I think it'd be great if we could make having your songs downloadable optional. Because I have some stuff from the studio that I really want to put on here but I'm legally not allowed if it's downloadable. It has to be streaming...

ANYONE?!

What do you think, Mud?

- Chester

well, I think it might be harder to do than just a simple adding a button... I do quite a bit of web development myself... and it is tricky to get multile options and then you have add an entire script for the size of window, type of player, etc...   it is much easier to put on your own website... if you go to my site, I have mine streaming in a pop up, aswell as clickable to stream.. or you can click the disk icon to download... http://jkoontz.com

   So, can it be done? Sure...  Is it really practical? hmm.. maybe...  Is it time consuming? yup yup yup...  

   So, For now, I would post a link, if you need a pop-up streaming audio player, let me know, I will give you the html code for the pop-up, and the playlist....

         JimK

E.G Wrote

I think it'd be great if we could make having your songs downloadable optional. Because I have some stuff from the studio that I really want to put on here but I'm legally not allowed if it's downloadable. It has to be streaming...

ANYONE?!

What do you think, Mud?

We are in the same situation as E.G

Blakhatz music is registered with APRA and currently released, 2nd album 2b mastered early next month.
Video clip in addition.
We are completely self-funded and as any one with experience in the industry will tell you it ain't cheap.
However Recently it came to our attention totally by chance that our music is used in some indie short film, screening at international film festivals and comps.... even made it to Cannes & used to chase backing for the producers acting like doddgy Quentin Tarinteno plot scammers in their quest for Roger Cormanism...in addition to being wanted by Interpol ......sweet.
Where did they get it? Downloaded from bandamp. No question asked..........we haven't seen a contract, credits, cue list. Money??? HA ....nuthin. The dudes are somewhere between Australia, china and Europe.
We indicated some time ago that as far as bandamp members reviewing our material we had no problem with down loading but now beyond that .........FUCK NO.
Streaming only, it is available thru youtube...myspace and other sites ,the option is there you choose.
As for locking songs ...Na i don't tink so, I learned a lesson, don’t put songs in battles if you want to have contol over your music. As a result we don't bother entering battles.
If indeed it is so that the song can't be re used for another battle, why would you???? ..........cummon lol.ITS Band amp , not the John Lennon Song contest.
We are still waiting for our bandamp T-shirt from March last year.
Emailed the admin, even offered to help promote bandamp at our gigs etc ..........no reply.
If a site wants to lock our mp3s permanently for world wide unlimited download then yeah I want a reply.
I hope IZZ picked up the Nano Ipod, which was also on the prize list from March 2006 cause he deserves it thoroughly.

The voting system fell off the map last year anyway and for songs to be locked when the comp doesn't work is BAD.

 We are concerned, we have including colabs 34 songs up on bandamp they are not solo noodles or crack Flstudio pieces they are band recordings, I don’t have a day job, this is it I’m a professional musician, although considering the amps woes currently wish I was a programmer.
Hope you appreciate that if the situation is nearing some crash of the site, we will delete it all and request those pieces locked also be removable if necessary, really don't want our music floating around out there beyond our control.
Thanks for indulging us on this I’ve consulted with the band and that's the vibe.
Best to get these things on the table. .
.Thanks Blakhatz

Sounds serious, blakhatz. As far as I can tell your copyright has been violated: downloading is allowed for strict personal use only. It's as easy as that, they put the song in a commercial release without your consent and that's where THEY'RE wrong. Look at it like this: if you go to iTunes music store, you can buy a song for say $1, this gives you the right to play it on your computer and such but does NOT give you the right to use it for your own commercial endeavours or publicly put it on display. Here on BandAMP you agree to not get paid for having your music downloaded, it's free, but there's exactly where the difference ends. Downloaders don't have to pay $1 but they still don't have the right to make use of the track in what way whatsoever other than for personal, non-public, non-commercial uses. Whether the song is locked (which is a bad feature and needs to be get rid of) or not, that doesnt matter. So sue them, you'll win this case with ease.

