LION MUSIC - the progressive, neoclassical & hard rock label

BORISLAV MITIC

My internet friends,

I would like to send a message for all those who intend to download my album for free :

Here are a few words on a very important subject to me - illegal Internet file sharing download!!! This is also known as - MURDER OF MUSIC! Since I have a new album coming out on December 4th now would be the right time to get into this matter of life and death.

You see,... it is very hard to master an instrument. It takes a lot of years of practice, discipline, study and dedication (like going to a university and more) to reach the level of playing that I and similar musicians are at.

It is really very hard work to compose quality music and create something special for you listeners out there. It is very hard to make records too because the studio time is very expensive (making your own project studio is a big cost too and not many can afford it or even know how to operate it). It is also very hard to find a Record label to publish your music these days,... and even harder to arrange real retail music store distribution to circulate the music on the market and make it available everywhere.

But musicians go through all these pains because they love and believe in music and they believe in fair and just financial reward return for hard work of producing beauty of music they offer to the world. Don't you agree that musicians should be paid for their work?

When people illegally post or download free MP3 files on Internet of the music that musician made so many sacrifices to create - it is the sign of ULTIMATE DISRESPECT! This means literally taking the bread off the musician's table and spitting in their face!

The music business works like this... (if you don't know).
Musicians who make the music give the album to the label under certain conditions. Then label sells it through its distribution channels and shares the percentage of return income with the musician. Stores and distributors also get their cut for the retail sale service to you - the customer. So the bottom line percentage per a CD that goes back to the musician is quite small in the end. Also don't forget that musician invested money in studio time so this has to be covered before musician makes any real profit money!!!

To make a living from music this way a lot of CDs have to be sold. That CD money also gets re-invested in touring, new albums, promotion, etc.
Everybody in the chain of music industry is living from this system of sale... magazines, concert promoters, labels, music stores. Every single CD sold counts and especially today for smaller artists like myself who do not have a big budget at their disposal to promote themselves in mainstream media, TV, Magazines, etc (yes, all that actually has to be paid for and costs quite a lot).

I know,... CDs in stores cost money (16$ a piece?), the world is in economic crises and it's easier to get a free download so that you can put that money into buying your pants and cookies, right? Hey, you can make a cool free collection of thousands of albums with no money invested at all! Woohhhoooo, viva la internet!! How cool is this!!!??? Well,... NOT COOL AT ALL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you eat? Yes...? Me too! (inspite of legends you might have heard even we musicians need to eat). To get food I have to go to the grocery store and pay money for it like you. The same goes for clothes and other products. If you would try to take (or "download") food or clothes from the grocery or clothing store the people dressed in blue outfits called THE POLICE would try to stop you since this is considered a crime of stealing. What if everybody starts stealing food unpunished? How will the grocery store employees survive? What about their family? How would the farmers producing food survive if we take it from them for free? They would not.

Do you catch my drift? Just because you CAN download music for free today on the Internet doesn't mean you SHOULD. You CAN also beat up an old lady on the street and steal her pension from her wallet ... but somebody CAN beat you up too and do the same to you. Would you like this? Or would you perhaps like to go to work 9h-17h for free? Would you like musicians to visit your home and take some of your property for free? Why not? They can use it... the same way you can use illegally downloaded music without paying for it.

This all would be called robbery of course and is illegal and if we would apply this pattern of behaviour to the society in general as a rule of life we would very soon have a society of filthy, wild savages!

My point is - if there is no money coming back to us musicians for the ultra hard work we invest we will all eventually give up and stop making music. If the unchecked Internet theft goes on much longer very soon there will be no more new albums from the artists you like and cherish so much on your illegal free MP3 collections!!!

This will be THE END OF TIMES FOR MUSIC! After we musician give up the labels will fold, the music stores will turn into ... shoe shops for example (you can't download those through internet can you now?)!
Soon after that the whole music industry, concerts, fun time, guitars,... will be dead and gone - thanks to Internet and illegal global piratery system! Game over!

