we used to write to lots of labels/artists before posting and feel bad about the a-side hitting sales, but then we looked around and found if we don't do it, someone else will without permission.
case in point being whatever we want records, we asked nice, they said no and now every other blogger has blogged them so yeh, what did them saying no achieve? and what did us not posting achieve?
no idea if any of this stuff damages record sales, i buy shit loads just so i don't have to dj with mp3.
v.nice tracks today btw
thanks for the thoughts.
i think two good rules of thumb are try not to do prelease stuff and try to keep the bitrates sub-256K, so the fidelity is sub-optimal for a soundsystem.
as far as permissions go, yes that's tough. back in August I put up a Spank Rock track, then felt guilty when I realized it hadn't hit the stores yet. oddly enough, I received an e-mail from them thanking me..
i blogged quiet village sans permission, and joel martin happed upon my blog and emailed me to tell me that he liked what i wrote and was happy to see it up. another example is being sent shit robot's 'wrong galaxy' by a dfa artist, but dfa records not being cool with me posting it. i dunno, i guess it makes sense that record company people will be uncomfortable with this stuff. the times i've talked to artists they're usually glad to have their stuff heard. i have no answers as to record sales being affected, but i think blogs are pretty good at stirring interest and creating 'buzz' (or whatever) internationally. i don't think the importance of that should be discounted. and i mean, so much stuff, prerelease or not, can be found via torrents, slsk, whatnot anyway. all that stuff is available to everyone.
it's tricky. the whatever we want records example is a good one, I can see how they would be reluctant to grant permissions as they are opening up an mp3 store (many boutique labels are starting these up). At the same time, I'm sure they loved the positive attention from DoI.
I'm considering dropping everything down to 96kbps, but even that doesn't obviate the ethical dillemma of not asking.
Commenting by HaloScan
