Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 09:17 AM

Plus the brute fact remains that if downloading weren't around, they would HAVE to have bought it

That is not necessarily the case. Speaking for myself, recordings that I would download and/or borrow from a library and copy would be the ones I would be curious about but wouldn't immediately fancy buying. Or they would be ones no longer available for sale.

I can not imagine I am unique in this.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 09:29 AM

True. But those sort of downloads can't be anything like the majority : the number's just don't add up. The point being that if the majority of illegal downloads really were just "curiosity/see what it sounds like" downloads, the record industry quite simply wouldn't have noticed. It wouldn't have even registered as a blip. Instead, it's taken a massive hit.

There's also something slightly spurious about that "road-testing" argument. At what point do you decide that, actually yes, this is an album you quite like and might have bought. A week later? 6 weeks later? a year later? 6 years later? There's a lot of imponderables there.

(and at least with libraries, there's a little loans royalty. it's titchy sure, but at least it's some kind of kickback to the artist)

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 09:48 AM

It may not be the majority of downloads but it will be a considerable portion of the downloads from the few sites mentioned on this thread.

I didn't mention 'roadtesting'. I said I download or go to the library for recording I wouldn't otherwise buy.

As for libraries and loans royalties, that's an illusion. I never received any anyway, or from broacasting. The crux there is you need to subscribe to your national music rights organisation to receive anything and in most cases of the artists on the download sites in question the membership fees for these organisations will way outstrip the royalties due.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 09:52 AM

if the majority of illegal downloads really were just "curiosity/see what it sounds like" downloads, the record industry quite simply wouldn't have noticed. It wouldn't have even registered as a blip. Instead, it's taken a massive hit.

Is the record industry going to take a massive hit from downloads of old Leader/Trailer albums?

You're arguing against huge numbers of people downloading commercially available material. I'm arguing in favour of small numbers of people (e.g. the population of Mudcat) downloading unavailable material - and I think that's pretty much what SO'P is advocating, too.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 09:55 AM

H'nh h'nh... he said "record industry"...

P. "young at heart" R.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 10:02 AM

I think you have it there Pip.

A few people, maybe a few hundred people downloading material that is not available or very hard to come by.

As I said, in some cases I have mixed feelings about these things but as long as there's not someone on the download side making money at the cost of the artists I really can't see the damage outweighing the benefit of for example making Bobby Casey's music available again to those who wouldn't otherwise have access to it.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 10:15 AM

*IF* those who post music online without permission of the artist or owners of the copyrights were merely doing a service (reminding folks of nice old music) by posting short samples, they 'might' have a point: but when they post **FULL ALBUMS**, along with full size pictures that can be used to create a CD, there is only one description of the practice that fits....piracy.

   I do not care what justifications and rationalizations one employs, what they are saying is: "I want what I want, and I don't care how how I get it, and those who think like *I* do will continue to 'share' stuff, no matter what the legalities are or whether the artists still alive & are due royalties.

You will notice they don't actually host the downloads themselves, but post them to Rapidshare, which makes a huge profit selling "premium accounts" to those who download lots of music & porn and can't wait for 'free' downloads.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 10:29 AM

Peter Laban,there is a Vinyl lp,Cheating The Tide,on this site,it is up there without my permission.
I have objected ,it is still up there.
it is not ok, when will people realise.
quote SOP" Interesting thread though, if only for what it reveals about the anal-retentions of the folky mindset. I must say, I can't say I'm too surprised, and this despite years of being ripped off by folk club organisers, folk festival organisers and folk artistes - a lot of whom expect something for nothing, but such is the human way.
see this thread, dick miles june 8 gig

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 10:43 AM

Peter,

If you're after recordings by Bobby Casey there's a wonderful CD of old recordings from the mid-60s to the early 70s, 'The Spirit Of West Clare,' available from Copperplate Distribution.

And it's legit.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 10:48 AM

Bill - I don't know about "I want I want I want", but I will say that I'm very glad that I have been able to hear Tony Capstick singing the Ballad of Accounting, Tony Rose singing the Bonny Light Horseman and Nic Jones singing Miles Weatherill, to name but a few. If you can suggest how else I could have heard these tracks I'll be more sympathetic to your position, which I take to be that I shouldn't download anything ever.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:05 AM

Thanks Chris. I am not particularly after Casey's albums I have hours and hours of his music and I had Reg Hall's tapes that became 'The Spirit of West Clare' over a decade before the CD was released. I merely used 'Taking Flight' as an example of a recording that is no longer available and is unlikely to be released ever again. Which I think is a great loss to people who don't have it.

