $7,596,626,766

Yes, they are record years, but they are having to release twice as many movies as they did just 5 years ago to make the same amount of money. Isn't that the same complaint we are hearing in this industry? Almost every day you see posts where people talk about how they are working twice as hard, just to make the same amount of money or less than they did just a few years ago.

2002 and 2005 is jurassic when we are talking about technology. And if you believe Google rank means more than peer-review, then you have a problem with validating sources.


I see a decrease in number of sales. So that means they didn't go to the movie or bought the DVD, after downloading for free.. after all.. or what?

Yes, and it's not pirates who sell their music as affiliates. It's like the write; LICENSE partners. Without piracy, legal partners would make much more money. :2 cents:

Yes, of course there is an overall transfer of material welfare and increase in cultural welfare. That's the fucking point of piracy (and socialism): "sharing is caring". Jesus... That still doesn't prove that pirates pay MORE money to Mr. Music - or Little Miss X . How are you going to compensate for their loss? And how are you going to compensate for the lower quality?

It's already in place in most countries. The problem is not really the model and technology, but all the regional differences. Without a free world market, and protection of it, there are unfornutalely many limits. Hopefully they will solve both issues soon.

Were talking about piracy, we need to look back BEFORE the Internet... so please stop pretending that the data is Jurassic....

Much of the research is peer-reviewed, just because a blog talks about it, and links to the source, doesn't meant he source isn't reviewed. Almost all the purchased "marketing research" is reviewed, and allowed in Gov, Courts, used in Universities all over the world accept and use this market data.

Even the MPAA can't hide the facts anymore... they can't lie, twist, or anything... Piracy is making them grow, every report is showing it, and it's driving them mad.



Decrease? Are you bind?

Years per # set --->
(1995) $5.29 $5.59 $6.51 $6.77 $7.30 $7.48 $8.13 $9.19 $9.35 $9.27 $8.95 $9.25 $9.65 $9.85 $9.93 (so far 2009)

That's growth, making 09 (which isn't over) the biggest in 14/15 years, actually it's EVER!

Damn near doubled... that's the most fucked up degrease I have ever seen.



Nice 2 cents... but it's not backed by peer research.



So basically, you read the paragraph I posted and not the report... that's what I expect from gfy's finest.



Anyway...... moving on.

We already know 08/09 had the biggest box office records in history, single days, weekends, weeks and months, with the longest running ever too. One weekend after another, for 2 years.

How do they have the biggest 'ever' and yet, still have to release double the movies?


Simply... you re-release movies.... yep, those numbers include remakes, redo's, making movies digital and releasing them again.. Not really "new" movies, but "released" movies. Shit people don't want to buy, MGM......

When managers fail, they like to blame it on someone else, piracy in this case. While in fact, its just the stupid decisions of stupid people running the show.

Comparing sneakernet with 100mbps lines, VHS with Blue-Ray writers, audiogalaxy with rapidshare and high-speed torrents etc.. yes, that is jurassic.
Back in those days pirates were actually pirates, and not spoiled kids who tried to justify their activities in public...

If you conclude and read the data they way you want to, then it's useless to link only. In the paper you posted above, they conclude the opposite of what you trying to say :upsidedow



You are blind. Read what they say; Note: in order to provide a fair comparison between movies released in different years, all rankings are based on ticket sales, which are calculated using average ticket prices announced by the MPAA in their annual state of the industry report.
And you know as well as me, that the amount of piracy exploded on this side of the millenia. From 2002 there is a decrease in ticket sales each year, except for 1. Oh.. and did I mention the population is also increasing? :2 cents:



Doh! They write they have legal partners and you can go their portals. And what do the torrentsites, rapishare etc write on their pages? Please tell me.. or do you need peer-reviews for that?



No, I read what you didn't their hole conclusion. And not out of context. I think you should read it, and then you will see they are talking about the overall welfare transfers - Socialism and piracy at it's finest...

But if the numbers are correct releasing that shit helped to make these record sales. Are you suggesting that if they didn't release this stuff that they would still have records sales? Sure there were some huge movies at the box office as there are every year, but if you look at the numbers you can see the trends.

This site has a great breakdown of it.

http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/

In 2002 the movie industry made 9.2 billion dollars at the box office. They sold 1,575.7 million tickets, released 477 movies and had an average ticket price of $5.81

In 2008 the industry made 9.6 billion, sold 1,341.3 million tickets, released 605 movies and had an average ticket price of $7.18


So what does this tell us.

