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[flamingo]

http://www.deathtofalsehoperecords.com/site/albums.html

http://quoteunquoterecords.com/albums.htm

[SWOON! at My Gravitas]

freemetalalbums.com - Self-explanatory, 100% legal, there is some really good stuff here.  I personally recommend all the albums by a Belgian progressive black metal band called Gorath

Death Metal Invasion - Same thing but with, well, death metal.  A lot of it is pretty bad, but then hey, it's all legally free.

Demilich Discography - Finnish death metal band Demilich made their entire discography available for free.  Their, sadly, one and only full-length Nespithe is an absolute death metal classic, any and all fans of the genre should get it.  Think tech death but instead of a bunch of sweep picking and wank they wrote songs that were both very unorthodox in melody, meter, and chord progression, but somehow at the same time ridiculously catchy.

Timeghoul - The discography of another death metal band, this time limited to 2 demos.  Like Demilich, they were very unorthodox and very under-appreciated

Slime In the Current - Young USBM band that has made most of their debut full-length available for free.  They've got a very interesting sound that is like a cross between Von and Deathspell Omega

Mitochondrion - Rapidshare link (safe rapidshare link) to the download for a demo by Canadian progressive war metal band Mitochondrion.  Heavy as balls, but interesting in approach

[JD]

Gama Bomb released an album for free a while back

[Johnny C]

death to free music is a stance i'm taking as of late

[Johnny C]

can you dudes SERIOUSLY not afford ten bucks to drop on a record at a show

[Johnny C]

i mean yeah ok it's free but like SO MANY BANDS are asking for like a pittance per copy sold. you can't seriously just cruise on over to the touch & go site and slam down ten bucks via paypal for an out of print record or something? come on. the dudes from the standard aren't ever going to be able to quit their day job any more, this is the least they deserve.

[the_pied_piper]

can you dudes SERIOUSLY not afford ten bucks to drop on a record at a show

Right now, honestly, No.

I mean, when I have spare cash the majority of it goes on buying records that I enjoy whether in print or out but I see the free downloads as a chance to hear the music first and if I don't enjoy it then I'll get rid of it but it saves me paying the cost of an album that I didn't like in the first place.

[flamingo]

Id prefer to just donate and then download anything, that way I dont have to linger forever whether or not this album is worth buying- which can suck cuz sometimes thats the only way for me to give it a listen and if I dont like it, I regret buying and dont want to buy more.
Also, I'd buy certain CDs if they sold them, for the material aspect of it.
Seeing as I dont have paypal, I'd love it if I could pay by mailing them money.

Also, the same kinds of bands play free shows and ask for donations, I would donate more at a show than I'd pay to get in.

Theres also merch.

[Johnny C]

totally goofy attitude. like don't you place any value on the music at all?

if you are broke, that is totally shitty and i can get that. but if you have something resembling an entertainment income, why wouldn't you pay to get into a show? especially because shows – at least the majority of shows that i go to and that i play – are like five bucks, MAYBE eight bucks.

sure okay yeah records are a gamble but like somehow the culture fucking thrived back when it was word-of-mouth and when you had to actually take a goddamn risk. it made you more likely to plunge into a record and be willing to spend the time it takes to get all of its nuance. and that's not really an argument for free shit, it's an argument for having people you can talk to and learn about music with.

bands playing free shows isn't an attitude thing on the bands' part, it's a concerted and in a lot of ways brutal reaction to how totally shitty our culture is w/r/t actually even paying lip service to appreciating created stuff. they're great in theory for the audience but that's ultimately because the audience is cheap and lazy. what i'm getting at is i guess do we want to really be cheap and lazy?

[Johnny C]

like i want to emphasize not as a dude in a band but as a dude who likes it when cool bands actually tour to where he lives that this is an absolutely atrocious climate in which to be in a band, maybe one of the worst climates in history. it's so easy to make music but it's borderline impossible to actually do anything with it. and that fucks me up as a dude who likes music because how am i supposed to hear about all the cool shit that's in the world? and how am i supposed to share cool shit with people if i never get exposed to it firsthand?

like - do you really want all of the music you ever listen to to be something someone else told you to listen to? where's the sense in that?

[scarred]

internet?

