Once in a while, I type my name and a release into google just to see what global impact my music is having on the world. So far, not much - but, I did stumble on a Torrent site that indicated how many downloads my recording Hypnoforce has had since being added to their site (illegally, I might add). In case you've been living in a cave or just past the potty training stage in life, a Torrent site is a portal for anyone to rip off virtually anything that is digital --- software, music, video, photos, etc, etc. via downloads. I was simultaneously horrified and flattered to learn that this one recording had been stolen 2,431 times since landing on this one Torrent site. There are countless amounts of these sites... Hmmm... the flattery has cost me about $10,000 in net profit if it were bought through iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, etc. - and, again, this is just one site with just one of my 22 available recordings. Imagine, since I released the recording in September 2012, I coulda maybe had 10K extra in the past five months. That buys a lot of food. Here's the sick part - my actual sales are next to nothing... The amount being stolen dwarfs my actual sales.....
Now that leads me down a different path - if people had to pay for the recording rather than steal it for free, would I have sold 2,431 downloads = I seriously doubt it, and, that is why music is nothing more than an easy to acquire commodity. I love that I can find all types of music via all sorts of sites (being I'm a music junkie - have a huge collection, and all paid for with exception of artists that offer it for free via archive.org or netlabels), but in a weird way, I miss the days where vinyl was king, and you waited a month via adverts or rumors for that flimsy piece of plastic housed in a colorful informative piece of cardboard to hit the stores. It was more dramatic and fun...
See below just 1 Torrent site out of god knows how many.....
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