I am a big fan of the ministry of sound chill out albums, but I don’t own any of them.

I had a look on line at buying them, but then thought I don’t really have the space to store all the CD’s I want, I could buy them on iTunes or similar, but I don’t like not having something tangible to touch… Quite old fashioned I know but hey….

So anyway, I thought I would listen to the tunes I could find on you tube to see if I was thinking through a rose tinted filter or if the tunes and mixes were actually quite good.

then I realised you could create you tube play lists and quick as a flash I had found out the track list for one of the albums (1998 if you’re interested) and re-created it. Now I have access to you tube pretty much anywhere that I want to listen to the album so this has now completely removed the need for me to purchase anything. I have done nothing illegal that I am aware of.

The Dilemma: Do I have a moral obligation to find some way of recognising the talent of the individuals who put the original album together?!

I mean, it was the choice of music and the order the songs were put in that make the album. The album producers (I would think) have little or no input in the creation of the individual tracks, but they have created several masterpieces (As far as I am concerned), and that deserves some recognition!

Thoughts?

I thought some sort of licensing arrangement had been reached which means that artists / producers / whoever are compensated for their works on YouTube? In which case, no moral problem!

Look in your supermarket, In picked this up for the wife for £3 in Sainsburys the other week…

As for morals – if its through a legit source like YouTube then its fair game.

It’s not an interesting moral question, it’s common theft.

My neighbour hangs her clothes on the washing line, no guards, no locks, they are there just for the taking – do you want her address ??

If it’s there, it’s mine.

Multi-Billion dollar corporations have the power to regulate, but it’s more financially viable to sanction & prosecute the end user.

Common theft to me is nicking out the shop that has employed a security guard to stop you.

Hels – I kinda think like you on this one. I feel the tiniest bit guilty even for having done it… But I think theft is a bit strong, adn I am not sure the analogy fits… (Does she hang silky knickers out or big safety pants?!)

A better analogy I think is that I borrowed my housemates bike today (convenience over anything else) when I finished with it I put it back. If he hadn’t bought it then I couldn’t have done that… So do I owe him anything? (Yes, gratitude)

The way I see it I am borrowing the songs when I listen to them through the tube, But the order of the songs and the actual songs chosen is something completely intangible. But it is still an integral part of what makes the album the album!

Maybe I should email my gratitude to ministry of sound every time I play the playlist!

The Dilemma: Do I have a moral obligation to find some way of recognising the talent of the individuals who put the original album together?!

How can you not have your own conclusive thoughts/feelings on this? Have you not, as an adult, developed your own conscience? If you feel that they deserve to be paid for their work, just go and buy their recordings and stop finding excuses. How hard can it be to find space to store a few CDs? Oh, and YouTube compression makes a huge mess of musical audio. The original recordings will also sound a whole lot better.

I could not care less for taking it for nothing
hels may think it is theft but you are doing nothing illegal by doing this [ you tube may breach copyight but how can you know or be sure and so you cannot be charged with anything
it more like your neighbour has a statue in their garden and you look at it even though you have not paid for it …do you need to give them some money towards the cost of it?
you dont have anything physical in your possession after watching some videos on Youtube so what have you stolen?

Three Fish – Sometimes it is nice to challenge your own preconceived ideas.

Junkyard – I am suggesting that the thing that is “stolen” is the skill and thought that was used to put the album together.

In my ears each one of those tunes is good, nothing overly special but enjoyable, however listening to them in the order that was chosen by someone at ministry of sound somehow adds to the experience. They compliment each other in such a way that the album contains more artistic merit as a whole than the songs do on their own.

The analogy is good, but not perfect. I can listen to you tube and my play list anywhere that I have access to the internet. I can’t view my neighbours statue unless I am in it’s vicinity so there is an element of exclusivity which there isn’t in the case under discussion….

The track listing was free information on the back of the original CDs. You did not have to pay at the time to discover this magical sequencing. It was given freely, as a incentive to encourage you to imagine the bliss of the tunes in that order. You can not steal what was given freely. If you had access to the tunes, you could always play them in that order, without owing anyone anything further.
Why should a more modern method for accessing the tunes change this?

edit: consider the free advertising you have created for these albums as more than enough recompense 🙂
BTW check out the early cafe del mar compilations

The track listing was free information on the back of the original CDs… You can not steal what was given freely

That is a fair point, but someone still had to take time think of that magic… and there is a difference between imagining and experiencing, I don’t think the experience would have been the same if you had to shuffle between CD’s to get the listening pleasure. You could copy them onto a CD, but then you are infringing copyright…

Why should a more modern method for accessing the tunes change this?

