Dubstepforum.com

I'm not sure if I've already said this, but I'm a lot more concerned about illegal downloads fucking over labels than I am about them fucking over producers. Largely, I guess, because I'm used to scenes like leftfield dnb where a release is for the purposes of getting tunes on wax - financially it's meant to do a bit more than break even and if there's a bit of beer money in it for the producer, that's a bonus.

I'd imagine that most dubstep producers get more cash from playing out than from selling records, so I'm not sure how much impact downloading actually has on, say, when Skream will get his Learjet. But what it will do is make it harder for labels like Hessle Audio or Tectonic or Applepips or whoever to afford to stick stuff on vinyl. Less stuff coming out on vinyl fucks it up for everyone, especially aspiring producers who'd like nothing better than to see their tunes on wax.

Junglist wrote:Artists who care more about making money than having people listen to their stuff shouldn't be making music in the first place.

yeah! string up the fatcat dubstep producers!

can someone write down here the whole process of putting up a record in UK? with all the costs? i know what one must swallow in order to do that in my country. I've been playing in a punk rock band for 12 years now and the band was given the opportunity to put up an album. In country where I live cd-s cost about 12 to 13 quid. for producing an album the company gives about 10000 quid to record, mix and master the record, the sleeve and packaging...they do a promo or two for the band and the rest is up to the band. every single gig a band does, it has to pay the label a certain amount of money because the label owns a part of royalties. if a label doesn't agree with a band for some gigs the band wants to play, the band can't use its' name. of course, the band owes all the amount of money given by the label for producing. So, how can a band pay out its debts if a label doesn't want to support gigs for a band? and not to forget that the band is given just 8% of money for each cd sold. It's pure slavery IMO. I know a band that had to buy off their album from the label just to pay all the debts and later on they disbanded because they couldn't use their name anymore.
I seriously hope that's not the thing in UK with dubstep, as I don't know how things go for small independent labels in UK. Indie labels in my country live pretty short as they run out of funds to keep themselves in bussiness because they cannot sell mp3s because of huge amount of taxes. and in the end, the artist is given a 8% of, let's say, 2 quid per download. I say fuck all that and give it for free. That's what my band did. And in return we were given huge amount of gigs to play and make money trough gigs. As for DJ-s, every booking agent has to pay permissions (in my country that's called ZAMP) for some event and the money usually goes to the artist whom tunes are being spinned (if a dj registers the tunes which he plays) and it's payed every year. the same thing goes for radio stations. So, I would like to know if radio stations like rinse or dubstep.fm pay the royalties for the tunes being played on air or those are propper pirate stations? does a booking agent pay permissions and does he/she register tunes and pays the artists their fee?

I get all my shit online legally, i would buy them more if i had more access and didnt have to ship it over the pond and wait etc.. but i am going to start ordering more online

anyone know any good sites to order dubstep off of?
Im getting tired of radio mixes to a large degree too

psematic wrote:anyone know any good sites to order dubstep off of?
Im getting tired of radio mixes to a large degree too

i'm not into buying MP3s yet, but i'm finding quite a few releases with just 1 or 2 good tracks. someday, maybe. if you're asking about vinyl, i've mostly ordered from redeye records so far. i live in the states, so i don't get charged taxes. the shipping is cheap and fast, too. the same goes for chemical records. the best thing about chemical is they have a fancy pop up virtual deck for the audio clips, which are 3:30 in length. you can definitely tell whether or not you like a tune in 3:30. as for in the states, i've placed 2 orders with breakbeat science. i'll probably never order from them again. after my first order, Clever informs me that 3 of the items are no longer in stock. so, i try to find replacements. the 2nd time, 1 of the items appears to be gone as well. i didn't even get an e-mail. i was just charged for 2 of the 3. as far as i know, it hasn't shipped in over a week. i'm assuming this is because the new Pangaea isn't shipping yet. there's also Juno and smaller online stores based in the UK. i'm keeping one smaller store to myself until i get a certain record only showing up there. ;p

gars wrote:can someone write down here the whole process of putting up a record in UK? with all the costs? i know what one must swallow in order to do that in my country. I've been playing in a punk rock band for 12 years now and the band was given the opportunity to put up an album. In country where I live cd-s cost about 12 to 13 quid. for producing an album the company gives about 10000 quid to record, mix and master the record, the sleeve and packaging...they do a promo or two for the band and the rest is up to the band. every single gig a band does, it has to pay the label a certain amount of money because the label owns a part of royalties. if a label doesn't agree with a band for some gigs the band wants to play, the band can't use its' name. of course, the band owes all the amount of money given by the label for producing. So, how can a band pay out its debts if a label doesn't want to support gigs for a band? and not to forget that the band is given just 8% of money for each cd sold. It's pure slavery IMO. I know a band that had to buy off their album from the label just to pay all the debts and later on they disbanded because they couldn't use their name anymore.
I seriously hope that's not the thing in UK with dubstep, as I don't know how things go for small independent labels in UK. Indie labels in my country live pretty short as they run out of funds to keep themselves in bussiness because they cannot sell mp3s because of huge amount of taxes. and in the end, the artist is given a 8% of, let's say, 2 quid per download. I say fuck all that and give it for free. That's what my band did. And in return we were given huge amount of gigs to play and make money trough gigs. As for DJ-s, every booking agent has to pay permissions (in my country that's called ZAMP) for some event and the money usually goes to the artist whom tunes are being spinned (if a dj registers the tunes which he plays) and it's payed every year. the same thing goes for radio stations. So, I would like to know if radio stations like rinse or dubstep.fm pay the royalties for the tunes being played on air or those are propper pirate stations? does a booking agent pay permissions and does he/she register tunes and pays the artists their fee?

