Dubstepforum.com

http://instramental.spaces.live.com/

I just found this site (a massive list of mixes) linking directly to files on my server, gutta's, dawntempo, odds-n-sods and other sites run by people on this board.

I'm glad people are feeling these mixes, but anyone who's had to pay, unexpectedly, for excess bandwidth usage knows that this isn't cool.

So just a warning to anyone who might want to adjust their links accordingly.

panty inspector

we went on about this a while ago when he had released mixes up for free !!! scandalous !!!

noticed this dude posting links to a few of my mixes at various spots about the web.

fair play i say.

There's a large number of these leach sites around.

They are not OK and it is not "fair play".

They are not just proividing a service in terms of promoting DJs and publicising new mixes (like, say, the mixing bowl does). Rather, they make money from advertising by attracting eyeballs by providing someone else's content without paying for the hosting or bandwidth. The original DJ doesn't get any benefit at all from these sites, while the leach makes money off somneone else's work that they usually pass off as their own.

One solution is to make mixes available via email only, but it's not entirely satisfactory.

ah right. i see. i'd just seen this guy keenly posting mix links on forum threads, which is pretty different i guess.

still, not sure it's true that djs don't get any benefit if it means more people listen to their mixes, but anyway... can't be arsed opening a worm can here.

another storm in a tea cup...

r33lc4sh wrote:another storm in a tea cup...

not if your site goes down three weeks out of four every month because of leaches, as has happened to me in the past.

^^ exactly. and/or if you're suddenly out a couple of hundred dollars because of this sort of thing, as happened to me in the spring. the traffic spike was so sudden that my host couldn't warn me about it until after the damage was well under way. bassnation blog was hit with a bill of several hundred pounds additional bandwidth costs at one point for the same reason.

if u host mixes u wanna people to download them or am i wrong?

oh come on, you're just being difficult. the principle is clear. obviously the mixes are meant to be heard, otherwise people wouldn't pay to make them available. it's a matter of leaches causing massive extra expense or suspension of hosting accounts by not sharing the burden and, often, making these mp3s out to be their own content. i'm happy if someone hosts one of my mixes and tells people where it came from, or if they point to the blog post, etc. that went with it. but i don't like leaches. simple.

things show up becouse there is need for them
u can't win so why are u trying to fight?;)

I'm with Casino Addict/ r33lc4sh, can't really see the
problem. More the merrier with mixes innit?! If there
are issues with limited hosting I can see that would
be annoying, but people arent gonna know the ins &
outs of your situation. One of the great things about
this scene (IMO) is the way we share mixes so freely.
Perhaps you guys should take increased demand for
your mixes as the compliment it is and get yerselves
more bandwidth or whatever. Sorry if that's rude!

if i had a website and someone in commercial enterprise made some cash from advertising and left me with a several hundred pound bill id be fucking brewing. these ppl are doing it for the love, then a businessman looking on a profit comes along and makes money off them...?

bollocks to the proliferation and profiting of bloody middlemen

Again, sorry to sound harsh.... but having to pay for extra
bandwidth like that is what seems scandalous to me!! But
yeah, it all depends on the motives behind people posting
other people's links. I'd imagine that it's often probably as
much for the love as the people actually making the mixes

If someone chose to download my mix out of the thousands posted on there I'd feel pretty lucky.

If my site went down because I exceeded my bandwidth for the month I'd probably feel pissed for all of 10 seconds then really friggin excited that a mix could be in such high demand.

That hasn't happened though so lol

Netlabel etiquette wise, when I feature a mix or a release on my blog, I never direct link to the file, just to the site where they can get the file. Also, I always ask first, and give credit where it is due. I am for promoting music on the web, but am also for community building.

unlimited hosting doesn't cost that much these days anyway. the people I use charge $9.95/month which isn't that much in the scheme of things, and certainly better than getting ridiculous charges for exceeding bandwidth limits. I'm not sure what the most bandwidth I've used in a month is but it's certainly been more than 20gb with no problems

elgato wrote:if i had a website and someone in commercial enterprise made some cash from advertising and left me with a several hundred pound bill id be fucking brewing. these ppl are doing it for the love, then a businessman looking on a profit comes along and makes money off them...?

bollocks to the proliferation and profiting of bloody middlemen

Re: that instramental site, I cant see how he is making any money off that at all. No advertising no nuffin'.

yeah, can't see that he's gonna be raking it in from that page either.

tbh if you're a few hundred dollars outta credit or your site goes down every few weeks because of bandwidth usage, i reckon you're getting mugged more by your server than by so-called 'leach' pages like this...

i paid £80 12 months ago for two years worth of no size/no bandwidth limit server space. since then i've hosted mixes by surgeon, vex'd, aaron spectre... not to mention various people on here. there have been literally tens of thousands of downloads, no problem (that's with streamline.net btw).

the page in question at the top of this thread means one of my mixes gets picked up in search engines very nicely indeed. so i'm down with that.