My general remarks are really based on Ceol Álainn to which I posted a link on this thread. The other site, at which I had a brief look and appeared similar, I don't know much about. Roughly speaking I don't see much harm in making available, free of charge and not for profit, albums that are no longer available of artists no longer with us. This enters a grey area where artists are still alive (and still have control of the material, which is often not the case) and certainly, in my opinion, shouldn't cross into material that is still available commercially.

I am a bit in two minds about it all but I think the perceived 'damage' done in a lot of cases outweighs making music available. I do think though musicians should have control over their own output.

Having 'Legit' distributors doesn't mean artists get paid either by the way. Ah, the stories... But that's another territory.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:06 AM

The problem with sites like this is that they rely on the artist contacting them and asking them to remove the album. The same technology which makes it easy to copy and distribute the music also makes it easier to track down and contact the copyright holder. If these sites would make the effort to get permission before putting albums up for download a lot of these problems would disappear.

This would then leave a small number of albums which it is reasonably safe to assume will never be re-released, and there may be a moral case, if not a legal one, for making these available for posterity.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Casey fan
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:16 AM

How do you know, Peter, that Compass Records - the owners of Mulligan - isn't planning to reissue 'Taking Flight'?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:25 AM

All CD re-issues should offer incentives to purchase, as many pop albums do of course, but not many folk ones. My wife has early CD issues of June Tabor's Topic albums which have to be the shoddiest pieces of shit I've ever seen. Great albums they were too, in their vinyl incarnations - maybe things have improved, but Folk Product always looks limp & overpriced to me.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:25 AM

If these sites would make the effort to get permission before putting albums up for download a lot of these problems would disappear.

Quotes from witchseason.blogspot.com:

"Most of the rest of my albums are now available on CD (and so I won't post them) - but every so often I discover that an album that *was* available isn't any more. So I pounce. Oh, you may be able to buy it from ebay, or from Amazon in the 'used and new' section, but the *artist* doesn't get anything from that so I have no problems with giving it away instead."

"Until recently a lot of the tracks on these albums were available on compilation CDs - but now it seems they're not any more. If I'm wrong, or if they are re-released, I'll be taking them down pronto so you can buy them."

"Laura Nyro update: both Seasons Of Lights and Mothers Spiritual are, or will soon be, available from http://www.iconoclassicrecords.com/ (along with Nested). I have therefore removed the links to these downloads."

I don't have any qualms about downloading from this guy.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:40 AM

Bonus quote from witchseason.blogspot.com:

"The Witchseason name as used here is not connected with, but is partly a homage to, Joe Boyd's Witchseason Productions, which was responsible for some of the best music to come out of the late 60s and early 70s"

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 12:02 PM

OUT-OF-PRINT & RARITIES SELECTED BY LIZARDSON & FRIENDS

Thursday, April 02, 2009
Dick Miles
Cheating The Tide (1984)


Greenwich Village GVR227

Dick Miles has been singing at Folk Festivals, Folk Clubs and Maritime Festivals, for thirty two years. His special love is traditional song and the concertina. He has recorded 4 cd's and 5 lp's, one of them, "Cheating The Tide", features excellent guitar playing from Martin Carthy. He also has written two concertina tutors, one on song accompaniment, and one book of self penned songs (The Sailors Dream), available from his website.

Musicians:
Dick Miles: vocals, concertina, baritone concertina
Martin Carthy: guitar
Sue Miles: bass clarinet, clarinet, chorus
Sam Richards: piano, harmonica, whistle, chorus
Tish Stubbs: vocals, guitar, chorus
Stephen Cassidy: recorder, bass recorder, bass crumhorn
Jenny Critchley: tenor crumhorn

Tracks:
01. Lady Diamond
02. Washington Post
03. Rebel Soldier
04. Bill Charlton's Fancy
05. Tommy's Lot
06. Pakefield Parson
07. Poor Boy
08. There's No One With Endurance Like The Man Who Sells Insurance!
09. Wages Of Death
10. Dillpickle Rag
11. The Curse Of Hoxne Bridge
12. The Cott
13. The Battle Of Bosworth Field


http://www.dickmiles.com

posted by Ailis at 3:43 PM
4 Comments:

Blogger cianfulli said...