[Johnny C]

that's a joke, right

[Johnny C]

can something real that we enjoy not just be data for once

[Pogotross]

this is an absolutely atrocious climate in which to be in a band, maybe one of the worst climates in history. it's so easy to make music but it's borderline impossible to actually do anything with it.

Are YOU serious? This may be the biggest cock-tease of a climate in music history, but you can't tell me you really believe that right now is worse than any time before recorded music, any time before affordable/reliable transit, any time when long-distance phone calls not making it expensive just to try and set up shows rather than simply get to them, when bands were forced to sign to labels to get anywhere, or when young bands were forced to either stay around their homes playing cover songs and weddings in Nowhere, Iowa or move to a large city to even have a sliver of a chance at having any kind of audience bigger than the people they grew up near.

The very fact that you can make "data" that proves your band existed without having to go through some guy who decides if you are marketable or who asks for thousands of dollars means that this is one of the BEST times to exist. Is it easy? NO! Should it be? NO! But it's ridiculous to expect every band that can stay together for a year should do a worldwide tour, or that every single band needs to be able to sell something to every single person that might think about maybe listening to them. Because, let's face it, it's not like borrowing music is some new thing. People more than likely copied their friends' wax cylinders back in the day. Kids have always tried to sit outside of clubs to listen to bands play shows they couldn't get in to see. If there is music around, people will try to consume it.

The difference between then and now is when or who decides a band can tour or make a living off their art. Before, there were guys that were paid to say "ok, this band is good, we'll sign them." But everyone decided those were "bad guys." Now they are dead, and bands and fans have to try and make the decision themselves. One of the ways to do that is to "send demo tapes" to new possible fans instead of labels. That's what free music looks like to me. Cutting out the middle man.

[Wasteroo]

I came here to say something but then Pogotross went and said it better than I ever could

edit: not to say that I couldn't afford $10 to drop at a show, absolutely not. I spend the grand majority of time with music that isn't expressly given away, and I'm betting that's true of most people. but I guess if your only source of music is from places where it is given out for free, more power to you, just realize that you're limiting yourself greatly— I sincerely doubt there is very many people who do that though.

[Wasteroo]

maybe that's just my personal stake in it talking though

[Johnny C]

maybe that's just my personal stake in it talking though

yeah i posted my band's ep on here for free download too

[Wasteroo]

I know, I've listened to it!

[Inlander]

Johnny give me a link to where I can download that again and tell me how I can pay you actual real Australian money for it because I never got around to doing either of those things the first time around.

[Johnny C]

harry - you can listen to it for free at http://theseestates.bandcamp.com, and then conveniently pay to actually own it there also! although paypal are sure taking their sweet time getting money from you to me. hypothesis is currently that everyone who's bought the album so far has paid with ghost dollars.

and who's a middleman - corey rusk? the dudes behind jagjaguwar? the way that a good label operates is by getting people to pay attention to its releases and the bands it releases. it develops a reputation for quality, as a good curator should. never even mind that the labels gave us, say, black sabbath, and that free music has given us wavves. never mind that the guy who asks for thousands of dollars is now a press agent (most bands have one of these). these smaller labels doing good work are seeing the same thing happen to them that's happening to the major labels - touch & go shut its doors last year, remember?

borrowing music is on a fundamental level different from free music, because there is a middleman - it's your dude who had the free record. the band isn't knocking on your door and pressing a copy of their album into your hand - someone who you trust had to listen to it. another listener - emphasized for really strong reasons - who heard it, and felt it necessary to share it.

this idea of direct access between artist and fan is in a lot of ways a load of hooey, because the steps between artist and fan are frequently actually pretty good steps to have. as a listener, i like talking with other listeners, and not only hearing the risks they've made but sharing the risks i've made. i also like labels, because it means i can look on the back of something and go, "oh, this is something i'll probably like because it's on jagjaguwar," or "oh wow barsuk is putting out the d-plan's emergency & i on vinyl," you know? the idea that everything except the listener and the artist is an adversary is a grim combination of naďvete and ego.

and - besides all that - i don't think i have the time as a listener to listen to something that the artist involved doesn't even feel bothered to place a value on. there's so much out there that i'll never even get to - i might as well show the artists i like that i at least respect the token price of appreciation they've charged me.

