'Anybody who legally downloads music is an idiot!' says irate record store owner
The view from inside Rockit Scientist Records
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)It's in the East Village around the corner from where the 1960s rock Mecca, the Fillmore East once stood. Rockit Scientist Records is a blast from the past, a 'Village record shop that's a treasure trove for collector oriented psychedelia, '60s, '70s, and '80s garage rock, underground, progressive, punk, blues, soul, reggae, and jazz.
Rockit carries mostly CDs, but there's a lot of new and used vinyl, with a smattering of music DVDs. Owner John Kioussis is there six days a week and always multitasking. "It's not rocket science," heh, heh--drop in, and you'll likely find him sorting records, chatting on the phone and serving in-store customers--all at the same time.
Asked if downloads are killing his business, John got a little worked up, "Anybody who legally downloads music is an idiot! You can get it for free, why pay for it? Download it illegally, who's going to catch you? Legal or illegal, they sound the same."
Ah, but the CD or LP, that's way better, so if you're going to pay, you might as well buy the physical version. Maybe get some nice cover art or booklet. Makes sense to me. John quipped, "If I was a kid I'd be downloading music, but if you ask me I think the music business blew it by charging too much for CDs."
Rockit doesn't have website but does mail order. The shop is located on 33 Saint Marks Place, so if you're into this sort of music and in NYC definitely check it out. Out of towners can call 212 242 0066 or Fax 212 645 5432.
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Mellow as a Pina Colada John
Also, I'm not going to waste $15+ on an entire CD (album) when there are only a few songs I really like on it. I will hit iTunes and purchase the tracks individually, saving money. Sure, the quality isn't uncompressed, but the iTunes Plus tracks are high quality and have no DRM. The real problem is with record producers allowing crappy tracks on an album with a few gems mixed in. Where's the inventiveness? Where's the originality? Recording artists (not all) are just not putting out as good music as they used to. It's all due to pressure from the labels to get that album out ASAP.
Maybe he learned this behavior from our lame government ot from us. We allow illegal people in this country so what's the problem? Illegal is illegal regardless of the subject. If you're willing to overlook illegal aliens, then an illegal download is just as harmless. I say even more so. Illegal downloads won't rob, rape and pillage!
Now I will admit that most of the music I purchase is from the Independent musicians and I happen to feel that an artist deserves to be compensated for something I can't produce myself. I don't, however, feel that the RIAA deserves to be compensated for it's stupidity on this issue.
What you lack John, is integrity. You've shown yourself a thief...the price being an illegal download...and your conscience.
"Anyone who doesn't put books in his sweatshirt at Barnes & Noble is an idiot."
"Anyone who doesn't swipe a sandwich from the case at Starbucks while the barista's back is turned is an idiot."
"Anyone who doesn't siphon gasoline out of the neighbor's tank while they're away is an idiot."
How do those sound? Music is just of many things you can steal. What keeps us from stealing all of them? The threat of being caught? Perhaps, but I'd like to think it's more than that - at least for some of us.
John himself does not seem to particularly like how the article came out and perhaps some things were taken out of context. I do not completely agree with the views expressed in the article; I can understand them though. I am someone that loves owning albums. The singles, the B-sides and the artwork; and it sounds like John does too. For someone that owns a record store I would imagine that it is hard to understand the purchasing of a download that can be so easily obtained for free. If you want to pay for music, why don't you actually buy the music? Not just the 0s and 1s. Perhaps that was the meaning of the article that got lost in translation.
You have the worst taste, the worst music collection and itunes and amazon were created knowing that you are a moral idiot with bad taste.
Although the previous poster put it a little more stridently than I like, there is some valid thinking there.
Some artists (admittedly a minority these days) compose an album as a single artwork. Sure, individual songs may be separated -- like the songs from a musical -- but the songs often form a thematic whole. You miss that theme if you pick out one or two songs and ignore the rest.
Second, some albums have fantastic songs that never become mainstream hits, and you'll never hear them if you only download 1 or 2 songs that you are familiar with.
Third, your perception of songs -- like any art -- will change over time. Songs that are initially disliked may become favorites later. If you don't listen to the album, you never hear them.
With that said, I do pay to download music from Amazon's MP3 store, because it's DRM-free, reasonably priced and incredibly easy.
Of course, you can't stick vinyl in your pocket and listen to it on the go, so digital certainly provides convenience if not exact replication. And the clarity that comes with the cleaned up digital recordings can often times trump the authenticity of the analog recording. At least as far as the average human ear is concerned, which means that *most* consumers will prefer a CD over its vinyl counterpart. Of course, if SACD were to ever take off, that preference would only increase, but I still believe vinyl will always be an appreciated -- if not preferred -- medium to true audiophiles, which brings us right back to the point I believe John is trying to make: Compressed audio formats are *awful*. Spending money to obtain a 128k, 196k, or 256k MP3 file is a complete waste. Buy the CD or vinyl if/when possible, or start demanding that more online music retailers provide the original WAV, FLAC, and/or other uncompressed file formats. Of course the primary reason they don't is because the file sizes are too big for the average consumer who wants to listen to their newly purchased music as close to immediately as possible. For that we need a serious upgraded to our Internet infrastructure. That's coming, but its still a ways before the likes of iTunes feels justified in offering uncompressed audio files.
Sorry, didn't see your response until after I posted my own. I absolutely agree with your point.
The difference between all of your arguments and process of making a copy of an audio file -- regardless if its legal or illegal -- is that of stealing physical inventory. Barnes & Noble pays a publisher a certain amount to stock one of their titles. If someone steals a book, they now have to pay more money to the publisher to replace the stolen item.
I'm not arguing that it's okay to steal. But if instead of stealing a book, that same person when into Barnes&Noble and took pictures of each page, then the theft doesn't impose a financial burden on B&N. You could argue that taking pictures of the pages instead of buying the book means B&N loses a sale, but if I'm the type of person who's willing to go through the effort of taking pictures of all the pages, chances are pretty good I'd have no interest in plunking down the $25 bucks, so B&N nor the publisher/author have lost anything. The same can be said about illegal downloads: If I'm the type of person willing to download a track illegally, chances are pretty good I'm not the type of person who would have paid money for it in the first place. And in many cases, I'm gaining exposure to music I would have otherwise never gained exposure to which means if that same band were to ever come to my hometown, I will be much more likely to pay the $10 - $50 for a ticket than I would have been otherwise, which means the band has now benefited from my illegal download, *especially* when you consider that even in the pre-Internet days most musicians made their money from concerts instead of sales of CD's/LP's/etc. And while the labels can complain their sales are plunging, it's not because of illegal downloads and instead because they chose to fight the transition from physical mediums to digital downloads instead of embracing the opportunity. iTunes has proven that people are willing to spend money on digital downloads. The record industry just took too long to figure out that fighting your customer base in court instead of giving them the options they were most interested in does nothing to help you sell more music, and everything to make each of these customers embrace a "stick it to the man" attitude towards you.
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by dayamax
June 13, 2008 4:28 AM PDT
- Downloading music illegally feels good.
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See all 24 Comments >>Also, I have listened to a lot of music which I couldn't have afforded to do in the first place if I was buying music. But now i've begun to notice the shortcomings of mp3s, so maybe I'll start buying CDs of my favourite bands.