5.15.2007

Preventing Pirating with Reverse Psychology

I recently saw in the NIN blog that Reznor does not condone the price of his latest CD at certain places around the world. I personally haven’t bought the new album because I’ve been in France and it’s about $27 here, and I wasn’t sure that I was going to buy it at all, until I read his blog. I respect when an artist speaks out against their label or music stores. I realize his comments aren’t too aggressive, and it’s not like he doesn’t like money in his pocket, however I doubt that any artist really cares if music stores make money off of their product.

Other artists have made me feel a similar way in the past. Such as, Thursday, who advises their audiences to get their hands on the music anyway possible; via downloading, burning, ripping, sharing, etc. Or, AFI, when they wrote a statement saying that they did not approve of Nitro Records re-releasing a greatest hits album. I find that I respect artists much more when they don’t saturate their discography money-making special editions, re-releases, live albums, and greatest hits. As I type this, I remembered that NIN has more halos than Heaven, but I digress.

The bottom line is that illegal downloading is absolutely necessary for bands to get exposure and build a fan base. But if you gain respect for a band, then go buy their next release, or support them by going to shows or buying merch. Besides, Yu Quan thinks it’s OK! …I’ll get off of my soapbox now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I read Mr. T.R.'s post as well. Thank you for the France perspective. Your overall observations are very on. Little known bands certainly benefit from just getting their music out via all means necessary. When a band gets large (NIN) it's easy to lose sight of the fans, and clearly Mr. R. is not. And this is Mr. B., signing off.

Samuel Hamner said...

following your digression, one of the side effects of electronic music is a lot more raw material because, usually, the artist is a lot more technically savvy and experiments more (ie, re-mixes, etc). hence, a plethora of halos. aphex twin (Richard David James) is another good example of an electronic artist with a large discography. so my point is, i don't think he does it for the money.