Ruling raises songwriter royalties from Spotify, Apple Music by 44%

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QVprod
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26 Dec 2018

In this modern age, pirating music is a direct loss of sale. Because all legal methods of intentional access to that music, including free streaming accounts, pay the artist for use of the song. Sure it’s not a lot of money, but it’s still payment. A person who rips music has clear intent to listen to the song in question which would’ve been either been a sale per listen or a 1 price sale for unlimited listening.

And nice link. Really cool watch, but remixing has nothing to do with piracy. Huge difference between downloading Star Wars illegally and making a film inspired by it.

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26 Dec 2018

QVprod wrote:
26 Dec 2018
Sure it’s not a lot of money, but it’s still payment.
In my mind, this is the exact WRONG mindset we all should have in regards to music streaming services, and let me explain.

So from my experience, as someone new to creating music that I hope to make money with one day, as well as someone new to the concept of subscribing to music services...

It is all a load of shit meant to line the pockets of the streamers and give little to nothing to the content creators. It is just another way in which the musicians and producers are getting their work unfairly used, all while telling us the torrenting issue has been addressed and are now protecting the media creators.

Ok, so streaming is supposed to stop the average user from torrenting and converting them to a paying customer. But lets look at that. How much goes back to the artist on a per-play basis? A FRACTION OF A CENT??? How does that help anyone looking to make money from their music unless they get up to the upper-echelon of stream counts? Even artists like Taylor Swift are fighting these services, so this should be telling ANYONE who believes these services are supposedly helping the torrenting problem, YOU ARE WRONG! Does anyone remember Pearl Jam fighting Ticketmaster???? This is just a different person stealing from the media producers, and we as a community, should not be allowing the streamers to be stealing our work any more than we allow torrent sites to exist.

Streaming == Legalized Torrenting

And yet, here we are asking the steaming services to please put our media on their services and give us $0.0001 per day or our work being consumed by our apparent customers.

Back in my days or torrenting, I often downloaded things to try and see if I liked them. Often this would lead to a later sale. I torrented an album by a musician who I didn't know and hadn't thought to go listen to on Youtube. Since then, I have paid probably $200+ on Beatport to that same artist. If I calculated the amount of money that artist would have made off of streaming, I doubt it would work out to $0.50. When it comes to a media streaming subscription, I have already paid for the media and the user got their $0.0004, and since I already paid, I am not going to go back and buy any more products which includes the album which I now have legal access to through streaming. I am only going to continue to stream from my subscription. Who makes the money now? The only thing that has changed is that the streaming services are collecting money whereas with torrenting, no one was, but the producers still aren't getting anything significant.

We are prostrating ourselves to a different master because we think the $1.00 we will get from their streaming services is better than the $0.00 we would get with torrenting. Except studies have shown time and again, that torrenters tend to eventually buy the products they torrent, or would never have bought them in the first place, so a torrent does not always equal a loss of a sale. Whereas a streaming customer will never go back and buy the albums they stream because they feel they have already paid for them, so the artist will only ever see the streaming money, and never the album money. And lets not forget that most artists do not receive the full amount of money we as customers pay them, and artist typically only receive around 10% from album sales.

Well, as an ex-torrenter and new media creator, I think streaming services are worse than torrenting. I buy all my media through legal channels now, and am dipping my toes into the streaming services now that I have a family that likes to listen to music, but I believe my streaming subscription is helping the artists less than before.

My $0.02 and YMMV.
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26 Dec 2018

jam-s wrote:
26 Dec 2018
I don't get how so many of you cannot see the fundamental difference between theft (= taking something from person A so that person A doesn't have it any longer) and creating an unauthorised copy (= person A still has his something).
I don't get how you don't understand that piracy is theft. It really can't get much more simpler than that. If you're not paying to own the track, you're paying to stream it within the confines of the licensing agreement that you agree to in order to subscribe. But, as Selig said - minds will never be changed...

Pirates will pirate, and in their minds most believe that it's no big deal.
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26 Dec 2018

EnochLight wrote:
26 Dec 2018
jam-s wrote:
26 Dec 2018
I don't get how so many of you cannot see the fundamental difference between theft (= taking something from person A so that person A doesn't have it any longer) and creating an unauthorised copy (= person A still has his something).
I don't get how you don't understand that piracy is theft. It really can't get much more simpler than that. If you're not paying to own the track, you're paying to stream it within the confines of the licensing agreement that you agree to in order to subscribe. But, as Selig said - minds will never be changed...

