Dubstepforum.com

i hope this question wont sound too dumb but it's a thing that is bugging me a lot in the last few months: why there isn't any digital release for many singles/eps or it is available only after several weeks or months?

it looks to me like a suicidal decision, i mean...i can find something on blogs, torrent sites etc. but i can't pay for it if i want?!?!? so why some labels, especially little underground labels, keep doing that? to me it's totally pointless, but maybe there is something that i miss...

yep most labels will do digital release after the physical. i know bleep.com have a lot of dubstep releases at reasonable prices (and @ 320kbps). a question to others: what other digital release shops are there with a lot of dubstep?

you can try beatport and boomkat

I do know for a fact that at least one distributor in the game delays digital releases by a month to give people no choice buy to buy the vinyl at first. The reasoning is because vinyl sales are tanking right now due to financial crisis.

People are still playing it, though not in as large numbers. I think the reasons are more financial, rather than technological. CDJ's and Serato have now been around for years... there wasn't an immediate rush to switch until the prices of every other commodity went up. If I find our tunes on a blog, that entire server and the owner of said blog will be hit with a lawsuit. If it's in Russia, I'll find some nice capitalist hackers to make them pay. In any case, they will pay.

I rip all my vinyl anyway, so it's more of a fetish than a requirement for me to play it. We release vinyl because I dare you to ask some big name to release their tune on digital.

Plain and simple: $1500 vinyl production costs dont get covered from digital sales

i think the labels and the artists just have a vinyl fetish

im just like them

lukki wrote:Plain and simple: $1500 vinyl production costs dont get covered from digital sales

Shit mastering costs barely get taken care of by digital sales lol.

mod3rn0 wrote:it looks to me like a suicidal decision, i mean...i can find something on blogs, torrent sites

yeah, if u r happy with the sound of an mp3 made out of a vinyl rip, then go on and download it...

Im sure the reason digi comes later (for those vinyl+digi labels) is because it can hurt sales if the digi files get on torrent before/at the time the vinyl hits the shops...

Surface_Tension wrote:People are still playing it, though not in as large numbers. I think the reasons are more financial, rather than technological. CDJ's and Serato have now been around for years... there wasn't an immediate rush to switch until the prices of every other commodity went up.

Was the commodity price spike passed on to vinyl production costs in the US? It wasn't in any significant way in Europe. Anyway commodity prices are now in a big slump so if the previous price increases were passed on, the decreases presumably have been as well?

Surface_Tension wrote:If I find our tunes on a blog, that entire server and the owner of said blog will be hit with a lawsuit.

Can you explain how this is economically viable?

Paulie wrote:

Surface_Tension wrote:If I find our tunes on a blog, that entire server and the owner of said blog will be hit with a lawsuit.

Can you explain how this is economically viable?

It's not... Sorry but the industry spends millions a year trying to lock down the music and it doesn't work.

If your music is worth pirating then it's gonna get pirated all over the net. I found an old track of mine on a torrent site the other day, I'm not bothered, it's not like it's making me any money, might as well get downloaded for free. If I don't want it getting out then I don't send it to anyone, full stop.

kill mp3... vinyl or nothing!!!

thanks for the explanation about mastering costs thing...but in 2008 do you think it's still possible a speech like: "you have to buy vinyl otherwise you won't listen that tune/lp..."? you do listen to that music! i don't wanna say that there is a simple solution to this (or that i have one), but in my opinion just saying "you have to buy vinyl!" is not a solution, even if sometimes - i have to admit it - it works

Paulie wrote:

Surface_Tension wrote:People are still playing it, though not in as large numbers. I think the reasons are more financial, rather than technological. CDJ's and Serato have now been around for years... there wasn't an immediate rush to switch until the prices of every other commodity went up.

Was the commodity price spike passed on to vinyl production costs in the US? It wasn't in any significant way in Europe. Anyway commodity prices are now in a big slump so if the previous price increases were passed on, the decreases presumably have been as well?