[Inlander]

Now I own a piece of you, Johnny!

Unfortunately because it's an electronic transfer you won't get the benefit of seeing the second-most garish Australian banknote, so here it is for your viewing pleasure:

[Johnny C]

Canada had something like that back in the 70s:

[scarred]

johnny your argument is convoluted and nonsensical

first you were complaining about bands giving away their music for free (which is their decision)

and then you were complaining about free shows (also the band's decision) (where merch is sold)

and now you're complaining about "data" (but there's no better way to discover a band's music)

what

[JD]

Canada had something like that back in the 70s:

I like how color coded our money is. Need a 20? Go for the green!

[Wasteroo]

johnny your argument is convoluted and nonsensical

first you were complaining about bands giving away their music for free (which is their decision)

and then you were complaining about free shows (also the band's decision) (where merch is sold)

and now you're complaining about "data" (but there's no better way to discover a band's music)

what

okay so I'm not crazy, thank you

[KvP]

I think Johnny is actually getting to something here (nothing to knock in his defense of labels, at least) so I'll ask him to clarify.

So Johnny, are we to believe that the only way for an artist to attain legitimacy is by an earnest pursuit of profit? When you say

i don't think i have the time as a listener to listen to something that the artist involved doesn't even feel bothered to place a value on. there's so much out there that i'll never even get to - i might as well show the artists i like that i at least respect the token price of appreciation they've charged me.

it's that "doesn't even feel bothered to place a value on" which bothers me. Are we to believe that a song or album can only really be pointless shit unless a price tag is tacked on it? Are we really going to take seriously the idea of monetary value as the only value (or at least, the most vitally important one)? I think there's a lot to be said against free dissemination of music, mainly that it invites laziness and bloat when it comes to presenting a finished good, but that doesn't really have anything intrinsically to do with the pricing or lack thereof of the music, it's just a matter of discipline which can be overcome.

Music was once a commodity but it is no longer one, and people have started to take it for granted in the same way they take lots of other easily accessible things for granted (like water, for instance) . Even “successful” bands have a rough time of it, and labels are withering. World tours will likely become a thing of the past. All of that is true, and you can be morose about it to be sure, but if you think there’s any way to salvage the traditional context of music there’s a bridge in Alaska I would love to sell you (and the RIAA will be frantically calling on you). That’s just kind of the way it has to be from now on. You can shame bands for clumsily trying to adapt, but what are you really offering them? I agree that it sucks, and the "new age" of internet-spread music (AnCo and their imitators, Chillwave, Witch House) that is supposed to represent the future of the industry hasn't inspired much confidence in me, but what are you going to do except get over it or turn into a musical version of the RPG Codex, in your own little echo chamber of acidic misanthropy?

[Pogotross]

and who's a middleman ...

I'm not saying labels (or any other middlemen) are bad. In fact, as you've said, they serve a very important purpose to the listening audience. (They also serve an important function to the bands, but if I had to guess, it will be one of those "everything falls apart and then gets rebuilt" kind of deals.)

It's more like...the labels (or more specifically, I was talking about the talent scouts) were gatekeepers, and bands were standing in line, but then the internet came, everyone saw the door was open and they all charged the gate. So they've all got access to this possible world-wide fan-base that existed behind there. Which is absolutely fantastic for bands that wouldn't have quite made the cut. They get to make their appeal straight to the listeners. There will still be other middle men (Review websites, venues, friends, stores, the whole lot of it) but there doesn't HAVE to be. That's the key of what I'm saying. There doesn't HAVE to be a friend. There doesn't HAVE to be an advertisement or radio play. (There will still be something between the band and the listener because, let's face it, you probably aren't going to run into the artist on the street and they hand you the free cd, but the barriers are so low now you can easily look over the other side.)


