JUST SAY NO TO PIRACY [VIA VICTORY RECORDS & GILBERT GOTTFRIED]
It’s no secret that the music industry is in a shambles, with both profits and revenues at an all time low. With Napster, eDonkey and Audiogalaxy more popular than ever, anybody with a DSL connection can download an album in a matter of hours, often at CD-quality 96 khz. While the unprecedented access that we the fans have to new music is amazing, it comes at a price: the ability for artists to eke out a meager living by making music.
Sure, on the one hand it’s pretty funny to think about, say, the bassist for The Autumn Offering working at his dad’s ravioli factory when they’re not on tour. Admittedly, the contrast between some D-level metalcore band’s onstage persona (“U MIRIN OUR STAGE PRESENCE BRAH?!”) and the sad reality of seeing them try four times to get their 1998 Saturn to turn over in the parking lot after the show is pretty amusing, but this isn’t high school. Music isn’t about who’s making money and who’s 27 years old and still thinks it’s cool to be in a band, it’s about COMMUNITY. To me, the scene is one big family, and I look out for my family members. Whether you are the “fuckup-idiot-with-a-heart-of-gold cousin that everybody feels sorry for” (Eyehategod) or “ridiculously good-looking older brother we r all jealz of” (Oli Sykes/Bring Me The Horizon), if you are family I will always have your back — and family members do not steal from each other!!
PLEASE DO NOT PIRATE THIS ALBUM!!! As you can tell from listening to it, ADTR are not that good anymore, so there is no point in stealing from them when the album is kind of crappy anyway
I try to tell kids about this, but sometimes I feel like teens these days only listen to famous people, so I wanted to show you this video from leading independent music retailer VICTORY RECORDS. In the video, washed-up comedian GILBERT GODFRIEND gives teens a bunch of reasons why they shouldn’t pirate music (especially albums on VICTORY RECORDS, I assume). It’s not that funny, and most people who buy VICTORY RECORDS albums these days were probably born a decade after he was popular and have no idea who he is, but I still thought it was cool. Thanks to my friend Andrew of Something Awful (a bleeding-edge breeding ground of tastemaking meme-authors) for the link!
If you want to pirate Hydra Head releases, I think that is ok, because those bands are not really trying to make a living at what they do, they’re just some guy with a normal job at Jiffy Lube/some shitty record store/Outback Steak House that makes records in their basement for fun/scene points. But I think it’s different when it comes to bands on independent labels like leading independent label VICTORY RECORDS, because they are trying to make money off of their music, so it’s a lot more meaningful and valid than some guy like WATANE or XASTHUR who is just trying to make art and doesn’t care that only like 200 people will ever like his band.
-Sergeant D.
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