The New Age
David Biasotti said...
Dear Lizardson,
I hope this finds you well. The other day I stumbled upon the page at Time Has Told Me that offers the recent New Age LP All Around LP for download. While I know this was uploaded in the same spirit in which countless other albums are uploaded – that of sharing – the coolness of offering recently released and very much in print albums eludes me completely. I think out of print albums are totally fair game, and I’m very grateful to be able to hear things of that nature. But this particular upload happens to undercut the efforts of Raymond Dumont of RD Records, who tracked down these New Age tapes, which were in the possession of Susan Graubard, and, with her cooperation, put the reissue together. Surely you must realize that this kind of file sharing acts to discourage small labels from doing this kind of reissue. And who ultimately benefits from that? I’m not associated with RD Records, but do correspond with Raymond occasionally. I’ve written about Pat Kilroy & the New Age, and count Susan Graubard as a friend. She’s seen the page on THTM and isn’t at all happy about it, although she feels uncomfortable writing in herself. So, I guess you could say that I’m writing on her behalf. If you could kindly make the New Age LP unavailable, that’s the end of it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll check back. If it’s still up, I’ll contact RD Records, and you’ll hear from them. Thanks. I apologize for writing, but hope you understand where this is coming from. (I had to write a similar e-mail request about my own album to another file sharing site not long ago!)
Best regards,
David Biasotti
Dear Lizardson,
I hope this finds you well. The other day I stumbled upon the page at Time Has Told Me that offers the recent New Age LP All Around LP for download. While I know this was uploaded in the same spirit in which countless other albums are uploaded – that of sharing – the coolness of offering recently released and very much in print albums eludes me completely. I think out of print albums are totally fair game, and I’m very grateful to be able to hear things of that nature. But this particular upload happens to undercut the efforts of Raymond Dumont of RD Records, who tracked down these New Age tapes, which were in the possession of Susan Graubard, and, with her cooperation, put the reissue together. Surely you must realize that this kind of file sharing acts to discourage small labels from doing this kind of reissue. And who ultimately benefits from that? I’m not associated with RD Records, but do correspond with Raymond occasionally. I’ve written about Pat Kilroy & the New Age, and count Susan Graubard as a friend. She’s seen the page on THTM and isn’t at all happy about it, although she feels uncomfortable writing in herself. So, I guess you could say that I’m writing on her behalf. If you could kindly make the New Age LP unavailable, that’s the end of it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll check back. If it’s still up, I’ll contact RD Records, and you’ll hear from them. Thanks. I apologize for writing, but hope you understand where this is coming from. (I had to write a similar e-mail request about my own album to another file sharing site not long ago!)
Best regards,
David Biasotti
posted by Lizardson at 6:36 PM
19 Comments:
Rarity should be a goal of shares---this writer certainly has good point
Man, don't make circus of this, allowing dozens of comments of all kinds about this matter.
Remove the links in silence and keep up with your good work.
Your regular reader
"Rarity should be a goal of shares---this writer certainly has good point."
I agree. And while I agree that hearing an album before purchasing is important, anything new enough that it hasn't recouped yet should go up at about 96 kbs so you can hear it and still have an incentive to go buy it. It just isn't true that 192 and up mp3s sound 'crappy'...they sound well enough to keep a lot of people from going and buying the album, even if they love it.
People don't buy music out of consideration for the artists or for the small record companies. They buy it because they enjoy it, and for that is necessary to give people the opportunity to like it, and that only happens after they listen to it. This is obvious to anybody older than 12 or less.
On the other hand there are two categories of artists/performers: those who usually sell tens of thousands of cds, and those who sell just a few thousands or less. There are many reasons why this happens (sometimes regardless of the quality or originality of the artist/performer), but at the bottom is the same as in a supermarket: you buy the product when you know it, or when somebody you know and trust recommends it. So here the rule is quite simple: if you want to sell you must advertise, and Mr. Biasotti doesn't realize that this is exactly what Time Has Told Me does for his friends for free! Instead of threatening he should be glad that his friends are getting exposure at one of the top blogs with a sizeable audience that has, as far as I know, a considerable purchasing capability.
The idea that people who may buy the music would instead download it, is absurd in this case (remember we are talking about the second category of artists)! Yes maybe 10 or 100 possible customers would only download the music and never buy it, but on the other hand a much larger group of potential customers would decide to buy it once they listened to it (provided they like it!). I am sure Mr. Biasotti can add and substract well enough to see this.
