Dubstepforum.com

great article, thanks!

he makes many valid points!

I think we could see an end of purchasing pop music as we know it soon, hopefully will kill off a lot of the crap, and well just think of the cringeworthy music scene today as a hangover from before..


seriously though, I still think people are WAY over paranoid about filesharing and independant scenes

these scenes are generally made in bedrooms, into clubs, onto dubs, into filesharing and repeats.. ok its not essential, but tis 2007! "just tuning into your radio" exists but its not the only thing these days

the internet has proved itself irreversable, and i think its great! its about time general people were able to use their own brains to shape how the industry works, the constant buggery of art by big business has gone on too long

Some guys in the Drum and Bass Scene are pretty anti-filesharing. I know they pay attention in breakbeats too. I would imagine the house guys and trance guys are aware of it too, but they make so much money playing massive stages, they probably don't give a shit!!

if a track has been built 'illegally' (cracked software, vsts, p2p samples) is it wrong for people to 'illegally' download the mp3?

Pangaea wrote:if a track has been built 'illegally' (cracked software, vsts, p2p samples) is it wrong for people to 'illegally' download the mp3?

Or for that matter, if a track samples a snare drum from another recording, is it wrong to download that mp3?

Nubian Minds wrote:I fully agree with 'DJ Ruptures' take on things.

Really liked his thought about this situation, specially this one...

When I say ’system’, I mean everything from Sony to iTunes to white-label 12″s that cost 8-pounds ($16.38!) in London shops and only have 2 songs on them. (I bought a bunch of these last week, and it hurt).

perfect quote!
I've said some of my thoughts about piracy, my opinion is sincerely that sharing music is not that bad, sharing pre-released stuff that didn't hit the market is a bad thing actually, people will still buy their music... in a main difference nowadays, people will get their hands over the stuff they really want cos they had a proper preview.
For me there are no people that dont use the internet to download illegal stuff, in a way or another, or probably they have an astronomic income to buy all the stuff.

Big up Rupture. Making some very nice points. Still stealing though.

As a label owner i just wanted to make a few points.

There are over 80 artists on planet mu and being friends with over 50% of them I happen to know that most of them DO pay for their software.

It is also very disheartening knowing telling an artist how little they've sold when u know how much of their life and soul they've put into their music... "well u know that thousands more people have enjoyed it for free" is very little comfort. But at least it spreads the sound.

Everyone downloads and there's no getting away from it. It doesn't matter whether it's mp3/flac/wav... via torrent or p2p, it's always there now. It will always be there.

The main point about free music is it is very hard to compete with. There is no way of undercutting free unless you provide for free yourself. (That may have to be an option in the future). Planet Mu has been going since 95 so i know how much sales have falln in electronic music. In 93-98 albums were selling 20-90 thousand (yes, including mine). When I started Planet Mu independently in '98 we were selling 6-10 thousand of an album. in 2 years that quickly fell to about 1000. Partly to do with fashion. It's been a lot of hard work to build back up from that point. Many albums we release struggle to sell 250-300 now (mainly electronic "idm" sorta stuff). These are available all over torrent sites and there are hundreds of copies available when u log-in on slsk.

But an artist like Vex'd would have sold 30-50 thou easily in the 90s now struggles to sell around 4 thousand

Regarding the spread of the sound, You can't ignore how influential the internet has been. But we did used to have things called import record shops and DJs - how do u think detroit techno and chicago house spread over here from 86+? before the internet.

Rant from an old man, sorry...

planetmu wrote:As a label owner i just wanted to make a few points.

There are over 80 artists on planet mu and being friends with over 50% of them I happen to know that most of them DO pay for their software.

It is also very disheartening knowing telling an artist how little they've sold when u know how much of their life and soul they've put into their music... "well u know that thousands more people have enjoyed it for free" is very little comfort. But at least it spreads the sound.

Everyone downloads and there's no getting away from it. It doesn't matter whether it's mp3/flac/wav... via torrent or p2p, it's always there now. It will always be there.

The main point about free music is it is very hard to compete with. There is no way of undercutting free unless you provide for free yourself. (That may have to be an option in the future). Planet Mu has been going since 95 so i know how much sales have falln in electronic music. In 93-98 albums were selling 20-90 thousand (yes, including mine). When I started Planet Mu independently in '98 we were selling 6-10 thousand of an album. in 2 years that quickly fell to about 1000. Partly to do with fashion. It's been a lot of hard work to build back up from that point. Many albums we release struggle to sell 250-300 now (mainly electronic "idm" sorta stuff). These are available all over torrent sites and there are hundreds of copies available when u log-in on slsk.

