My Legit Music Collection Starts Here

Good for you.  personally, if i enjoy an album I buy it used off amazon.  if you buy from the same seller, you can get say 10 cds for .99 a piece plus five dollars shipping total, with next to no scratches.

Of course, if you buy it used, the artists aren't getting paid for that transaction any more than if you downloaded it illegally

I'm one of the folks that goes out of their way when buying CDs and maybe spends a couple of extra bucks here and there to support the artists, their labels, and struggling indie record stores... because I like having them around, and they need money to stick around longer.

Congrats to the OP for making a good choice. Amoeba is a great store, too, you're lucky you have that locally. Most cities haven't got anything near that good.

Thanks to a Head-Fi thread I have seen the light too. Used to not really care about buying and supporting. Now, I do quite a lot. My small collection is made of 50% digitally bought goods now. Still a way to go but happy that I am in

I am a huge pirate, have been for many years.

I will not be changing my pirate ways anytime soon.

In the beginning, it was a question of availability, of the lack of selection that record stores had. Pirating was the only way to get my hands on the music that interested me.

Nowadays, there are many legal options to buy music online. I still don't use them. My philosophy is that if an artist wants my money, they better put on a concert or play a dj gig where I live.

Artists actually get very little money from record sales. The money just fills the pockets of the labels, mostly.

Live gigs are the way the artists actually get paid. Putting out a record used to be the only way artists could promote themselves, the only way that people outside of their hometown would ever hear of them. It was a scam, evryone knew that going in. But it was a necessary evil.

Nowadays, piracy, or P2P file-sharing, actually helps these artists to gain notoriety very quickly. It puts the music in the hands of the people that should have it, the ones that will later go to your live gigs. I am a perfect example of this. A couple of years ago, Mala, the dubstep producer, played a gig in my city. I went and had a great time. At the time, I had been listening to dubstep for almost three years, and the only way that was possible was by using P2P.

Artists should be supporting P2P. They are the ones who benefit from it the most. Well, after the fans.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah 

Of course, if you buy it used, the artists aren't getting paid for that transaction any more than if you downloaded it illegally

To me it's a question of legality.  As others will mention, the percentage the artist will get is a pittance compared to total album cost.  So I personally wouldn't use starving artist arguments.  An artist will make $1.60 if you pay full price for their cd.  They will make many more times that if you come to their concert.

(counterpoint- $1.60 is better than nothing, and the more albums an artist sells the more they can charge and the more people come to their live gigs.)

And lest you think that buying on iTunes will do the artist better (assuming they are signed to a label, I counter with:

iTunes sells at a slightly higher percentage but at a significantly lower cost, giving the artist even less money on the album.  As long as there is pirating in the world, the vast majority of artists signed to labels will not be able to subsist on album sales.  And not having labels to back fledgling artists with recording costs and promotion all but ensures that they will never enter into the public eye in the first place.  

Sources: Wired article

Arguably the "best" way to support an artist is to get the music any way you want (CDs, piracy, iTunes) then support the artist directly through concerts, T-shirts, or just donations.

If I ever strike it rich I'll donate $5 to the artists for every CD I've pirated. Until then I'll buy CDs whenever I can. I don't like piracy, not because it's illegal but it feels like I don't own the music. I feel the same about any digital download. Call me old-fashioned, but I want something physical, and if I like an album it's worth the money just to own the disc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Radio_head And not having labels to back fledgling artists with recording costs and promotion all but ensures that they will never enter into the public eye in the first place. 

This, to me, is one of the main reasons to buy. Most of the CDs I buy are from small, independent labels that need all the help they can get in staying afloat and continuing to bring me great music that I love. Quality indie labels are doing us a great service by finding great local bands and bringing them to a national audience. I can keep up to date on my own local scene but not every local scene everywhere.

Artists may not be able to subsist on the money from sales, but sales numbers are a big part of their career trajectory - with better album sales they will be able to sign more lucrative contracts in the future, they will be able to release more albums, they will be given more money for higher-quality studio recordings, they will be able to do more live shows in more cities, and so on... Labels are not going to help pay for and promote a studio album to be recorded and released if the artist is selling lots of concert tickets and no CDs.

I am a huge proponent of live concerts as well, not just for financial supporting-the-band reasons but because I absolutely love them   I'll go to any show I can afford if I like the band at all - or even if I don't know them but heard they're good. Or if I like one of the musicians in the band. Or because one of my friends is going. Or because the band has a cool name. Or because I'm in Manhattan with nothing better to do. Or..... well, you get the picture...

An interesting thread. Really it is a thread about self discovery and change. The OP is starting a CD collection and having fun. I have always purchased original CDs. There are many plus sides to having a CD.

We also hear of peoples digital collections starting to fail for one reason or another. We read about digital file corruption. Having the original really promises the owner of keeping the music to a certain level. Depending on your age there is a good chance your CDs will last you your lifetime with the right care.