Surface_Tension wrote:If I find our tunes on a blog, that entire server and the owner of said blog will be hit with a lawsuit.

Can you explain how this is economically viable?

It's economically viable because I personally have the money to do it and gladly would to make a shining example out of the tracker hosting the tunes. I also already have a lawyer on retainer for other reasons, who would love the work. That, and we're not talking about suing individual persons sharing music... just the sites distributing them and the trackers therein... also, there are these things called CLASS ACTION lawsuits, which would be like you, me and other label owners collectively suing a site. Costs are split, and since these tracker sites make TONS of money on ad revenue(and the better ones take donations on top of that to avoid ratio bans, etc) we will be able to go after them for that on any losses, or IMPLIED EXPECTED LOSSES. Meaning we can sue them for money we THINK we might have made. Open ended on our part.

And the commodity costs rising didn't DIRECTLY affect the sale of vinyl, but the cost of every other commodity rising has taken money out of the pocket of the buyer. So oil prices do actually take a large chunk out of vinyl sales. Oil shortage will take a bite out of the abundance of vinyl as a commodity, because petroleum is a key component of vinyl records.

But your argument about financial viability... I mean really, is running a Dubstep label even financially viable for the biggest labels in the scene? Is anyone here making a living off of record sales alone?

Probably not. At least most aren't. Maybe Burial is.

to be clear, I advocate locking up the drug pusher, not the drug user. Arrest the site that allows the flow of that information, not the people sharing it. If trackers are afraid to operate because they see their buddies being sued by a collective onslaught, they'll think twice about running a tracker. Maybe not, but if one of them pays and I can garnish that mans wages for the rest of his life, I'm thinking it was worth it.

Surface_Tension wrote: But your argument about financial viability... I mean really, is running a Dubstep label even financially viable for the biggest labels in the scene? Is anyone here making a living off of record sales alone?

Of course i doubt there is anyone surely that was paul's point. Legal action is costly an doesnt even guarantee success. Course sure he didnt realise you had an army of ally mcbeals ready to do your bidding to strike fear into the hearts of pirates. Short of gettin these sites shutdown i'd be impressed if you got any money out of them.

Are you predicting an oil shortage or is this current thing? Seems demand for oil atm is declining alongside the price of barrel crude. So currently dont see how this would affect vinyl production/sales either.

daggus wrote:

Surface_Tension wrote: But your argument about financial viability... I mean really, is running a Dubstep label even financially viable for the biggest labels in the scene? Is anyone here making a living off of record sales alone?

Of course i doubt there is anyone surely that was paul's point. Legal action is costly an doesnt even guarantee success. Course sure he didnt realise you had an army of ally mcbeals ready to do your bidding to strike fear into the hearts of pirates. Short of gettin these sites shutdown i'd be impressed if you got any money out of them.

Are you predicting an oil shortage or is this current thing? Seems demand for oil atm is declining alongside the price of barrel crude. So currently dont see how this would affect vinyl production/sales either.

Oil prices declining in the nearterm won't change the fact that oil is still up over 100% over what it was in 2001. And where oil is, so goes everything else. If vinyl costs more, it won't directly hurt the labels, but it hurts the people pressing records for a living... they raise their prices, and down she goes.

I'm not saying my philosophy is better or worse, it just IS. I'd rather lose money on my own terms. And if you think that those Scallywags at *** and ******* don't have money, when they have BANKS AND BANKS AND BANKS of servers running at a great cost, you are mistaken.

It's illegal, the law has already ruled on this in most countries... if you are within a country where I can take you to court I will.