From what I'm getting, though, is that you want bands and listeners to value the music more, right?  Maybe kind of in the same way that people fear loose women ruining social/marital climates and "reducing their value to men." That it ruins the sacred/current band/listener arrangement. But as you say, as a listener, you only have so much time! Every minute you spend listening to a band you might not like (which is a risk you take, even if non financial) is still an opportunity cost to you. And the problem with having so many bands putting out free music is that it makes the time you've put aside for music listening that much more scarce on a "per available band basis." So they HAVE put a price on it...your time. If you feel that's less than they deserve, tell them. Bandcamp has the "donate some money" button. Every band has some kind of email address where you can say "hey guys, heard your album, I loved it! My favorite song was X, I loved it when you did Y, is there anywhere I can pick up a physical copy?"

And if you don't think a band who doesn't charge for their album isn't worth your time, that's completely fine. There's a reason why "high-end" department stores can charge such higher prices, and it isn't all from the higher quality of goods.

[KharBevNor]

In this thread, Johnny is bitter because he is not a rock star, blames the modern world for tricking him out of a life doing coke off underage roadies, rejects techological and cultural progress, declares that only one sort of music has value. Next up, John Philip Sousa on how the phonograph will put all musicians out of business, followed by Pope Gregory I on the evils of polyphony. 


I get far, far more enjoyment out of post-industrial and dark ambient music distributed free over the internet than I ever will out of the vast bulk of the tedious 'authentic rock musicans' signed to some creaking indie like Touch&Go. So art doesn't have a curator anymore. It's not like it ever needed one anyway.

Back to the original , I gave Slime in the Current huge brownie points because I first heard them as a placed track whilst listening to Panopticon's last.fm radio station. That means that this band paid some money and then thought 'what radio stations should we put ourselves on to maximise our potential listenership?' and they picked fucking Panopticon. Brilliant. That is exactly the kind of shit I would do. 

[öde]

DEY TUK AR JEEERBS

[Johnny C]

it's really not about the idea of music as commodity, it's about the ultimately ephemeral nature of the way we consume music now. i'm concerned with artists getting paid but only from me liking the music they make and me not wanting them to be one of those bands that just tools around locally after a couple great records and quit. it's obviously not a blanket thing but since i don't listen to khar's tedious aimless darkwave or w/e i want the bands that i listen to to keep being around, and so i'd kind of appreciate it being remotely viable. that's only part of what i'm getting at though.

i don't think a band like ladyhawk or joan of arc or portico or any of these bands that i've pored over their albums time and time again are bands you can really get on first listen - whether that's a good thing or a bad thing - and i think that the thing that free music does, more than make anything bloated or make anyone poor, is make music disposable, because if on its first listen it doesn't immediately catch you, you can just get more. it becomes more about space on your hard drive than it does your actual i guess commitment to the music, in a lot of ways.

the reason i'm arguing that there should be a middleman is because ultimately art is reflexive. it's a mode of discourse through which we relate to other people, through which we relate to parts of ourselves that we hadn't previously considered, through which we relate to the idea of art itself. tamper with that and what does the point of art become? what's the point of art if it separates us from others? if it doesn't have any effect on us whatsoever? it doesn't make us think about the actual work? then, like i said, it's just data - it's just a thing that we don't really pay a second thought to.

i guess my problem isn't that i want bands to adapt - in fact i guess my problem is i don't want bands or artists to adapt, and i'm sick of that dominating the discourse. i want people who consider themselves listeners to start thinking about it, and not in the fundamentally selfish way that "how are bands going to adapt to ME" is. i want listeners to stop being so goddamn lazy all the time, and to figure out ways to actually enter into sophisticated discourse about it rather than the unrealistic and again selfish presumption that the only thing important is their own little bubble and the whole "well that's just like your opinion man" thing.

the thing about money is that ultimately it works really convenient as a shorthand for value. capitalism has some serious problems but to ask the people who provide us with a thing that we ostensibly value to exchange the hour we spent listening to the fruit of their labour for gas money or whatever is really presumptuous of us. the reason money is a part of what i'm getting at - but only a part - is that it's realistically all we have to show these bands that we value them, and really it's the only way to guarantee that we'll actually value the music we get. it shows that we value that risk we take. it shows that we value the idea of having to actually work for art.

maybe there's another way to show it but we shouldn't act like we have that other way before we do. if we don't, i hope we all like the idea of art being the province of the rich, because they're the only people who don't need us to show that we value what they do.