    I posted it on Folk yourself long ago.
    Nice it resurfaces here
    03 April, 2009 12:29   
Blogger Freg said...

    This is a gem, i love it. I'd never heard of Dick Miles before.
    Thanks, Ailis
    04 April, 2009 21:04   
Anonymous dick miles said...

    you have mylp cheating the tide , avialable on your site . pls remove it.>thanks DickMiles http://www.dickmiles.com
    03 July, 2009 16:48
so,they were asked to remove it on the third of july,and I am still waiting.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 12:31 PM

If you don't mind me saying, a comment to a blog post would seem less effective, or appropriate, than a direct e-mail to the actual poster of the album in question, establishing your rights and requesting them to remove the album.

Did you try both approaches?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 12:35 PM

I mean, I wouldn't take it for granted that on a site of that size all comments would get read all the time by the people running the site.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 01:14 PM

Dick, they have removed the download link for Cheating the Tide. They have left up information about the LP itself, which I for one don't see should be a problem - if you want them to remove all references to the album, I suggest you contact them again. However, although the album sleeve will be copyright (presumably owned by the artist who designed it), I don't think you could prevent them from publishing the track listing.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 01:24 PM

oops, it would seem Dick didn't do his research very well.

:-D

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 01:33 PM

Well, it would be nice if the site management asked that contributors not re-post links to albums which have been taken down, and where copyright is very obviously being infringed:


Jim Causley's Fruits of the Earth

the third comment, which has been allowed to remain on the site since 2008, contains another link to the album, despite Doug Bailey asking them to take the album off their site. Who does that? What inspires such selfishness in people that they think stealing from artists is not only acceptable, it is their right?


S O'P: "My wife has early CD issues of June Tabor's Topic albums which have to be the shoddiest pieces of shit I've ever seen. Great albums they were too, in their vinyl incarnations - maybe things have improved, but Folk Product always looks limp & overpriced to me."

So that makes it okay to nick it?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Charlie
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 01:36 PM

Hey ! Just a thought..havent all you anti-downloaders considered that this whole thread is a great advertisement for the bloggers to taut their wares to curious folkies...nice one my friends!!

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,spooboo
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 01:58 PM

The people who run these download sites are thieves and the people who download the albums are thieves too. Is there any more to be said?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 02:05 PM

From the OP link I did download And Now It Is So Early. Then I had to find some software that can unpack a .rar archive. Then I ran the software, which showed me a list of tracks. Then I tried to extract some of the tracks and was asked for a password, which I don't have. That's as far as I've got.

If I eventually am able to extract any of the tracks, I'm more than willing to pay somebody some cash - possibly the suggested fiver (being somewhere between the price of a CD if it were available and the fraction that would go to the performers).

Who should I pay it to? Bob Pegg? Carole Pegg? Sydney Carter's estate? Some to each of them?

Richard

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 02:50 PM

I was just talking to Jim Moray, who tells me he had to have Low Culture taken down from Time Has Told Me a few months ago. So if this site claims to only post albums that are rare and difficult to find, why is it posting recent releases which are very obviously still in copyright and readily available from many outlets to purchase? The onus is then on the artists to discover their music has been stolen, and ask the site to take the album down. This doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the "enthusiast" perfoming a service: this seems to be the action of someone who thinks he has the right to steal music, and provide it for free to other people who feel they are entitled to receive something for nothing.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 02:55 PM

Wow, this thread has been a real eye-opener (so was a PM). Not so enthusiastic now...

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Goose Gander
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 05:05 PM

"Fact is bootlegging is part & parcel of the music industry & the most interesting recordings are very often the unofficial ones."

True, but the site you linked is equivalent not to bootlegging (making 'un-official' recordings available to fans) but rather to counterfeiting.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 05:25 PM

Pip Radish said"If you can suggest how else I could have heard these tracks I'll be more sympathetic to your position, which I take to be that I shouldn't download anything ever."

What I suggest is that someone should not UPLOAD full albums without permission from whoever owns the rights. Once they are uploaded, I'm not surprised that MANY download them. It may be that whoever own those rights may be planning to re-issue it as a CD. Why bother to buy that CD if they already have it? (and, why is it necessary that you hear those tracks right now?)