@surface tension you have to be a shining example of a stereotypical american shit talker.
law suits , class action law suits , layers .. if these methods don't work for sony , time warner .. why would they work for you ?
and i know quiet a few people who make a living out of their labels or the labels more than pay for them selfs and the residuals such as merchandise and dj gigs bring in even more cash , but on the other hand if you are one of the 100's of mediocre dubstep labels putting out hyped up forum tunes but unknown artists with no profile except on dubstepforum.com don't expect to break even , right now its very easy to get a p&d deal or get distribution for you label if u will pay , but facts being facts cannon fodder dubstep don't shift units so you shouldn't rate your or others failures as the norm for sales

interesting....

No one in the scene is making a living from record sales, i can pretty much say that with confidence. Its the offshoots that bring in the money, dj gigs, compilation cds, even public performance royalties every quarter (radio play for the bigger artists).

As for the Vinyl / Digital thing... at Sidestepper we release digital versions of our records 12 weeks after the vinyl simply to keep the wax fresh for longer. It also works for the distributer and record shop.
If your gonna rip/blog/DL one of our tunes prior to its digital release, you were never gonna buy it anyway...

One area i think that does need addressing is the slow speed in which physical releases are released after they're play on radio and in clubs. Tempa stuff for instance, amazing music, hammered in the clubs and on the radio but no release. I'll be honest, Skreamizm 5 for me was whacked to death pre release and i still havn't bought it, simply because other tracks have come along and taken my attention and excitement that week. Same for the Benga EP recently.

Our next Sidestepper release by Zed Bias 'Seeds' is already in production (MCPS, mastering, pressing) but i hav'nt even properly promo'd it to the DJs yet. Not saying we're perfect by any means but we're aware that you gotta get your 'ish out there to buy around the time people discover it or first hear it.

Another thing we're trying at Sidestepper towers is our new DUB SPOT digital store. These are tracks that will never come out on wax, are raw from the studio, maxed for club play by the artists themselves and put up for sale at just over a quid. A few of the tracks being released on the store next week we're finished in the studio in Manchester this week. New music to buy directly from the artists themselves. If the whole 'vinyl warmth mastering mp3s sound rubbish yawn' thing is what comes first for you before the music then we're on different planets. One of Chimpo's recent tracks was delivered to us in mono! Smacked it the club though.

Anyway, ramble ramble... jB

THE-VOICE-OF-REASON wrote:@surface tension you have to be a shining example of a stereotypical american shit talker.
law suits , class action law suits , layers .. if these methods don't work for sony , time warner .. why would they work for you ?
and i know quiet a few people who make a living out of their labels or the labels more than pay for them selfs and the residuals such as merchandise and dj gigs bring in even more cash , but on the other hand if you are one of the 100's of mediocre dubstep labels putting out hyped up forum tunes but unknown artists with no profile except on dubstepforum.com don't expect to break even , right now its very easy to get a p&d deal or get distribution for you label if u will pay , but facts being facts cannon fodder dubstep don't shift units so you shouldn't rate your or others failures as the norm for sales

Trackers have been shut down... there was a thread on here about it. Search for Pig references, init. Napster isn't free and artists who are on there get paid... etc... that was the work of lawsuits and American bravado. Don't knock the hustle. I'm not talking about tracking down individuals, just the owners of the site's, which are making money off of tunes being released on those servers.

I think you have to ask yourself here why so many people who supposedly care about record sales and how the scene is doing would be so quick to dismiss someone who would be willing to put their own money up to take down these trackers. It costs you nothing for me to do it. So why not just say "good luck" instead of being THAT GUY. You're not unique for telling me I can't do something. People told me I couldn't quit my job and invest in this market and not lose my shirt. I now have a closet full of shirts, which used to belong to THAT GUY.

Assume for a second that we release 5 records, at a cost of roughly $1200-2000 for the release. Every one of those releases leaks before the vinyl has a chance to break even, or even come close, leaving the label with a $1500 debt, with no means to recover our losses. How many times does this have to happen before it becomes worth it to file a lawsuit? Filing a lawsuit is cheaper than you think... cheaper than letting 4-5 vinyl releases leak.

Vinyl everytime, big up Kutz lol