The Pirate Bay’s trial in Sweden has resulted in their four founders being found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison each, on top of some horrific fines. While we understand that artists are being damaged by file-sharing, it’s certainly in the interest of consumers to obtain music through p2p channels, or they wouldn’t be doing it.
So who is actually at fault here? The Pirate Bay arose in response to a demand from music and media consumers that wasn’t being met by other retailers and content providers, and they were arguably only providing a roadmap for their users to find files that others had put up on the web. Their site was a tool capable of helping people make copies of files, like Microsoft’s Media Player is capable of allowing people to burn copied CD’s of other people’s music, or indeed music that they’ve copied from the internet. It’s not Bill Gate’s fault that millions of people have used Microsoft’s software to burn those CD’s, and it’s arguable that the Pirate Bay’s owners and operators are only providing a tool in the same way.
Whatever the morality of file sharing – it’s here to stay. The Bay have vowed to put up servers in countries all round the world, so that the site cannot be taken down as the result of a judgement in a single territory, and sites like mininova are not only taking down all the contested content, but also paying healthy lumps of tax to their native governments, making them much more respectable in the eyes of the law. What needs to happen is for a method to be designed that brings revenue back to the artists or other content originators from torrents or other file sharing methods, so that consumers can have their cake, and artists can eat it too. My suggestion? Sanctioned releases from labels or artists that are monitored by legit sites (like mininova) and funded by a combination of ISP’s taxing bandwidth, and the torrent tracking site’s advertising.
When it comes to sequencing drum tracks, there are a whole load of different plugins available, for free or otherwise. The first one we’re going to look at is a little home-grown number called MyDrumSet from Norwegian site Blue Noise. It’s a .vst plugin made from recordings of the producer’s Ludwig kit, with separate mic outputs from each drum, as well as a couple of overheads. No strange or fantastic sounds here, but a solid basic drumkit that you can drop in to your tracks.
If you’re unwilling to get your wallet out but you’re looking for something a little less basic, there are loads and loads of other free plugins listed over at the AudioMastermind database. It might take a little sifting, but you’re not going to spend any money.
Working on something with a more live feel? Fully sequenced drums not giving you the juice you need, or just unhappy with the sound you’re able to record? You can replace the drum tracks you’ve got with sounds from this plugin – Drumagog which uses the existing drum hits as triggers for the sounds in it’s databank (which contains 4 gig worth of samples), retaining the rhythm and feel of anything you’ve recorded but replacing the sound.
Next up is the number 2 application on the market, Toontrack’s Superior Drummer – this is the second version of their DFH Superior software, and they’ve made significant improvements to the graphic user interface, and the detailed control you have over your mix. Sound-On-Sound has this to say about it:
It’s difficult not to be impressed by what SD 2.0 has to offer. Toontrack have managed to strike a sensible balance between very detailed control of your drum mix and an interface that is relatively easy to use. And as the samples themselves sound excellent, the only limits to your creativity are your programming ability and your host computer — unless you have a reasonably well-endowed one.
Unfortunately there’s not a demo version for you to try out, and this product does have a pretty hefty price tag on it unless you’re of a piratical bent, which we certainly can’t condone.
If you’re considering spending $400 on a new plugin synth then you should also take a look at FXpansion’s BFD2. This is the Ferrari of plugins, offering you a vast battery of sounds, principally recorded at Hampstead’s phenomenal looking AIR studios, it’s also got a load of dedicated EQ’s filters and other gubbins built in. It’s getting massively good reviews all over, and there are some sample tracks mixed using the plugin on their product listing page that demonstrate what it can do.
Music Ally has reported that over 445,000 people illegally downloaded the new U2 album. All these downloaded were alleged to happen between the 18th of February till the 3rd of March from BitTorrent sites.
The chart supplied by the company shows the spike in downloads following the album’s leak in February, apparently due to it being accidentally made available for sale on an Australian digital music store ahead of its official release on 2nd March.
The debate is always would these people have purchased the album if it wasn’t leaked on BitTorrent clients? No one can really answer that question, but I’m sure that certain sales would have happened because of this.
Overall this does make me think that the claims of the Pirate Bay in the last couple weeks that “80 percent of all their torrents are legal”, cant be true.
During the ongoing trial in Sweden of Pirate Bay, spokesperson Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi claimed that an internal study of 1000 torrents had show that 80% of trackers pointed to material that was legal to share online.
An essential part of Pirate Bay’s defense has been that the service is simply a tool that has many legitimate uses. The trial is entering it’s 6th day.
In 2007 P2P music downloads were worth a staggering $69 billion, and all other forms of movie/television piracy are on the rise.
Techcrunch has been talking a lot about using music online as a free promotion tool, because eventually music will be free online. If record labels do use music online as a free promotional tool then they need to have other revenue stream. Warner Music is signing their new artists to 360 deals, in which allows them to have all revenues streams.
Somebody over there needs to put their thinking cap on, quit screwing around and just give the damn music away for free with no lawsuit strings attached.
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