All I can do is hope that YOU would buy it if it became available. Since the technology exists to easily copy and upload albums, we are getting into a VERY murky situation about the economics of music production.
What I DO think is that the owners of rights to older stuff, like LPs, should either make them freely available and creat a database where the public could look to KNOW what is permitted, or make it very clear that they do NOT wish certain properties to be copied. This won't stop piracy, but it would avoid a lot of gray areas.

Sometime soon, someone had better deal with the issue.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 06:33 PM

Here's a few thoughts:
If musicians are feeling hard done by, why don't they make available their out-of-print stuff themselves and charge for it on their web pages?
The reason a lot of L/Ps are hard to get is because only a small number were pressed, in some cases about 500 ,to be sold at gigs. The musician is paid for having sold 500. end of story. Why should he be paid if I want to make a copy for a friend, and in so doing possibly add to his fanclub?
Ian Anderson moans that an album he would rather forget, that he rushed just for contractual reasons, has become available. do you not think , Ian, that you cheated all those who bought it?
Buying on e-Bay is buying second-hand, often at rediculous prices. As such, the artist gets nothing from it.
If a person has the right to sell a second-hand L/P for £40 or £60, doese he not also have the right to give it away for nothing?
Finally, do these download sites not regenerate an interest in old gems being re-issued that otherwise would be forgotton?

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 06:35 PM

(and, why is it necessary that you hear those tracks right now?)

Well, anything can happen, can't it? I would hate my life to be cut short whilst waiting around for some record company to get their shit together to release And Now it is So Early because my ethically superior Mudcat conscience would make the music turn to ashes in my ears if I were immoral enough to download one for nowt.

Sometime soon, someone had better deal with the issue.

I couldn't agree more. The situation is well out of control even unto the verge of a national crisis. The answer is a huge government-funded archive containing every track ever recorded in the history of recorded sound in MP3 ad FLAC formats. These would available for download by anyone for a nominal cover price of 14p (MP3) and 19p (FLAC). There would be no hard-copy allowed - not even CD-Rs. Record companies would simply record their artistes and upload their albums for punters to download onto their specially equipped hi-fi systems & computers etc., complete with text and graphic material where appropriate. Each file would be encoded in such a way that any form of duplication would result in a deadly virus being unleashed into ones system. I reckon that should sort it out no bother.

See my thread: BS: Petition for Government Sound Archive

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 06:45 PM

why is it necessary that you hear those tracks right now?

It's not. But I have heard them, my life has been enriched by them, and anyone who tells me that I shouldn't have heard them is going to have to have somd good arguments.

What I suggest is that someone should not UPLOAD full albums without permission from whoever owns the rights.

Google "Celtic Music" some time.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 06:50 PM

If musicians are feeling hard done by, why don't they make available their out-of-print stuff themselves and charge for it on their web pages?

The problem is very often that the musicians don't own the rights to their published work - this is why you can buy Nic Jones's Unearthed from Mollie Music, but not any of the Leader albums. Also, in some cases the musicians have the misfortune to be dead.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 06:57 PM

Ian Anderson has been having technical difficulty posting to Mudcat today (like many of us, I suspect) so he asked me to post the following on his behalf:


The problem with sites like this is that they rely on the artist contacting them and asking them to remove the album. The same technology which makes it easy to copy and distribute the music also makes it easier to track down and contact the copyright holder. If these sites would make the effort to get permission before putting albums up for download a lot of these problems would disappear. This would then leave a small number of albums which it is reasonably safe to assume will never be re-released, and there may be a moral case, if not a legal one, for making these available for posterity.

Well put.

What none of the diverse and in some cases hypocritically self-justifying other posts here deal with is the situation I described in post 15. What about the case where an artist has good reasons for NOT wanting an album to be available any more? In my case simply because it was crap, but I can think of many others: a bad and/or unauthorised live recording, songs that carry unwelcome emotional baggage, songs that espouse a viewpoint that the writer no longer holds, songs that have been previously or subsequently recorded in better performances or sound quality. Also, in my case, piss poor dubs off bad vinyl pressings. As well as having the right to gain even a tiny amount of income from back catalogue, artists ought to at least be given the respect of being allowed to decide whether something that has deliberately been made unavailable stays that way, or given the respect of only making their music available in decent quality.

I appreciate that shouts of hypocrisy could be aimed at me too. In the 1960s I was part of a movement (probably started by Harry Smith) that saw nothing wrong in "liberating" old '20s & '30s 78s and re-issuing them on vinyl since the labels that theoretically owned them didn't even know they had them, or that anybody wanted them, and certainly weren't about to do it themselves. And so people then went looking for artists like Son House and Skip James who, as a direct result, got second careers, and in the end the likes of Sony did re-issue their Robert Johnson boxes to the benefit of his (claimed) heirs.

