Thinner goes to paid downloads: here my reply to them!

0x7f · Post by **0x7f** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 2:16 pm

until you get pleasure by doing it, it's not "work", it's hobby. when it starts being a "work" for you, you have to chill down and get a real life. if your hobby takes 12hours/daily is not a hobby, obviously, at least if you have 24hours days and you need to work/study/stay with your girl/sleep Wink

what a nonsense is that? my "real" job is mostly fun for me, but its still not a hobby :-P so you are saying if you start a label and it turns bigger and actually results in work and not always only fun, then you should stop doing it? first you talk of passion, well you can't tell me that every "hobby" is always fun and never work. many artists put a lot of work behind their music to create something cool and that sometimes is a lot of work and not always fun if the things dont work out as planned, but you still push yourself to get things done. so whats with the attitude "get a life" that actually made me laugh

i mean whats wrong with running a label? does that mean everyone who runs a successfull label has no life?

who said running a label has to be a hobby? some do it for a living you know..

Don't fool me please. Domains costs start from 10€/year, hosting is cheap tho. There are a lot more expensive hobbies out there (car kits, airplanes kits, stamps, comics..) that opening a website. If you want to start you netlabel you have some totally free alternatives as well: platforms like wordpress or blogspot for the website + archive.org or scene.org for hosting the releases, so you are not really obliged to pay if you think that you hobby is not worth of your money.

I'm not fooling you, you just have no idea. Yes domains start at 10€ a year, but hosting is different deppending on the server you rent. this can range between 30-200€ a month. If you need managed hosting it can be even more expensive. Sure you can work with the cheapest and free hosting, but that doesnt look very good and is far from professional. like somelabel.freehost.tld and gmail emails etc. you can argue that its not needed and what not, but actually many people prefer a clean setup.

I agree, equalizing and mastering tracks is a pain in the a$$, but if you are skilled, you don't need weeks to master a track. Same for covers: doing a cover it's a matter of hours, not a matter of days if you know how properly use the tools (Photoshop, Illustrator..) and if you have a bit of creativity and aesthetical taste. If you have not, you can contact some guys at Flickr or Deviant Art sites: they will be joyfull of providing their art to you for free.

What an excuse is that? Not everyone is into mastering and doesnt have the hardware to properly do it. Sure you can do simple mastering, but professional mastering isnt common in the netaudio scene. Only those who pay for mastering or who got friends to do it. But in most cases they simply lack mastering.. As for covers, sure you can do a cover in a hour, but if you try to follow a certain style and want each release to be properly done with a cover that fits and not just anything it can take sometime. Also people have good and bad days that is for artists and designers aswell. So while one day you might do a great cover in 30mins, it can take days for others till it looks the way you want. First you talk so much about passion, but then you dont understand some key points of it..
Of course you can get some guy who just learned photoshop to do it for you anytime, but it always looks better if someone is doing it who knows what hes doing. Now you can go on and argue that there are tons of good designers who would do it for free..yea but find one first..your all talk and no action. I mean in theory its all easy, but doing it is a whole different story. You just make assumptions based on theories, but you'v never done anything related other than download releases and write a silly blog. Dude writing a blog is nothing special there are 1000000000 blogs out there doing the same..

You should start a netlabel, since your so skilled in this scene that it would be easy for you to get artists and awesome covers + perfect mastering for free, while you also manage to listen to the hundreds of demo requests and answer emails of your artists daily,update the websites,label profiles and do some promotion as its all pure fun. I'm sure you can start the most perfect netlabel out there with your skill to get everything for free! Why bother with thinner, with your skill you can run a even more successfull label in no time. its an easy hobby, everyone can do it!

Everybody of us who do and share things for free with a professional taste do things with lot of effort and passion, not just netlabel owners, but this doesn't mean that we have to be paied. There is no link between the effort you put in you hobby and the money. If you put your effort into your job, you deserve to be paied for it, but hobbies are not job by definition, at least inside this Universe. Following your sentences, it seems that every good thing done with effort must be paied.. come on dude Wink

Check software world: a lot of good softwares are shared for free by their authors and they don't ask a cent for em. Check ebooks tho.

