So less than a week after releasing an ep, sure enough it's on some (mostly russian) file sharing sites like rusfile and zippyshare...seems people like to download the album, which i have for free download, and make their own DL links to it on their own sites. Now i cant read cyrillic and most of these sites (3 so far that I can tell) have linked to it there. I am curious how you guys have dealt with these things before. I want people to get our tunes from the place we designate. Should I think about hiring an attorney? I am strongly considering it, even though i don't know how much good it'll do in the long run, and I'll just end up paying for my own free goddamn ep to be out fuuuuuuuuuuuu! and these random assholes will just keep putting their own links to it.
People putting your music up on file sharing sites
- Thread starter Terminus
- Start date
Pman
Member
Just embrace it man. Especially if you're giving it out for free anyway. You can't control these people and it's not just you they do it to, it's everyone. They'll reach people who wouldn't have found your music otherwise. There's a few sites that just upload everything that comes their way, like getmetal, bunalti, darkport, plenty others. Showing up on those sites are only going to expand the amount of people your music will reach, if you're lucky! So much new stuff comes out everyday and crosses these sites that regardless of your perspective, only a few people will see it before its on page 10 and theres 100 even newer releases up. If they like the music they'll find their way to you (hopefully) and if they don't, who cares.
You're right I shouldnt care if it brings in the fans...man it's frustrating though. I guess we all pretty much have to deal with it if we put shit out.
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
Call me weird, but I'm waiting 2 months before throwing our stuff online for sale. I guess it's mainly because I don't want to get stuck with a bunch of EPs lying around.
DullElysium
Member
I was actually really happy to see our EP got posted on many different download sites. Only downside was that we can't know how many times the EP was downloaded from all the other sites.
anotherpaul
Member
Yeah, we russians are pretty weird about sharing music. I've put my band's album for free download on bandcamp and announced it in our social network accounts. On the next day it was on about 15-20 music related blogs with rusfolder and other file hosting links and NO BANDCAMP LINKS AT ALL. I'm all for spreading my music around, but it's stupid that the listeners can't get to the band's official resources.
Thing is, these uploaders actually make money on advertisement on the file hosting sites. In 80% of the cases the person who wants to download a file has to click on a banner or wait for a minute or so for the link to show up. And usually the uploader (if he/she used a registered personal account on the file hosting site) gets some cut from the website's profit. So these guys just snatch anything they can find on forums/bandcamp/whatever and post it all over other related blogs, forums and so on.
More than that, I've even found our FREE album FOR SALE in one digital music store (supposedly russian as well). They took it down after I asked either to make it free or remove it.
Thing is, these uploaders actually make money on advertisement on the file hosting sites. In 80% of the cases the person who wants to download a file has to click on a banner or wait for a minute or so for the link to show up. And usually the uploader (if he/she used a registered personal account on the file hosting site) gets some cut from the website's profit. So these guys just snatch anything they can find on forums/bandcamp/whatever and post it all over other related blogs, forums and so on.
More than that, I've even found our FREE album FOR SALE in one digital music store (supposedly russian as well). They took it down after I asked either to make it free or remove it.
FrankTheSmith
Member
- Apr 20, 2013
- 494
- 9
- 18
My band had an EP that we were getting ready to release and just before that we kicked out our bass player. Our bass player's brother was pissed at us all and put the ep on tons of torrent and download sites. All the sites they were on had the option to flag or take down the files so I did that with at least 10 of them.
Ermz
¯\(°_o)/¯
The issue I take is with the hosting sites actually generating revenue from advertising, as was mentioned above. I get that everyone feels entitled to get everything for free, it's a brave new world and all that, but when I see 3rd party organizations profiting for prostituting my work (a certain book, for instance) that's where I draw the line. I get the whole libertarian hippie, 'everything should be free d0000d' attitude, but most of those types who spout the self-serving justifications to account for their own filesharing don't realize that the income is being re-appropriated. You're not helping topple big business and the music industry... you're just shifting income away from the artists and authors who create the products toward the charlatans and shitbags who attempt to profit from exploiting that work.
As it stands, there's not much that can be done. We're fighting the big war against state control of the internet, and you have to be very careful where you draw the line in the sand.
As it stands, there's not much that can be done. We're fighting the big war against state control of the internet, and you have to be very careful where you draw the line in the sand.
Mago
Austrian Blech Machine
Yep, same way I see it.
An ooooh boy, yeah...those russian sites. fuck them.
Pman
Member
If you approach those sites yourself pre-leak, and provide your own links, that's a way you could track your number of downloads.
That's what I ended up doing with the EP in my sig after learning what happened to our album before it.
That's what I ended up doing with the EP in my sig after learning what happened to our album before it.
DanLights
Santa Hat Forever
Yeah, what really sucks here is how much money those download sites make out of hosting our work, but I don't think there's much we can do about it now. My band's album was up on tons of sites and forums (in several languages) only like 4 days after we released it on Bandcamp, cool things is you can check the "buzz" in bandcamp and see what website they're coming from, I've had quite a few visits from russian forums and hosting sites that have put up our album. We give it away for free anyway, so it's not like we're losing money by them downloading it elsewhere. I guess it's just impossible to control, at least currently.
