P2P: Kaiser Chiefs have their say

any music costs next to nothing to make. Songwriters, bands, even gimmicky dance acts have a habit of omitting the time spent creating a recording, and only regarding the studio/equipment etc. costs as the cost of recording... maybe because (especially in this country) musicians have been generally brought up to think of themselves as not doing a 'proper' job. It's rubbish, really... in any other creative service industry like graphic design or advertising, you are paid by the hour (as are session musicians)...it's funny how the actual brains behind ideas, the songwriters and film directors, are actually expected to do all their work for free in the gamble that they will make future royalties.

Tour support is a worry, but that's merely a change of environment, and one perk is that if bands have no tour support, headliners record companies/agents etc. won't be able to continue with the perpetually disgusting phenomenon of the 'buy on'. It is possible to tour without crew, driving yourself around, using the house engineer, bunking on the promoters living room floor(or four to a travelodge room) and needing to sell merch to break even on van hire. When you start getting an audience, and reasonably attended headline tours, you can start thinking about improving things. Touring can be one of the main sources of revenue these days, and the aim for every band, even the small fish, should be to make it profitable.

when it would cost thousands to fill them? it's just hypocrisy, making money where you can, and demonising and alienating consumers when you can't... the industry has been largely reactive to change. for instance, CD prices have only plummeted because of the impact that piracy has had on demand. the fact is that people have been encouraged become used to having a greater range of music at their fingertips whenever they want and the old industry model can't offer this. one way that torrents could be trumped would be to provide unlimited streaming from a library for a set fee. sites such as last.fm appear to be headed that way, although wireless internet would need to be ubiquitous first in order it to work

Well worth the £8.99 I bought it for on tape in Woolies when I was a wee lad.

As a 'in the dark, headphones n all' vinyl fan I totally agree that the art of music appreciation can so easily be lost to the ears of a flippant downloader. I totally hear Nick's point about flicking through an album on laptop speakers and straight away getting online to disect it - especially when this comes from an influencial journalistic source who other lazy critics may then borrow from and spread the misinformation like a plague. Example perhaps being Kaiser Cheifs, people on this site were perhaps prematurely commenting on how lame the lyrics to 'never miss a beat' are. Right or wrong, they missed the irony and although yeh maybe obvious, the point in jumping the gun.

I think all music fans have a moral responsibility not to abuse the ease of downloading, it is great to be able to try before you buy, as long as you do actually buy and support artists that have given you something. I once belonged to an infamous members only file sharing website via a friend's invitation, the one time i uploaded something that i had bought online was a new album by a well known lo-fi psych band. In uploading this i immediately got a bunch of angry comments from people saying the quality was shit and i should be 'suspended' from the site for a while for not adhering to the rules. I was docked ratio points.... fact of the matter is the album is lo-fi anyway and i figured beggers could't be choosers... I was wrong. Anyway, I quickly realised the kind of place i was in, theses people actually think they have a right to expect people to just provide them with top quality, free albums for trade like some horrible black market without consequence. Its like a bad white collar crime commune, too much ignorance to regular society so i got out fast. Some friends who are a part of this network won't hear me out, they think its about give and take therefore fair, that downloading and uploading ratios make it fair, some buy records and understand the artists predicament but a lot don't even consider the artist in the matter at all and only consider the ratio. It is clear to me that people are never gonna be uniformly morally responsible enough to give the artists the respect and money they deserve for their art, therefore some kind of law is (regretably) needed.

Definately a complex issue.

I will NEVER pay for an MP3 though. Never, ever, ever. I'm not going to spend ten quid on a CD just because someone says it's good though so that's where blogs come in. I download albums illegally and if I like it then I buy it.

I also don't like the idea of buying individual tracks. Albums (on the most part) go through a painstaking process of masterings and arrange (right?), musicians spend hours getting it just the way they want. I don't like how people can pick apart art as they choose, disgarding the non-singles and downloading the popular tracks. It's really not for me.