Pirates will pirate, and in their minds most believe that it's no big deal.

I believe we are arguing about two fundamentally similar, but actually different things. That is because we as various cultures haven't further defined things like piracy, stealing, and theft in the digital age.

The word you are all are looking for is illegal. But stealing, theft, unauthorized copying, and piracy are not all the same things. They are all illegal, but not the same things.

And taking someone else's work without the agreed upon compensation is illegal, regardless of how that was done.
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26 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
26 Dec 2018
QVprod wrote:
26 Dec 2018
Sure it’s not a lot of money, but it’s still payment.
In my mind, this is the exact WRONG mindset we all should have in regards to music streaming services, and let me explain.

So from my experience, as someone new to creating music that I hope to make money with one day, as well as someone new to the concept of subscribing to music services...

It is all a load of shit meant to line the pockets of the streamers and give little to nothing to the content creators. It is just another way in which the musicians and producers are getting their work unfairly used, all while telling us the torrenting issue has been addressed and are now protecting the media creators.

Ok, so streaming is supposed to stop the average user from torrenting and converting them to a paying customer. But lets look at that. How much goes back to the artist on a per-play basis? A FRACTION OF A CENT??? How does that help anyone looking to make money from their music unless they get up to the upper-echelon of stream counts? Even artists like Taylor Swift are fighting these services, so this should be telling ANYONE who believes these services are supposedly helping the torrenting problem, YOU ARE WRONG! Does anyone remember Pearl Jam fighting Ticketmaster???? This is just a different person stealing from the media producers, and we as a community, should not be allowing the streamers to be stealing our work any more than we allow torrent sites to exist.

Streaming == Legalized Torrenting

And yet, here we are asking the steaming services to please put our media on their services and give us $0.0001 per day or our work being consumed by our apparent customers.

Back in my days or torrenting, I often downloaded things to try and see if I liked them. Often this would lead to a later sale. I torrented an album by a musician who I didn't know and hadn't thought to go listen to on Youtube. Since then, I have paid probably $200+ on Beatport to that same artist. If I calculated the amount of money that artist would have made off of streaming, I doubt it would work out to $0.50. When it comes to a media streaming subscription, I have already paid for the media and the user got their $0.0004, and since I already paid, I am not going to go back and buy any more products which includes the album which I now have legal access to through streaming. I am only going to continue to stream from my subscription. Who makes the money now? The only thing that has changed is that the streaming services are collecting money whereas with torrenting, no one was, but the producers still aren't getting anything significant.

We are prostrating ourselves to a different master because we think the $1.00 we will get from their streaming services is better than the $0.00 we would get with torrenting. Except studies have shown time and again, that torrenters tend to eventually buy the products they torrent, or would never have bought them in the first place, so a torrent does not always equal a loss of a sale. Whereas a streaming customer will never go back and buy the albums they stream because they feel they have already paid for them, so the artist will only ever see the streaming money, and never the album money. And lets not forget that most artists do not receive the full amount of money we as customers pay them, and artist typically only receive around 10% from album sales.

Well, as an ex-torrenter and new media creator, I think streaming services are worse than torrenting. I buy all my media through legal channels now, and am dipping my toes into the streaming services now that I have a family that likes to listen to music, but I believe my streaming subscription is helping the artists less than before.

My $0.02 and YMMV.
So what you’re saying is you’d rather get paid nothing at all than something? Those fractions of cents do add up to a hell of a lot more than zero if you get enough streams. Should it be better? Yes, but to say you rather someone torrent your music is crazy. You know people use streaming the same way you say you used torrenting. Listen to an album to see if they like it, and then buy it. Streaming doesn’t stop people from doing that. Most torrenters weren’t buying the music at all. That’s why it was such a big issue. And it’s also a numbers game. If one person streams your songs enough times it’ll pay you more than the percentage of 99cent you get off a sale.

Also, apparently streaming pays better than radio (in the US at least) https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2018/06 ... worse.html

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26 Dec 2018

QVprod wrote:
26 Dec 2018
So what you’re saying is you’d rather get paid nothing at all than something? Those fractions of cents do add up to a hell of a lot more than zero if you get enough streams.
My point is that we are no better off with streaming than we were in the 90's when torrenting was the rage. I believe that musicians are being ripped off whether that is by the consumer (torrenting) or by the streaming service.

If an artist sells an album via CD or iTunes, they are lucky to see $0.05 per dollar spent by the consumer (if a large act), but at least that was a guaranteed payment up front with the music label taking the bulk of the profits.