Somehow, though, I find it difficult to equate today's pirate ego-bloggers with that. If we'd had the internet in the 1960s to help tracking down the artists first it would have been a very different story and - if the models of exemplary re-issue labels who grew out of that era like Arhoolie and Ace were followed - the artists would get paid.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Anne Lister
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 07:22 PM

My earlier attempt at posting didn't get through either.
I can't think of any other art genre that would look happily at people who have no part in creating a piece of copyrighted material distributing it indiscriminately with no regard to the opinions or financial rights of the owners of the copyright.
The facts are (and this is not my opinion) there is a law of copyright and illegitimate downloads are illegal. People have been prosecuted for it and fined heavily. It is one thing to lend someone else your copy of a recording and entirely something else to upload it to a site where there are no restrictions as to who will download it. Not that long ago there was small print on albums to remind the purchaser that buying a copy of the CD did not confer broadcast, distribution or commercial rights. It still doesn't. I know there is a huge sub-culture with today's kids whereby copying music is a normal part of what they do - it still doesn't make it legal, however, or fair, or right.
I am, like others on this thread, very disappointed that there are Mudcatters who haven't worked out that publicising blogs like THTM is not a way to support musicians working in a minority genre who need all the financial boosts they can get.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 07:52 PM

"And Now it is so early" was re-released on th Japanese Vinyl label as a cd in 2006. Sold out at present, but may be re-stocked later.

Dunno who holds copyright, but an inquiry to the Copyright Office (costs ?) would answer that.

"Rebellion," Nigel Denver, Decca 1964, has 11 tracks trad. arranged Nigel Denver, 2 credited to McColl and Peggy Seeger, one to Hamish Henderson.
Inquiry to Decca probably would determine who holds copyright.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 08:22 PM

It's probably appropriate to note that the copyright holder is not necessarily the artist--who owns the recording is a matter of legal contract.In any case, though, recordings still in copyright are not up for grabs, whether or not they are currently in print.

This may be esthetically unfortunate, but it's nonetheless true.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:23 PM

In the case of Art Thieme, Kicking Mule was sold and the company who bought them own all rights to his albums, two of them if I remember right. He cannot reissue them on his own and they will not. We had a letter-writing campaign years ago to try to get them to.

Also, even if an artist is dead, there may still be an estate which collects whatever royalties there may be, so just because they are gone doesn't mean the product is up for grabs, free of charge.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: JohnB
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:58 PM

I have the perfect answer on my computer to stop ALL this illegal downloading.
Just for a laugh I followed the link in the first posting, followed all the instructions and am able to download 55.something meg of music.
My answer to the problem (or maybe my problem to the answer) is of course "Dial-Up" now connected at the amazing rate of 49.2kbps. It should only take me half a lifetime to download it.
If every computer in the world was connected at this rate illegal downloads of anything bigger than "Pong" would not be a problem.
What are you all crying about?
JohnB

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Anne Lister
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 02:51 AM

In view of Q's post above it may be of interest to note that "Lizardson" is Japanese, so that could explain how this particular album ended up on his blog.

And yes, the copyright owners to an album may well not be the artists themselves - we had this very issue with THTM about the album "Burnt Feathers", recorded by Mary McLaughlin and me as Anonyma in 1986. The copyright owner is Paul Adams at Fellside. We don't have the right to put downloads from this album on our websites, free or otherwise, despite the songs themselves being our own (copyright) material. Should we be grateful to Lizardson and friends? Not really. Like Ian Anderson above, we'd rather choose what happens to our older recordings ourselves.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 04:36 AM

In the 1960s I was part of a movement (probably started by Harry Smith) that saw nothing wrong in "liberating" old '20s & '30s 78s and re-issuing them on vinyl since the labels that theoretically owned them didn't even know they had them, or that anybody wanted them, and certainly weren't about to do it themselves. And so people then went looking for artists like Son House and Skip James who, as a direct result, got second careers, and in the end the likes of Sony did re-issue their Robert Johnson boxes to the benefit of his (claimed) heirs.

Somehow, though, I find it difficult to equate today's pirate ego-bloggers with that.

