04
RANT!
Posted by Waxer | Posted in Disco Scratch Stuff | Posted on 04-06-2010
I decided to add a comment to a post I saw on the Wener von Wallenrod humble little Hip Hop Blog. If you don’t know this site, it’s great and Werner adds fascinating posts about all types of nerdy Hip Hop shit that we all love. He’s a bit like the US version of Mr Krum.
Anyway, he wrote a post about how MP3s are affecting music sales, it was an excellent read and while commenting on it, I found myself ranting and thought I should post it up here.
Here’s the link to Werner’s post:
http://wernervonwallenrod.blogspot.com/2010/05/home-taping-hurr-durr.html
I’ve copied it and pasted it here:
“Home Taping” Hurr Durr
I’m not a musician. I have some sympathy for the artist – seemingly more than most hip-hop bloggers today – but I generally leave them to fight their own battles. Illegal downloading killing your career? Well, maybe if you’d pressed up your album I would’ve supported, but you didn’t care so I don’t.
There is however, one point I feel compelled to make, just because I see so many people get it wrong in online discussions. It’s frustrating, damn it.
We’ve all seen it. The usual “mp3s are killing music!” versus “artists need to adapt!” debates, and someone ironically posts the old “HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC” logo (which did have a pretty awesome image, I must admit). Laugh at how paranoid and foolish the music was for thinking taping stuff off the radio, or making cassette copies of albums, would topple the music industry. I mean, they probably did lose some revenue, but don’t look at that. The joke is how senseless they were being.
But here’s where the comparison really becomes invalid:
1) This is a lesser point, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. Home taping still required blank tapes. It was substantially cheaper than buying a proper cassette album Sam Goody’s, but there was still a discouraging expense involved that isn’t there in sharing mp3s. This is marginal (but still a factor) if we’re talking me hooking a friend up with a tape of an album. But it’s huge when you compare the cost of uploading one mp3 to a site like Zshare for free and having hundreds – or even theoretically potentially billions – download it verses the cost of buying a blank tape for every one of those people.
2) But more importantly, that the internet is killing the distribution gatekeepers… which for the most part, I’ll happily concede, is a good thing. What that means, however, is that the labels, the stores, etc. no longer have any say in what music you get. In olden days, if no music store in your area stocked the album you wanted, you were SOL (shit outta luck). And I’m not just talking about, “damn, my local Sam Goody’s doesn’t carry Esham’s first EP!” What they didn’t stock were album dubs. You couldn’t say, hey let me pass on that $10 album and get the $1 dub of it instead. But now on the internet, it’s just as easy (if not easier) to download something free and illegal as it is to get it legally.
3) A dubbed cassette tape, with a generic Maxwell or whatever logo and the title of the album written in ballpoint pen seriously lacked the luster of a proper album, with the track-listing printed nicely on the tape, and of course the fold-out cover art and liner notes. But an mp3 from Amazon or Itunes has no advantage of an mp3 you snagged off of Soulseek or some random blog. In fact, with issues like DRM, the illegal copy might just be better.
So, anyway, my point isn’t to make a grandstand against internet piracy or anything like that. It just irks me when people make the “home taping” point without any realization or acknowledgment of how off-base a comparison it is. And even if you want to pull a “well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man,” on me, I think a look at the Soundscan numbers after the rise of home taping versus the after the rise of Napster will show an incredibly vast distinction in declining sales.
So, go ahead. Continue to download everything you like. I don’t care. Just don’t throw that cassette and crossbones logo into any more message board debates as if you’d just intellectually crushed the opposition.
And here’s my comment:
This is a great post and there is a key sentence that you wrote: “Illegal downloading killing your career? Well, maybe if you’d pressed up your album I would’ve supported, but you didn’t care so I don’t.” That’s it right there… ANYONE can knock a track up and post it online anywhere for free. It might be the modern “Nation Of Millions” LP for all we know, but throwing up MP3s is crazy wack.
In the UK there are DJs that refuse to play MP3s of any description. Why you ask? Well if you believed in your music enough, you’d press a dubplate of it, or even a run of 50 copies (it’s cheap anough now) and send them out to DJs. If a rip of it comes online somewhere, you know one of the DJs you sent it to has ripped it and shared it. Want to keep it exclusive? Get just 1 test press done and only give it to one big DJ to break that track, make it a signature track, OR, post out about 20 copies to DJs but give individual DJs a dub with a VIP version of it, very popular with Drum and Bass DJs here. People should stop fucking bitching about losing sales and either just accept that there’s no money in it and carry on, or only put stuff out on wax. Fuck MP3s & fuck Serato, in fact fuck the internet too!!
