Metal Reviews

I dunno. There last two albums were very solid, and the one before that, Agnen, was almost a masterpiece. Plus, they are from Trondheim, one of the most awesome towns on the planet!

Well I wasn't saying this is specifically why Keep has gone on that show, but why aren't people a bit more charitable with their interpretation of why a band may do something? I mean, do you have evidence to the contrary?

See, logic has to come into play at some point. It doesn't matter if the music industry exploited music fans and musicians/bands. They also supported these bands, even if it was just giving them enough to survive. The difference today is that due to downloading—and the evidence has been out there for over a decade; I don't need to provide it for you—labels are no longer supporting bands long term.

So now bands have to find alternative ways to make money—reality TV shows being the latest business model. The fans, despite what many of you think, are the direct cause of this.

You know your right when you say that the industry used to support the bands. Yet I think now they are just downright taking them down with them in the slump the industry is in itself. I read the Nile interview on this site, and you know with all of the extra merch deals you know the buy the cd get a shirt bundles. The bands are really getting themselves even deeper, not only do they have to deal with lagging sales but now they have to payback merch distributors as well. If I may interject a bit of a bolder statement here, I think this slump the industry is in has been coming for a while now. Especially with the advent of downloading, I just see it as some degree of inevitability on the age of discs.

Don't have any evidence as to why they're doing it, but my immediate assumption would be that they are doing it for a laugh and also to reach a bigger audience. Whether they're are trying to reach a bigger audience specifically because of collapsing sales due to downloading seems like a bigger assumption to me, which is why I'm the one asking you for evidence.

The fans probably do damage bands' incomes by downloading, but the reason I can't stand this whole "damn those music listeners" attitude is because without them their income would be precisely zero. It's like, if the foundations of a building start to rot, saying "oh those foundations, can't they see what they are doing to this poor building?".

Definitely agreed with what Steve said here:



Really, this is the subject for another thread, though. Might go start one.

He's talking nonsense, anyway. Without DLing I wouldn't even know of 90% of the bands I listen to and do support fairly often enough by buying some CD's, going to shows, getting merch.

I'm not really in the position to blow a ton on CD's, and I'm not going to sit around trading. Maybe if my degree ever pays off and I make a decent living I'll start really collecting hardcore again, but I blew thousands on CD's in high school and a little beyond and I'm done doing that.

A mod should throw our convo in another thread so we can have another debate in which we'll never see eye to eye.

A bullshit response, of course. Just because you know of a band doesn't mean you support them. Out of what you downloaded, what's the percentage of bands that have gotten money from you from buying CDs, merch, going to shows? Something like 2%, maybe?

The Internet has offered people a great way to discover new bands, but before the Internet came about there were plenty of fans that new a lot of bands as well. And it meant more to them.

And like I've said before, when the music isn't so damn expendable, you learn to appreciate it more. The younger generation is not nearly as obsessive over music as they were back in the day, and this is because they simply cannot process it all enough because they're willingly shoving too much down their own throats. No one is chewing and savoring what they're tasting.

Fans were RABID back in the days before downloading. It's not even close to that now.


And here's that entitlement issue people have.

But Satan's Anus, now you're starting to sound like an old dude just going "oh, things were better in my day". It's really puritanical; like you're lecturing people on how much they have to enjoy something on a spiritual level otherwise they are unworthy of it.

More music available to more people is a good thing, and if people not being as desperate to hear new releases by a specific band is the side-effect, then so be it (obviously potential loss of income through dling is another, but I'm talking specifically about the argument that people are less into bands now).

Younger music listeners quite probably spend just as much time (and perhaps in the case of someone like Evil Dead or no doubt myself, just as much money) listening to music as they ever have. If that is spread over a wider range of bands, whom atttract a less obssessive level of devotion because the musical marketplace is much larger, I don't see that there's anything inherently wrong in that. Why should people be completely obsessed by certain bands, instead of just being obsessed with music as a whole; something which is created by thousands of different bands rather than a few with rabid followings?

I mean, people probably enjoyed potatoes more during the Irish potato famine, but that doesn't mean we should go back to a time when it was harder to get potatoes. (yes yes yes, another epically overblown analogy, but it illustrates that people being obsessed by consuming something doesn't mean that the situation is better; it means there is not enough of it available to them)

I wish people would stop buying CDs so that the music business would evolve faster. We're holding on to an outdated technology. I mean why the hell are we buying these plastic discs when we could listen to everything online or on our mp3 players. Also, am I the only one who thinks it's silly that every fucking band out there thinks they're supposed to make money from their music? I mean it's not like music would die out if nobody made money from it. Everyone loves making music, it's not a fucking job.

