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Opinion: Commercialism on a FREE site


Blue_Drac
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You can probably guess how this will go by the topic title, but ...

I'm all for commercial success ...

Really ...

But in my opinion, that was never the spirit of what this site was about.

I'm definitely not in favour of this site "selling out" ... and though I may have donated previously... I never will buy the Mega Man album.

I just don't agree with it.

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Also an opinion:

Ocremix has been providing thousands of remixes, dozens of albums and lots of other entertainment for free for over a decade now... and now that they're offering something even better in exchange for helping keeping the site running, you snob them out of "philosophy"?

Hard to sugarcoat it, I find that to be pretty weaksauce. If you're all up for commercial success, why are you bashing it at the same time? C'mon man.

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It's also not like anyone who's receiving the money NEEDS it. I see it more as being compensated for their time for making something awesome AND unprecedented. But like you said, you don't need to make a purchase, which is in all likelihood, your loss.

EDIT: To clarify, no one is doing this to rip anyone off or to "sell out". They did it because they love it, not for the money.

Edited by kitty
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I'm definitely not in favour of this site "selling out"

Hey guys great idea, since we are selling out, lets charge $1 per remix download. Lets charge $5 to submit to OCR, and $10 for in-depth badass jooj feedback while we're at it :D:D:D:D:D

Seriously tho -

we just did a little thing with the capcom. it's coooooooooooool, man. still plenty of free music

Yep. The free music shall always be here. OCR'll still be doing it's thing for years. One commercial album ain't going to change the world. Sorry you don't agree with this dude, but we'll keep on doing lots of free stuff i'm sure you'll love after this, so hopefully you'll forgive us :)

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You can probably guess how this will go by the topic title, but ...

I'm all for commercial success ...

Really ...

But in my opinion, that was never the spirit of what this site was about.

I'm definitely not in favour of this site "selling out" ... and though I may have donated previously... I never will buy the Mega Man album.

I just don't agree with it.

Uh huh.

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You can probably guess how this will go by the topic title, but ...

I'm all for commercial success ...

Really ...

But in my opinion, that was never the spirit of what this site was about.

I'm definitely not in favour of this site "selling out" ... and though I may have donated previously... I never will buy the Mega Man album.

I just don't agree with it.

We were approached BY Capcom with this concept and they wanted to promote it, so that's why it ended up happening. Without Capcom, this just wouldn't exist.

Are we making a mint off this, or did I not get the memo? :lol: Seriously, thanks for donating in the past. I'm curious as to what you think this album specifically is a harbinger of?

I can't speak for djp, but I think the way we handled this IS within the spirit of the site in the sense that our only commercial album is fully licensed and endorsed by the copyright holder, unlike well... most other fan-made VGM arrangement albums being sold with no license or sketchy licensing. If we wanted to sell out our ethics, we could and would have easily done that a long time ago.

Also, gotta love ANYTHING involving an iota of commercialism equaling "SELLING OUT, THEY SOLD OUT!" Why would we do that and piss everyone off?

Some people can't help but be cynical about this album being commercial, and I understand, since they're not privy to the process. That said, you'd think karma-wise that we've shown we're not about commercialism, and that we're not rubbing our hands in commercialism and greediness. :-)

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We live in an age of saturated hardcore "rock and roll" philosophy thanks to decades of worshiping anti-establishment figures combined with a die-hard, anarchic internet piracy ethos where no one ever actually buys music when they can get it for free somewhere - of course some people are going to be dicks about it and call it a "principle".

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The morality of charging money for this project is virtually non-existent by the fact the site is just as enjoyable without those couple songs on the MM25 album. There are 2618 songs posted on the site as of posting this comment, not including those on albums but not posted on the front page, nor competitions/workshop/etc. So even if we compare it to the substantially smaller number of just front page remixes, it's less than 1% of the total content you are missing out on.

It's sort of like in a free to play game, when they have a pay shop. You don't have to pay anything at all to the organization/corporation, but if you do, you get something out of it.

Now, I understand the guys concern, I certainly don't think he's a prick, but I, myself, am all about private organizations holding personal rights and owing nothing to it's user-base and whatever, so, OCRemix, do whatever you want, I frankly couldn't care less, I'm just enjoying the ride. You could make all remixes cost $1 and I'd just have to deal with that.

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We live in an age of saturated hardcore "rock and roll" philosophy thanks to decades of worshiping anti-establishment figures combined with a die-hard, anarchic internet piracy ethos where no one ever actually buys music when they can get it for free somewhere - of course some people are going to be dicks about it and call it a "principle".

If on one ever buys music, how do people continue making money from music? I think the amount of "piracy" is overblown. Most people are willing to pay a fair price for music they enjoy, and are also happy to support those musicians.

Edited by Cash
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If on one ever buys music, how do musicians continue making a living from their music? I think the amount of "piracy" is overblown. Most people are willing to pay a fair price for music they enjoy, and are also happy support those musicians.

Issues only really come up when it's big labels fronting tours and advertisement and recording costs. Rock musicians tour and sell CD's at shows. DJ's can usually do the same, but from my understanding, it's a different situation. If the artist can't make back the money the label lent them, they go into debt, so they want as much money out of it as they can get. Piracy is only a big issue because of bloated budgets and high expectation with no safety net for the musicians. Now, if an independent band/artist wants to make moolah, and they see a pirate of their album, that's a bad situation. That said, usually the ability to pirate can be correlated to the popularity of the artist, so again, not a big issue.

There are some musicians who support piracy, though. Streetlight Manifesto, for example, disliked their label and got almost no money for albums sold, and for their last album on the contract, they leaked it and told the fans to pirate it or buy it from them on tour instead of buying it on iTunes or from Victory Records. Only one case, but hey.

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But in my opinion, that was never the spirit of what this site was about.

ocremix.org is dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form.

They don't use the word 'free' anywhere in their statement. Really the only thing you can argue is that little 'art form' bit.

At the risk of getting too sardonic and crass, I'm already wondering what OCR meme like "Killer Studio Chops" or "Technomanga" we might pull from this if it continues to get traction.

OCR meme is now an OCR meme.

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Most posters in this thread are way too hard on the OP. Not every topic needs to degenerate into "TECHNOMANGA DELUXE EPIC MEME TIME.*" The guy just isn't sure why in the 10+ years of the site, there's suddenly an album for sale.

*aka Try Hard and its sequel, Try Hard with a Vengeance

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Not every topic needs to degenerate into "TECHNOMANGA DELUXE EPIC MEME TIME.*"

Out of the hundreds of topics posted on OCR only like five have turned out that way in the last few years. You don't need to passive-aggressively insult the OCR community because it takes offense that someone is calling it a sell-out.

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