RESPECT

Word. It's day 2 of the leakage and I'm still resisting. I'll make it, I have the Whitey Album to keep me happy!

I think it'd be interesting to have a member of the band come on here and comment about this.

That would be really neat to hear their opinions. It would probably stir things up a little bit too.

i discussed it with them after nurse leaked. i'm relatively certain that their thoughts an the issue are extremely similar, if not exactly the same. the quality issue bummed them out, as did the lack of context.

even with tape-trading, which people keep bringing up, at least the physical original item exists somewhere for you to go check out. that's simply not the case with something leaked 2 months before the physical item exists.

really bad form...

I'm agree with you Chris but the fact is that it's already shared online as everything. some my friends already have dled all it and I have listened just a couple of songs. so why not to put a preview online in streaming as the mixtape thing?

if the band wants to do it, they'll do it. it's their music.

I repeat the question (maybe it has already been answered, but haven't find it.)
how can someone leak the album?
Who could do that?
is it you, chabib? :)))

Hi Paolo! I think it happens mainly from promo.

as if the sound quality of rather ripped isnt going to make it awful

haha, no way is it chris. Firstly, he's against it, secondly, If SY don't want it out, he wouldn't put it out anyway because it's his job and I don't think SY would be too pleased!

ahm...
pao-lino....was
joking.
:)

i've addressed this already. all that exists is a shitty rip online.the band spent half a year working on the record. if all that exists is this crappy rip, and it's what people are listening to and discussing, why should the band have spent any time on the record at all--let alone six months of recording and mixing.

why should any band bother if yr all just happy listening to crap anyway?

woops, my bad. Sometime it can be hard to tell over the net

I think the whole "download/listen/burn/delete" culture has caused me to burn out on music in a big way. It's just so overwhelming, and it really makes the music loose it's value, in my opinion. When you can get in in 3 seconds it just ins't as special anymore... the 2 month wait, the drive to the record store at midnight on release that, all of that is becoming obsolete, and that's quite a shame. I mean, let's put this into perspective: last year I bough around 150 albums or so (I have no job, mind you). This yeah, to this day I've bought none. I plan on buying Rather Ripper and a few others, but yeha :( Last year, I remember distinctly, within a 1 month period 75% of the albums I was looking forward to leaked. It's insane man.

So I'm taking a "break" (though I still listen to lots of music every day), and re-evaluating the way I listen to music. I've been a hypocrite in some ways. I hardly download leaks anymore, so that's one step in the right direction..


That's not to say that downloading is bad, so please don't get me wrong. it's a great way to find new music. But I feel people have misused it a great deal, and have begun to eat away at music culture, as well as the value that music has in general.

how am i supposed to listen to music?

i think if an album is good, it will be good despite how you record it. if people hear the leaked version and like it, then it would be wise of them to get a better version of it for more intense listening. like how all the people do with pet sounds, hah.

what is better, listening to the shitty rip and getting a sense of whether i should buy it? or buying it blindly and not knowing if i will even like it? at this point, those seem to be the only two options, and i would say that even tho the sound quality isnt as good as the album quality, it is a good way of finding out if i want to go further into it or not.

maybe sonic youth could leak a high quality version, if that's what is important... maybe make the masters available

it's so much more rewarding to just wait for an album to come out, i find. i didn't get the leak of "the woods" or "the greatest" and i'm really glad i did, because dancing around the music and being generally pleased was worth it.

interesting.
im the same sort of, havnt bought any new cd's for a long time time now, but to me, i dunno, its more of a quality thing.
there just doesnt seem to be that much music i like anymore, record companies are too happy selling crap, which is based on fads, gimmicks and hype.
not sure if alot of you heard of arctiv monkeys, but these are my current fave band to use as an example.
hailed as revolutionary in the way their PR manager has used MySpace, hailed as amazing by a press with nothing else to write about, but musically crap.
theres very few bands whose upcoming records get me excited now, radiohead, spiritualized, massive attack, SY.....
yet the industry blames downloading and sharing, and i think the industry needs to look at itself and realise it needs to nurture and love good original music regardless of hype/sales/whatever......

not true. just go listent to ariel pink to see how much recording quality matters. many good songs have been killed by shitty recording.


that's what singles are for, champ. i hardly believe that SY are going to put out the new album without having a track or two up on the website for listening pleasure.

so you think it's for the reviewers?
it's like with movies... they say there's a spy at the academy award commitee that puts online the highest-quality-ever movies supposed to be "valued" by these people.
(I myself never dloaded a movie just cos of the time it takes and the amount of memory it occupies)
they should create mission impossible-like self destructing cds to send to reviewers: like it or not, you have 2 chanches to listen to this cd. If you put it in a computer it will cause its explosion....

whatever why dont you just accept that the world is changing

mp3 vs cd vs tape vs vinyl blah blah. there are a million ways to hear music.. why dont you just enjoy them the way you want to.. like i will.. you cant tell me that what i think isnt true, cause im not you . if anyone wants to steal that rhyme for a song, go for it

are you sincerely stupid, or just stubborn?