It means from 2002 to 2008 the industry had about a 5% increase in revenue. Yet they had about a 26% increase in number of movies released and about a 23% increase in ticket prices. All the while they had a 15% drop in ticket sales.

So number of movies released is up, ticket prices are up, yet number of tickets sold are down and revenue is not growing at the same rate of ticket prices and all is okay?

For pirates, 'inflation' and 'per capita' only exist if it fits the graph they want to show :1orglaugh :helpme

You need to do research.


You mean the report by the IFPI that represents the recording industry worldwide? Well of course they don't make it sound pretty... but the numbers don't lie.

"Single track downloads, up 24 per cent in 2008 to 1.4 billion units globally, continue to drive the online market, but digital albums are also growing healthily (up 36%)."



You forgot 09, looks like it already bet 08 and is on track to go back for the last 5 years. Not that our Country didn't get attacked, hasn't been at war, had and has crazy economic issues, we lost a region of our country including part of a major city, had several major floods, growing unemployment...

Industries falling all around us, 100's of banks, auto, small business, farms even.. just going belly up year after year after year...

And... sales hit a peak, then held steady, and now go back up...

You may want to rethink your one tracked mind.

Again... go find different data to read then. You can find the straight raw statistics and build your own trends if you want. Or let someone else do the work for you to get you the same results.. at the end of the day, you need to do your own research.

Which you aren't doing.



nSocial societies work.. Piracy is working... what's the issue?

I see trends that match economic times in that chart. That shows the number of tickets has increased, it's just off it's peak... and yes, the value of tickets sold has went down.

If more lower scale re-released movies have taken place, those aren't at premium rates, they are at much much much reduced rates, like the $1 theater. With MORE of those released, the average ticket price would drop greatly.

And "movie" entertainment, is on the decline overall... the "quality" rating is dropped to the floor with people, greatly. I'm shocked to see they did so well this year with so much 'hate buzz' going around about the cost of movies these days, and the quality, and the bitching of re-released movies.

At that... I would like to point out the price has increased every year, all the way back to 1980... the trend would say, piracy or not... it would still have done this. It was doing it before Internet Piracy.

The price going up has nothing (or very little) to do with piracy. Still, if you took out all of the discounted stuff that you are claiming causes the number of movies released to rise then what would the amount of sales be? Would they still be making record sales? Maybe they are doing this because they are trying to squeeze every penny out of what they have. Increased competition from the internet, games and other cable channels are causing things to be more competitive than ever before. So when you mix piracy in with all this increased competition it makes for the perfect storm.

No, the TNO paper you refered to. They conclude that "material" welfare is transfered to the consumer, and "cultural" welfare has increased. Now, is that a surprise for you? That's what socialism/piracy is all about.

I think you should also read their recommendations, especially this one:
Don’t ‘criminalise’ individual end users - educate them

I disagree when it comes to those scumbags making money of the infringements, but for the rest, education is surely needed. Didn't their mama not learn them not to steal? Didn't they learn that if everyone steal or not work, then there will be no one left to support each other?
Education is needed, and pro-piracy proganda on forums is not the way exactly...


There are many reasons, also complementary reasons, but the numbers do not prove what you try to say. Lets put it this way, quite simple: If you watched a movie.. or downloaded a site-rip - has the chances of you paying for it afterward improved? Answer me - honestly :)

Doh again. It's a no brainer that some legal ISP portal have license for the downloads they offer their customers - and torrent sites mostly not. Do you need research papers for that?


Social societies is not the same as socialism :winkwink:

And what do you mean by piracy is "working"? They are destroying everything artists, writers, yes even porn industry have been fighting for the hole time; free speech and freedoms. And then they have the nerves to whine about it afterwards? As I said, pirates are not "pirates" anymore - who at least can admit what they are doing is wrong.

wolverines!!!!!

uggg.. it's a cultural study, with the data in it.. you're getting stuck on details outside the subject... which is, piracy hurts sales, income, etc..

"The research shows that the economic implications of file sharing for welfare in the
Netherlands are strongly positive in the short and long terms. File sharing provides
consumers with access to a broad range of cultural products, which typically raises
welfare. Conversely, the practice is believed to result in a decline in sales of CDs,
DVDs and games."

Economic implications of file sharing, is positive in the short and long term. It doesn't hurt CD, DVD or game sales.