How much money have you spent on iTunes in the last year? You do know they have a reasonable catalogue of Metal tunes right?



That has got to be one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard on this site.

I haven't spent any money on music in the past few years and I don't plan on buying any music ever again except paying for Spotify or maybe a live DVD.

Why is it ignorant to think that people shouldn't make money from recording music?

Dude you buy tons of records a month at ridiculous prices, that doesnt seem like chewing and savoring what you're tasting.

Downloading does hurt musicians, thats undenaible, if people buy more records, the labels would be more rich and thus hopefully support the bands more, easy concept here and i think we all get it, but you cant deny that the advances in comunications has also helped the bands, labels and fans tremendously.

I come from a small town in Mexico and one of my best friends owns a speciallized metal record store, we had talked about this several times and he always tell me that this (his store) wouldnt have been possible in the old days, there just wasnt enough people who listened to metal back then, now you can even go to a major record store and buy a Black metal album, that was unthinkable 15 years ago, the internet and downloading has helped in bringing metal to the masses and thats a fact.

Because it takes effort, creativity, talent and most importantly it costs money.

Edit:

Some people love their jobs also, thats no reason why they souldnt get paid.

More bands should do what DEP did, start their own more or less independent imprint under a higher umbrella like Season Of Mist. I wish the two every success - SOM especially are a small, dedicated team who have grown into a real power in the underground due to their integrity and quality.

It's hard for an industry to evolve when no one is paying for the product it offers tbh. Also while I'm not a huge fan of CDs, I am a huge fan of albums and I think if the music industry were to evolve because of downloading, it would be away from albums and that would make me sad.

As for people shouldn't make money from recording music, that's silly. Even if you take for granted that the artists are putting in all that work to write you a beautiful album out of pure passion to create (which is quite a selfish way of looking at things) and shouldn't be rewarded for that, there's still people like engineers with recording studios who need to get payed.

So unless you want music to consist of poorly recorded singles then buying music is imperative!

Yeah, that's a stupid thing to say.

Being a musician is a full-time job, and comes with numerous expenses, and takes time and effort. Saying that "Oh, people love making music, so they shouldn't get paid for it." undermines all the time, effort, and expenses that come with making music. It's not easy, and it's certainly not cheap.

Maybe I'm turning into Eyesore, but this sounds like a classic case of justification to me. You download the music for free, and to cover yourself for that, you say "people love making music, so it's not like people need to make money out of it."

lol

I do agree that what EoF said was pretty extreme, but there is sort of a point in there, IMO. I'm not saying that musicians shouldn't expect to make money from recorded output, but increasingly this may not be possible simply because of advances in technology. The possible answers for that are either to smack down on that technology, which is probably impossible, or for musicians to re-orientate the way they see what they do and approach music differently.

I'm being kinda presumptuous here, but you're going to Berklee as a bassist- is that to study jazz? (I got the impression it was, due to your posts in now playing etc.) I'd be amazed if the proportional impact of downloading on jazz musicians is as big as it is on metal musicians. Leaving aside the fact that jazz fans are probably less likely to download anyway, I would say that this is because the entire culture of jazz music is one of live performance. Musicians play with any number of different bands, at private functions, in bars, at proper gigs... recorded output is a pretty secondary part of the life of a jazz musician. Whereas for metal bands, it seems like touring is often just a way of supporting and advertising an album.

Dunno exactly where I'm going with this, though... but I think that differences in perceptions of what being a professional musician actually means are quite important to the way people react to downloading.

I'm gonna major in Performance (maybe dual-major in Composition), and pretty much any sort of music curriculum will focus on the "serious" genre (i.e. "Classical," I'm not crazy about the term "serious") and Jazz, and from what I understand, Berklee is pretty heavily leaning towards the Jazz side, so I expect to learn a lot of Jazz. As much as I like Jazz, and as great of an academic tool it is to use, my ambitions are more focused towards Metal (although writing video game music would be equally awesome).

The major source of income for a vast majority of musicians is in live performace. However, it is an interesting point that for Metal (maybe Rock in general), writing and releasing an album is perhaps equally important, because with each new album, they have new songs to tour with and perform, whereas a lot of Jazz musicians get on stage and can play a handful of standards for a performance, so writing and releasing albums isn't as high of a priority.

good luck with that logic in this day in age man, in a very short time unless your 50 cent or a big name your fucked. Metalheads can argue about the ethical issues involved of downloading till they die. It still won't halt the people on blog sites or using p2p sharing, yet tell that to the elite losers of MA.

I know it won't stop them, but saying "Everyone loves making music, it's not a fucking job" is pretty ignorant. Debating the ethical issues of illegal downloading doesn't change the fact that bands and lables depend on that money.