We recently shot another "episode" of our Islamuzik segment (every saturday 6pm at channel 5) at Living Asia’s office.
The episode talked about PIRACY. They interviewed Atty. Jing Gaddi, formerly from Tungaw and now with Dong Abay’s new band.
We found out that burning or ripping (converting your CD audio to MP3 format) your CDs is legal. And so is Downloading/File Sharing through the internet.
Piracy lang pala yun kapag pinagka-kitaan yung CD… Kapag nag-burn ka ng CD, at binigyan mo ng kopya yung kaibigan mo, hindi piracy yun. At least, dito sa Pilipinas.
After the shoot, we realized that a LOT of our friends/fans/listeners/admirers/stalkers/etc… are still looking for a copy of our first album, Little Monsters Under Your Bed. They can’t find a copy ANYWHERE. Matagal nang na-pull out ng VIVA ang lahat ng copies nila. May ilang songs kami sa mga pirated compilation, pero hindi lahat. May mga pirated copies yata dati, pero wala na ngayon. Mababait kasi yung mga listeners namin. They won’t buy pirated stuff. They know that it’s bad. They know that it’s stealing.
So we decided, "let’s give it away!!!"
We brought some burned (or is it burnt? hmmm) copies of the said album (plus a few bonus tracks … para "compilation" siya) to our last couple of gigs, and gave them away to our close friends and other listers/listeners. The result was overwhelming. Ang daming humingi! And we know that it wasn’t because it’s free. Naubos yung 10 copies na dala ni Kelvin!
I know a lot of people would disagree… Pero sayang kasi talaga yung 1st album eh. Maraming naghahanap, pero walang makuhang kopya. Hindi naman lahat may DSL internet at Kazaa… Dapat marami pa ang makarining nung mga kantang yun.
Don’t get us wrong, we’re not going RIVERMAYA on you and give away our album, and make a big media event out of it. We’ll give it away to those who we feel really likes our music. We’ll give it to people who will say, "Ah, finally i have a copy of this nice CD… I’ve been looking for one for two years! I didn’t want to burn my friend’s copy kasi…"
We’ll just bring around 10 copies per gig, and see what happens from there. Personally, i’m not a bit worried about this new gimmick of ours. Alam ko, hindi maaapektuhan yung sales ng NTS dahil dito. Like i said, our listeners are intelligent people. They won’t go, "Ay, P200++ yung 2nd album nila… yung una nga, nakuha ko ng libre eh!"…
Baka nga mas madaming bumili ng NTS dahil dito, eh. People will go, "Hey, i really like the itchyworms’ music! I only knew the singles until i got a copy of their 1st album! Let’s check out their sophomore effort!"
We’ll see…
Basta, just go to our gigs if you want to get a copy. We just have a small request… That you share it also with others. Parang yung "Pay It Forward" na movie ni Haley Joel Osmond. Or parang network marketing. hehehe… Pero libre, tsaka walang over-priced membership fee!
C’mon, tell me what you think.