Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Ex-Manowar man explains how illegal downloading works

Ross The Boss Friedman has been patiently explaining how the internet is collaborating with journalists to somehow stop him sending his son to college:

Okay, so two weeks before my record was to be released on AFM in Germany, it was available online in Russia. By thieves. So anyone who wanted could just go there and get it. This happens to every single group that tries to release a record and puts out promo copies to journalists that probably for 15-100 euros sends it off to a friend in Russia or wherever. Then it is illegally downloaded. So what happens is the artists get fucked in the ass. The record company gets fucked in the ass and will eventually have to close its doors and not sign anymore groups. So the scene gets destroyed. The record company gets destroyed. The artist can't make any money from his work. They have to just go on touring and selling merchandise. Eventually the whole scene will just evaporate.

It's the JOURNALISTS, is it? What terrible scum, somehow selling records to Russian THIEVES for some reason.

Does he really believe that there are people in Russia forking out thousands and thousands of Euro a month to get hold of records in advance? The Russians download them for free off the internet like everyone else, Friedman. And while it's unfortunate that the change in the media has made your old business model unsustainable, boo-hooing that you're going to have "go on touring" and "selling merchandise" - or "working", as it's sometimes known - in order to make money isn't really an approach to elicit much sympathy at a time when hundreds of thousands people are losing their jobs altogether.

You didn't used to sell music, you used to extract value from its rarity. That rarity is no longer there; even if there were no journalists, and no Russians, you'd no longer have rarity. It's heartbreaking. But no amount of swearing is going to bring the old days back. And it's the same for everyone.

Don't confuse 'music as I know it' with 'music' as a whole being at an end.

By the way: Your obsession with anal sex makes it sound like you think it's a bad thing.


1 comment:

Olive said...

Thanks for that Simon. I've now got 'All Men Play On Ten' rattling round my head.

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