Dependent Records, an independent record label from Germany recently decided to shut its doors and upload all its albums onto The Pirate Bay. Interestingly, a year ago the the CEO of the label mentioned piracy as one of the main reasons why they decided to quit.
Nonetheless, a few days ago Dependent records’ CEO Stefan Herwig decided to upload all the albums from his label -which mainly features aggrotech, electro-industrial and futurepop artists- onto The Pirate Bay.
In the description on the torrent download page Herwig writes: “I closed down my record label Dependent Records for good. But since I want my music to be heard by the people out there, everything I have ever published is now available on The Pirate Bay,” stressing that it’s a legal torrent, approved by the label.
Over the past few months, more and more artists have decided to make their music available for free on BitTorrent sites. However, this move from Dependent Records seems to be a bit odd, especially when you read why the label decided to close its doors.
Little over a year ago, Stefan Herwig wrote: “We are not closing our doors because of the existence of pirate websites, but because there are simply too many people who enjoy our bands and their songs who do not wish to pay for them.”
Herwig and his team got frustrated when they saw their albums appearing on P2P networks. They don’t seem to buy the argument that indie artists actually profit from these new technologies, as Hedwig writes: “A popular claim often seen on Internet fora maintains that the P2P culture weakens the majors and bolsters the independent labels. This is, we can assure you, 100% bullshit. Even if there are listeners who download first and buy later, they are clearly in the dwindling minority.”
We understand Hedwigs frustration, but 100% bullshit is not completely accurate. Several studies have shown that most artists, especially those who are not mainstream, profit from filesharing. The dwindling minority Hedwig is talking about probably exists because of filesharing, and may have never discovered Dependent Records’ artists if their albums weren’t available there.
Music consumption has changed significantly the last decade. People consume more music simply because it is available, illegal or not. The challenge for the the recording industry is to find ways to monetize this demand, for example by all-you-can-eat plans for a fixed price. The bottom line is, piracy has shown that music is more popular than ever, and no artist will ever argue that this is a bad thing.
http://torrentfreak.com/record-label-quits-uploads-catalogue-onto-piratebay-080210/Believe it or not I was a bit sadden to see the demise of the audio cassette but knew that the mp3 player was the future!. Well i guess you cant stop progress