[Johnny C]

if you are remotely familiar with modernism you will probably be able to see the general thrust of my argument - that there are things we are losing and have lost, and that that is a fundamentally bad thing

[Johnny C]

the reason i don't like bands giving away their shit for free is that it enables what i view to be ultimately lazy and selfish behaviour on the part of the listener, i don't think that should be hard to follow at this point but i'll spell it out anyhow

[Johnny C]

the assumption that i'm speaking haughtily from the position of the artist and demanding that you value my work is like grossly erroneous and doesn't address anything i've said.

try going into a library and photocopying the whole book and taking it home, tender. they don't appreciate it. i've tried.

[KharBevNor]

the reason i don't like bands giving away their shit for free is that it enables what i view to be ultimately lazy and selfish behaviour on the part of the listener, i don't think that should be hard to follow at this point but i'll spell it out anyhow

It's fairly hard to follow because it makes no sense. I thought you were all 'pop music fuck yeah', but now music is only something to be appreciated by an elite of true listeners. Only the dedicated may truly understand music, and if they do not show sufficient dedication they should be actively excluded.

And what's the fundamental change in listening habits? People listen to music more, and in more contexts (because of portability), and they listen to it more in their own way (picking and choosing certain songs or playlists rather than being tied down to the artists/labels choice). But what's actually changed. It's not like in the past everyone was a fucking audiophile douchebag sitting down in a big leather armchair to listen to whole albums on LP played through big Beyerdynamic studio headphones and stroking their nasty little soulpatch whilst they wrote essays about the essentiality of having to change the record four times to truly appreciate Dark Side of the Moon. People have had discos, jukeboxes, radio, player pianos, cheap as fuck seven inch singles and so on for years. Things are just now more advanced, convenient and personal. I don't happen to believe that art is something that can only truly be understood in a certain format, and I think it's absolutely ludicrous to suggest that free music, or digital music 'separates us from others'. It's just a nonsensical idea.

Incidentally, when did you start that annoying affectation of not using capital letters and full stops at the end of paragraphs? It's kinda sad. Also as I'm sure I've remarked before, the rhetorical use of multiple posts for punctuating your ideas has its place but just not in every single thread.

[Johnny C]

i can't stick around and make the massive post i'm going to make later right now, so in the meantime khar could you actually concretely nail down where and how i am an elitist instead of just calling me one in every single thread where i disagree with you?

[KharBevNor]

i don't think a band like ladyhawk or joan of arc or portico or any of these bands that i've pored over their albums time and time again are bands you can really get on first listen...because if on its first listen it doesn't immediately catch you, you can just get more. it becomes more about space on your hard drive than it does your actual i guess commitment to the music, in a lot of ways.

Here you are saying that good music requires effort to get in to, and that people who get free music don't put that effort in (which is a fucking ridiculous judgement on its own). Furthermore, these people (as opposed to you, who are by your stance the opponent of these people and their mode of consumption) don't really like music! They just like boasting about having loads of music on their hard drive.  Elitist.

 

the reason i'm arguing that there should be a middleman is because ultimately art is reflexive. it's a mode of discourse through which we relate to other people, through which we relate to parts of ourselves that we hadn't previously considered, through which we relate to the idea of art itself. tamper with that and what does the point of art become?

True art takes effort. It must be experienced in a certain way or it is somehow magically not art. Elitist.

i want people who consider themselves listeners to start thinking about it, and not in the fundamentally selfish way that "how are bands going to adapt to ME" is. i want listeners to stop being so goddamn lazy all the time, and to figure out ways to actually enter into sophisticated discourse about it rather than the unrealistic and again selfish presumption that the only thing important is their own little bubble and the whole "well that's just like your opinion man" thing.

People who listen to music must be 'listeners' (whatever the fuck that means) and enter into a sophisticated discourse. The only true purpose of music is to pontificate about it? Elitist.


Generally your posts make the implication that only people who engage with music on a certain intellectual level and in a certain way are proper music listeners, and that music has to be handed down to us through a 'middleman', who 'curates' the experience for us and somehow makes it culturally relevant or something, which is a big pile of horseshit essentially.

