OBITUARY Frontman Discusses Illegal Music Downloading

Mark Carras of RockMyMonkey.com recently conducted an interview with OBITUARY vocalist John Tardy. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Rock My Monkey: What do you think hurts the music industry more? Bad choices inspired by their paranoia, or actual downloading?

John Tardy: (laughs)

Rock My Monkey: And this is inspired by the promo of your album I was sent.

John Tardy: Yeah. Well, you know, it's tough. I mean, the downloading thing, it's just really brutal. To be honest with you, it hurts everybody in the industry. Last time around, one of Roadrunner's brilliant maneuvers, we gave them masters. I think like the same day they just started emailing MP3s to everybody in the company. And it was by the end of two days, three months before the album was out, it was just so available on the Internet, it was [like], why would anybody go and buy it when you could just get it so easily? This time around Candlelight did make an extensive attempt to hold back, keep it out of the wrong hands as long as they could. No MP3s were allowed at all. The promo copies that they did made up were somewhat protected for the most part. You couldn't just put them in the computer and copy them. But obviously people are going to find a way around everything. So I know it's out there on the internet now, and we're just under a month before the release date. But there's not much you can do about it. I just hope that people… if they want to see their bands stick around and continue, hopefully they'll go out and purchase a record if it's something they like.

Rock My Monkey: Do you think that it hurts the band at all to have a promo sent out that, for example, like the promo that I got, I have yet to hear the album because it won't play on any of the players in my house.

John Tardy: There's been a couple of people that say that. I just know, I have one of my vehicles that it does not play in, but it plays fine in another of my vehicles. And any regular player that I have it plays fine. Where it has the problem is what they tried to do is the whole MP3 thing, so if your stereo plays like MP3s, or you can plug your iPod into it, it may have a problem. But I just as soon have those handful of journalists have a problem listening to it, than it be so easy that they just get it, right click and copy, right click and paste, and email it to everybody that they want to. Even though that most people are going to find a way around it eventually, anyway. But to be honest with, chances are next time around we may not even send out any promo copies, just for the fact that there's this handful of journalists that are just not responsible with the music. They put it on the interest and they just don't realize how important it is to keep that, to keep it under wraps. You think someone would have a little bit more professionalism and listen to it and hang onto it for what it is, and let it get released and be a surprise to all the kids out there, as opposed to just being able to get it for free months before the album even comes out.

Rock My Monkey: Personally, that's one of my biggest pet peeves because, the people that are being dishonest and doing that kind of thing, they're only making the honest journalists' job more difficult, because they're inspiring record companies to do things like this.

John Tardy: It is a tough and ongoing problem. It's a cancer in the industry. And it's being felt from the bandmembers to literally record companies are going out of business because of this stuff. But like you said, we could mail out a thousand promo copies, and 999 of those people could be responsible with that music, and the one person that lets a friend borrow it, and they go and copy it and they put it on the Internet. You know how rampant it runs. As soon as it's out there, it just starts spreading like crazy. It's just a matter of a couple of days before it's just available to anybody. I don't really know how they're going to change that and get around it. It's just a little strange. We work hard to put our music and stuff together, and we get all excited. We just want to have that release date be something special. Where it's like, you know what, nobody has heard it, and hear it is, and I go out and get it and then everybody talks about it so it's a big surprise and everything. Nowadays it's like, the artwork, everybody has seen it, there's nothing surprise anymore. You've heard the album, you've seen the artwork. So by the time you go to the record store, there's no more surprise to anything. You know, it's like, I don't know. It's strange.

Rock My Monkey: Yeah, it's bad for everybody. I know that I do, I'm very, very hard on my writers to say don't you dare loan these out to anybody, nothing. Personally I wish more labels would actually go around the method of-there's a way you can put tracking stuff in the files where basically that's how you catch people uploading. Because when the record company or the band goes online, looks for the file on The Pirate Bay or whatever, and they see it, they download it, then all they do is they mouse over the thing, and it shows actually where, which CD the file came from. Then they can actually prosecute that person and get that person shut down and black ball them from the industry so they're not creating problems for everybody like that.

John Tardy: I really wish they could. I know in having our own studio and being able to work with ProTools and do that, I know I could make a copy of my record and put a series of clicks in there that you probably never even heard. But if I saw that music get out there, I'd be able to import it, open it up, and with a series of clicks that I could take notes and tell them that I know that on your CD that I gave you that every one of these songs has these little clicks, and I could identify it and say, "You know what, that is the copy I sent to you." But at the same time to try to prosecute somebody now, it may be kind of tough because they can simply say, "Well, how do I know you didn't give it to somebody else, and something happened," and blah, blah, blah. But it sure would be nice to come up with something. But in the world of the Internet it's just tough. Kids are going to have to realize the way they're going to feel it in their pockets is when people come on tour and their ticket prices and merchandise stuff are just going to be higher priced just because the amount of album sales that a lot of bands used to have are not there. It's just the lack of money that comes in from that has to be made up in another way, or it makes it impossible for bands just to even stay together and tour and do records, you know?

Check out the entire interview in text and MP3 format at www.rockmymonkey.com.