Black March

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   Peelander Gallyposted 12 years ago

   
   
   So this was suggested on 4chan and Reddit a while ago... I'm wondering if anyone who lurks on this site knows about it and is planning on participating. It could have pretty incredible far-reaching consequences if more people knew of it.

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      joe scaliseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I manage a band called the Adrian Niles Band and we are an up and coming band.  We just sold two songs to FX TV for the show "Justified" which will begin its season in about two weeks. I am opposed to any media censorship.  But I don't think I would like a boycott either. We have worked very hard to get a break and are in negotiationss to do the letterman show. I support efforts to supress censorship. Again I don't like any attempt to censor the internet even though there are consequences. But I can tolerate piracy if it means protectig the internet from government intrusion but this would be bad month for us to face a boycott.

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   Peelander Gallyposted 12 years ago

   I'll take that as a "no".

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      joe scaliseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yes I guess it is a no. Why punish the artists. We have four cds out and we have most of our songs on our website.  We realize that we are putting our music into the public domain. We still offer our cds for a price. If we lose sales thru piracy we take the hit and we are not calling for this legislation. We don't believe in jeopardizing our rights in order to correct a wrong. To me it is a smaller scale of giving up my rights of habeous corpus,protection against search and siezure and unwarrented wiretaps due to terrorist activity. I fear losing my rights more tahn terrorism.
      The entertainment industry may be sponsoring the effort to stop piracy on the internet but I am sure that the government would love to create legislation to get there hooks into the internet and we would fight that. So a short answer to your question is no with a caveat.

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         Peelander Gallyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         It's not about punishing artists, it's about wanting the corporate monopolisation of everything to end. Major record companies absorb too much of every artist's profit margin, and it's clear that they don't have any kind of a long-term future with all the different methods of self-promotion that exist today. Useless fat cat middle men don't have a place in a world of altruistic peer to peer shareware. A lot of people like me haven't bothered forking over ten or fifteen bucks for one CD in the last decade unless it was an independent release by an artist who needed the support. Things just don't work like that anymore. I'm surprised Best Buy hasn't gone the way of Blockbuster yet, retail prices are too high and they're completely obsolete. Eventually the paradigm shift will affect the record companies themselves, too.
         
         There was originally something in the Black March discussions about supporting local indie bands and other media. Getting exposure through playing shows and establishing a following is what'll make you successful, especially if you can get onto local radio and one of the side stages of Warped Tour or another major tour. Name recognition is the most powerful tool at your disposal.

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            joe scaliseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            The Adrian Niles Band records on our own independent label (Flying Boxcar).  WE sell our cds' on line and at gigs. We have worked at getting name recognition as well as developing exposure.  We have opend houses like the Pepsi Road House for artists such as Dave Mason and Los Lonely Boys and opned the Heritage Port Blues Fest for John Mayal.  We went to the Eastern Pa. Blues competiton and won it which earned us a spot in the Memphis International Blues Challenge and out of 111 bands we finished 14th.  Now we have sold two songs to FX TV and are negotiating to paly on Letterman an Fallon.  The band has aspirations but we will not sacrifice values for profits.  As we grow we realize tha we may have to face piracy nof our intellecctual property but know one in the band want to sacrfice the right to privacy or face censorship yo be protected from piracy.  Music is a tough business and there is so much more than musical talent involved.  There are tons of talented musicians who are satisfied with playing local gigs for a few hudred dollars a month.  It is a shame that the music industry isn't really about promoting performing arts as it is in exploiting and manipulating talented people.  All in all we are against internet censorship.

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