If an artist sells a stream, the stream pays $0.0050 per listen, of which the artist will make a fraction of that, with the label taking the bulk of the profits. The relationship between the artist and the label still hasn't changed, as the label is still taking the largest slice of the pie in terms of revenue from media consumption.

And radio has been a scam for as long as I can remember, seeing as the labels often pay for "rotation time" for new and established artists. So radio really equates to a net-gain only because it is considered advertising to get consumers to buy albums or, more recently, streams.

Yes streaming does add up after a point, but only to those artists that pull in massive streaming numbers, and most likely, that is because they have music labels putting money into advertising, which the labels make a return on, when consumers purchase albums, individual songs, or stream.

My point is that, from the perspective of an artist, we really are no better off, and I suspect we as artists are putting a greater share of profits into the music labels and streamers than we were before. Artists have been looking for new ways to circumvent the above issues, and we thought streaming would be the answer to both revenue lost to torrenting and as well to the greedy music labels, but I do not think those circumventions have accomplished anything substantial as of yet.

Again, this is just my perspective, but in listening to bands such as Bon Jovi and others who have been around prior to the modern streaming services, I suspect they have run the numbers and know that during the CD/album days, torrenting wasn't cutting such a big piece of their pie as the streaming services are now doing.
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26 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
26 Dec 2018

My point is that we are no better off with streaming than we were in the 90's when torrenting was the rage. I believe that musicians are being ripped off whether that is by the consumer (torrenting) or by the streaming service.
I believe it IS worse because I doh't believe it's an "either/or" proposition.
I believe artists are now (more than ever) being ripped off by BOTH (consumers and services), which is worse than being ripped off by just one or the other.
;)
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selig wrote:
26 Dec 2018
I believe it IS worse because I doh't believe it's an "either/or" proposition.
I believe artists are now (more than ever) being ripped off by BOTH (consumers and services), which is worse than being ripped off by just one or the other.
;)
Exactly, I really wish artists would not look at this from the perspective of "well streaming is better than nothing" because they do not know that it is. When artists like Neil Yonge, Jay-Z, Kanye, Beyonce and the such as creating their own labels and streaming services, then you know THAT is where they feel they are loosing money.

Youtube, Google Play, Google Music, Spotify, Apple Music are to me, so much worse for an artist than the torrenting days because some torrenters bought media later. I am sure that is not the case with streamers.
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26 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
selig wrote:
26 Dec 2018
I believe it IS worse because I doh't believe it's an "either/or" proposition.
I believe artists are now (more than ever) being ripped off by BOTH (consumers and services), which is worse than being ripped off by just one or the other.
;)
Exactly, I really wish artists would not look at this from the perspective of "well streaming is better than nothing" because they do not know that it is. When artists like Neil Yonge, Jay-Z, Kanye, Beyonce and the such as creating their own labels and streaming services, then you know THAT is where they feel they are loosing money.

Youtube, Google Play, Google Music, Spotify, Apple Music are to me, so much worse for an artist than the torrenting days because some torrenters bought media later. I am sure that is not the case with streamers.
But streaming IS better than nothing because something is better than nothing. How can it be otherwise, logically speaking?


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selig wrote:
26 Dec 2018
But streaming IS better than nothing because something is better than nothing. How can it be otherwise, logically speaking?
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See, I guess I could be persuaded that streaming is a better alternative to albums + torrenting if you look at very popular acts that generate thousands (millions maybe) of streams.

But if you look back to when an artist sold an entire album for $15 - $20 for roughly 10-12 songs (70 minutes), they were generating roughly $3.00 per album back to the artist, which meant that each song was generating around $0.30 per song per album. Moving that idea forward, iTunes sells individual songs for $0.99 cents each, which roughly equates to $0.03 per song sold to the artist (we no longer are selling albums by this point). With streaming, each play receives around $0.00040 (depending on the service) which means the artist is making roughly $0.00003 per streamed song.

So for an artist to make the same from streaming as from individual song sales, they would need to sell 1000 streams of a single song to equal a single sold song via itunes, and to measure that back to the album days, they would need to stream 10000 times to equal a single song sold.

