Re: boots

[Alan McKendree <amck@thenetdr.com>]

>From: David36798 <David36798@aol.com>
>
>And...a note for all of you...I'd really like to encourage you NOT to go out
>to indie record stores and buy boots.  All of them are unauthorized, and the
>artists don't get a penny from them.  It's just taking money out of their
>pockets that probably deserves to be there.  Also, they cost way too much.
>Try trading tapes...you won't be taking money away from people that deserve
>it, and you get a lot more bang for your buck.

Let me argue the other side.  Boots do not take money out of the artist's
pocket.  To capture the money that's "escaping", all the artist would have
to do is release a legit recording of a full show, or a significant number
of live tracks.  I'd dare say that most if not all fans would rather buy a
legit release of a full show, than a boot of the same show, which implies
that even if a show _is_ booted, the artist could release that same show
and outsell the boot.  The fact that they don't says to me that they (or
their record company) don't see enough profit potential in it to bother
with.  Yet there's SOME demand for the music, otherwise boots wouldn't
exist, and the producers of boots serve that demand.  Actually, if you're
concerned about the artist's finances, just send them a $20 directly, which
will far outweigh their share of all royalties they would have got from
your purchase of booted shows if they were legitimately released.

Second, anyone who is interested enough in a band to care about buying
boots probably has most if not all of the legit releases anyway, thus
putting all the money in the artist's pocket that they would have, anyway.
On the other hand, hearing a boot may bring a band to someone's attention
so that they go buy some of the legit releases if they like what they hear.

If you think boots cost too much, by all means produce some and sell them
at a cheaper price.  And it's completely unclear to me how "trading tapes"
is preferable, from your point of view, to buying boots...many tapes have
boot vinyl, CDs, or DATs as their source, or are boots themselves.

This is NOT to defend counterfeits (exact copies of legit albums, produced
by someone else and passed off as the legit release) or pirates (legit
tracks repackaged and sold by someone else), both of which DO divert money
out of a royalty stream which should go to an artist's pocket.

Alan
Be sure to read _McKendree: A Burning Novel of Murder and Revenge_
by Douglas Hirt, ISBN 0-8439-4184-7  (available at www.amazon.com)