I’m not suggesting it should, I was just wondering allowed… I was involved in an interesting discussion about what exactly culture the weekend before last which sparked this thought.

Is there anyone on Singletrack who creates/produces albums? Maybe this discussion would be more fruitful on a music site.

you could download spotify http://www.spotify.com/ which is a legal music streaming service which pays labels per play (not very much mind you, but technically something) – has a huge catalogue, MoS stuff most likely on there.

also if the youtube videos are hosted by the label, they will often be getting a little advertising cash – not so likely with older music though, which tends to be fan uploaded.

personally if i was keen on a particular old album i’d be more inclined to buy the mp3s for convenience, but spotify gives you a guilt free route for streaming!

If it’s legally on youtube (and most stuff gets taken down quite quickly if it’s not) then I don’t see any moral dilemma at all. For whatever reason the artist has consented to it being up there (receiving royalties, advertising, or just happy to have their music out there) so I don’t see why you should have any compunction in playing it in whatever order you fancy.

Oh, and wrong forum…

best thing to happen to music for years is illegal down loads. Its become an industry obsessed by celebrity and the production of money ( the xfactor being most prominent example) instead of the production of music and people expressing whats important to them through their art.Wont be long before big business moves on to something else due to lack of profit.Another social advance driven by social disobedience !! 8)

If information or entertainment is being publicly and legally broadcasted I don’t see how listening to it is wrong in any way.
In the good old days I used to tape songs off the radio – I think YouTube is just a modernized version of that.

If it’s on youtube then there are webapps which will generate an MP3 of the audio for you as a download file.

Just saying like.

um how is this thread bike related ?

I look on it in a different manner

During the 90s and early 00s, i spent a great deal of money on CDs. Typically, they would cost me between £7 and £12

I spent a lot of money, however, i didn’t hear of many record companies having morality issues about charging me such an obscene amount for a CD in a nice box

Hence, i don’t feel particularly bad when i download an album of an illegal site

However, i do still inject plenty of money back to the artist when i pay £30 to £60 to see them performing live

I think calling copyright contravention or copying something “theft” is a bit daft. You don’t steal something when you duplicate it. Nor are you “stealing” money from artists by listening to music on YouTube just because you could might have otherwise spent money on it. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that calling it theft is over simplistic.

I can’t work out where I stand on it morally, though. I buy CDs and videos second hand, which seems just as immoral as listening to stuff on YouTube, since the artist doesn’t profit from it. I know there’s an argument that buying second hand makes people more likely to buy stuff new because they know they can resell it, but I think that’s nonsense. I’d be no less likely to buy new media if I thought there wasn’t a second hand market for it. But I’ve never heard anyone bollocking charity shops for selling second hand CDs, nor their customers for buying them.

um how is this thread bike related ?

It’s not, I just didn’t change the option when I started the thread.

personally if i was keen on a particular old album i’d be more inclined to buy the mp3s for convenience, but spotify gives you a guilt free route for streaming!

Fair point. I have somehow survived this long without an MP3 player though and every time I look to get one I can’t help thinking my phone is perfectly good for that… If only it had decent battery life!

I don’t see why you should have any compunction in playing it in whatever order you fancy.

But have I taken someone elses idea immorally?

Muddyman – I kind of agree with you, it’s just a shame there is no real way of reimbursing those up and comings through recorded media without going through a label which as you say are more interested in the monies than the quality… IMO

dyl – There will always be people who want shiny and new (like my missus) versus people who recognise a damn good second hand deal (like me, I hope!)

I think we’re getting a bit mixed up with what I actually asked here. I am not worried about listening to the music, as has been pointed out if the music is on You Tube, and still there, it is there probably there legitimately.

However the order the songs are put together was previously defined by someone else, this order then wasn’t my idea.

At the moment I think I should be crediting the Ministry of sound some how on the play list…

Three Fish – Sometimes it is nice to challenge your own preconceived ideas.

But that isn’t what you’re doing.

It’s not an interesting moral question, it’s common theft.