the options you lay out are not the only options. SY generally streams new tracks on the site or makes mp3s available just before the release of an album. they do it so their fans can check out the tracks and so that they have control over the way they're presented. is it too much to ask that people wait for bands to freely offer previews?

see, the problem with the internet is that it breeds a society of jackasses who want nothing more than to become more elite than those around them. "hey, i heard this [way before you] and it's great. man, you should go find it. it's out there!" "wow, yr so cool! you heard it already! 2 months before everyone else! can i suck yr spindly little pencil-dick? please, please, please tell me where or how to find it. i need to be cool too." then dipshit A buys the respect of assholes, B, C, D and E. those fuckwits in turn buy popularity from dumbasses F-D1 and so on. is anyone actually any cooler or more elite? no yr all just idiots trading in shoddy goods to buy some sort of imaginary cool. it's pathetic.

i have to say, the rip ive got is a 128, and sounds awesome.
i can see your point, and you're right, the band spend time and love on it just for it to be "stolen" kind of..
but....... to say "why should any band bother....." seems somewhat, hmmm, brash? have you ever listened to the geffens vinyl versions of nirvanas unplugged and the stone roses second coming? they are soo awful, and are official releases!!!

but yes, much respect to you cos you're right, i cant wait to hear the album in the way the band wants me to. because if its ace on a crap mp3, its gonna blow me away with a mastered and sexy cd :)

I perfectly know all this cause I worked in an recording studio years ago but how many people knows that every record would be listened with bass/middle/treble amp control setted on zero? then if someone wants more treble on a song turns the treble control on +1 and so on.....I wanna say that even an mp3 well done could be cool especially as a preview.

chabib, i think you have an overly simplistic view of people and the internet by thinking its more complicated and insincere and manipulative than it is. most people are just excited to hear stuff and get into stuff. they are trying to tap into the world and see what people are up to. maybe a little too much myspace for you?

if sonic youth wanted to control the way their music was presented, if they truly wanted to do this, they could. but instead they choose to go down a road that is burdened by boundaries where the options for control over your art is limited.

if you can't wait for something to be released before discussing and distributing it and you make a point of yr access to that thing on a website belonging to the manufacturers of that thing, yr begging for attention.

it couldn't be any more simple.

Fuck yeah I'm downloading it. I wanna hear that mother fucker. I respect the band by shelling out $30 to see them live everytime they come 'round my way.

In general, I see downloading as a good thing. Music was made to be heard. As technology has developed, it's provided the means for larger numbers of people to be able to hear it. Before a technique of recording music was developed, the only way to hear it was to see it performed live. With the development of recording equipment, the whole idea of music as a business was developed. Entrepeneurs used the technology to turn music into a commodity. And now technology is fucking them over. Too bad. I couldn't care less about hurting the music "business".

chabib, i dont know what experiences you've had to make you come to think that people who are excited about sonic youth are just trying to be cool and showing off about access to the world, but im not sure why you are trying to push down someones excitement.

these conversations come up all the time over the internet whenever a new album is leaked, people are constantly talking about the morality of music on a computer, as opposed to a cd player, which is also a kind of computer.

the reality is that there is usually a significant difference between what you hope life is like, and what life actually is. and you can say what it IS is not cd, its not material album, its not the tired form of marketable packaging that people "choose" to present themselves in.

what is worse out of these three things?
the sun shining
the sun shining but clouds are in the way
or the sun not shining at all

I won't even bother reading this entire thread, because the answer is painfully simple.

You can cite curiousity, enthusiasm, good intentions, 'dangers' of the industry, etc. It's all bullshit.

You claim SY ought to accept the leakage to a degree, because it's an inherent risk given their choice of dissemination and today's technological mediums.

How about some personal accountability? The answer to this little moral debate is simple enough for me -

If SY wanted you to hear the album before its release, Kim would be standing on your doorstep with your very own copy, and you'd get a cookie for being special.

But that isn't happening. So keep your pants on, wait for the release, and, most importantly -

Show some fucking respect.

I can't agree with Chris anymore on this subject (w/o sounding like an asskisser) i think what really bothers me and Chris and probably the band are those specific folks (yeah you know who you are and there is more than one!) who've posted here making a deliberate point on telling us they've (a) heard the whole album (b) give us an opinion of how great or shitty it is (c) and prompt by telling us how we should hear it and by what means (via soulseek...etc etc).

That sort of behavior is complete and utter nonsensical bullshit and really sad... and this is where the negatives of internet musical distribution heavily outweigh the positives.

i can wait for the official release and whatever happens to be "leaked" in a more official way by the band themselves. and its been said already but i also agree that this is where we should give a certain amount of RESPECT to the band for their work (and i beg to differ that this has nothing to do w/ shelling out $25 or $30 to see them live), if they wanted us to hear the album then the release date would've been April 4th, promo copies are what they supposed to be (meant as PROMO ONLY) unfortunately it only takes a few dufusses (sp?) to take advantage of that and attempt to widely distribute a promo as some widely available release over the ridiciliously uncontrollable world wide web.

you can't tell me that SY are/were unaware of the definite possibility of it being leaked. if they didnt want it to happen, they could have stopped it.

people who can't wait for the band to offer this thing that people may or may not be excited about to those people freely; then take it upon themselves to distribute that thing (which the people who've made it have not yet done); then try to offer up the first reviews of it in the known universe (online or off); are asking for attention.

if they didn't need the attention or didn't want to make their access to this thing known to anyone they'd:

a) listen to it and enjoy it, waiting eagerly for others to be given a similar opportunity

b) wait til the fucking thing is officially released in some form and listen to it then.

these people do just as much to push down the band's excitement as i do to push down their's.

