The Thieves Are Back — Songs at Stake on Myspace….
Posted August 29, 2007 — in Music News
The illegal hack site myspacemp3.org which allowed users to rip streaming audio off of Myspace sites into MP3’s has been suspended. Unfortunately, the thieves are back in town — New illegal hack sites have popped up that allows music thieves to defile themselves with their guilty pleasure.
http://www.downloadhelper.net/
http://www.eches.net/myspace-music/
http://myspacegrab.com/
If I were an artist, I would remove all my songs on Myspace until they can fix these security issues. I would also sue or jail the creator of these sites. A recent spammer was recently imprisoned for up to seven years. KOAR is asking Myspace to recognize the problem and take immediate action. It would also make sense for Major and indie labels to remove songs on myspace or at least put up 15 seconds of a clip.
Myspace and News Corp. are obligated to tell it’s customers and advertisers that pay thousands of dollars for placements that their music will be free rather than purchased. Myspace also needs to update their security tools and techniques that prevent hackers.
Remove all their music from MySpace? Do you realize how much MySpace helps artists? I can’t think of a single artist that doesn’t have a MySpace page these days. Everyone from music industry professionals to crazy 12-year-old fans use MySpace to find out about new music. Removing music from their MySpace page would hurt an artist far more than it helps them. Sure the download sites are a problem and something needs to be done about them, but taking all the music down in the meantime is not going to help the artists. Think of all the views and plays they’d be losing on the site just to stop a few terrible-quality illegal downloads. Think of all the potential new fans, who may also buy concert tickets, merch, etc. in addition to the CD they may or may not purchase legally, they would lose if people couldn’t randomly come across their page on MySpace. If they are determined to get them illegally, and can’t do it from MySpace, people will find another source. The fact that a number of similar websites have popped up in place of myspacemp3.org just proves the point. It’s like copy protection on CDs or iTunes DRM… people who are determine to will just find a way around it.
Comment by Anonymous — August 29, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
What all of these hack sites really prove is what a poor design MySpace has and how unsafe their content is.
People are gonna steal, yes, but does MySpace really have to make it so easy for them? It’s completely irresponsible and is doing a disservice to the MILLIONS of people who use their site. I don’t know how hard it would be to make one of these hack sites, but with SO MANY of them, I have a hard time believing these are MIT masterminds rather than some asshole kids.
Sure, there are some bands who rely so heavily on MySpace that pulling songs temporarily would bring their whole world crashing down…but who cares about those bands?
If you can’t live without MySpace, you’re doing it wrong.
Comment by AJ-KOAR — August 29, 2007 @ 9:43 pm
I don’t know about http://www.eches.net/myspace-music/ and http://myspacegrab.com/ but i have been using downloadhelper for about 6 months and i think i understand the way it works: it uses generic methods to intercept the files downloaded anyway by the browser. As far as i know, there is nothing specific for hacking myspace or any other particular site. If it works with myspace, this is simply because myspace did not take any action to protect their media, as AJ-KOAR stated.
Suing the developers of downloadhelper ? why not suing the authors of Firefox for placing a ‘Save Page As…’ in the menu ? I don’t like the world you live in.
Comment by Peter — August 29, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
First off, bands can add flash music players or something similar to their myspace sites, to continue to stream music.
Second, MySpace is owned by a GIANT corporate company. Why cant they come up with a secure streaming system? It blows my mind.
Comment by alex — August 30, 2007 @ 3:24 am
as an unsigned band myspace downloads is no different than handing out free cd samplers at shows.if we sell 100 songs and 100 songs are stolen…do we now have 200 fans ? any buisness has a “cost of doing buisness” is this ours ? maybe the next step is for bands NOT to spend so much on recordings. maybe just do scratch demo’s and put them up. do we hope that the “thieves” (or new fans) do show up to shows, buy tickets and merch ? now i understand why labels want part of merch and tickets sales. times have changed…we better get use to this.
Comment by larry anderson — August 30, 2007 @ 4:58 am
MySpaceGrab.com is run by this guy. I urge every label on this planet to sue him!
Registrant:
Administrative Contact:
Shaffer, Ben beninisrael@hotmail.com
27 Woodhill Crescent
Kenton, HA30LU
United Kingdom
2071936138
He also has a MySpace site: http://www.myspace.com/clarifywithben
Comment by alex — August 30, 2007 @ 6:24 am
Alex, I am glad you brought up adding flash players to sites. Gives me an opportunity for self-promotion..haha
http://www.altsounds.com
unlimited space for songs and videos with standalone players that can be added to MySpace, blogs, or anything else.
Larry- I agree that stealing songs can’t totally be stopped and I admire your optimism about it. The problem here isn’t just giving songs away for free…the problem is that artists don’t have a choice when they use MySpace. You’re giving it away for free whether you want to or not. Maybe you don’t take issue with it, but many others do.
MySpace has every resource available and COULD protect the content of their users…and hopefully they will take steps in that direction. In the meantime, should artists continue to allow their material to be stolen, or should they select what they want to give away and what they don’t?
Comment by AJ-KOAR — August 30, 2007 @ 10:26 am
We just put a two minute clip of a song up. The person gets the idea whether they like the song within 30 seconds anyway so we give em a taste and if they like it they will buy the CD or come to a show.
Comment by Greg Daybreak — August 30, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
It’s that “Sue the pants out of them” attitude that’s ruining the business. That’s right, “Kings” you must be part of the old guard of the biz, desperately holding on to whatever you can.
Who could this really hurt. Any band that is big enough, downloading one song will not make or break their career, and any band that’s developing should be glad that there is so much passion that people want their music. They it just becomes figuring out how to find those fans and monetize their passion for the music.
Holding on to the old way of thinking is what got the business into this mess.
Comment by monte Burns — September 2, 2007 @ 7:43 am
It’s that “Sue the pants out of them” attitude that’s ruining the business.
KOAR: Lawsuits haven’t ruined the business; piracy and mediocre artists have led to the blacker industry days. Focusing on selling music rather than making music has somewhat put a dent in the business….
That’s right, “Kings” you must be part of the old guard of the biz, desperately holding on to whatever you can.
KOAR: Holding onto what?
Who could this really hurt. Any band that is big enough, downloading one song will not make or break their career,
KOAR: iPods are selling like hot cakes, I guess going into best buy and stealing some iPods won’t hurt Apple’s bottom line. A successful new paradigm is not THIEVERY.
Holding on to the old way of thinking is what got the business into this mess.
KOAR: what is the old way? what is the new way? You haven’t defined OLD WAY or NEW WAY. Is your New way STEALING? according to your logic, any successful product is worth stealing, or it won’t hurt the company’s bottom line. In that case, go steal the NEW TOYOTA HYBRIDS…
Comment by koar — September 2, 2007 @ 8:31 am
Nobody goes on MySpace anymore. Give it a break. There’ll be a new music site coming soon.
Comment by annie — September 2, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
[...] illegal myspace hack sites include http://myspacegrab.com/. KOAR tested the program and it successfully rips the track from myspace but the song quality sucks [...]
Pingback by Kings of A&R » 2007 » December » 04 — December 4, 2007 @ 9:52 am
It seems that people want free stuff and don’t really care about the quality. A colleague and I have been talking about suggesting to our artists that they just give away the high-quality files of their new CDs and hope that it will pay off in greater exposure and interest in why they are giving away a high quality product. We’ll see what happens.
Comment by Ray — December 5, 2007 @ 1:33 pm