So if anyone of you wants to continue supporting - KILLING MUSIC (that you are supposed to love) go and join the Internet gang of music hijackers for free through torrents and file sharing sites! The blood will be on your hands...
But If you want the music to SURVIVE please treat it like you would like to be treated yourself and do the right thing by paying for it. I always paid for the music I wanted and I don't see why each of you can't - there's really no excuse!

SPREAD THE WORD!!! SAVE THE MUSIC YOU LOVE! Or let it bleed and die... It's all in your hands - the choice is yours to make. I vote for life but if it's death of music - so be it! We can also live in a world without real music but then don't complain in the future to come how the music in the media around you is bad and lame and "where have all the good times gone".

You have been warned!

Borislav Mitic

ONOFRIO FALANGA OF ASHENT

Since the first day of our existance as band, the p2p already existed. Every day of our life as musicians has been underlined by the awareness to create music mainly for free, and every new year this potential risk has became stronger.

It's clear that the collapse of sales has been truly remarkable and we usually call it "the factor 10": ten years ago a professional metal band could sell an X amount of copies, now the same band sells ten times less. Probably, in the next ten years, the same poor band will sell ten times less in comparison with the 2009 statements and so on. So the trend is easily predictable: continuing in this way, the music industry, as we know it, will disappear in few years.

A first consideration could be: file sharing is certainly the cause of this collapse. Piracy is killing the entire music scene, and internet has given the perfect technology in order to help this endemic process.

Because piracy always existed from the invention of Audiocassettes, but the increase of possibilities of communication multiplied the consequences with unimaginable speed until a few years ago.

But at the same time, we truly think that the web represents an excellent promoting instrument for music, lowering costs, giving visibility an so on.

So we have this paradox: the same instrument helps to develop and simultaneously kills the music bussiness.

A second consideration should be: is the Web killing the people's need of music? The answer is NO.

It's not like cinema vs theatre: 1 century ago the newest art slowly started to kill the interest in theatre. Luckily Internet is only a new resource, not a new art.It's a refined form of communication that is changing our life, as radio and television already did during the last decades. But radio and television didn't destroy music!

So the third consideration has to be: the world is totally changed and the music bussines can�t continue to sell music in the same way of 50 years ago!

We believe that the correct solution is not to produce more severe laws against �pirates� (more or less, all the people that own an internet access) but to renew completely the way to sell music: and we also think that it�s not a problem that can be solved by the �small� metal labels but directly by the big U.S. Majors.

We think that the web is a big shop with a lot of stolen items. In this scenario we have 3 subjects: the sad producer (labels, bands, musicians), the happy merchant (societies that sell the web access, personal computers, mp3-players) and the customers (�the pirates�).

At least a half of the internet�s success is linked to the possibility to see movies and to listen to music for free, and it�s full of societies that gained billions of euros in these last ten years, knowing that a half of their success is connected with this possibility.

So we can only deduce that:

The money spent by the public "moved" from the acquisition of music to the monthly subscriptions in order to access in internet (and mp3players, and so on). It�s time to change some outdated dogmas of music-business, creating economic agreements between sellers of internet access (who exploit the appeal of films and music), and who physically produces music and movies, investing their lives.

This is a serious solution: it�s full of countries with severe laws against this or that, but the trend never stopped, so it�s time to start a new way also because, probably the real pirate is not the person who spends 25-30 euros every month for an internet access (equal to 2 new cd),and 1000 euros (and often, also more) every couple of years for a new PC-Mac (80 new albums?).

Ok, and in the meantime?

The metal scene is largely self-financed by bands that spend money, time and energy in order to follow this passion called music. The metal scene is also relatively not influential on the fate of the music world because its numbers are small. We can't change the trend alone and maybe we probably benefit only from changes made by others in the next future. But until that day, the metal scene will depend on the passion of the fans and music-lovers that still invest money DIRECTLY in music. So, if you really like a band, please buy the cd!

