There is a lot of talk about the price of CD's and about value for money.
I've given this a lot of thought over the last few days.
Let's put this into perspective, when you buy a CD, the small bit of plastic, the disc itself is just the method in which the music is delivered to you, it's the envelope, it's the plate for the food if you like. When you buy a CD you are buying a copy of that music, you can keep it for all of your life and listen everyday, or you can listen once and put it on a shelf and forget it, that is your choice once you have bought it.
Something that you could get pleasure from daily for tens of years for a few £'s is not good value? The price of a CD compared to the price of a coffee, or the price of a cinema ticket is low, very low, and you have this thing, this special something for the REST OF YOUR LIFE, it has the potential to cheer you when you are sad, to comfort you when you are alone, to join you to others, really it's an amazing thing!


To say "music should be free" devalues it.
It says that you believe that the work, inspiration, imagination, skill, time and effort that has gone into composing and recording the piece is worthless.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the musician for a moment, how would you be inspired to write music in such a climate? How could you go to work each day if you were being told that your work was worthless?
Consider what it would be like to be told you were worthless, BUT your services were still required free of charge, then ask yourself how you would feel? Would you be hurt, angry, depressed?
Is this a fair and just way to treat the people we admire?

When those who regularly steal music get cornered, they tend to get angry and try to defend this behaviour, if this is you, please stop and consider the emotional impact you are having by the soul destroying actions you chose. Even if you wrongly deny or discount the financial blow and burden you create.

So many artists are independant these days, they are musicians and at the same time the plan tours (financially putting their necks on the line to do so), they run websites, they design t-shirts, they do the accounts, they parcel up cd's and ship them, they promote and advertise, they often do all the jobs that traditionally a record label would have done, and at the end of the day, the special thing that they do, the music, is taken, with no thought to consequence. When they have the audacity to speak up about it they are ridiculed and abused! HUH?

Can we add a little humanity to this issue and really consider the effect of taking and freely distributing something that you have no right to.

Wilcey. Prog Against Pirates.

Hi all,

and welcome to all the new folks who have added their names in the last two days!

Please checkout our new weblog

It's FAB!

Thanks to Shawn and Hansi!

Rx

P-A-P

A WORD ON PIRACY

First off, I'm going to distinguish between
pirated copies that are full-on duplications and
almost look like the real ones (if you see a
price that is too good to be true, it is likely
one of these Russian or Chinese copies), and
digital downloads that you get through various
peer-to-peer (p2p) and torrent sites. Also, let's
focus on our prog market, as opposed to the music
market in general, as that is what is directly
affecting all of us. And finally, this is aimed
at people that are doing illegal downloading. I'm
not pointing a finger at the many people who play
by the rules, but maybe you know people who
illegally download and you can help convince them to stop.

In conversations I've had with those who
illegally download music, here are the most common excuses they give:

* It's only hurting the record labels and they
screw the artists anyway, so it's justified

* I'm just making copies to share with my
friends, and they will surely buy it if they like it

* I can't afford it right now, but I'll pay for it when I have some money

* It really leads to more sales for the artist
because I'm turning new people on to it

* Everybody breaks some law every day - so what?

* CDs should cost a lot less

Now the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA) is no hero in this. Their enforcement
attempts are not effective and they're making no
effort to deal with the current technological
situation. I've said for years that a pirated
copy isn't necessarily a lost sale, so you can't
make the one-to-one correlation, but in recent
years empirical sales evidence indicates
otherwise, which I'll illustrate later. Let me
ask you this: would you go to a store, steal a
CD, listen to see if you like it, and return it
if you didn't; or go back and pay if you did? Of
course not. Just because stealing something is
easy, that doesn't make it any less illegal.

Then there are those who claim they are part of a
group of people that turn each other on to new
music and that they buy what they sample. These
people are just full of it. These groups are a
way to pool their money so that they can each buy
a different CD and make copies for all the other
members of the group. That way, for each single
CD they purchase, they get another 10, 20 or
whatever, for free other than the cost of blank
CDs to burn for the other members. The odds any
of these people go and buy it afterwards are somewhere between slim and none.

