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Set Your Goals planning extensive summer tour

Contributed by aubin. Posted by ben on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 1:00 PM (EST)

Set Your Goals have started to plan their summer well in advance. The band is looking to tour extensively through the United States playing new cities and ones they haven't visited in some time. The band is looking for fans to leave comments on their blog letting them know what areas they should swing through.

Set Your Goals re-released their breakthrough album Mutiny! this past Spring. They are currently working on its follow-up and have yet to announce what, if any, label will be handling its release.

News (31 comments)

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Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Seriously.

HumanUnkind (November 16, 2008)

I saw these guys twice in the one night in February and it was awesome. I've not really been bothered listening to them since then.

1+ Reply

MilesQToast (November 16, 2008)

february is a tough month for vampires

MattRamone (November 16, 2008)

I thought their new album WAS going to be another rerelease.

Didn't their manager buy out their contract or something stupid? I can't wait to see this end in failure for all involved.

3+ Replies

eazyd2 (November 16, 2008)

i cant wait for them to prove you wrong you fuckin wanker. good band.

Cox_Attack (November 16, 2008)

Why don't you just listen to a good pop punk and hardcore band instead? This band sucks. Garbage,

LooseKanonYankee (November 16, 2008)

good band or not, waiting for them to fail is fucked up and stupid

MattRamone (November 16, 2008)

Have you HEARD these guys?

LooseKanonYankee (November 17, 2008)

I love set your goals, Ive seen them live 6 times, and records sit right next to my kid dynamite and Lifetime records

LookingForCorpses (November 16, 2008)

Yeah, they were unhappy with their label. Got a buyout. They'll probably sign to another label. This isn't that weird or uncommon.

Scarysmurf (November 16, 2008)

Help..
I'm writing a paper on how the music industy has evolved and how eventually downloading music changed it and what might happen in the future.
Anyway..
I think i should be good for a while, but its a long paper, so if anyone wants to just just shoot some stuff out there to give me more ideas it would be much appreciated. Anything would do as far as what a major label profits on to how many people got fucked in the napster debacle.

7+ Replies

eazyd2 (November 16, 2008)

write about how fuckin gay collecting vinyl records is and how we dont need bands anymore cause guitar hero kills all of them and if guitar hero gets boring there is still pro evo soccer 09 and how i score a fuckin sick goal with torres last night.

Scarysmurf (November 16, 2008)

Great idea, Easy.
You never let me down.

HumanUnkind (November 16, 2008)

You could look into the ways that labels (most notably the majors since they have a bigger markey share) have to expand their markets in order to maintain high profit levels ala the 360 deal that, was it warner?, got posted about the other day. Another example is how blatantly games like Guitar Hero are helping pay the bills because most of the songs do come from the majors and this is another example of expanding their market.

Something else that seems to be happening more is the quicker turn around between albums. It used to take about 3 years for most bands to put out another album but these days we have some bands releasing albums twice in the same year. Like kings of leon or Los Campesinos.

Scarysmurf (November 16, 2008)

didnt even think of the guitar hero idea.
Thanks much.

LookingForCorpses (November 16, 2008)

Actually, bands bought out record less often than they did in the 70s and 80s.

ryanky (November 16, 2008)

i did a similar paper last year, but mine focused on how CDs destroyed casettes. so i don't know if that helps too much, but you could throw it in your paper like mentioning the evolution of music playing devices

HeyBarmold (November 16, 2008)

I already wrote your paper. Your welcome.

In 1998 while attending Boston’s Northeastern University, an eighteen year old computer programmer named Shawn Fanning hijacked the music industry with his peer to peer music program “Napster” and in so doing he ushered in the musical revolution of file sharing. This phenomenon allowed 24 million registered users at its peak to be able to download their favorite songs for free by using Napster as a link between them and another fan’s computer files, allowing for direct uploads and downloads. Napster was immediately entangled in a grip of lawsuits from artists who felt their music was being stolen, and in the nine years since then the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been fighting an uphill battle to quell this insurrection of their consumers. The RIAA is a trade group which represents a number of companies, most

show rest of commentI already wrote your paper. Your welcome.