I admit I have no idea how to calculate the effects of the above when taking torrenting into the equation, but I had seen studies that showed the effects were no where near as bad as many were led to believe. As I mentioned, a torrenter did not always equal a lost sale, but in many cases a torrent would convert themselves into a paying customer (admittedly, not all and perhaps not even most cases). But artists were making more per song when selling full albums or individual song when compared to streaming services. And I suspect the effects of torrenting were not as bad as we were told. I know that I was both a torrenter and a full-paying customer at the same time and I had paid for almost all of my music.

Will streamers step up and give back to the artists in the same way that they did when they bought full albums? I do not think so as they have legally "purchased" the music (although the idea of ownership in a subscription world is an argument for another day of forum). I think individual streaming consumers will stream a song at best 10-15 times, and move on as music becomes more of a commodity than something treasured or "owned".

As a matter of fact, I think commodification would be the proper term to apply to what we are talking about in the music/tv/movie industry.
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26 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
26 Dec 2018
selig wrote:
26 Dec 2018
But streaming IS better than nothing because something is better than nothing. How can it be otherwise, logically speaking?
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See, I guess I could be persuaded that streaming is a better alternative to albums + torrenting if you look at very popular acts that generate thousands (millions maybe) of streams.

But if you look back to when an artist sold an entire album for $15 - $20 for roughly 10-12 songs (70 minutes), they were generating roughly $3.00 per album back to the artist, which meant that each song was generating around $0.30 per song per album. Moving that idea forward, iTunes sells individual songs for $0.99 cents each, which roughly equates to $0.03 per song sold to the artist (we no longer are selling albums by this point). With streaming, each play receives around $0.00040 (depending on the service) which means the artist is making roughly $0.00003 per streamed song.

So for an artist to make the same from streaming as from individual song sales, they would need to sell 1000 streams of a single song to equal a single sold song via itunes, and to measure that back to the album days, they would need to stream 10000 times to equal a single song sold.
All of those numbers depend on an artists' situation. One, all of the revenue is a lot higher once you take the label out of the equation. 2, the higher your fanbase the more money you make obviously. And you don't need a label to make relatively high numbers. While the pay rate of streaming isn't ideal, it's not as dismal as people make it out to be. I have a friend who's independent and relatively unknown, but his total Spotify streams from just his 10 most popular songs are over 500,000. He has far more than 10 songs... And those songs will likely continue to be streamed for years. Also keep in mind that's ONLY Spotify. If his streams are equally as high on Apple Music or any other popular streaming service, then he's made pretty decent money off of music.

There are artists who aren't the top artists in the world that make six figures off of streaming. Is it easy to do? No, but even with cd sales, was it ever easy? I leave this video for perspective


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26 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
26 Dec 2018
I believe we are arguing about two fundamentally similar, but actually different things. That is because we as various cultures haven't further defined things like piracy, stealing, and theft in the digital age.

The word you are all are looking for is illegal. But stealing, theft, unauthorized copying, and piracy are not all the same things. They are all illegal, but not the same things.

And taking someone else's work without the agreed upon compensation is illegal, regardless of how that was done.
Yes, that's what I'm trying to explain. While both is not legal and also morally not OK, license fraud is something different than stealing/theft... just like arson is something different compared to poisoning or a robbery. And as (semi-)professionals we should try to be correct and exact on our choice of words.

p.s.: I'm a huge fan of free music and supporting the artist directly. Mainstream Music is not that interesting to me, so I don't use spotify or other streaming subscriptions, but I also don't illegally download any music, as there's enough interesting music that can be listened/downloaded legally for free.

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26 Dec 2018

it’s sort of a useless distinction. the point I was originally trying to make was that it’s a crappy, illegal thing to do. doesn’t matter whether you call it theft or piracy.

and trying to explain why the golden days of piracy was just as bad as the way things are now with streaming services completely ignores that point. how much any of us personally feel someone should get paid per stream vs what they’re paid for physical album sales isn’t our call to make. unfortunately, the market dictates that, and we have what we have. there’s no way to justify stealing/piracy.
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27 Dec 2018

jam-s wrote:
26 Dec 2018
license fraud is something different than stealing/theft...
Except that it's not. ;)
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27 Dec 2018