These are all just lame excuses for doing
something illegal. I can't say it clearly enough
– copying and distributing or receiving music you
didn't buy IS ILLEGAL. It doesn't matter if you
think it isn't, or you think you're doing the
band a favor. If you really want to turn someone
on to something you like, then lend them your
copy, have a listening party, or turn them on to
internet radio. Our station www.progrock.com has
nearly 20,000 songs. Odds are good you can find
what you want to hear and request it. As long as
no extra copies are involved, then this is legal.
You can, however, legally make copies for
yourself. For example, say you don't want to risk
the CD getting damaged, then you can burn a copy
to take around in your car, or you can copy to
your iPod, as long as it is all for you. This is
"fair use". It is never your decision to give an
artists music away. If they want to do it, then
that is their decision, not yours. Someone who
gets something for free is much more inclined to
give it away to others, so that person you gave
it to probably gave it to someone else and eventually it's on a pirate service.

CDs cost virtually the same now as they did 20
years ago, adjusting for inflation. That means
they are even cheaper than they were. On average,
in the United States you can get a non-import CD
for about $15. If you buy when a CD is first
released, you can get it for as low as $12, which
is what the new Rush album sold for on Amazon
when it came out. If you think that's too much,
try not going to Starbucks or McDonalds for a couple days to save the money.

We've recently been researching various pirate
services and torrent sites for our own releases
and we're finding tens of thousands of downloads
for titles that we've sold maybe 1,000 or 2,000
copies. This should make it clear enough that
those downloads are NOT, in fact, turning into
sales. Here are some quotes from labels, artists
and industry analysts that illustrate the impact.

This quote is from the May 28, 2007 issue of the New York Times:

"Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new
talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged
more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing
any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and
similar services. Aram Sinnreich, a media
industry consultant at Radar Research in Los
Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the
United States 24 years ago, is in its death
throes. "Everyone in the industry thinks of this
Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD
sales", Mr. Sinnreich said, "and then everything goes kaput".

According to Bernard Gueffier, founder of Musea
Records in France, their sales in the past 10
years have dropped by 50%, despite growing recognition and sales channels.

The owner of Record Heaven in Sweden tells me
he's seen a 15% drop in sales the first 4 months
of this year and figures he'll close shop within 2 years.

Dave Mulloy of Pendragon Music told me that he
went from being able to make a living as a
reseller, to only doing it as a hobby due to lost
sales from illegal downloading.

At http://www.myspace.com/progagainstpirates
there are quotes from members of Pendragon and IQ.

"Just as a small sample," said Pendragon's Nick
Barrett, "on Komodo alone , over 200 people
potentially [we cannot be sure because they don't
all "thank" the "releaser"...which is a joke in
itself, like these guys wrote and recorded the
frikkin album!] downloaded the soundtrack last
weekend of our new DVD, Past And Presence, as
opposed to the 10 people who bought it from our
site. This weekend, from our site we sold two.
300 people have downloaded a sort of "10 album
Pendragon package" from Pirate Bay, which is a
loss for us of between £15,000 and £25,000!
[depending on whether they would have been retail
sales or from a wholesaler] And this is from this one site alone!"

"With regard to the downloading thing, personally
I'm not impressed if we have 2 million fans that
download for free", said IQ keyboardist Martin
Orford, founder of Giant Electric Pea Records.
They're no use to us whatsoever and I'd rather
have just one that actually buys the CDs,
because, if everyone expects to get music for
free, all the middle ground of the music business
(and that includes IQ) will disappear. And all
that will be left are the amateur no-hopers and
the superstars. The rest of us will all have
given up due to lack of funding. This is not
something that could happen, it's happening
already, and based on current trends I give bands
like IQ and record companies like GEP a life-expectancy of five years at best."

To summarize, there are plenty of legal ways to
check out material, there is internet radio,
download services like Mindawn that let you play
the song three times for free, audio samples at
virtually all online retailers, the band's
MySpace page, and your friends, who can have
listening parties. These are all ways to get
repeated exposure to new music. Remember some of
those classic prog albums that you maybe didn't
like at first, but then grew on you, like Brain
Salad Surgery, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,
Relayer, and others? If all you did was listen to
them once and toss them, then you would have
missed out on the years of enjoyment it eventually did provide.