I don't know why but having the digital file never seemed worth anything to me. This may stem from having so many computers blue screen out over the years.

TakashiMiike has a personal issue with morality because of the files he owned. He now is having fun going out and finding music another way!

Years ago every cassette you purchased had a tax placed that paid certain groups off as they knew people were going to use the cassettes to record copyrighted music from the radio or from a friends albums. If you owned 4 track home recorders you paid more for the cassettes you were going to record your homestudio music on.

When music only CD recordables were introduced they had players which would record only on music recordable  CDs. This was the same as the process for cassettes only transfered to CD home music recording.

In the end it really is only up to the consumer if he wants to have original or copies depending on his issue with morality.

Interesting thread, anyone knows hw sites like "bandcamp" works? iTunes seems to be ripping off artist BTW.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah 

Of course, if you buy it used, the artists aren't getting paid for that transaction any more than if you downloaded it illegally 

 

very Interesting. although buying used would be less harmful for the artist.

According to their website, Bandcamp takes a straight percentage (10%-15% according to their site). But I'm not sure how it would work if your band was signed to a label, if you'd have to split the money with them, or what. Probably depends exactly what the artists' contract says.

Excerpts from this article http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110707/03264014993/riaa-accounting-how-to-sell-1-million-albums-still-owe-500000.shtml

"...he breaks down how a band might think it's getting royalties on $20 million worth of sales but then find out that, thanks to some of these fun tricks, the basis for calculating the royalty takes that number all the way down to $4.9 million (and then with a 10% royalty, the official take is $490,000 -- but if the advance is $1 million... the band still technically "owes" $500,000).

And, as we noted in the post last year, don't think that because a band goes "unrecouped" that the label loses money on them. The "recouping" only comes from the 10% royalty rates, which are really much, much lower (in this example, the "real" royalty rate is more like 2.5% due to the clauses in the contract). That leaves 97.5% of the money in play. Obviously, some of that is covering costs and expenses. But there's plenty of cash that makes its way into the label's bank account, when an album sells $20 million.

As for what kinds of tricks the labels use, well, Frascogna notes "breakage fees" of 20%, which are based on breakage rates for vinyl from half a century ago. That CDs don't break so much and that digital files don't break at all, doesn't matter. The labels still try to get a super high breakage rate that they get to deduct. For them, it's pure profit. Then there are "uncollected account" withholdings, on the basis that some retailers go bankrupt and don't pay for the stock they had. The way it's described here, that's often just a set number, rather than based on any actual, documented cases of uncollected fees. Next up? "Free goods." Now, we talk about the importance of free goods all the time. But here it's used in a different manner. Basically the labels deduct the "cost" of providing reviewers/radio stations/etc. with "free" copies of your album. That money comes straight out of the gross that the royalty is calculated on. The fact that you could just email the mp3 to those folks yourself? Well, pay no attention to that newfangled technology.

Next up, there are "container charges." That's for things like the jewel cases and inserts for CDs. Again, the fact that digital music doesn't have such expenses is pretty much ignored. Also, the fact that all of these expenses get deducted from the artists' share? That also seems wrong. Even more insane? Apparently the standard "container charge" is an additional 30% off the revenue. Again, in many cases that's just pure profit for the labels.

Finally, there's the ever lovely and totally amorphous "reserves." As Frascogna notes: "no one really knows what reserves entail." It's basically a blank check for the record labels to claim they have to keep some of the money themselves for "other stuff," which is mostly undefined. In this case, some labels simply set a straight percentage, up to 20% more of the gross that artists never get to see as part of their own royalties.

Bring all that together, and the 10% royalty looks more like a 2.5% royalty, and that's not enough to even get halfway to recouping even if you sell 1 million albums at the high high price of $20/album. And that doesn't even touch on splitting up any money you get between band members and paying the manager/agent, etc. When you dig in to things like this, you can understand how artists like Lyle Lovett can say they've sold 4.6 million albums and never made a dime in royalties from album sales."

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Courtney love's infamous speech about piracy and file-sharing. For those of you who aren't, here it is http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html. A very interesting read, indeed.

^ page not found in the last link, there is a dot at the end

http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

Interesting reading indeed.

If a bands album doesn't sell it makes it hard for them put out another album and no label wants to put out another album from that band.

If the album doesn't sell it also makes it hard to tour much if at all.

Just because a mainstream band on a big label got a crappy record deal doesn't mean all bands and labels are ran the same.

And usually it's the label who pays for them to go on the road.

If your a fan of a band I would think you would buy their albums.

Instead of ohh concerts is the only money they should get. Even though venues take most of that too and sometimes don't even pay the band what they were suppose to be paid.

And some music don't even do live shows or very few.

I wonder how does that work for non popular bands, lik, most of my favorite bands, ie: The flower Kings, a swedish 3rd wave prog band, they dont sell millions and their shows are in very small avenues, yet they have 15 studio albums and a load of live ones.