There are a lot of things done with effort out here that are free since ages.
This not means that their authors don't need money, but it means they believe into the free culture. CULTURE. Culture! Start go over the money society Wink

Again who said running a label has to be a hobby? Only you expect that it has to be a hobby. Some do it as hobby and some don't thats what you don't get. Software? Now you tell me i'm off topic.. anyways most of the time free software is made as a hobby yes, but there is also developers who do it for a living. They also do some freeware once in a while. Same as for the Labels. Some do it for free, some just do free releases here and there. Whats so bad about that? You can be happy that they do it at all! While there may be a few labels that work as hobby project, most of them don't. Where do you get the best releases from? Mostly the labels that put money and work behind it. Thats simply a fact. Sure there are some hobby labels who dont care about money and got lots of friends who are professional designers or what not, but thats 1 out of 100. The next thing is some people WANT that a label goes commercial and produces vinyl for example.

Nope, they aren't. Creative Commons is a more modern way to license stuff properly in the Web era. Many collecting societes are recognizing CC licenses and they are starting implementing em as options for the artist (ex. in Netherlands).

Yea in theory, but there arent many actual cases so its not 100% sure if the CC license would hold up in courts. There was just recently a court ruling in usa which was the first to accept CC. While this is good, doesnt mean it works everywhere and if you read the CC license they state somewhere that its not foolproof. But hey i'm not a lawyer so..

Sorry, I disagree. Mainstream as concept (not as music genre) is what is done for earning money from it, not for the pleasure of doing it. It's a matter of culture, im so sorry if you can't still get it.

ok so here the definition of mainstream:

"Mainstream is, generally, the common current of thought of the majority. It is a term most often applied in the arts (i.e., music, literature, and performance). This includes:

* something that is ordinary or usual;
* something that is familiar to the masses;
* something that is available to the general public;
* something that has ties to corporate or commercial entities.

As such, the mainstream includes all popular culture, typically disseminated by mass media. The opposite of the mainstream are subcultures, countercultures, cult followings, underground cultures and (in fiction) genre."

kinda funny to see "something that is available to the general public" in there as that would mean your netaudio and GNU is all mainstream

hm when i think about it that also means, that the stuff on beatport isnt so mainstream, because its not available to the general public, only those who pay

.. well i belive, as i said before, that mainstream is more like the stuff that runs on MTV or the like. Beeing on beatport means nothing. Many free labels have much more exposure as some shitty label on beatport that doesnt do proper promotion etc. Most of them don't make much or are even known widely..

whatever really, i couldnt care less.. you are free to belive whatever you want, it just doesnt mean your belives are always right and everyone has to belive the same crap

There is something called Open Source and something else called Linux around. Check them please, you will learn what normal people like us can do sharing our time for free Wink

haha great i'm using linux since 1994. I worked as linux admin and do security audits for any unix platform for my customers. I also code on linux,bsd,solaris. So please don't tell me anything about linux, i'm pretty sure i'm better informed about anything related to unix than you, sorry

now lets get back to music shall we ?

You are going offtopic here. Clubs are not netlabels. Clubs are jobs, with employed people inside that deserves to be paied, with drinks to pay etc. You can't comapre a website that costs 20euros/years with a club Wink come on dude Wink Try again Wink

And btw, I don't know what you mean with "Professional Artist", but for me a professional artist is somebody who has a contract to do music and gets already a living from its music. There are few professional artists into netaudio scene (vladislav delay for example), the rest are newcomers.

No i just made an example. Labels also have employees you know?
So labels dont deserve to be paid ? Whats so different from other jobs that musicians dont deserve money ? Who told you that every netlabel has to be a hobby project ? If this hobby turns into something bigger, i don't see whats wrong with that. Either you stop, or you continue. So in your opinion its better to stop, than to continue commercial ?
Look many newcomers start in the netlabel scene, but you cant blame them if their hobby tunrs into something real. Sure for you its stupid, because before the artist basicially worked for you for free, just so you can enjoy his music. Now many artists do this out of love and passion.
If someone would tell them "hey i pay you so you can work on music all day!" do you think any artist would be like "ah no thanks, i just keep doing it for free.." thats maybe 1 guy who is rich and doesnt need any money, but 99% of the artists would agree and there is nothing wrong about that. Why not give them freedom to produce music instead of sitting in a office from 9-5 beeing a tool for some company wasting his talent when he could do what he loves and even gets paid for it. This would result in more great tunes. Your just plain selfish as you expect to get everything for free without caring about the artists.

