Dear Industry:
I am a blogger. I have been a blogger for almost three years. I do this out of the love for music industry. I buy anywhere from 2-3 new albums a week. I believe in buying music. I believe in supporting the artists. And most importantly, I believe in the music business...the corporations, the suits, everyone pulling the strings behind the scenes. I believe in supporting them as much as I believe in supporting the artists, themselves. Without the suits...the industry would fall apart.
In the past few weeks, it has come to our attention that the music industry has gone on the offensive against the bloggers. Sending out Cease & Desist Letters, threatening to shut down the bloggers for posting tracks. Without a warning, bloggers are getting shot down for doing nothing more than promoting music.
Dear Industry...we are not the enemy...we are your biggest fans. We do not do this for money, trust me...there's no money to be made. We do this for the love of music. And not just the artists...like I said before...we do this for the love of the industry. The bloggers can't survive without you. We need the music industry as much as we need the artists. Therefore what we are doing isn't in an effort to undermine you...everything we are doing is to support you and ensure your survival. Like I said, there's no money in it for us...the only one who benefits from our posts is you.
You may disagree, but take time to read our blogs. All we are doing is promoting music. Your music. And we do this for free. FREE. We do not ask for a dime in return. What we ask is for our readers to go out and BUY your music. Since most of us do not get paid, we do not waste time writing about music we don't like. Therefore if we're spending our time writing about music, it's in an effort to encourage our readers to go out and buy it...to go out and BUY YOUR MUSIC.
Your issue with us is that we give away songs. But please, believe us when we say we only do this to convince our readers that the music we are praising is as good as we are claiming. We do not believe in giving away albums. That is not our goal. Our goal is to give our readers a taste of your product in order to get them to BUY the whole thing. The practice of giving away full albums or albums prior to their release is heavily frowned upon in our community.
Up until now, we have asked nothing of you except to put out good music for us to talk about. But today, I am asking for something. I am asking you to stop sending the Cease & Desist letters. When you do that...our posts are deleted...destroyed. It's not just the tracks that get taken down...our writing is taken away with it. And that's not fair.
Work with us...not against us. We are your biggest asset. Many artists encourage the bloggers to post their tracks so it is impossible for us to know who wants our assistance and who does not. Please, in the future, if one of us posts a track that you wish removed, email us and tell us (our emails are readily available on all our sites). We will take it down, immediately. Like I said, we are not your enemy and do not wish to hurt your stability. We want to work with you, not against you.
Why not even take it one step further? Why not provide us a list of artists you do not want promoted on our blogs? We will honor it, we promise. At least give us the chance to prove ourselves.
Sincerely,
Jason
The Good, The Bad, The Unknown
10 comments:
So I take it you got a cease and desist from GnR's people? That's too bad. Lord knows the only reason people have maintained any kind of interest in the new album is because the leaked songs proved it actually existed.
You speak for all of us bloggers who have been affected by this hypocritical rule in a way that is direct, effective and elegant. I couldn't agree with your open letter more, kudos.
Can I get an AMEN from the people?
Thank you for taking something I tried to say on my own blog and saying it far more eloquently and effectively.
==TJ==
PS Big fan of your blog. Keep up the good work
rock the vote... or something important.
thanks for writing. =)
This wasn't a DMCA deal, but about 14 months ago I posted a song by a band that will go nameless. They had recently released a debut album (they had a self-released one a couple years prior, with many of the same songs on it).
Ordinary I only post legal songs, but I made an exception in this case because I liked the band so much and wanted to spread a little bit of word about them.
Anyway, a few days letter I got a message from Google/Blogger saying that they had received a notice of copyright infringement and to remove the link to the song or else they will delete the post. I promptly removed the link, but a couple days later the post vanished anyway.
This is all well and good. Except for the following week, the band's record label put that song up on their website -- as a free download. Considering the album had already been released (and considering much of that album had been self-released previously), why was it such a big deal one week earlier? Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't get it.
I'm glad I haven't fallen victim to any DMCA shenanigans yet, though.
Nice Blog - You have been linked.
Hey man,
Fantastic post - I'm entirely in agreement. I got a couple of C&Ds a couple of months ago after trashing Metallica's "Death Magnetic". It irritates me, this attitude that the industry have towards the grassroots press: that we're completely inconsequential, and that it's fine to trample us. That, and the Kevin Cogill arrest, has led me to boycott G'n'R completely (along with Metallica, and any other aging rockers with their heads too far up their own asses).
I'll link to this post next time I post. Great work,
Marcus K., Stereokill
Post a Comment