Onofrio Falanga
ASHENT

http://www.ashent.net/

EDWARD BOX OF VENDETTA

Heretic Nation has been out for about 5 weeks now but if I�m honest things a looking very grave indeed. Is there any chance of this record ever recouping its recording costs? Probably not and for the simple reason that people who are illegally downloading the album are taking the royalties away from Lion Music and therefore Vendetta. Our last album, Tyranny of Minority currently stands at a loss of around 1500 euro�s and if things keep going the way they are then Heretic Nation will suffer the same fate and we will have to put money from merchandise and gigs into our recording budget, money that was set aside to pay for rehearsal time and the up keep of equipment. In a nut shell we don�t make any money anyway and now we are making even less! If I�m honest I don�t care about the state of the big labels. It has been well documented that EMI has had a lot of problems but they have or have had The Beatles, Queen, Coldplay, Scorpions, Iron Maiden and Robbie Williams to name but a few. In other words they own the copyright (make sure you look up this word down loaders) to some of the biggest selling music in history and recent history so it�s their problem if they have failed to adjust their business model to satisfy the changing tastes and habits of the music consumer. They make huge profits anyway and probably did very well out of the 1960�s when music business practice was frankly disgusting and artists were treated like dogs. This is not the case for a small label like Lion. They struggle to survive and need the revenues of the CD purchase and by proxy so does a band like Vendetta.

In regards to file sharing this isn�t the first time musicians have been shafted by technology. Back in the early 80�s, something wonderful called the compact disc was invented but we weren�t allowed an increase in our royalty and we were still paid the same money for a vinyl sale even though the percentage knock up on a CD was far greater. We were also charged for breakages of this supposedly indestructible object (incidentally around 10% of our total royalty, this practice still continues today as well as a 25 % deduction for packaging, which seems strange when CD�s cost less than a �1 to press). Why was this? Elementary my dear music consumer, it was because the research and development of the CD had to be recouped. After all the men at Phillips needed their mansions paying for so a few more years on the dole was no problem for us musicians. We wouldn�t want them living somewhere normal and, god forbid, modest would we? OK, we said we can go along with that for the greater good of recorded music and we waited and waited till they hit the black. In the meantime someone invented the internet and the foolish record companies failed to see what was coming. The artists were much quicker on the uptake but by then it was all too late and the by product known as downloading was created or in simple terms taking a heavily compressed file that is probably around 10% of the quality of the actual music created and loading it into your computer and listening to it thorough crappy PC speakers. Down loads are shit, they are shit quality, sound shit and look shit because where is your Derek Riggs artwork in download? There you go, downloads shit I and especially if they are illegal. If you love music then buy the fucking CD like I do.

To compound all of this, artists now get a crappy deal on downloads because we have to pay for the R and D on IPODS. For example Journey has the most downloaded back catalogue track in ITUNES history. Don�t Stop Believing is at 2 million and counting but as they only get about 4p per download I suspect they are quietly seething at the size of the insult while the board of Apple and its share holders merrily piss the fruits of Journey�s creativity up the wall. Hey, but wait a minute, they�ve got to pay for their mansions and we wouldn�t.....you know the drill. In reality Journey probably don�t need the money (unless they have several divorces behind them) but that�s not the point.

For some reason consumers now seem to think that CD�s are a rip off. Back in the early 80�s I would pay around � 5.00 sterling for a vinyl LP. That is easily � 15 in today�s money and that was for no more than 10 tracks. Last year I bought Nostradamus by Judas Priest for � 10.99 and that is over 105 minutes of music. There has never been a better time to buy CD�s! On line you can get some great deals and there is a wealth of material out there but perhaps you would rather stare at your PC screen with your heavily compressed wave file and your shitty speakers?

I will admit that friends have and do copy CD�S for me (we all traded cassette tapes at school right?) and I do get sent promos quite a bit as I do the odd review but if I really like the album I buy a proper copy and support the artist concerned. Real music fans understand the quality of good aural representation and so do artists. That�s why we spend lots of time and money making a recording sound as good as possible but perhaps we should just record directly to MP3 players and interface it right onto the superhighway and hope our dole cheque covers the next month�s food? So in a nut shell: Downloading shit, illegal downloads doubly shit. My advice: buy the CD or if a friend makes you a copy try before you buy but please buy. CD�s are now fantastic value for money. It took a long time the get there but they really are so go on buy a CD today and ensure that artists and small labels survive.

Edward Box

http://www.vendetta-theband.com