guitfnky wrote:
26 Dec 2018
unfortunately, the market dictates that, and we have what we have. there’s no way to justify stealing/piracy.
I haven't read a single comment on this thread trying to justify stealing or piracy. And just because markets dictate something, doesn't mean the participants of the market should ever accept anything that is sub-optimal for them. We have what we have because we let a segment of the industry push the producers to this point, and we never sufficiently pushed back because we felt "something was better than nothing". Instead of fighting for a system that provided greater control and profits to the media creators, we have let the streaming services step in and make a large chunk of the profits, while we rant uselessly on public forums. I have not ignored that point at all.
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27 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
27 Dec 2018
guitfnky wrote:
26 Dec 2018
unfortunately, the market dictates that, and we have what we have. there’s no way to justify stealing/piracy.
I haven't read a single comment on this thread trying to justify stealing or piracy. And just because markets dictate something, doesn't mean the participants of the market should ever accept anything that is sub-optimal for them. We have what we have because we let a segment of the industry push the producers to this point, and we never sufficiently pushed back because we felt "something was better than nothing". Instead of fighting for a system that provided greater control and profits to the media creators, we have let the streaming services step in and make a large chunk of the profits, while we rant uselessly on public forums. I have not ignored that point at all.
suggesting we were just as well off when piracy/stealing was the norm as we are currently is an implicit justification.

as for the rest of that, it’s a nice idea in theory, but in practice it falls apart. artists do what they do for the love of the art, not because they’re interested in the business side of things (usually). you seem to be implying that musicians have a choice as to how the industry functions. we don’t. we’re at the mercy of the market as it is. we can’t just say “we’re not going to use these tools! we’re not going to participate!” unless we’re comfortable selling almost nothing ever. you can’t drive people’s eyes and ears to your music without using the existing infrastructure—people (large numbers of them) need to be able to find your music easily.

the only way to fix that is to get involved and innovate on the industry side of things, and like I said, musicians are mostly not interested in that.
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27 Dec 2018

Funny thing is the only person in this thread who talked about ripping audio was a (now banned) spammer linking to some crappy audio conversion software.

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27 Dec 2018

ScuzzyEye wrote:
27 Dec 2018
Funny thing is the only person in this thread who talked about ripping audio was a (now banned) spammer linking to some crappy audio conversion software.
Hah! And then there's THAT. :lol: :lol: :lol:
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27 Dec 2018

fotizimo wrote:
26 Dec 2018
But stealing, theft, unauthorized copying, and piracy are not all the same things.
And this is where we will fundamentally disagree. Stealing/theft, unauthorized copying, and piracy are all the same thing: taking something that you did not pay the agreed upon price for.
selig wrote:
26 Dec 2018
fotizimo wrote:
26 Dec 2018

My point is that we are no better off with streaming than we were in the 90's when torrenting was the rage. I believe that musicians are being ripped off whether that is by the consumer (torrenting) or by the streaming service.
I believe it IS worse because I doh't believe it's an "either/or" proposition.
I believe artists are now (more than ever) being ripped off by BOTH (consumers and services), which is worse than being ripped off by just one or the other.
;)
One could also argue that it has never been easier to be an independent artist that has complete control over your music sales than now. Gone are the days of signing a "record deal" where you're given a cash advance for studio time, marketing, distribution, and touring where you are essentially an indentured servant to the record label - that keeps virtually all profits from your income, only allocating a small portion for you (whether you're a band or a solo act). There are plenty of artist horror stories from those days where artists are still paying their labels back, long after their music has faded into obscurity.

Open a Tunecore, CD Baby, or similar account, and you keep 70% of your income made from sales - worldwide. That was simply unheard of 20 years ago. All control is in your hands. That's pretty damn amazing, actually.

Or you can just put your music up on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, etc, and hope that your streaming royalties buy you dinner once a year, like me. :lol: :lol: :lol:
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27 Dec 2018

Spotify is used in many shops, and used on radio. Which in fact is illegal. It only allows for private use. It doesn't offer professional licenses yet. Many people don't know this.

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27 Dec 2018

EnochLight wrote:
27 Dec 2018
Open a Tunecore, CD Baby, or similar account, and you keep 70% of your income made from sales - worldwide. That was simply unheard of 20 years ago. All control is in your hands. That's pretty damn amazing, actually.

Or you can just put your music up on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, etc, and hope that your streaming royalties buy you dinner once a year, like me. :lol: :lol: :lol:
:lol:

either way, I think it's amazing, when you consider where we were, and where we are now...even if you are earning merely a pittance (or less than a pittance, as in my band's case, haha!) on Spotify plays, it's incredible that we have the ability to easily share our music with people across the world. when you consider the cost and effort that would have taken for someone only, say, 20 years ago, we've come incredibly far.

yes, 'plays' are worth less than they were in terms of physical album/single sales (I'd argue that's appropriate, TBH), but when you think of your individual reach now, it's so much farther than a decent band/artist trying to make a go of it in a little town somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
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28 Dec 2018

Streaming is legal torrenting. My feeling exactly.
My label has my music out there to stream. Great. Personally I'd rather make nothing, give it away for free, than my music be part of this agument. The money you get from streaming is an insult, nothing more.
So people buy my music, stream it, watch it on youtube, and steal it. I'm ok with that because I do the same with everyone elses music. That's the industry now and around here we all have the right to drink from that cup fars I'm concerned.