If I could switch the internet off today I would, get the independent record shops back in business and meet up with friends in a record shop on a Saturday afternoon when the distribution van turns up with precious new sealed import 12s to salivate over, even outbid your mates for that exclusive shit, play it on the pirate radio stations, do mixtapes that you can’t get anywhere else except from that particular DJ.
In fact fuck CDs too, too easy to copy, in fact, FUCK COMPUTERS as well!!!! I was more than happy with an s1000 and a 4 track recorder back in the early 90s. You could argue against me here, the fact that we couldn’t share all this knowledge without the internet, but so what, these days no one actually GETS INTO NEW MUSIC anyway, it’s a one listen free download and throw it away. If the only medium was Wax or even cassetts, you’d listen to those shits cos rewinding your walkman uses too much battery, so you listen to them shits all the way through, even the wack cuts like I Need Love on “I’m Bad”, yes, I know all the words cos I couldn’t afford muthafuckin batteries all the time. FUCKIN GREAT POST, GREAT BLOG AND LETS ALL GET IN A TIME MACHINE, GO BACK TO 1985 AND EXECUTE THE INVENTER OF CD WRITERS AND THE INTERNET!!!!! Nuff respect, WAXER.
Comments? Hates? Loves? Let me know, I thought all Disco Scratch readers should see this…
interesting read about not wanting computers or internet.
Personally i never collected 7”s,once 12″s came about & listened on the very first tape walkman.Once CDs came about hated them & missed so much commercial stuff thru still getting just 12″s only(& odd 10″). Then in early naughties started 2 replace albums & get/replace some singles·& downloading on fones. But i still hated PC’s & still do. I always thought mini discs & CD recorders were a good idea,but miss the tape pausing. But even tho don’t have PC love mp3 players-i download on fone stick the memory card in the reader of my old Archos & that’s how i will probably keep going. But look at how strange my ways r tho! I think internet is good 4 finding music just 4 finding radio rips-Latin Rascals,etc. But i’m just bothered about old stuff & couldn’t afford 2 have(or even hear it!)without the net. But i’ll probably never get a PC(if so i’d have 2 get an iphone-more expense). Gone are the days when i’d keep my music 2 myself,i’d share most of it-only problem is i don’t have a PC 2 do it!
I totally agree with everything u said there, my man.
Another problem I have with this internet thingy-majig is how easy it is 2 become an instant expert on even the most obscure shit. Thanks 2 sites like discogs, some 16 year old kid that has never even visited the UK can rescite verbatim every 12″ ever put out on Kold Sweat.
I’m all 4 the next generation educating themselves on the real culture, but sitting in ya bedroom with 2 terabytes worth of mp3′s doesn’t equal nearly 30 years of “actual” experience and/or actually owning the real fuckin’ records.
That’s just my opinion though, innit.
Very interesting stuff,especially your likes dislikes,& how record buying is crap now(as mostly involves internet!).
My opinion is 12″s,mp3′s(& memory card mp3 players!),mini disc recorders & CD recorders are good. And apart from downloading,& a handfull of blogs/sites(DS,ABBU & Dutch spring 2 mind!) internet & PC’s are a waste of space. As 4 forums like Electro Empire they are wack to the extreme-snobbish & mostly full of people who only know anything thru Discogs! I.E. if someone said i know ‘nothing about anything’ to me in the street i’d knock em out! I prefer to leave that site & let ‘the old boys club’ bore each other!
Definitely truisms to the wax, mate.
My only gripe with the internet is that THERE IS TOO MUCH MUSIC!
I’ve got albums and albums I’ve ‘acquired’ over the last couple of years which always end up in my ‘Listen To Later’ folder. It creaks whenever I add anything.
I’m not helping matters either by making my own stuff and subversively passing it out amongst friends and peers.
You’re on the money about no one getting into new music as well. I listen to a little bit before I hear the groaning of my Folder and it’s puppy-dog eyes enticing me to please listen to that Ugly Duckling album as it been 3 years since Rapidshare gave up 32 minutes of it’s time to bestow it upon me thankyouverymuch.
In response 2 what Repo,etc said about people not listening 2 new music,& 2 much music on the net-i choose not 2,otherwise i’d never catch up listening 2 the old! Of course it’s nothing 2 do with me living in the past & thinking ‘they dont make tracks like that anymore’ !!! It happens 2 everyone eventually !!!
“If I could switch the internet off today I would, get the independent record shops back in business and meet up with friends in a record shop on a Saturday afternoon when the distribution van turns up with precious new sealed import 12s to salivate over, even outbid your mates for that exclusive shit, play it on the pirate radio stations, do mixtapes that you can’t get anywhere else except from that particular DJ.”
That’s the truth right there!!!