Art in general and music in particular are tough for the artists, and recognition only comes after the public knows the artist and his/her/their production: if you have any doubts remember Van Gogh's history!
Finally "ge" says that "rarity should be the goal of shares". OK this is exactly what happens in this case: few people have heard about this album or this artist, and because of that it must be considered "rare". Am I wrong?
I agree with anonymous 2 and 4! As for anonymous 3: how much is "a lot of people" in this case ... 50-200 or 10,000-100,000? Get real!!
Make them low-bit-rate. Everybody's happy then.
In response to the comment above, well, I think it's a contrivance too far to conflate contemporary short-run independent-label albums with rare out-of-print albums simply because they lack exposure. And even if I agreed with you, surely the logical conclusion would therefore be to post up only, say, 4 tracks from an album, or snippets from all tracks? If an advertisement is near-as-damn the actual product being advertised then it's a little specious to call it an advertisement.
In saying this I realize I'm being a total hypocrite, because I have downloaded in-print albums by artists I like in the past. But that in itself is evidence that many people do exactly the same thing, and never pay for the album they have downloaded. I would agree with the poster who suggested above that these links should simply be removed. It's just polite, frankly.
I agree with most of the comments here but I think it best to just remove the link if the artist asks and move on.
You have a great site that I love to view, a link or two removed occasionly shouldn't hurt anything.
Steve
Hey, at least he is quite pleasant about it and is entitled to ask... not like some of the other toads I see writing to bloggers asking to have things removed forcibly or else type stuff....... yeah just remove them and move on.... totally agree...
i want to say something in general about downloading music first: i have never had enough money to buy even a small portion of the music i like, so for me, file-sharing has meant that i can finally listen to stuff i care for and not just the somewhat different tastes of my buddies.
yes, it sucks for the artists that i am not buying their records. but not being offered the download wouldn't make me go out and buy the album either...
i do find it a little passive-aggressive to juxtapose these postings kind of like "ha, losers, look, the other guys don't care if we post their stuff".
i think it's too bad that you are trying to humiliate artists etc. into silence.
from what i can gather, the people complaining are a minute portion, so why not just respect their choices and move on? is there maybe a little bit of an ego thing going on?
Yep - remove and move on.
Well, some artists don't want more publicity, they don't want thet more people know about their existance, hear their music, and buy their discs.
Some tiny independent labels don't want free advertising. they want to remain tiny independent labels.
They have all the right to demand it.
So let it be so.
"i think it's too bad that you are trying to humiliate artists etc. into silence. "
WELL SAID. If this place has too many of anything it's arrogant passive-aggressive jackasses, making us all look bad.
If you're not going to pay, even if you can, and you're still playing an album days later, it means you're a jerk. Don't berate the artists who rightly complain to make YOURSELF feel better for this basic fact.
Live with it and stop acting like you've got some carrot to dangle that isn't attached to your groin.
I think this man wrote a similar letter when Fallout issued the Pat Kilroy album a few year ago. I can imagine the answer of the label"all the money for us and nothing for the artist".But important result of the operation Collectors Choice issued the CD.I hope result will not be"official cd released but nothing again for the artist".Anonymous because I don't want to have Manila on the back again.
Awwww, I'm not THAT bad!
No problem Manila,its nice every one can express his opinion on this beautiful blog.I make comment with help of a dictionary (French-English)and think sometimes translation in words is not exactely what I have in my head.
You do very well, Jean. I wish my French were as good as your English.
i think music sharing has made me a better listener and a more astute buyer of music. And, it means I am very conscious of just whose music I do buy and which record labels i support, and i make choices that benefit working, creative, obscure artists and good independant labels the most.
i am also a poor artist/musician and i don't have a lot of extra money to spend, so not being able to dl something would rarely make me buy it. but whenever i do have money to spend on music, i do (and i refuse to spend it on, say, rapidshare). in a sense, music sharing functions as an anarcho-communist used-record store, offering exposure but no royalties.
so thanks for this blog, and thanks to the artists who make the music on it. and thanks for allowing many comments to offer a well-rounded forum. and no thanks to people who "are trying to humiliate artists etc. into silence. "
if it weren't for them, there would be no music to post.
Maybe post a few tracks since low quality bitrate doesn't let one judge the music production. That way if we like it, we buy it to get the rest of the album. I mostly downloasd out of print and rare material, and I always buy new artists albums to support them. Great blog.
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