torrentfreak.com — Steve Knightley is one half of ?Show of Hands?, an award-winning acoustic and folk duo from the UK. Steve says he is thankful to the people that pirate the band?s music and go out of their way to promote the band. In fact, he says the band utterly depends on them.
Aug 26, 2008 View in Crawl 4
governmentyardAug 27, 2008
About three months ago I downloaded my first Show of Hands album, since which I've encouraged others to accompany me to their gig in town last month - I brought eight people in all, which is worth a damn sight more than the couple of pounds they'd get from a CD sale. In Britain, Show of Hands are really quite popular, though - largest folk/roots show on national radio opens with their music. Highly recommended, as are Bellowhead.
hollowmarkedAug 27, 2008
$4-5 sounds reasonable, I think the industry just needs to acknowledge the days they could make sick profits from CDs are over. Free downloads is the best era of music I can imagine, sites like last.fm and blip.fm means I find lots of new music, and I've bought CDs on the back of listening to great new bands for free on the internet.
opticwindAug 27, 2008
"It isn't piracy if the band allows it"...Listen, the world is not this simple. The reason you've even heard of ANY of your favorite bands is due to marketing and record producing. Without record companies, even word-of-mouth isn't powerful enough to generate attention for a band. And half the time, the bands don't even write the songs. A song is like a tv show...when you enjoy it, you're enjoying the work of hundreds of people, not just the stars.
opticwindAug 27, 2008
I agree with your second paragraph but the title was a tad misleading. The band's lead said that he's cool with people making CD copies of his songs. He never said anything about putting his mp3s on the net.
opticwindAug 27, 2008
No because they're not labeled. When a band joins a record company they sign away certain rights in exchange for mass marketing. If your friend's band had a lebl and started giving CDs away at a huge loss to the company, that'd be piracy.Bands don't own their music, they signed a legal contract giving the record companies the rights to distribution and how things are done. If you don't like it, hate the band for signing up. They knew what it meant.
onlinesAug 27, 2008
Piracy, to me, only exists when the medium is met with too little demand, and therefore you have 1 side wanting the product, the other side more than willing to give it to you, but the middle is simply going on and on and on about shipping costs, and how it's not good here and there... etc, etc. I would have had to pay close to 80$ for 1 season of "The Mighty Booch" and another 60$ for 6 episodes of "Snuff Box". Instead, i downloaded it.Good job, middle man. Keep it up.