Andre Yoskowitz
3 Feb 2008 17:52
Benn Jordan, better known as The Flashbulb has announced that he has uploaded digital copies of his new album "Soundtrack To A Vacant Life" to the public trackers What.cd and The Pirate Bay as well as other trackers in an effort to bypass the traditional distribution methods of a new CD.
The digital download, which comes with an NFO file, starts with "hello listener...downloader...pirate...pseudo-criminal...", and continues, "If you can read this, then you've more than likely downloaded this album from a peer to peer network or torrent. You probably expect the rest of this message to tell you that you're hurting musicians and breaking just about every copyright law in the book. Well, it won't tell you that."
Jordan continues on to debate why anyone would even buy CDs anymore now that the world has moved on to a digital age. He believes the only reason is that fans still want to support their favorite artists but aren't given the proper options to do so.
"Want to buy a CD just to show your support? If you don't particularly like CDs, don't bother. Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon spike the price so high that their cut is often 8 times higher than the artist's. Besides, most CDs are made out of unrecyclable plastic and leave a nasty footprint in your environment."
Jordan continues on to say that he encourages file-sharing fans to donate instead of purchasing a CD and possibly buy albums as lossless FLAC downloads directly from artist's websites. Jordan also goes on to say what many have said for years, that the music industry is not moving forward and that its outdated business models are actually increasing piracy.
"Record labels aren’t meeting the demands of their customers. That’s why music piracy is destroying the music industry. No matter how many people you sue, how many torrent sites you take down, or how many idiotic methods you come up with to protect the date (Key2Audio, DRM, etc)…people will always prevail at doing what they want to do. At some point the industry needs to come to grips with that fact that their business model is changing, and they have to devise new business plans inside the parameters of the situation. I don’t think donation is the long-term answer, but it is hell of a lot better than pretending 85% of your audience doesn’t exist."