That is seriously fucked man. I don't see how that would be advantageous for a band at all. No that isn't how it works here (US) Artists usually get around 50% after costs for digital. Might be different for vinyl but most of the time neither artist nor label makes much on vinyl unless it's a huge release. Labels don't get a cut of gigs as far as I know. Maybe if you are signed exclusively but only a handful of dubstep producers have a deal like that.

I have been giving a lot of music out for free. I am about to launch a digi label to test the waters but if I only sell like 100 units it might make more sense to keep it free. I have had up to 1,500 downloads for my free tunes. TBH I'd rather have all those people listening to my tunes than make 100 bucks or whatever.

I don't see why you wouldn't just try to do everything independently. That is the way most bands do it these days in the US and of course DIY is the mantra for dance music.

abZ wrote:

gars wrote:can someone write down here the whole process of putting up a record in UK? with all the costs? i know what one must swallow in order to do that in my country. I've been playing in a punk rock band for 12 years now and the band was given the opportunity to put up an album. In country where I live cd-s cost about 12 to 13 quid. for producing an album the company gives about 10000 quid to record, mix and master the record, the sleeve and packaging...they do a promo or two for the band and the rest is up to the band. every single gig a band does, it has to pay the label a certain amount of money because the label owns a part of royalties. if a label doesn't agree with a band for some gigs the band wants to play, the band can't use its' name. of course, the band owes all the amount of money given by the label for producing. So, how can a band pay out its debts if a label doesn't want to support gigs for a band? and not to forget that the band is given just 8% of money for each cd sold. It's pure slavery IMO. I know a band that had to buy off their album from the label just to pay all the debts and later on they disbanded because they couldn't use their name anymore.
I seriously hope that's not the thing in UK with dubstep, as I don't know how things go for small independent labels in UK. Indie labels in my country live pretty short as they run out of funds to keep themselves in bussiness because they cannot sell mp3s because of huge amount of taxes. and in the end, the artist is given a 8% of, let's say, 2 quid per download. I say fuck all that and give it for free. That's what my band did. And in return we were given huge amount of gigs to play and make money trough gigs. As for DJ-s, every booking agent has to pay permissions (in my country that's called ZAMP) for some event and the money usually goes to the artist whom tunes are being spinned (if a dj registers the tunes which he plays) and it's payed every year. the same thing goes for radio stations. So, I would like to know if radio stations like rinse or dubstep.fm pay the royalties for the tunes being played on air or those are propper pirate stations? does a booking agent pay permissions and does he/she register tunes and pays the artists their fee?

That is seriously fucked man. I don't see how that would be advantageous for a band at all. No that isn't how it works here (US) Artists usually get around 50% after costs for digital. Might be different for vinyl but most of the time neither artist nor label makes much on vinyl unless it's a huge release. Labels don't get a cut of gigs as far as I know. Maybe if you are signed exclusively but only a handful of dubstep producers have a deal like that.

I have been giving a lot of music out for free. I am about to launch a digi label to test the waters but if I only sell like 100 units it might make more sense to keep it free. I have had up to 1,500 downloads for my free tunes. TBH I'd rather have all those people listening to my tunes than make 100 bucks or whatever.

I don't see why you wouldn't just try to do everything independently. That is the way most bands do it these days in the US and of course DIY is the mantra for dance music.

well put.

The_Dza88 wrote:ye but you could have just posted the quote and not the link

well now he's removed the link from his post but you didn't remove it when you quoted

oops ... double post.

black lotus wrote: but seriously, to think you are going to stop theft in general is pretty much a of course, i would love to see music as an industry fail and go back to it's folk roots. anyone want to go dubstep busking?

but ... professional musicians have been able to make a living making music for thousands of years.

a measure of a society's advancement is how well it supports the arts--and by extension, artists. by that measure we're regressing.

what about robbing to get money to pay for dubstep?

The_Dza88 wrote:what about robbing to get money to pay for dubstep?

well if it's for a good cause...

You'll be very lucky to make any real money selling your tunes digitally, it's better to give them away free (up to a point), get yourself known and then push for bookings where the decent money is at. Like most musicians and bands, they make most of their money through touring and live shows at this level.

psematic wrote:anyone know any good sites to order dubstep off of?
Im getting tired of radio mixes to a large degree too

Check out my studio mixes instead then:p

I don't think anyone in Dubstep is making big money. Not enough people are buying the music and that's a fact.

Whether digital/vinyl it doesn't matter. The scene is still very small.

manray wrote:I don't think anyone in Dubstep is making big money. Not enough people are buying the music and that's a fact.

Whether digital/vinyl it doesn't matter. The scene is still very small.

I think the scene is big enough to support more full time artists. The thing is why the hell would you pay for the music when you can download free mixes all day long? The music is marketed towards DJ's rather than fans which is totally backwards. To be honest I don't know if there is anyway to turn this ship around. If you want to make cash with music you need to work on other genres it's as simple as that.

abZ wrote:

manray wrote:I don't think anyone in Dubstep is making big money. Not enough people are buying the music and that's a fact.

Whether digital/vinyl it doesn't matter. The scene is still very small.

I think the scene is big enough to support more full time artists. The thing is why the hell would you pay for the music when you can download free mixes all day long? The music is marketed towards DJ's rather than fans which is totally backwards. To be honest I don't know if there is anyway to turn this ship around. If you want to make cash with music you need to work on other genres it's as simple as that.

Only because dubstep is so small...... Trust. That's the only problem right now. Personally I ain't interested in the money... I've got a day job. I do it because I want to get my music out there really. The recognition really.

Small? we internationals !

pdomino wrote:Small? we internationals !

It's small when you go to a rave and see the exact same people every time.