KVR Audio

andrew71 · Post by **andrew71** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:42 pm

So last Monday (6th October) my new track was released. As usual there is little to no sign of sales, and the aggregator that I use takes a few months to report any sales. All is proceeding as normal, apart from one difference. At the weekend, I googled my name and the track title, to see the links to digital stores, and alongside the usual links to iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores, were links to several piracy sites, with my track available to download in 320kbps quality. Ironically the piracy sites appear to outrank the legitimate stores.

So, what has happened? Has some mysterious benefactor somehow heard the track, paid to download it and then shared it for everyone else? Have they streamed/ripped it from Spotify?

I'm not really complaining - if anything I see the fact that someone bothered to take the time to pirate it as a measure of success, albeit one that is unlikely to pay dividends in the future. That said, it doesn't appear to have happened with anything that I've released in the past..

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:45 pm

andrew71 · Post by **andrew71** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:59 pm

tehlord wrote:No

Insightful... I was really just wondering why anyone would bother buying something just to pirate it. Whilst the track is available quite freely in the edited version, the longer versions haven't been made freely available. I support someone could have ripped them from Spotify at 320kbps, even if they were streaming in a lower quality.

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:04 pm

Are you affiliated with a record label?

Not suggesting it's them, but quite a few of these "leaks" happen from within the industry. Some for viral promotional reasons, others because someone on the inside is doing it for their own (dodgy) reasons.

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:26 pm

I wouldn't mind at all if someone would pirate my stuff (I'm publishing some albums on Bandcamp) - at least it would give me the feeling that my music is worth being pirated.To appear on a well-frequented piracy page could be a promotion factor anyway, and maybe people who pirate my stuff would also listen to my music.

audio/fault · Post by **audio/fault** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:36 pm

a year ago we released an ep on bandcamp for "pay what you want"(even nothing)... 3h (and 6 not paid downloads) google was full of links to piracy-sites that had our ep. that didn't changed for months. can't say we had any benefits from it beside some people might had a listen...

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:02 pm

Well I should add that I don't really intend to earn money with my music, so it's easy for me to be cool about that piracy stuff.

sjm · Post by **sjm** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:12 pm

My songs are also available as illegal downloads. I'm pretty sure this is just automated bots that download anything off soundcloud et al and make it available for download. I've no idea why anyone would actually want to download one of my tracks illegally when the playcount on soundcloud is so low - some songs seem to be more popular on pirate sites than on soundcloud though. And it's not like it costs anyone anything to listen to them on soundcloud either.

So there are quite obviously automated tools that simply rip anything that can be streamed online and upload it to piracy sites, without any sort of plan. If your song was available on spotify, then that's most likely where it got ripped from.

It's pretty bizarre to be honest.

fluffy_little_something · Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:13 pm

audio/fault wrote:a year ago we released an ep on bandcamp for "pay what you want"(even nothing)... 3h (and 6 not paid downloads) google was full of links to piracy-sites that had our ep. that didn't changed for months. can't say we had any benefits from it beside some people might had a listen...

That is really so low, not paying anything on bandcamp, some people are really trash

I wish one could include the Ebola virus in the downloads made by such people.

I paid 10 euros for an EP containing 6 songs last week. I think one should apply the same price as on other such portals, i.e. 1 to 1.5 euros per song.

treebeard · Post by **treebeard** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:18 pm

Yes, its funny, I wonder...given the choice of being either rich financially or extremely popular what people would choose?

fluffy_little_something · Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:24 pm

With software piracy is not an indication of being successful. One can find the most crappy software on such illegal sites, but not so much high-quality software.

So am I getting this right, bandcamp might have a leak? Might be something the police should be interested in...
Maybe the big labels have hired people to infiltrate such portals and ruin their reputation so that they can sell more CD's again and young artists don't try the indy thingy...

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:34 pm

You can rip anything on BC with 128kbps - maybe then it is recoded in 320k by bots...

fluffy_little_something · Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:38 pm

Maybe it would be better to enable listening to only the first half of any song then

It would disable ripping and yet give the listener a good idea if the song is worth buying.
Or to add the IP address of the listener as a digital watermark as the song is being streamed.

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:54 pm

Not on BC:

"One of my fans showed me a totally easy way that someone could STEAL my music off of Bandcamp using RealPlayer 14.1 beta 3, or RipTheWeb.com, or by going into Temporary Internet Files and renaming blah blah blah. What are you doing about this grave problem?

Nothing. Since streams on Bandcamp are full-length, rather than 30-second snippets, it's correct that someone could use one of the above methods to access the underlying MP3-128. And sure, we could throw some technical hurdles in their way, but if they hit one of those hurdles, it's not like they'd slap their forehead and open their wallet. Instead, they'd just move on to some other site where those restrictions aren't in place, and you'll have squandered the chance to make your own site the premier destination for those seemingly cheap, but enthusiastic, word-spreading, and potentially later money-spending fans. In other words, the few people employing the above methods are better thought of as an opportunity, not a lost sale. If you're still skeptical, Andrew Dubber's post on the topic of music piracy is a must-read."

treebeard · Post by **treebeard** » Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:57 pm

Whilst I agree that an items availability on a torrent site does not imply popularity of itself, the number of times it has been DL'd might? I'd be interested in some comparative analysis here. Top ten DL'd torrent tracks vs top ten legal sales for example.

I am not condoning piracy however I know of plenty of folks who buy a lot of stuff that they would not have known about without first discovering it through pirate sites. Its a very interesting subject anyway.

Myself I would be quite happy to see one of my creations being DL'd thousands of times although I can too understand the frustration of developers and artists if they saw their real sales dwindle as a result - im just not convinced that they are directly related.

Has there been any real analysis done in this regard?

Piracy as a measure of success