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| quote: | Originally posted by Vesa
It would be good to remember that consumers have all the power in music sales. Vinyl collectors can survive without buying so many records. DJs are playing vinyls instead of burned CDs at clubs mostly because of long-standing gentleman rules (to support legal rights of artists). And our lives would only be slightly worse off if we missed a small number of trance tracks from artist X and label Y. So the point I'm trying to make is that we are buying music because we are polite enough to support musical art, not because we have to.
But the artists and labels will suffer a lot if they piss off file swappers who are most likely to be their most biggest buyers (why else would they target so much energy into swapping unless they were also serious vinyl addicts). The swappers have most knowledge, power and influence in the virtual underground of electronica. If we decided to ignore the artists, they would get neither money, fame or girls, so they would be just lousy ordinary guys.
If there would be actions against individual file swappers of electronica, I would immediately drop my record buying by 50%, and progressively more and more (to reduce record sales as a punishment) until the labels understand who really has the power in this game. The consumer is the king when buying non-essential commodities!
The world of electronica would be a lousy place without swapping. Swapping makes it democratic because having many tracks and broad knowledge depends only on enthusiasm and love of music. If there wasn't swapping, things would become very elitistic. There would only be a small number of cocky indivuals (DJ's friends) who have the newest promos and rare old tracks. People would spend their time trying to get into the inside circles, instead of listening and loving trance music.
Moreover, actions to stop mp3 swapping would destroy the heritage of electronica. When I heard AG might get shut down, I spent lots of time finding out how many old tracks from 1998-1999 were still on AG. The conclusion was that only a modest percentage of tracks older than 3 years were available anymore. The shutdown of AG made things worse, and the likely result is that tracks made before 2000 will completely vanish from the collective memory of trance community. Instead of being preserved and treasured, the work of those artists is gone like it had never existed. So the labels and artists who oppose mp3 swapping are hurting mostly themselves because in a couple of years their music will be forgotten.
We can only hope RIAA will keep its attention on pop music, so that the world of electronica should stay as innocent and joyful as it has been (including lots of enthusiastic swapping of rare old tracks). |
Give this man a cigar!  Excellent points.
I got into trance music properly through the internet. Before that, I had only ever heard of Ferry Corsten, Tiesto, PvD, Darude and maybe a couple more. Within a few months of discovering trance music on the net I know tonnes of smaller artists.
Without mp3s, most people entering the genre will only know about Ferry Corsten, PVD, and a couple others, those artists will become extremely rich (more so than now) and their music will enter the mainstream. In effect, trance could die.
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I love the RIAA