That's my point - I'm sure they were. But why are THEY supposed to be accountable for all the ignorant fuckwads out there who steal their music?

What are we, fucking barbarians? Just because you've been given the means to do something, doesn't mean it's compulsory.

In short (and maybe I'm being presumptuous here), perhaps SY is counting on the collective human decency of their fans to not be arrogant, selfish, attention-mongering pricks.

Right on. And when the cd comes out, no one lend their copy to a friend. Show some goddamn respect people. A little accountability in the world would be nice.

i will agree that reviews are mostly dumb and who really gives a fuck about what someone else thinks of something like an SY album

but i will also say that who gives a fuck about what some reviewer in a magazine says.. what i mean is, there is no different between the reviewer who posts on here and tells you where to get it, and the reviewer in a magazine who tells you about it and that its available to buy in all major retail outlets.

i also imagine it does suck for SY to have to read all this shit.. but i think if SY approached the message board like a band like Animal Collective who some read the board a lot and talk about stuff with people, all this cold hearted review nonsense wouldnt occur. and i guess you can say that that is putting something on someone to do something to please someone else, but im just saying that if SY is sad or bummed as you put it, they should come on here and talk to the people interested in them about it, and maybe they would feel less sad.

i agree that accountability and respect is nice.. it's a really good thing to support music and art and bands.. but the reality is, if you want control over your art, you have to realize the way people and life work, in a totally non-judgemental way. whether or not you like life changing or not, if you want to have control over your arts presentation, you should see this very large, and popular form of music sharing and listening

SY read the board all the time. and it has less to do with the reviews than it does with people trying to share something that isn't really available to everyone yet as it's intended to be. i don't know a single musician who doesn't copy cd's from friends or download tracks from P2P networks. they don't do it before those things are made commonly available and they don't announce what's just been made available to them (selectively or otherwise) to the world and then distribute it from the various platforms they're not making their announcements from.

it's an issue of tact. a lot of people on this board lack that.

I really feel you on this. Technology has allowed music to become so unbelievably accessible that it's become easier than ever to become burnt "out on music in a big way" as you say. Ripping, downloading, storing, and listening to music has become so infinitely easy that we don't even have to think about it anymore. It's almost become a bodily function. I eat. I drink. I breathe. I listen to music. And only occasionally do I put some thought into these activities.

The leakage of records only serves to worsen this situation. Our appetite for music has become so unknowingly voracious that we cannot simply wait for a record to come out -- we have to break laws in order to satisfy ourselves. And while I don't actually care about the laws that are being broken, I am a bit shocked at the manner in which these laws are being broken. Using this forum to announce and indirectly distribute leaked copies of Rather Ripped is not only insulting to the band -- and in particular Chris Habib who clearly stated in the Sharing Forum that no copyrighted material is to be shared -- but it's detrimental to our enjoyment of the artform as a whole. The degraded quality, the lack of anticipation, the sabotage of an artist's hard work -- these are all valid points for the case against record leakage.

And so the underlying issue, the source of all of this trouble I think, is that we've become so selfish and thoughtlessly hungry for music that we're willing to compromise the artists' intentions. We're basically cutting the artist's intentions out of the picture and letting our appetites for music dictate the process. In this way, we're no better than the money-hungry grubby-hooked major label suit-and-tie sleazeball motherfucker who wants to change an artist's songwriting so that he can make more money. Major label businessmen traffic in money, sometimes at the expense of the artist's integrity. We traffic in personal enjoyment of music, also sometimes at the expense of the artist's integrity.

Honestly, I don't think there's any way to stop leakage -- not any way that I'd approve, anyway. I don't think the leakers should be fined, because I don't at all think it's about the money. Perhaps, in the future, bands that anticipate that their records will be leaked should execute a series of fancy tactics to curb the leakage, but also keep the masses engaged. For example, a band could flood Soulseek and the Bittorrent sites with files that have the names of their upcoming record, but the actual mp3 will be just a snippet, or a live version of the song, or a poorly recorded practice version of the song, or some such. I don't know, I haven't thought this through all the way, but I think something like that would effectively 1.) acknowledge the fact that we, as music consumers, are selfish; 2.) give us something exciting to listen to, even if it isn't the real deal; and 3.) assert the artist's authority over its own artwork.

I have more to say about this, some more ideas, particularly about the faked-leak, but this post has reached pretentious proportions, and I doubt it will get read, anyway. If you've read this whole thing, thank you. And keep debating.

hahahah what to say if not "enjoy the spring with the new sy album?!!"