Anyway the problem here isn't even the free download thing (free for personal use!!!). Streaming media can as easily be ripped 1:1 quality-wise, it just takes a little longer than a download (have to wait till song is finished). Unless you want to put crap quality mp3 up then I'm not going to listen, let alone review

And mud is preoccupied with paying jobs, he doesnt get money out of bandamp either, and he has bad luck employing people to work on the code. He will be on here when he has the time, and maybe with everything that has been said in the last couple of days, we can have some changes made, and some new people working on the site.

Great posts........
nice simple explanation of the copywright status of amp material

Thanks hatz and puppet

fish

I agree fish, good posts.  Interesting discussion, and points well made by BlackHatz and Puppet.

yup great thread discussion. I checked on the copyright laws with the free downloads, and pup is right. Just because someone has a free download of your music does not in know way give them any legal rights to use your music or to use it in way other than personal use.... even DJ's can be sued for using songs, if they get paid for the DJ gig and did not pay for  the commercial (making money with the music) use of the music.

I must say it's a great idea to disable the download button if you want. And to me it's not the point of copyrights. In some cases I do not want to make a song downloadable. It's just because keeping the control over my stuff. Listen and enjoy on bandamp but no download. again cool idea. rules up and down and forth and back. but I like this idea.
And I would like to know WHO of the registered users downloaded my material. This report should be located in a separate corner in the thread (top) entry (#1) where the song is in


*edit
in these hard times for musicians the industry is thinking about to make all music downloadable for free. the spirit changes into a new era of bein a musician. a band should go outside to the people to the public and earn money with gigs and concerts. thats the way a musician must go in the future.
all these internet download sites including bandamp will be a platform for stars and idols and new heroes of the music business. listening for free but watching the artist(s) live on stage for good money.

Radio stations have what's called a umbrella license from all the big 5 media companies. In other words, they can download any from through limewire (and they do)

Toasty is right unless you have a license to use music you can only use it for your self and your immediate family.

Blahatz: my deepest apologies.  It's stuff like this that prevents good people like the members of this community give away their music for free.

I have hesitated putting up my best work on the amp because I am worried that something similar will happen to me.  I've been involved in many communities, and have been a victim of IP theft several times.  With a bit of source code, a photograph or a piece of art it's bad enough, but with music, something that is a direct link to you and is a product of your mind it hurts even more.

I'd still like the ability to delete songs, maintaining the comments thread.  The player of the amp is too broken to make disallowing songs a real problem.

It's not that difficult : You just take out the 'download' button (thus the function) from the page in the 'audio_review.template.php' (or what ever it's called on the server.) So you just cant use it.
To make it an option you need to implement a form radio button on the 'song_upload.template.php'(??) that returns a 'yes' or 'no' value. The users option is then passed to a php code : If yes = generate button (on the page), in no = dont ! 

No, not good enough.  It's a 15 second job to get the raw file stored on the server.  If it's easy enough for me, anyone can do it.  Hell, I posted a tutorial here a while back.

almost every other music upload site that I've been too offers these options  lowfi/hifi,  song is allowable for download or not ,  or in some cases you can even pay the site to set up a account or one of them uses your paypal account and you can even sell your songs at the site...... I know band amp is not here for that purpose this was just some examples of options that some other sites have.. I think it would be cool if you could set a option when you upload to either let em download, or just stream the music.  might bring in some more musicians.

Well I think a poignant point to make is simply that you music being listened to means that its running through a wire in analog form somewhere or other. Which means that people can record it and resave it. There are bazillions of easier ways to get the sound file than that, but the point is that you can't bulletproof protection. At some point the user has to be trusted, or at least copyright law has to be trusted. You can always sue their asses if they mess around with the file in ways they shouldn't.

Aside from the fact that one person in six billion might be a little hard to track down, I wouldn't have the time or money to fight a legal case like that.  I know plenty of people who have been fucked over for the same reason.  You have to take it in stride and just hope that it doesn't happen again.

I seriously considered 'watermarking' my music (every 20 or so seconds putting a little beep or some out of place noise) and uploading at 64kbps when I started here.  That someone knows that music has been stolen from this site directly I might consider it again.  Unfortunately it kills the point of the upload.

Is the HTML embed tag allowed? (edit: it was stripped out.  So I can't even embed my own flash player).