Lizardson at THTM, maybe not; Crimsonking at Folk Yourself, definitely not. But what Jeremy Browning (crazy name, crazy guy) is doing at http://witchseason.blogspot.com strikes me as very close to what Ian and friends were doing with the old 78s: taking stuff which is unavailable, which copyright owners appeared to have no intention of re-releasing, and making it available again.

There's massive suppressed demand for the deleted work of Nic Jones and Tony Rose, for example; with a bit of marketing, a new edition of the Noah's Ark Trap or On banks of green willow could do well, both for the label and for Nic (and Tony's estate). But that's the problem with suppressed demand - in the nature of things, it can't make itself heard. Folkies can moan in places like this, but who cares about that - folkies can always find something to moan about. Actually making a 'lost' album available for download gives tangible evidence that people want that album - and if the blogger pulls the album when it becomes available again (as Jeremy B. consistently does), the impact on sales will be minimal. It's just the same kind of approach that Ian describes, and hopefully will ultimately have the same effect (although we may have to wait for Sony to buy up Celtic Music!). Even the rather unsatisfactory reissues of Nic Jones's first two albums only came out in the last couple of years, i.e. after they'd started to be shared over broadband.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 04:49 AM

"Actually making a 'lost' album available for download gives tangible evidence that people want that album - and if the blogger pulls the album when it becomes available again (as Jeremy B. consistently does), the impact on sales will be minimal."

On the other hand, making a 'lost' album freely available to download may remove the demand and completely undermine the market for a re-release in the first place.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 04:56 AM

Ruth - yes, that is the risk. That's the trouble with suppressed demand - you can't demonstrate it without satisfying it. But I think the fact that those two Nic Jones albums have had reissues (of sorts) suggests that demand for free stuff does indicate demand for stuff to buy.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Howard Jones
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 05:08 AM

For those who say, "I've bought the album and I can do what I like with it", the answer is of course that they're wrong. What they've purchased is the right to listen to the music. Of course, they can sell or give away the physical medium it came on, but in doing so they also give away their right to listen to the music - they're not allowed to make a copy. It is usually made plain, somewhere in the small print, what their rights are (which nowadays may include permission to rip a copy to an mp3 player for their own personal use).

Furthermore, the price they have paid reflects these limited rights. If they were to contact the record company to negotiate wider distribution rights then they would have to pay considerably more.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 05:18 AM

What about the case where an artist has good reasons for NOT wanting an album to be available any more? In my case simply because it was crap, but I can think of many others: a bad and/or unauthorised live recording, songs that carry unwelcome emotional baggage, songs that espouse a viewpoint that the writer no longer holds, songs that have been previously or subsequently recorded in better performances or sound quality.

That bad album you want to see dead & buried could well be the pride of someone's record collection - the album of their lives indeed; the negative emotional baggage for you just might be the happiest of associations for someone else. Thus the work takes on a life of its own - no longer the reserve of the artist, but common cultural currency with an ethnographic status that renders it invaluable. What the artist feels about their work & how it is valued by Culture as a whole is an interesting sort of dichotomy - for example, none of the members of Joy Division are particularly happy with Unknown Pleasures, but this in no way detracts from its assured cultural status as masterpiece. Nor yet might such feelings stem the tide of bootleg & unofficial recordings that are the lifeblood of a very particular cult (Joy Division that is) that is still going strong (almost) thirty years after they ceased trading under that name.

In this sense recordings operate as document, rather than product; they are a field-recorded feral archive in which all issues of artistic control is a complete anathema - and, if ever implemented, undoubtedly detrimental to the music as a whole. To Folkies (of whatever stripe) the present phenomena ought to be appreciated in terms of its folkloric / ethnographic value rather than in terms of conventional legality, or even ethics, even though many regard it as being criminal. This is, I fear, to miss the cultural value of what is occurring here - fact is, the music is out there, part of the virtual ether where it lives & breathes in another dimension far removed from anything the artist could have possibly envisaged whilst they were in the studio - and quite irrespective of their sensibilities in later life.

Just because someone downloads your album doesn't mean you have been robbed of a sale. Chances are they wouldn't have bought it in the first place. They download it as part of a casual culture of oral transmission & recommendation facilitated by the convenience of the broadband internet. These people are not your intended audience - they are not folkies in the Mudcat sense; they are lovers of music regardless of the affectations and intentions of the artists. If they were folkies, they would not be downloading it for fear of violating the ethical consensus - as we have seen on this thread people who seemed happy to download at first soomed turned-tail when they realised they were running contrary to the mob-feeling. In effect, waiting to be told the correct thing to do, in line with a general level of cultural compliance which is, alas, the Folky Mindset.