But an artist like Vex'd would have sold 30-50 thou easily in the 90s now struggles to sell around 4 thousand

Regarding the spread of the sound, You can't ignore how influential the internet has been. But we did used to have things called import record shops and DJs - how do u think detroit techno and chicago house spread over here from 86+? before the internet.

Rant from an old man, sorry...

Very interesting. Thanks for that.

seckle wrote:

planetmu wrote:As a label owner i just wanted to make a few points.

There are over 80 artists on planet mu and being friends with over 50% of them I happen to know that most of them DO pay for their software.

It is also very disheartening knowing telling an artist how little they've sold when u know how much of their life and soul they've put into their music... "well u know that thousands more people have enjoyed it for free" is very little comfort. But at least it spreads the sound.

Everyone downloads and there's no getting away from it. It doesn't matter whether it's mp3/flac/wav... via torrent or p2p, it's always there now. It will always be there.

The main point about free music is it is very hard to compete with. There is no way of undercutting free unless you provide for free yourself. (That may have to be an option in the future). Planet Mu has been going since 95 so i know how much sales have falln in electronic music. In 93-98 albums were selling 20-90 thousand (yes, including mine). When I started Planet Mu independently in '98 we were selling 6-10 thousand of an album. in 2 years that quickly fell to about 1000. Partly to do with fashion. It's been a lot of hard work to build back up from that point. Many albums we release struggle to sell 250-300 now (mainly electronic "idm" sorta stuff). These are available all over torrent sites and there are hundreds of copies available when u log-in on slsk.

But an artist like Vex'd would have sold 30-50 thou easily in the 90s now struggles to sell around 4 thousand

Regarding the spread of the sound, You can't ignore how influential the internet has been. But we did used to have things called import record shops and DJs - how do u think detroit techno and chicago house spread over here from 86+? before the internet.

Rant from an old man, sorry...

Very interesting. Thanks for that.

planetmu wrote:Rant from an old man, sorry...

No need to apologize. Really interesting to see the dilemmas (and possibilities) high lightened by you and Rupture. Just gotta say thanks to Mu for always providing the option of paying for mp3's, and doing so in sync with the physical releases. (Dub Police, etc, what's up?) It'd be interesting to hear how the digital releases did saleswise, though...

Interesting read from the Planet Mu man

I think he has very valid points.

But I think he hit it hard when he pointed out nothing is gonna change now, apart from forward..

I think the scene and scenes like it need to work out a way to fix it. And shouting at people on forums aint gonna work coz so many people do/will/can/have downloaded stuff.

Its gonna have to be inventive and its gonna have to be good.

I think trust is very important thing, and I dont think its so much "trust youll actually buy it after downloading it" these days (fyi that's what i download for, to check it out, see if i wanna buy it, but thats not everyone....).. something news gonna have to come along and make it work..


PS i saw the list for some major dubstep DJs per night the other night, trust me, the main boys aint so poor it seems...

they are making their money from touring, no doubt. You can't make money selling records like you can making several hundred dollars to play.

what if labels LICENSED things like Oink, so that you could pay a FEE... small in comparison, but your ratio still has to stay equally as high, quality will still be the same, etc...

just seems a bit weak to arrest a young guy who wasn't making money and who wasn't doing anything illegal by his actions. Technically, he's not trading files himself.

Not gonna cry at the fact it's been shut down because it does affect smaller labels etc, I never used it myself and havent used a p2p thingy in years but there's alot worse criminals out there who the authorities could be spending there time and money chasing but the fact remains these sites make it harder for the producers to make as good music as they potentilly could do because they don't help to pay for rent and food.

P2P's make some potential customers become lazy because they might think.. I was gonna buy that tune but i've already got it on my hard drive etc so I dont really need to buy it now and instead buys tune X that's not available yet on a p2p so the original artist who's tune got leaked misses out.

You can come with the old gem its great promotion etc.. but if a producer wanted that type of promotion they could easily do it themselves if they wanted to.

planetmu wrote:As a label owner i just wanted to make a few points.

There are over 80 artists on planet mu and being friends with over 50% of them I happen to know that most of them DO pay for their software.

It is also very disheartening knowing telling an artist how little they've sold when u know how much of their life and soul they've put into their music... "well u know that thousands more people have enjoyed it for free" is very little comfort. But at least it spreads the sound.

Everyone downloads and there's no getting away from it. It doesn't matter whether it's mp3/flac/wav... via torrent or p2p, it's always there now. It will always be there.