Of course there are also a lot of professional artists doing some free releases. Sure there are tons of newcomers, but many labels put out free releases with professional artists who do make a living with their music or even run own labels or booking agencies. They get paid for their gigs and releases. Some artists signed with collecting agencies even release incognito, so the labels dont have to pay fee's to the collecting agencies.
They put themselfs at risk, just so you get music for free. If the collecting agency would find out, the label would have to pay for every single download, but you dont see all the little details, you think its all just so easy. You simply have no idea what an effort it can be to run a label or to be an artist. So please just be happy for your free releases. The labels can be happy to have a fan who listens to their stuff and its all good. But don't try to enforce any rules on the labels if you don't provide any value to the scene you love so much. Writing a blog isnt any effort

also to your last post:
so every label has to create sub-labels if they want to do some free releases? We just label our digital (both free and commercial) "net". The physical stuff will be labeled differently. That might not fit your definition, but you know what? i dont care at all

eldino · Post by **eldino** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:08 pm

Mmh it's a "wall against wall" discussion, nobody of us will change his opinion so it's better to stop it here

We'll see if netaudio scene will still keep featuring great netlabels and quality releases (Thinner-like) or if it will collapse or compact itself coz of the adoption of a unrespectfull money-based model

Just a note:

0x7f wrote: You simply have no idea what an effort it can be to run a label or to be an artist. So please just be happy for your free releases. The labels can be happy to have a fan who listens to their stuff and its all good. But don't try to enforce any rules on the labels if you don't provide any value to the scene you love so much. Writing a blog isnt any effort

I'm an artist myself since 2000 so I know perfectly everything I'm talking about. I have been into Buzz tracker scene for years and done tracks with guys all around the world tho. Now i'm into Ableton Live (since v2.0), but im not producing so much. I do poetry, photoshop stuff and 1000 other creativity based stuff, I recently won an award for an essay I wrote, so believe me: I know what being an "artist" means

And btw, maybe you are not into blogs so much (and into Web 2.0 and user-generated contents world), but professional blogs need lot of effort and time: correcting the drafts, doing images to attach to the posts, checking four-five times if you wrote sh!t, schedule posts, publish stuff on regular basis, replying to people who writes you mails for help, doing social-networking-like stuff to get fresh contents (interviews etc), being involved into the scene (IRC, emails..), writing an email to the people you talked about in your posts etc. Do it without having an internet connection at home but lurking around (God save the wifi!), then come back

Blogging is not just writing "Hey, I woke up! " and hitting Publish

Professional Blogging : Journalism = Netlabel : Record Label

0x7f · Post by **0x7f** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:40 am

yes for once we agree

you wont change your opinion and i wont change mine case closed. as for the blogging, i'm into SEO for work so i do know web2.0 in and out, but thats even more off topic, so lets just stfu..

eldino · Post by **eldino** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:04 pm

There are many interesting concepts behind web 2.0 and blogging combo, that it could be very nice to apply to netaudio scene.. im thinking about citizen journalism, social news (site like digg) etc.. netaudio needs more genuine reviews and more resources in my opinion

ok ok off topic. i stfu.

shamankick · Post by **shamankick** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:49 pm

woooow what a discussion

They goes to paid music ??? I don't care, if they need it, why not.
I don't want to judge them.
But not sure they earn lot of money.

Thank and "Long life" to Thinner.

pafufta816 · Post by **pafufta816** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:22 pm

i think thinners credentials are above the norm of alot of these "beatport" exclusive dime a dozen minimal/tech house labels. that and they have releases from artists who have 12" releases, hopefully the semi-well known names they have like fuerstenberg makes them some cash monies

lucidpicnic · Post by **lucidpicnic** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 10:57 am

"Thinner does not accept add requests from bands."