Home Taping Is Killing Music – The Remix
UK artist Dan Bull, famous for earlier musical swipes at Lily Allen and the Digital Economy Bill, has teamed up with UK ISP TalkTalk to release a new song and video.
“We all know that the government’s disconnection proposals to deter illegal filesharing are daft and dangerous. And many would agree that the way many people in the music industry have reacted is a little misguided. After all, haven’t we seen this type of scaremongering before?” writes TalkTalk’s Andrew Heaney on the ISP’s blog.
“If, like me, you remember the 80s, you may also recall recording the Top 40 on Sunday nights. Up and down the country, people were hovering over their cassette players with their fingers over the pause button, trying to get the perfect recording before Tony Blackburn [UK DJ] spoke and ruined it. Back then the music industry told us that home taping would signal the end of the music industry and that it must be stamped out. There are clear parallels with today’s debate about filesharing and the Digital Economy Bill,” he adds.
To get this message across, TalkTalk have teamed up with UK artist Dan Bull to create their own 80′s styled music video based on the ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’ campaign.
In case you’re wondering….George Michael, Madonna and the probably-not-famous-in-America Adam Ant
O gawd! That means the current music industry is a ghost!? [/sarcasm]
Again that guardian article comes to mind. I swear I’m gonna find it.
Meanwhile the following should be nice reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/09/games-dvd-music-downloads-piracy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/mar/12/demise-music-industry-facts
I knew I had it. Pretty good the Guardian. Found great articles about both sides of the coin and a lot of bs from the media industry (read fake data or dubious sources and methods of generating data…)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/nov/25/filesharers-freeloaders-creative-industries?showallcomments=true
You forgot that Guardian Article, Ninja. Musta lost that one, nvrmnd , found it for you.
Yeah, as I said, both sides of the coin are shown and allowed to be seen there. Still, after reading part of it I can see where she’s getting at. They consider that nobody that downloads buys, which is an utter bs. As she mentioned the freeloaders must be a minority for things to work and although online the minority must be consisted of a few million people, there are other millions that buy. You can’t deny that digital sales are skyrocketing… If everybody wanted to freeload why would this happen?
I just lost the game.
good one freakbits ;)
This was on the biased BBC’s Panorama last
night…I hope you write up a retalliation article
pronto :)
Nice idea, shame about the song. :O
Panorama Article link
But why was it biased?
Oh they were bribed I suppose?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rl4dl/Panorama_Are_the_Net_Police_Coming_for_You/
I”d love to watch it but it says outsiders are a no go =(
Oh god I laughed at the CHOOSE FILE t-shirt. Do want
Yep, unfortunately, if you’re not on our side of the pond then the man say, you no watch.
Then again, I’m sure some ethical Pirate has already torrented it
for you
Dan Bull really got it right! The music industry is worried about stopping illegal downloads instead of inovating new products that users really want. So then they will move over to the new products because they are easier and more consumer friendly.
Perfect Video :)
I think home taping did kill music. You can’t buy any music any more, just some jerkwad singing through Autotune, while some other jerkwad talks over a lame beat with no melody. All at full volume all the time. Yep, Music is dead!
@klockwerk
No, music is not dead- if all you’re hearing is some jerkwad singing through autotune, then a lot of that is because the only way the major labels can survive these days is to pander to the lowest common denominator, in an attempt to get some income when most of the punters tend to download for free.
For the rest of us musicians and artists attempting to make ‘real’ music, times are very hard indeed. You may be surprised to learn that the ‘new’ industry, where artists release their work on their own labels and use the internet to let people know it exists (and hopefully buy it) hardly works, on a financial level, for any of us. There’s so much music out there on so many ‘channels’ ( a lot of it made on the cheap but folk who really should know better, therefore not very good) that finding good music is almost impossible – and a fair number of those who do find it don’t pay for it anyway.
This means it has now become almost impossible to fund the recording, releasing, and promotion of any music that can’t find a home on the major labels (ie, jerkwads on autotune, mostly) We just don’t have the money to do this anymore, and even if we do, we have to see something on the order of a 3000 to 1 ratio of free downloads to legal sales. Yes, maybe some downloaders do go on to make a purchase, but there simply aren’t enough of them to allow most artists to even break even on their costs, let alone make any kind of profit to allow further recordings to be made. Payments from Spotify and other streaming services are so low as to be negligible.
If the recordings are indeed ‘at full volume all the time’ then that’s because there is a ‘loudness war’ going on, with mastering engineers being forced to increase the perceived loudness of any record to the point where all dynamics are removed, in the attempt to ‘shout’ their way through to the marketplace.
In other words – it’s a desperate situation. Many of us, including me, have just about had enough. We can’t afford to make music if we just have to accept giving it away, with no chance of any investment back, and being forced to make enormous compromises all through the chain, from writing to recording to promotion.
Among my friends and colleagues in the ‘real’ music industry, the fall out rate, including artists who are relatively well known and often made a tiny living out of it for 20 years + … is increasing fast. We are all no longer making music, because we simply can’t afford to.
Home Taping IS killing music. As far as I can work out from the figures of files available on most torrent sites, something like 3,000,000 people have downloaded, or made available for download, just one of my albums.
The same album has sold about 1000 legal sales, so far, and failed to break even.
So I have one question for you – why shouldn’t I get something back for the pleasure given to those 3,000,000 ?
Because if I don’t, they won’t hear any more music, from me at least. I just can’t afford it.
Tom, I am interested in how you came by the figure of 3,000,000 downloads of one of your albums. If you have access to analytical software that can quantify this number by data-mining P2P and torrent sites, perhaps you should sell it to the RIAA, MPAA, PRS, MCPS et al and retire tomorrow. BTW, your projected generalised ratio of 3000/1 illegal/legal is solely based on your own claims of 3m – how does this figure equate to the earnings potential of someone else like, er, Lily Allen (oops, sorry, forgot – she’s not “real music” is she?)?
My downloading of an obscure 70′s disco-mix album which is unavailable anywhere in the world to buy legally doesn’t seem to have stopped you from making a profit from Bristol Royal Infirmary, Channel 4, RTE and apollomusic custom music, so how have I, as a downloader, killed music for you?
And another thing: if “We are all no longer making music, because we simply can’t afford to”, then why is your web-site still live and claiming that “(Tom Green)…is currently working on an album of new material”? You can’t have it both ways – :)
Comparing home cassette recordings in the past to
digital downloads today is completely stupid as the
cassette quality was poor and we still had to buy a
copy to get decent sound. Not to mention that the
DJ talked over the songs intro.
Also the radio only played one-two songs from a
release and people had to buy the full album to get
the other songs.
Digital downloads completely erase the need to buy the music and the download is the artist’s entire catalog.
Most ignorant comparison ever.