Just today a news story ran that Apple is
embedding customer account information in the
meta-data of files they purchase from iTunes that
are DRM free. This means that if you do decide
to share the files, or received files from other
people, it's going to be really easy for iTunes
to know and report it back. I'm a little torn on
this, but maybe it will scare enough people in to
doing the right thing. Other than that, there
seems to be 2 possible solutions right now
because none of the technological ones are
working. Either you sue everyone in site like
the RIAA is doing, or you engage in an awareness
campaign, which is what I'm doing here. If this
behavior continues, it WILL, without doubt and
utter certainty, start killing off bands that you
enjoy. Is that what you want?

Shawn Gordon
President
ProgRock Records
www.progrockrecords.com

Great news indeed!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7057812.stm

Please follow the link to the BBC news site, to read abou the torrent site owner who was arrested this week. Hopefully this will start sending out some strong messages!

Thanks to Shawn for letting me reproduc this from his own myspace site www.myspace.com/progrockrecords
Cheers Shawn!

More of Shawn's words to come!

W x

I've had the most amazing email conversations the last few days regarding the legality of music sharing. Now my basic opinion is that younger kids find nothing wrong with it more than adults think there is nothing wrong with it, what I was surprised to find out is just how many adults will jump through the most amazingly convoluted leaps of logic to justify their actions, it mostly consists of:

* It's only hurting the record labels and they screw the artists anyway, so it's justified

* I'm just making copies to share with my friends, and they will surely buy it if they like it

* I can't afford it right now, but I'll pay for it when I have some money

* It really leads to more sales for the artist because I'm turning new people on to it

* Everbody breaks some law every day - so what

Well these are all just lame excuses for doing something illegal. I can't say it clearly enough, but copying and distributing or receiving music IS ILLEGAL. It doesn't matter if you think it isn't, or you think you're doing the band a favor. If you really want to turn someone to something you like, then lend them your copy, as long as no extra copies are involved, then this is legal. You can make copies for yourself, say for example you don't want to risk the CD getting damaged, then you burn a copy to take around in your car, you can copy to your iPod, as long as it is all for you, this is 'fair use'.

I had people cursing me, threatening me and various other funny things because I kept insisting that it was stealing. Would you walk in to a record store and steal a CD, listen to it, decide you like it and go back and pay for it or return it if you didn't like it? Hell no!

These people that claime they are part of a group of people that turn each other on to new music and that they buy what they sample are just full of it. These groups are a way to pool their money, they each buy a different CD and make copies for each member of the group, that way for each single CD they purchase, they get another 10, 20 or whatever, for free other than the cost of blank CD's to burn for the other members. The odds any of these people go and buy it afterwards are somewhere between slim and none.

So have some honest and integrity folks, I'd respect you a lot more if you were stealing music and at least said "yes, I'm stealing music" instead of coming up with all these lame and twisted justifications.

Here is what Widge[Martin Orford] has said about the issue on the IQ forum....

"With regard to the downloading thing, personally I'm not impressed if we have 2 million fans that download for free - they're no use to us whatsoever and I'd rather have just one that actually buys the CDs. Because if everyone expects to get music for free, all the middle ground of the music business (and that includes IQ) will disappear. And all that will be left are the amateur no-hopers and the superstars. The rest of us will all have given up due to lack of funding. This is not something that could happen, it's happening already, and based on current trends I give bands like IQ and record companies like GEP a life-expectancy of 5 years at best.  

Widge"

What I hope to achieve with the myspace is the prickling of consciences, there are folk out there in cyberland who download or file share cd's INSTEAD of buying them. These folk roughly fall into three categories,
a] Those who know they shouldn't, but know they can so do so, cos hey who'll ever know?
b]Those who know it's wrong and simply don't give a monkies
c]Those who by their sheer age, and the culture that goes along with youth have NO IDEA what they are doing is wrong.

Those in group A, could very easily get their conscience prickled, and STOP.

Those in group C, well they will grow up into A's or B's....... or we can educate them young........ I know personally of folk who have been in this group and now campaign amongst their friends to try to stop the theft of music, and now enjoy the getting of an album after they have gone through the 'saving up' process we used to do in the 70's and 80's. They listen to prog radio, read a lot of review sites and THINK more carefully because it'll be a purchase and not a take.

Those in group B........ well, that's going to be a toughy, and I am at a loss right now....

So answers on a postcard..... or PM please!!!

Thankyou SO much to those who have already signed up, please spread the word to your friends and of course to your favourite bands!

Cheers,

Rach x