Tagged: underground business

When Pirates Attack: The Entertainment Industry vs. The Internet

YouTube Preview Image

Just read an interesting thread about how a group of anonymous pro-piracy activists have gotten fed up with the RIAA, MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations launching denial of service attacks on sites like The Pirate Bay. Apparently a company called Aiplex was hired by the MPAA to launch a denial of service attack against The Pirate Bay. A denial of service attack is when one hammers a service with automated requests in order to crash or disrupt their operations. It’s as if someone set up a computer to call your phone a million times so that you couldn’t make or receive calls. In this case these were distributed denial of service attacks meaning they involved many voluntary users running a program call LOIC to participate in the attacks. Sort of like a flash mob for cyber aggression.

This is interesting in and of itself since it’s one of the first times I’ve heard of denial of service attacks being used as a form of protest. What’s also interesting about this to me is the rhetoric you read around it about ‘corrupt labels and studios’ and attacking Sony and Warner brothers. As if the participants see themselves as some kind of revolutionary movement rather than a bunch of people who just want to consume other peoples creative work without paying for it. What’s interesting is not that people want to steal stuff, I get that, but the interesting part is that they feel so self-righteous about it. As if it’s a moral imperative.

Here’s a quote from a comment thread discussion at TorrentFreak.com

“It is still aiming at the decoys or mirror images of the real targets. The real targets are the media companies like Disney, Sony and so on.

However if for whatever reason someone wants to stay with secondary targets then lawfirms are extremely vulnarable. Especially for IP lawyers taking out their E-mail system for a few weeks will damage their business (Not to mention to explain potential new clients why they are attacked by random people).”

As someone who understands the piratical impulse but is also on the other side of the line as an independent label owner I would love to hear from this community and hear what their advice is for someone like me. I am not a corrupt label owner but I am hurt by piracy as is the whole independent business. Sales are way down across the board and still falling. It means that for me and my friends running a label we really can’t afford to put ANY money into a release. Even recouping very affordable mastering costs is a risk. Not to mention huge costs like paying for PR to promote a record.

So my question is: if the pirate community is going to start to act like a movement what is your suggestion for small outfits like mine to be able to release the music or films you enjoy consuming for free? I’m not being sarcastic. The thing that I find weird about this is a lot of the rhetoric that suggests that people are seeing piracy as a movement or even an ideology. Clearly there are some very bright and technically savvy people in this community. How do you think content producers should be made able to be paid for our work if you won’t buy it? Technical, social or political solutions are welcome.

Facebook Censorship: Who owns your online presence?

Facebook censorship errorAs artists nowadays many of us spend a lot of time updating social sites, building our followerships and driving traffic to them. A few events recently have given me reason to think twice about this practice. The first was when Masalacism, friends of Dutty Artz, had their free blog shut down by Google. The second was this recent article by online marketer Glen Gabe whose stuff I like. In short he was trying to talk about a similar event on Facebook where a guy’s page with 47k fans was shut down due to a trademark dispute. Gabe was trying to post a link to a story talking about it on a blog to Facebook and Facebook blocked him from doing so saying there was a technical error (see image above). Welcome to the world of social media censorship.

One of the main reasons this is possible is that in fact, as much work as we invest in promoting our profiles and their sites at the end of the day legally we don’t own them. They do. And if they decide they don’t like how you’re using their site, they can zap you. The defense against this is not avoiding these sites but instead creating your own piece of space on the web that you actually own. In my case, you’re looking at it. I use my social sites, mainly Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic back here and if I lose both those profiles this is still a place for people to come find me that I actually own.

I setup this site for about $6.00 US a month in hosting costs and am enjoying running it. Its running the free blog hosting software WordPress which I like because it’s designed to be easy to update often. If you’re interested in doing the same I wrote a how-to post here that has step by step instructions.

Has anything like this happened to you? Have you had a profile deleted? What was your response?

How To Make Money In The Post Recording-Business Environment

Record executive stereotype.

Redmonk, a person I’ve been acquainted with through the music scene for a while made a comment on my post ‘I’m Doing It For The Scene Maaaan’ which was relevant to the thesis he’s working on. He posted a few thoughts and links in the comments to that post and rather than type out my reaction as a super long comment that people might not see I decided to do a post about it.

Generally the thoughts are all circling around how artists will make money after the business of selling recorded music, what I call the recording business, finally dies. I use the term recording business rather than music business because there are plenty of businesses about or around music which are making lots of money including gear manufacturers, educational institutions, makers of music listening devices etc. The biggest casualties I see in all this are the labels and at some level the artists. Redmonk is italicized below, my thoughts are interspersed.

Hey Matt, you might have seen this:

http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-file-sharing/

Predicts that artists will supposedly soon be making more from gigs than selling physical copies of their music.

There are more and more theorists (including Gerd Loenhard – http://www.mediafuturist.com/) essentially arguing that we should be heard first, build an audience and then once the trust is there, they’ll pay to see our gigs, buy our merch etc. So give the music away for free (cos if people want to, they’ll get it for free somehow) and make money through other streams.

Firstly I don’t think giving all your music away for free is a valid model for first time artists. It creates the perception that that music has no value and makes it look like un-filtered amateur spew (which it often is) and makes people not think of it as professional. People still place great respect in the idea of ‘getting signed’ or ‘having a record deal’ even if it is just to some bedroom label putting out 12″s or digital singles. There is still an important role for the record label to play as a creative force, and it’s important to know that MOST labels are run by enthusiasts who are contributing to the dialogue about style and sound (like for example my label with Rupture Dutty Artz) by picking cool emerging artists and giving them a platform and helping to filter their output, not by guys in pin-striped suits sniffing coke in some big office trying to make money. Using ‘the record industry’ as a blanket term for some kind of exploitative boogie man is stupid.

Continue reading →

I’m Doing It For The Scene Maaan

I’ve been making music in various underground music scenes for the past ten years now. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Generally you find great people in underground music scenes, people with a lot of passion and dedication who truly love music. When people are able to strike a balance between their underground aesthetic and being organized, special stuff can happen. But there are many times when people can’t strike that balance. One of the ideas that I’ve run into again and again in this world is the idea of ‘doing it for the scene’. On one level this is a very respectable idea: doing something not out of self interest, but to benefit the larger musical community. The problem I’ve encountered with this is that taken too far this can seriously undermine one’s ability to continue to function.

For example, let’s say hypothetically you are a small record distributor. You do it because you believe in the music, you want to support emerging artists and labels and you don’t care about money. You set up shop, take product on consignment from any unknown player with a willingness to press their material and start doing business. Consignment is when you take product before paying for it, warehouse it and pay when it sells. You continue to operate on this basis but because you have so many unheard of records released by labels with no business model or capability to promote them, sales are slow. Eventually, basic costs start to add up. The rent on your office is due every month. The bill for your shipping provider is rising. Eventually there comes a time when you have backed yourself into a corner. Nothing is selling and while you were hoping for an improvement you passed the point of no return. The shipping company has cut off your access to shipping because your owed bill is so high. Your landlord is initiating eviction proceedings against your office where you warehouse your product.

Continue reading →