Damn those thieving bastards, everyone who goes on youtube should be shot.

If you really want to do the right thing for the artists, download the music illegally – you get the best quality, and it’s yours to do whatever you want with. Then find a way to donate some money to the artists. That cuts out all the middle men, and the artists will actually get a fair chunk more then if you’d just bought an album (depends on how much you donate of course).

It’s not theft, it’s just being a bit cheap – that’s all.

The Dr hasn’t downloaded anything it’s all online on a legal website so there for anyone in the world to access.

If you’re a ‘fan’ buy it – but if you’re happy with the quality on youtube carry on.

Its become an industry obsessed by celebrity and the production of money

Oh give over, it always has been. It’s a business. There have always artists aimed squarely at the money-making end of the market and these for a long time subsidised the more ‘arty’ types.

Anyway, copyright infringment is theft, pure and simple. Forget all the ‘sticking it to the man’ arguments, it’s theft. When you buy a CD, or pay for a download track, you’re not buying a shiny round plastic thing or a load of electronic 1s and 0s, you’re buying the skill, imagination and artistry that created the music. Yes, there’s profit margin, but why shouldn’t there be?

copyright infringment is theft

No it isn’t, and calling it theft isn’t helping anyone. Theft is a crime because it deprives the owner of the stolen goods of their use. So if someone steals my bike, that’s theft and it’s a concern to me because I no longer have use of my bike. If someone makes a copy of my bike I really don’t give a stuff and it’s not theft.

Copyright infringement may be bad, and may be a crime, but it isn’t theft.

Three Fish –

But that isn’t what you’re doing.

I think it is, explain why I’m wrong.

Theft is a crime because it deprives the owner of the stolen goods of their use. So if someone steals my bike, that’s theft and it’s a concern to me because I no longer have use of my bike. If someone makes a copy of my bike I really don’t give a stuff and it’s not theft.

Yeah, but if your living is designing bikes to make and sell, and you put a lot of skill, imagination and artistry into a unique design, then someone simply copies your design instead of buying one of your bikes, they are depriving you of the use of that design, i.e. to make a bike and sell it.

Ask any of the photographers on here if they consider the use without permission of their photographs to be theft or not. Or, indeed, the staff at STW towers whether the use without permission of magazine content to be theft or not.

Moral issues aside, I would assume a Ministry of Sound album will be mixed seamlessly. Listening to it as a playlist on Youtube removes that so you’re not getting the full experience anyway. Spotify can’t do gapless playback either, so mix albums on there are pretty pants too, unless you find the whole thing as one track.

Ask any of the photographers on here if they consider the use without permission of their photographs to be theft or not

They may mistakenly consider it to be theft, but that doesn’t mean it is. It’s a crime, but it’s not theft.

A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it

Theres nothing wrong going on here at all, either morally or legally (assuming they are legit videos on youtube and you’re not ripping them off the site).

Its neither stealing nor copyright infringement.

Do I have a moral obligation to find some way of recognising the talent of the individuals who put the original album together?!

Do you mean the artists who made the tracks that make up the album or the person who compiled them? The tracks that make up the album will almost certainly have been licenced from the original artists in some form, whether that includes ongoing payment of royalties depends. Usually it does, but sometimes it’s just a one-off fee.

You certainly don’t get royalties from Youtube, it’s a promotional medium and if your video goes “viral” you can collect revenue from associated advertising, but that’s it.

Royalty payments from Spotify are notoriously low, but then again the artists on there have agreed to it.

It gets even more complicated when you start to consider music that uses samples, or preset patterns on electronic instruments. Did the original creators get paid?

Stilltortoise – A very good point, but I guess it is the equivalent of the reduced quality you get from obtaining a dodgy copy of a DVD or similar.

No where near as good as the original, but 95% of the expected experience….

There’s also a site where you enter the YouTube URL and it gives you the MP3 to download. Worked fine for me when I used it.

No where near as good as the original, but 95% of the expected experience….

Without the mixing between tracks aren’t you missing the whole point of a mix album? 5% of the expected experience I reckon.

(RealMan Damn those thieving bastards)like when you sell something not up to description then do one with your dishonestly obtained money 😆

Yeah realman have you paid jimmy back yet?

Junkyard – Member

I like you and your posts but sadly they are not wrong
You will get this unless you do the right thing

Make amends or accept this every time you post