So, is our music not worth paying for?
We had some comments to our last bulletin about us being Jews and whatnot for charging 200 SEK/28 dollars for our new album. Cool, huh? You can see the original post and posters in here.
Let us state one thing:
We BUY these copies that we sell to you guys who want one. In Sweden a CD in the store costs about 200 SEK, which is roughly 28 dollars. We send this worldwide and shipping it is about 10 dollars outside of Sweden, per CD. We need to buy parcels to pack the cd’s in on top of that. The company who released it wants cash per CD as well, and it’s not cheap to buy those for us to sell – but we do this becoz we know some wants to support the band directly by buying from us. Also, we have invested more hours into what we have created for our albums than you can ever imagine. 28 dollars is too much for you? And you claim to be a fan of the band?
We can’t stop you from stealing it illegally, we never could and we most likely never will. If we got the CD’s cheaper, if the Swedish postal service drop their prices for postage and packaging – trust us, we wouldn’t charge 200 SEK/28 dollars for it. We can guarantee that we don’t exactly make much money of the sales we do ourselves – so Captain and Fleshbeast (2 people who posted replies to the bulletin mentioned earlier), no one forces you to support us – download illegally all you want, there’s nothing we can do about it. Luckily there are other supporters out there who wouldn’t think twice about ordering, and those people are the ones we create music for.
In a world where illegal downloading is a sickness, bands need to sell copies more than ever. We are one of those bands. If we don’t sell any discs, there is a chance no label wants to release anything by us in the future – so support us by buying our latest masterpiece directly from us, the band. I am lucky enough to get most of my new music from the record labels directly thanx to Global Domination, which I own and run. Sure, I have downloaded for reviewing purposes and out of curiosity. But if I claim to be a fan of the band in question, if I like the music so much I decide to keep it – I sure as FUCK make sure to get the actual album, the physical disc. And I rather try to get it from the band since it benefits them a little more, even if it’s not much. This will change nothing, but we had to explain how we feel about it.
Over to other things…
And here’s a little bit of info from our forums: Some of you have asked for a pre-ordering option for the new album. We will get our copies for sale late June, early July, 2009. If you feel like pre-ordering it (which means paying for it now and getting it shipped to you as soon as we have the disc in our hands) and support what we do – ofcourse you can do so. I recently changed bank which means I will only take orders thru PayPal right now until all those bank details are cleared and my previous accounts have been moved to the new bank – which might take all of this month to set up and sort. So, if you wanna pre-order the damn thing, just make a transaction to our PayPal account:
Due to PayPal fees, the record label’s share of every sold album and whatnot we are forced to higher the price a little than the usual amount we use for shirts and cd’s.
Prices for PayPal transactions (make a note saying LUSTRATE CD):
28 US Dollars
20 Euros
The prices INCLUDE postage and packaging to anywhere in the world. We’ll get back to you with bank details for direct transfers later on (this mostly applies to Swedes). Snail mail is also fine as long as you hide the cash well.
Send to:
The Project Hate MCMXCIX
Lord K. Philipson
Höglundagatan 22
70368 Örebro
Sweden
So, support The Hate and pre-order/order the new album! Coz you do want us to be able to release more albums in the future, right?
Last off, vocalist Jörgen also has something to say about this 28 dollar issue that we initially brought up in this post:
“Of course we would like you all to experience the real shit, the full sound, the artwork, the lyrics etc, etc… since it all connects with the music and makes the album. I mean, it would be like going to the show and stand outside the venue. You have a less better sound and don’t get to see the full show… Downloading is ok for me if you just cant afford buying our record. I cant buy every album I want either… But, also keep in mind, that if bands dont sell enough records they get dropped from the label… so if you guys want another chance to buy a TPH album, buy the albums. It is just that easy really. If you just want to download for the rest of your life, then you probably end up only with Torture Division stuff, haha… Which is not birdshit btw…”
And finally some news about the shirts: Just got it confirmed that I will receive all the extra orders next week and will then ship it to you guys who took this second chance and ordered one. Hopefully the actual CD has arrived as well so those can go in the package too for you who bought that as well. If not I will wait until they arrive before sending the shirts to those affected. Thanx so much for the support, people.