sticky subject ........

[TheYak]

Yeah, the best way to support good music is probably going to concerts and stuff like that.  

Anyway.. if we're gonna keep on this subject, someone wanna change the title.. a bit misleading at this point.

[Timosity]

Do you think Doom (and Duke3d, Quake and all the Doom clones) killed shareware?

Just out of interest Isn't Doom a Wolfenstein clone in the first place.

As far as FPS's  go I've never really been interested after Castle Wolfenstein. It was a good game but the genre is just too boring.

As for shareware being killed, I think the internet killed it, turning it to freeware


I try not to use p2p much anymore, I like sussing out freeware products to see if they are as good as commercially released products.

But I think (especially the music industry) needs to be fucked over by p2p, they cash in on peoples talent and looks (because they have no talent) even rip off the bands themselves.

It's bullshit about it ruining sales, For instance I've heard Eminem is the largest downloaded through p2p yet he still has huge album sales.

Really p2p is just free advertising, more bands become popular because more people get to hear the music without having to buy it first, then alot of people go and buy it.

I have downloaded a lot of music and only purchase stuff I like, but if I hadn't d/l it through p2p, I never would have known about it therefore they would have never got there sale.

The music industry should look into investing in telecommunications if they want a cut of it.

I say fuck the music industry over as much as you can, they would do the same to you, so it's even.

[MrColossal]

i think it's a little short sighted to say that ripping off the music label doesn't hurt the artist

how does the label decide if the artist is worth keeping around? popularity through socially conscious P2P users or album sales?

and as far as shareware being killed... when quake came out it was like... Ho-Lee-Shit look at this this is amazing... [i choose quake cause i never played doom shareware] and i'm sure they were super jazzed about it to [they being id] and also coming from doom's success they released the entire first chapter as a demo that's a big demo! i played it for days! now-a-days and i'm just talking randomly at 5.30 am here, the games don't really have that wow factor. Quake was a big leap for FPS games and they had a lot to show off, what do we have now? a few little leaps here and there. basically make a demo showing off a little leap and some cleavage and then just expect the name of the game and the hype to sell the first round of games.

id could have sold that demo as shareware easily and made a mint. i wonder why they didn't, it was like 60 megs or something and the internet was pretty slow back then that not as many people would have stolen it... curious

i remember buying Sango Fighter shareware and playing it a bit and hating it. it was terrible but it was also very very short. you could choose one fighter and fight one round for 30 seconds. that's it. compared to the amount of play time you got from dukenukem or doom it was like shutup!

what i mean by that is that all shareware wasn't good either, just like all demos that come out now aren't good. The demo for Impossible Creatures was pretty big, like 4 missions and the tutorial. the demo for Splinter Cell, very sweet. The demo for Curse of Monkey Island, got me psyched.

and what i mean by this is, i prefer free demos because nowadays they are super assed short. but then again lots of shareware was also super assed short.

so how do we fix this problem?

idunno it'd almost 6 go away

eric apologizes for this posts awkwardness

[wOoDz]

record companies leak music onto the net anyway to boost sales, marilyn mansons second album "smells like children" before its release was going to be an EP, so many where leaked out, days later a law suit was issued against manson because the EP  contained sampled extracts from the movie "Willy Wonka and the....." ironicly that version is worth thousands!
my point is the record companies use the net and p2p to their advantage as well

woodz

[Fuzzpilz]

What I mean is that it doesn't help the artist at all if the label decides to keep them around. In the worst cases, you can end up owing the record label a lot of money even if they made millions of dollars in profit (that's actual profit, not gross sales!) from your music. I'm talking about the major labels here - it would be wonderful if they suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth. There are just too many things wrong with the way they work.

[remixor]

I agree that the current record label system is a pile of shit.  However, and I can't speak for anyone here of course, but most people I know who download music off the net hardly do anything to support the bands whose music they download.  They don't buy merchandise or donate money, and live shows are so infrequent anyway that it's not much of a factor.  And as far the independent bands who are signed to small labels that DO give bands their fair share, people seem to be just as likely to download their material than buy it, if not more so because they don't have as ubiquitous names.

So while I agree with most everyone here in principle, I hardly think it's helping those bands any.  Fine, you're not feeding the recording industry machine, but that doesn't mean you're actually doing anything for the musicians.  I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who plans on making a living as such a musician, and I know that I'd certainly be honored if thousands of people were downloading my music, but I imagine that I'd probably hope that at some point those people would buy my records.  From an artist's perspective, which would you rather have?  It may not end up in that much money directly to the artist, but it's a concrete way of showing support and it indicates to the record company that the band has a solid fanbase.

[Evil]

Every once in a few months they have a huge (and I mean huge) pc sale at a warehouse downtown. You can get pc's, monters, mouses(mice), keyboards, games, cords, software, speakers, webcams, scanners, printers, and all of that good stuff for very low prices. A five dollar at the door fee and most of the software doesnt go above 15 dollers. Pc's are as low as like 50 dollers but on average like 150. There are racks apon racks apon shelves apon boxes apon bins of old games. All for like a doller. All legel too. And if it is like that here in our town, I cant imagine it being smaller in bigger cities. And sometimes people "drop" money there if you know what I mean

[Pumaman]

Personally, I don't tend to buy music simply because it's so expensive - 16-17 quid for an album.

The thing that really gets me is that I was talking to a friend who works in a record shop, and he was saying that they buy the CD's for about 2 pounds each, but the record companies force them to sell for a hugely inflated minimum price.

I'm surprised that this sort of practice is legal but it's certainly not doing their image any good. If every CD album was, say, $10, I can see them selling a lot more, and probably making more money overall.

[AGA]

:O You're shopping in the wrong places, CJ. You should be paying £10 at the most for any old album and about... £12 for a brandnew release

[Timosity]

how does the label decide if the artist is worth keeping around? popularity through socially conscious P2P users or album sales?

I think you missed the point of my post, yes album sales help the labels choose who to keep and who not to, but having them advertised using p2p gets it out to more people faster therefore boosting album sales for the more popular downloads.

It might not work so well for the smaller bands out there, but on the flipside people might hear them just cause they can get it for free, so a smaller band can become more popular without even realising.

Of cosrse people abuse it as with every aspect of life, but it is no different to the old days where instead you copied a tape off a mate from school, and so did everyone else, same with computer games. the classroom has just been replaced by the internet.

I just think the rich trying to get richer is not necessary in our society seeing is there is still a large third world within the western world, that is just ignored and used to profit by.

I think what CJ said would help to, if they reduced the prices, they would make a lot more money from more sales and people would be more inclined to buy rather than just download.

There is too much collusion in business, which is illegal, but how do you police it, otherwise everything would be cheap just to get ahead in the market. Also the major companies wouldn't be so major.

cut out collusion, we'd all live in a cheaper world, and have more money for food, which we don't all need but should share with the lesser fortunate.

I'm not a communist but definately not a capitalist, I'm just an optimist.