That's the point...


You aren't going to mass educate the population on what they call, sharing. We were taught to share, so things would really have to change.




If it's good, hell yeah, without question.

Even myself, kungfu, cartoons, music even on gfy... hell yeah.. I'm not afraid to spend money on things I like.. I am afraid to spend money on shit sold to me as good.

Just like the guy on gfy... canned off xbox for pirating a game but has $15k in games.


Huh? You assume torrents don't have legal content on them?

Hahaha... please.. People release music, even movies get released ONLY on torrents, everything.



Hahaha...... other than they have been praising it, other than bands have been releasing music on torrents.. writers have been sharing ideas pre-releasing books, then building massive followings, and selling out, without anyone printing the thing.


Wow... you really have no idea what's REALLY going on.

I feel if you removed all factors, piracy, internet.. Movie and Music sales would be in the total shit can. They would be looking like much of the failing industries around us that can't instantly tap into a world market, by mistake.

And I'm sure they are trying to squeeze every penny they can. But when you mix in all the competition, even the tiny guys... the market is EXTREMELY larger.. So do they just want more of the market they can't have... or is it actually hurting them?

They aren't hurting... they are fighting a change they can't win because of technology... even if it hits them now, they will catch up, again, at some point.

They increased the price and sold less tickets, whats wrong with that? When I increase the paysite price, I don't expect more sales either, but if it makes more money...

Also, as TheDoc mentioned, movie quality is so shitty lately, that I wonder people actually buy those movies instead of downloading them.

Another thing about piracy, many people just download movies to check them out and then buy them if they like them. If they didn't see them before, I doubt they would buy, too. They still prefer the DVD/blu-ray in an original plastic box over a burned avi file. Piracy is free advertising for movie companies.

Dammit, you claim pirates are paying MORE to the industry, which IS a question of material welfare (money) - NOT culture. They DEFINE material welfare as the TOTAL amount of money, AND they conclude the same material welfare is there, BUT it's transfered from operators/producers TO consumers. The cultural "increased" welfare is irrelevant.

I suggest you research and read references yourself, before calling other lazy :error


Yes, I have no problems with people sharing their own work or property, if they want to. But sharing your own work or property voluntary with others, is not the same as stealing FROM others. Haven't you learned the difference? Or did you learn: "if I want it - then I just take it"?


Yeah right... :1orglaugh

Well, let me quote what the "community" said about the piratebay plan about becoming a paid model:

If the shareholders give the green light to the new plans, the Pirate Bay will be acquired on August 27. Whether or not any of the existing users will start to pay for the site is yet to be seen, but we estimate, based on talks with several Pirate Bay users, that the majority will wave goodbye and move on to the next torrent site.

:1orglaugh



Yeah, sorry I forgot you can't place it into context. I meant pirate torrents of course. Now, go to any pirate torrent sites top500 and tell me how much percentage is legal content :1orglaugh



No, it looks like you have no idea, and I can now see, like Gideon, you are just trolling. First you quote the massive opposition against piracy, and now you suddenly say they praise it? I'm done with you. Go troll someone else. lol...

I can't argue the fact that there are a lot of shitty movies being made, but I can blame some of that on less income and more piracy. As I stated above the big successful movies are the ones that pay for the smaller movies to be made. So the studios are always trying to hedge their bets and make things they think will sell. If it was a successful TV show, they think it will make a good movie and that it will already have a built in audience. This is why we see so many sequels and movies based on TV shows and video games and stuff like that. Of course a lot of those turn out to be crap, but they are trying to find sure things that will make money.

I didn't think City Walk was owned by MGM?

Mark

Ok again... I took a random pick out of the top 5 results, and posted the statistics. Do your OWN research, rather than me just picking 5 random things from 1 google search result.



It's not for me to learn the difference on... the consumer doesn't think it's stealing, they call it sharing.

So go argue with the billion people that think differently than you.




Well... I put my content, our music, our pictures and art on torrents, forums, etc all the time. Of course people use it for piracy, every public service on the Internet has piracy on it, and it's big on all of them.


And I will wave goodbye to them too. Just like news services and forums that went paid. Statistically speaking, less than 2% of the people will pay it makes no difference what the service is.

It is after all, an 'extra' cost on top of the 'Internet' Cost on top of the Product Purchases that they make.

I said the Music/Movie "Industry" doesn't like it. Musicians and Artists, love it.. Those are two totally different things.