And all this despite the fact that The Folk Revival is founded on a far greater cultural plundering than a few computer geeks with folkish sensibilities having a casual listen to Anne Lister CDs. Maybe this is part of the problem with Ian A Anderson's contentious album - can middle-class English white-boys really sing the blues? Well, they did once, and now the truth is well and truly out there.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 05:33 AM

"Just because someone downloads your album doesn't mean you have been robbed of a sale. Chances are they wouldn't have bought it in the first place. They download it as part of a casual culture of oral transmission & recommendation facilitated by the convenience of the broadband internet. These people are not your intended audience - they are not folkies in the Mudcat sense; they are lovers of music regardless of the affectations and intentions of the artists..."

Evidence, please? Lots of people want something for nothing; folkies are hardly the exception. If you can prove to me that Jim Causley has not been robbed of sales as a result of his album being freely and illegally available for the past year and a half on the site you linked to, I'd be very interested to see the evidence.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 05:48 AM

No evidence as such, Ruth - just a hunch based on the prevailing righteous hysteria of this thread. I think the middle-class conservative mindset that buys into Revival Folk is less inclined to the instinctive lawlessness that afflicts the rest of us lesser oiks for such malpractice is simply par for the course.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 05:57 AM

should be "...for whom such malpractice..."

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:00 AM

I don't really like downloads. I like something to look at and read about.
Next time I'm at a festival, I'll just go grazing round the record stall and take what I want...Then I'll pop over the musical instrumaent stall and have a couple of guitars and a concertina.
That will do nicely.

Subject: RE: Free Rare Old Folk Album Downloads
From: Ian Anderson
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:02 AM

Will Mudcat let me post today? Yes, if you read this.

Maybe this is part of the problem with Ian A Anderson's contentious album - can middle-class English white-boys really sing the blues?

Almost certainly not, though I'm still slightly proud - with a certain degree of amusement - of my failed attempts to be a 65 year old Missssippi blueser at the age of 19. To that extent, when the master tapes of the 1969 album I made like that were unearthed in EMI's vaults 18 months ago, I was able to prove that ownership had reverted to me, spent a fair bit of time with an engineer doing a decent remaster, wrote some new notes and that nice Mr. Suff at Fledg'ling re-issued it. I may even see a few bob.

The one I mentioned above was a bad attempt at being a singer/songwriter. I was given one 4 or 5 hour session in which to record it. It obviously resonated so well with listeners at the time that it sold only a couple of hundred copies. Unfortunately (see many other examples in the strange world of record collectors) rarity boosts value. It sells for £200 on eBay on the rare occasions it comes up, has frequently appeared in books about rare LPs and recently had a half page in Record Collector dedicated to it, complete with a pic of the godawful cover. None of which improves the quality which I was dreadfully ashamed of at the time, and tried to prevent even its original release.

To find - this is my other point - badly dubbed - copies of an already poor recording (not, I think, my fault) of a not particularly good performance (again, not entirely my fault under the circumstances) posted up on the web by some blogger solely, I believe, to make his or herself look good because they've tracked down a rare album, distresses me a lot. Of course they didn't ask first, because I'm on record as saying I hated and regretted the thing from the outset.

I'm lucky enough to now own virtually all my other masters, having taken care to get them back or (later) protect them contractually over the years. I've just done a (I believe) well remastered and nicely packaged compilation of my other albums from around that time made for Village Thing which is out soon. I'd be very pissed off if that also started to appear on pirate download sites as it would rob any chance of recouping the investment in doing a decent re-issue, which we're also planning for other Village Thing artists to mark the 40th anniversary of the label - though whether they'll do much more than recoup costs is questionable.

A properly remastered, for example, Nic Jones or Tony Rose re-issue (other Harrogate problems permitting) in the kind of well designed, environmentally friendly CD packaging that's now available would be a wonderful thing to have, but preparing such a thing for release isn't cheap. If sales are marginalised by pirates then it'll certainly never happen. Which would you rather have: a beautiful re-issue artefact with best possible sound, notes, and maybe some income to the artist of their family, or crap dubs from badly pressed vinyl as a file on your computer or a handwritten CDR?

And do you condone theft?