Plus I think it's pretty bold for you to call people selfish in the way they consume music when essentially this whole thread is you chucking your toys out the pram because of reactionary nostalgia for an imagined golden age of zines and shows and deep conversations about indie rock music that you were too young to enjoy and probably never existed anyway, and now anyone can get into this shit and they just don't care and some tiny band from California will never play my home town when they would of back in the day when everyone cared deeply about the aesthetic sense of some art-school dropout running a distro and it really meant something, you know? And now it's all gone forever oh boo hoo hoo hoo hoo.

[jimbunny]

The only imaginable progress is the end of recorded music.

[amok]

No great loss, it's mostly shit anyway

[scarred]

i can't stick around and make the massive post i'm going to make later right now, so in the meantime khar could you actually concretely nail down where and how i am an elitist instead of just calling me one in every single thread where i disagree with you?

the thing is, he's right this time

[KvP]

Poor, sad Bobby Hill.

[KharBevNor]

A google search for site:forums.questionablecontent.net "Kharbevnor" "Elitist" reveals no obvious occasions on which I have ever previously called you an elitist. The only time I can ever think it might have come up is the thread where I argued against the necessity of music theory on a quixotic whim.

Edit: though there are several occasions when you have called me elitist, for not liking Lady GaGa and some guy called 'Jeremih', for example. Your interest in these subjects is one of the things that made the rants in this thread so incomprehensible to me.

[KharBevNor]

Headbangs are the best currency.

We should start a stock exchange. I am going to start trading old school swedish death metal at like 100 headbangs a track min.

[KvP]

Not after I flood the market with cheap, cut-rate Ratt records.

[KharBevNor]

You fool! If the headbang can't maintain its exchange rate with the Invisible Orb then the metal economy will collapse! You won't be able to move for corpsepainted dole queues and desperate men trying to busk by playing Slayer songs on a harmonica.

[Wasteroo]

playing Slayer songs on a harmonica.

I keep trying to imagine what that would sound like but my feeble mind is just not up to the task

[KharBevNor]

I keep trying to imagine what that would sound like but my feeble mind is just not up to the task

I imagine it would sound something like

WHUMwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuuu WHUMwuuuuWHUmwuwuwuwuwuwuwuWHUMWHUM WHUM WHUM WHUM WUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD WHEET WHUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD PARP PARP PARP PARP WHWWWEEEEEEYEYEYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAAAAAAAAAAAA
HHHHHEETETETETETEEEEEEWHHUUUUUMMMMM AUCHSWITZ PARP THE MEANING OF PAIN THE WAY THAT I WANT YOU TO DIE WHUM WHUM WHUM SLOW DEATH WHEET IMMENSE DECAY WHARP SHOWERS THAT CLEANSE YOU OF YOUR LIFE wuwuwuwuwuwu FORCED IN PARP LIKE CATTLE YOU RUN PARP STRIPPED OF YOUR LIFES WORTH wuwuwuwuwuwuwump HUMAN MICE PARP FOR THE ANGEL OF DEATH WuwuwuwuwuWU FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE TO DIEEEEEEE wudududududu PARP PARP PARP PAAAAAAAAAAARP ANGELOFDEATH PARP MONARCHOFTHEKINGDOMOFTHEDEAD wuwuwuwuwu SADISTIC PARP SURGEON OF DEMISE SADIST OF THE NOBLEST BLOOD DESTROYING PARP WITHOUT MERCY PARP TOBENEFITTHEARYANRACE PARP wuwuwuwuwuwuw SURGERY PARP WITH NO ANAESTHESIA PARP FEEL THE KNIFEPIERCEYOUINTENSELY pupupupARP INFERIOR PARP NO USE TO MANKIND PARP STRAPPEDDOWNSCREAMINGOUTTODIIIEEEEEEE wuwuwuwWHUMwuwWHUMPARPARPPARPPARP PARP  ANGELOFDEATH wuwuwuwPARP MONARCHOFTHEKINGDOMOFTHEDEAD

something like that.

[valley_parade]

Well-played vuvuzelas.

Wonder if Sunn 0))) are going to implement a stadium full of vuvuzelas on their next album. They've already used jackhammers.

[geodescent]

Entire label dedicated to their own free releases. Loscil released "Stases (drones 2001 - 2005)" there: http://one.dot9.ca/