You can keep trying to twist the URL's I posted (or words) as "the facts" we are basing this off of all you want. When I have stated, this is 1 (or a few) examples of 10,000's of hours of research.

At the end of the day, you posting equals you not researching anything.... that's all I see.

Just because a bunch of people considering "sharing" doesn't make it not piracy. A person can think robbing a bank is just "liberating" some money, it doesn't make it so.









Actually there are a lot of artists that hate it, but they don't speak out about it because they fear having the fans turn on them. There are also a lot that don't care. But in the end big rock stars like being big rock stars and they understand it is big music label money that helped them become big rock stars and without sales, those labels don't have the money to promote them and keep them big.

I simply stated what they say. By judging it, we lose out. We can't change the collective group, until technology changes it. Unfortunately but yet, oddly not at all unfortunate, technology is going more open, and this isn't going to help.



It comes down to, the people are telling the labels they want something different but labels say no, then try to tell the people what they want.

That has never worked.


The big business profiting from this, the real business people... which we know is happening, they took the word Piracy and replaced it with the word fans.

They want more fans, aka: eyeballs. And piracy is just 1 TINY part of the possible eyeballs. It's not like the Majority of the Internet pirates, that bands, music.

These people are looking at the overall... no mater how many ways you twist it, you can't saturate yourself.... so even thinking that Piracy hurts you, is impossible. Nobody has ever haven't reached even 1% of the possible market, even if your on every pirated site in the world.


This game... is way, way, way ... bigger than the minds here on gfy allow it to be.

That is true. Rick Rubin was hired to be the new head of Columbia Records and the first thing he did was put together some focus groups where they asked a bunch of people age 15-25 how they got music. Almost every one of them said they downloaded without paying and they didn't consider it stealing. So the collective whole has decided if everyone breaks the law, then no worries, they will just change the law. I guess that is a sign of the times, but it worried him and it should worry anyone who creates content and sells it.





people actually love being told what to like. Why do you think half the garbage on TV gets watched. Do you think people would choose to watch this shit if they were of free will? No they are told it is funny or cool or interesting and they watch it. They like being told a band is good so they check it out. They like being told a movie is good so they should go watch it. There is a huge sector of the media that does nothing but write criticism of movies/music/TV shows and millions pay to be told what to watch and read and listen to.


Certainly any artist wants fans, but getting those fans costs money. Even if a ton of people download your album and there is a big demand for you to perform live you will have to have someone who is willing to finance your appearances. And those people will want something in return for investing in you. When you start to cut record sales out of the equation it makes the pie smaller, but there are still the same amount of people wanting a piece of it.

If you think that there is a glutton of garbage out there now to listen to and watch, wait until the masses have control of it. The day that Bob and his garage band have the same access to the same amount of ears and eyes as The Rolling Stones is the day we will be lost in a swirling mass of shit and finding anything worth listening to will become a part time job. Trust me, for several years I made my living writing about music. Every week I got no less than 40-50 CDs that record labels were releasing and they were hoping I would review them or write about the band. 90% of it was trash. And this is back pre-internet which means someone listened to it and thought it was good enough to invest money into and it was still terrible. Imagine what it will be like when anyone with $200 and a garage can release an album world wide.

The old saying is that you get what you pay for. Those that feel downloading music is not stealing and those that insist on doing it will eventually get exactly what they pay for which is nothing.

but you guys are bitching about how the current laws don't work

you want the torrent sites to proactively cover the cost of screening for infringement but when i suggested that copyright holders should be fined 3 times the claimed value of the work if their takedown request violates fair use or the actual copyright holders you complained that was to harsh

you expect torrent sites to spend hundreds of millions to absolutely determine if the work is authorized even though the record companies are making "mistakes"

like this
http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-dr...yspace-091007/

how exactly do you expect them to cover those cost if their is zero liability for lost profits when they make "mistakes" like this.

how do you expect any such site to survive.

so we should thank the record company for screwing over the artist and making the choice for us

bullshit
the fact is there are proven examples of artist successfully launching themselves using peer to peer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Coulton
release all his work under creative common
he got his song featured in GH
he wrote and song the "i'm alive " song from portal.

without the record company taking 90% the fans who bought banana and bought the music from him, or asked him to play in their home town thru eventful more than made up for the "lost sales" from piracy.

maria digby covered other peoples songs on youtube

sick puppy gave their music away for free

i did the spike launch for project wyze that got them signed. and they made more money from that launch then they made for the album pushed by the mega corp that signed them.

we have been working with dozens of artist to do the same thing, small time success without the 90% ass raping is way easier to accomplish and will make you the same amount of money.

the fact is what you consider trash i might enjoy and vice versa, letting everyone make the decision for themselves is definately better then the record companies ass raping the artist so they can "tell us what to like"

omg best ever lol

Understand... to me this isn't about supporting theft. It's just accepting reality on the issue at hand. At this point, I can't stop any form of piracy, not even my own shit.