The main point about free music is it is very hard to compete with. There is no way of undercutting free unless you provide for free yourself. (That may have to be an option in the future). Planet Mu has been going since 95 so i know how much sales have falln in electronic music. In 93-98 albums were selling 20-90 thousand (yes, including mine). When I started Planet Mu independently in '98 we were selling 6-10 thousand of an album. in 2 years that quickly fell to about 1000. Partly to do with fashion. It's been a lot of hard work to build back up from that point. Many albums we release struggle to sell 250-300 now (mainly electronic "idm" sorta stuff). These are available all over torrent sites and there are hundreds of copies available when u log-in on slsk.

But an artist like Vex'd would have sold 30-50 thou easily in the 90s now struggles to sell around 4 thousand

Regarding the spread of the sound, You can't ignore how influential the internet has been. But we did used to have things called import record shops and DJs - how do u think detroit techno and chicago house spread over here from 86+? before the internet.

Rant from an old man, sorry...

I'm a proud owner of most of the Mu Collection. Don't be discouraged.

As for a Dubstep artist or Artists, in the case of Vex'd, selling 4000 copies... that's about 3500 more than I expect most Dubstep labels to sell of a tune, frankly. The reason that Dubstep doesn't sell on the levels that trance and techno do, is because of the sheer volume of Dubstep listeners to Techno listeners...

there are more techno BUYERS than there are people who have even ever heard the term Dubstep. Gotta keep that in mind.

planetmu wrote:As a label owner i just wanted to make a few points.

Definitely an interesting (and probably unique) perspective, thank you.

I still support file-sharing as the best way to get the music out there and available to anyone. How to get people to keep buying it though... that's tricky. The first step is definitely simultaneous digital downloads though, in my opinion. Even though these will be leaked immediately, it's way better to have high quality, professional rips floating around than some of the shitty, no-bass personal rips of some 12s that are out there. And let's face it - some people want to buy music but just aren't going to buy vinyl. So if you don't give them another option, they're just going to pirate it and never buy it at all. Periodic CD compilations are a good idea too.. for those not into buying vinyl or mp3. Bigs up to all labels doing these kinds of things already.

But really, the whole music industry is shifting, not just electronic, and we're all along for the ride. However, I really think the core fans who want to buy music will always be there, even if their numbers are dwindling.

I've spent 30 Dollars in the past day on digital music, and I continue that trend pretty much twice a week, and buy vinyl. I don't feel bad about downloading some free music, but when it's available to me and I'm at the checkout, if I like it--they get my support.

music = no

yet

software = YESSSSS MATE

Northern light wrote:

planetmu wrote:Rant from an old man, sorry...

No need to apologize. Really interesting to see the dilemmas (and possibilities) high lightened by you and Rupture. Just gotta say thanks to Mu for always providing the option of paying for mp3's, and doing so in sync with the physical releases. (Dub Police, etc, what's up?) It'd be interesting to hear how the digital releases did saleswise, though...

Agreed, so many dubstep labels are complete waste, not even giving people an option to buy legally unless they buy vinyl! its madness. Would be itneresting to find out how well people do from digital sales..

seckle wrote: i'm glad oink is down, and i'm glad some p2p people are getting a taste of their own medicine.

lol, well now it looks like the BPI are getting a taste of their own medicine - oink.cd is now pointing to a 'waffle recipe' site hosted by The Pirate Bay...

http://torrentfreak.com/why_are_the_ifp ... ed_071024/

"They also condemn the police forces for allowing the presumption of innocence to be discarded, in that the domain of the website, has been effectively hijacked, and replaced by a page insinuating guilt on the part of the site owner. The ‘Presumption of Innocence’, better known as “innocent until proven guilty” is a cornerstone of law both in the Netherlands and UK. Surely, if anyone should have put a temporary website under the Oink domain, then it should have been the Cleveland police, or the Dutch police, not the record label owners union.

This violation of what should be standard practices brings into question the ethics and procedures of the forces involved. Cleveland police have yet to respond to inquiries, however."

My view on it:

I used to download every Dubstep tune that got put on Oink!...If I liked it enough I would buy it whether it was vinyl/CD/MP3.

The quality of mp3's, espeically those ripped by MP3 'scene' groups, was poor and they were useless for playing out or trying to do anything with them....on a nice system (even in some cars) they sounded shit. I saw this as no different from recording a track off myspace/virb or even a clip from Boomkat. I would use it for easy listening thats all

In addition to this with Dubstep if there is something I really like I will buy it even if I havee it on mp3 because as I have learnt the hard way...computers aren't reliable when it comes to keeping files safe...at least with a cd if you take care of it it can last forever