But here's an interesting one. If I don't do any of those things and only buy used CD's, who earns the money from that and why isn't it stealing money from artists?
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EnochLight
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29 Dec 2018

plaamook wrote:
28 Dec 2018
Streaming is legal torrenting. My feeling exactly.
How is that? Torrenting doesn't allot the original artist any money whatsoever, and countless copies of their work is stolen. Streaming at least pays the artist something per stream.
plaamook wrote:
28 Dec 2018
My label has my music out there to stream. Great. Personally I'd rather make nothing, give it away for free, than my music be part of this agument. The money you get from streaming is an insult, nothing more.
Well, the beauty behind this is you can post your music online for free at any time, so why even posit this argument?
plaamook wrote:
28 Dec 2018
So people buy my music, stream it, watch it on youtube, and steal it. I'm ok with that because I do the same with everyone elses music. That's the industry now and around here we all have the right to drink from that cup fars I'm concerned.
So your argument is: people are stealing other people's work without paying for it, so I'll steal other people's work without paying for it? :roll: That's like justifying bank robbery... or piracy... (oh, wait).. :lol: :lol: :lol:
plaamook wrote:
28 Dec 2018
But here's an interesting one. If I don't do any of those things and only buy used CD's, who earns the money from that and why isn't it stealing money from artists?
Because someone bought the CD originally and paid (allegedly) full price for it, and it's not physically possible to make unlimited copies of that CD and share it - FOR FREE - to everyone in the world. Unless you share it on the Torrents, etc, in which case... well... see above. :) Selling used CD's is essentially a license transfer...
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plaamook
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29 Dec 2018

EnochLight wrote:
29 Dec 2018

plaamook wrote:
28 Dec 2018
But here's an interesting one. If I don't do any of those things and only buy used CD's, who earns the money from that and why isn't it stealing money from artists?
Because someone bought the CD originally and paid (allegedly) full price for it, and it's not physically possible to make unlimited copies of that CD and share it - FOR FREE - to everyone in the world. Unless you share it on the Torrents, etc, in which case... well... see above. :) Selling used CD's is essentially a license transfer...
If one person buys one of my CD's and sells it on 50 times it's ammounts to the same thing as one CD sale and 50 torrents. You follow?
You can split hairs all day about the legality if it pleases you but I'm sstill making the same figure. That's all I meant.
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plaamook
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29 Dec 2018

EnochLight wrote:
29 Dec 2018

plaamook wrote:
28 Dec 2018
So people buy my music, stream it, watch it on youtube, and steal it. I'm ok with that because I do the same with everyone elses music. That's the industry now and around here we all have the right to drink from that cup fars I'm concerned.
So your argument is: people are stealing other people's work without paying for it, so I'll steal other people's work without paying for it? :roll: That's like justifying bank robbery... or piracy... (oh, wait).. :lol: :lol: :lol:
Please don't tell me what my argument is. Ask me to clarify.

I'm not talking about banks or software. I'm talking about music, its value, the econimy behind it, and so on. The reality is that people see it as cheap and disposable but also essential and very accessible. The end result is that we, and I mean the whole society, get it however we can. Poor people steal it, rich people buy it, some people make it, rip friend's cd's (ever done that?...), and so on. I do and have done all of these things at some point or another. To me music is life. Would I steal it if I was poor? Yes. Would I rob a bank? No. Would I break into someone's house? No. If I have money I'll buy music. If I can't buy a specific track but I can get it on youtube I'll rip it. If I want the entire ACDC catalogue I might torrent it cause hey've had enough money off me over the years.

Is stealing music theft? Of course. Is it a crime to steal food to feed your family? Yes. Would you do that if you had to? Of course. Is it the same as every other kind of theft? No, because it happens for different reasons and with different results. Which is why you're not going to have the FBI after you for ripping a track off spotify but you will have them all over you if you try to lift one of Trumps bank accounts.

Hows that? posting.php?mode=quote&f=11&p=425801#ht ... 1&p=425801#
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