The copyright law could change to support us, like in other Countries... and it isn't going to stop piracy from happening, it happens in every Country in the world, regardless of strict copyright/piracy laws.

The sign of the times to me is technology exploding faster than we can keep up.




Correct... but add in something for the changing times, open and private social aspects.

The tv and magazines are 'single direction conversations' once you add in the social aspects of the Internet, the 'global conversation' is telling people what is cool, what isn't, what is not and what is not.

Not only that.. the social connection, is allowing unattached social bonding. This would be like you thinking I was cool, so if I said "this" was cool, you would follow me.

Anyway... the social aspects is the altering technology now.



Interesting view point... let me know if you hear of someone growing big that can't get an investment for a concert, I have a few dollars laying around.


That day isn't here? Have you seen http://12seconds.tv/ ?? It's 12 sec video clips of people... :)

With what you said... I think the "challenge" that is now presenting itself comes from the social aspect of the change. Not every tom dick and harry can just walk in now and directly sell people trash.

They wouldn't ever make it past step 1... unless the person joins, the social conversation, engages in it, adds relevant and good content. All while, building the relationships with others in your industry, so you can have help reaching the global conversation, that is so big.. that if only one person yells out, nobody can hear it...

But if 100's or 1000's or millions of people are screaming it, supporting it... the global conversation can't ignore it.

Times are changing... that's for sure.

We have been through all of this before. There are always exceptions to the rule. Many people argue that Dane Cook got huge because he was able to use Myspace as a way to get a ton of fans and he was able to turn those fans into people who bought his album and went to see him live. Tila Tequlia is another example of someone who made a lot of money just using Myspace and an online presence and it led to bigger things for her.

But when you remove the few exceptions most of these people are nothing more than glorified garage bands. I don't mean that in a bad way. There are small lesser known acts that I really like. There are bands that only put out 1 or 2 albums and never made it big, but I still love those albums. There are small underground acts that I really enjoy and yet they have never gotten big and most likely never will. This type of thing existed long before the internet.

What it comes down to is your ability to monetize your success while you have it. The half life of a band is about 5 years. Chances are if you haven't made it in 5 years, you won't. If you have made it, the odds of your success lasting more than 5 years is very limited. Times change, musical trends change and tastes and fads come and go. A few survive and most don't. It was that way before the internet, it is still that way wth the internet. If you go to a band and you tell them, "You can sign with a major label and they will ass rape you and you will never see a dime from record sales beyond your initial advance, but they will put a ton of money behind your publicity, you will have a couple of top 10 singles, work your ass off and within in year you will be headlining 3000-5000 seat venues and making millions on the road, or you can release the music yourself online, give it away for free and what you do sell you get to keep 90% of the profits from and in a few years you will still be playing clubs for 150-200 people and still holding a part time job when you aren't touring." Which do you think they would take?

I'm not saying the music labels are the be all end all. I'm not saying they have the best taste. I'm simply saying that when the music business becomes a free business where everyone releases their stuff for free and they hope to make money down the road touring, selling merchandise or whatever you are going to see a huge influx of people flooding the market with their stuff, and most of it is going to be garbage. There will be no filter and the consumer/fans will be left to sift through it on their own. Sure there will be magazines and web sites that will review it and help you find stuff you like, but most music buyers don't work that way. Most music buyers hear it on the radio and go buy it or download it. They don't have the interest in reading or researching stuff. Like always, there are exceptions to that rule and you and I are among those exceptions. But here is food for thought. Of the ten people that I consider to be close friends I am the only one who reads any kind of music magazines or websites. I am the only one of them that researches music and tries new stuff. The other nine all either hear it on the radio and buy it/download it or they just listen to something they already have. when I ask them why they don't look for something new that they might be into almost without fail they tell me it is because they have better things to do. Music, sadly, is an art of convenience and record labels help to facilitate that convenience for those who want it.