In 1998 while attending Boston’s Northeastern University, an eighteen year old computer programmer named Shawn Fanning hijacked the music industry with his peer to peer music program “Napster” and in so doing he ushered in the musical revolution of file sharing. This phenomenon allowed 24 million registered users at its peak to be able to download their favorite songs for free by using Napster as a link between them and another fan’s computer files, allowing for direct uploads and downloads. Napster was immediately entangled in a grip of lawsuits from artists who felt their music was being stolen, and in the nine years since then the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been fighting an uphill battle to quell this insurrection of their consumers. The RIAA is a trade group which represents a number of companies, most notably the five major record labels, a number of independent labels, and their distributors and promoters. The RIAA controls almost 90% of all recorded music and thereby controls the means by which this will be offered to consumers. While the RIAA may be fighting what they think is a noble cause, they are actually oppressing the glorious future that digital music can bring to the industry and at the same time biting the hand that feeds them. Regardless of whatever CD sales they claim to have lost, file sharing is a very beneficial for the artists, their labels, and the fans which put money in their pockets.
File sharing creates many benefits for the user and the consumer both. With a file sharing program like Napster, or even a simple instant messaging service like AOL, anyone can share their own photos, writing, videos, and personal work. File sharing allows consumers to purchase what is called “abandonware,” which are out of date, obsolete versions of games and software no longer sold by their owners. This can include previous versions of email programs, bug-free versions of chat software, and much more. A consumer can also legitimately download music which they have already previously purchased to obtain a digital copy of songs they legal own fair use rights to. And perhaps the most enticing, persuasive use of all is that consumers can now preview the music they wish to buy before purchasing, creating a litmus test of sorts, which allows them to reconsider if the new Britney Spears comeback CD is really worth paying 15 bucks for.
Why shouldn’t we share music online? Let’s examine some of the cries and accusations that the RIAA has made to imply that online file sharing is damaging their industry and see if they have any merit.
“You’re hurting the artists that you love!” Now, let’s stop for just a second and think about something. The reasoning behind the RIAA’s opposition to file sharing is the idea that a downloaded song is a lost sale resulting in a loss of revenue. This reasoning is flawed, but let’s entertain the possibility that an artist’s profit loss is proportional to the rate at which the songs were illegally downloaded. Take this into consideration: The Backstreet Boys were one of the top selling acts of the last three decades. Over the course of 8 years they sold over 70 million albums. Despite their record setting figures for album sales, the group has never seen a dime for any album sold. At an average of fourteen dollars per album, we can easily estimate that the total revenue generated by the Backstreet Boys were a nickel and dime short of 100 million dollars. After paying dues to songwriters, producers, and musicians and then offsetting the costs of album production, promotions, and living expenses, 100 million dollars became a negative figure. So after selling a respectable 70 million albums, more than almost any artist in recent history, the Backstreet Boys failed to make a profit. Can we really be expected to believe that illegal file sharing is the monkey wrench that is hurting artists and taking money from their pockets? Absolutely not. Record labels hurt their own artists. If you can’t make a profit off of 100 million dollars in album sales, there was something seriously wrong to begin with. File sharing is not hurting the artists. Not at all.
“File sharing is just stealing!” Is it always stealing? I beg to differ. Certainly the technology can be utilized by someone to download songs illegally, but is that always the case? A car can be utilized by a drunk driver to become a tool of destruction, but that doesn’t make driving wrong. Case in point: When I was in high school I purchased a CD called “Duck and Cover” by an independent band called the Mad Caddies. It was an incredible CD which I did not mind paying seventeen dollars for. After a few months, my backpack which contained the CD was stolen, and I went to my local record store and bought another copy. Not more than a week later, that album ended up getting jammed in my stereo was ruined. I purchased the CD one more time because the album was worth buying a third time. But to top that, I ended up having every CD that I owned stolen out of my car one day. So, that album was actually stolen from me. Twice. I purchased the CD three times, and therefore held certain fair use rights that allow me to listen to it. I never sold the CD to forfeit those rights. So I logged on to Napster and downloaded it. This was totally legit and I didn’t steal anything. So to assume that someone who is file-sharing is stealing is inaccurate, because it’s not always the case.
“It’s hurting the industry!” Which industry? We can not make the mistake of confusing the difference between the Music Industry and the Record Industry. The music industry is doing just fine. Artists are touring, iPod sales climb with every passing month, iTunes and online music stores are growing at a rapid rate, and American Idol continues to be the top rated television program every season. The record industry might be struggling, that’s true. But they are struggling the same way that they did during a switch from vinyl to cassette tapes, and then from cassette tapes to CDs. It’s a change in format. The only difference during this format change is that the RIAA and its affiliates refused to stake a claim in the digital music revolution and did not support the format, thereby missing their chance to make the transition. Take yourself back to 1990, when we were all using slow 386 personal computers running Windows 3.1 or DOS, and imagine the absurdity of someone suggesting that within a decade we would be able to put our entire music library onto our hard-drive at CD quality, and then download every song we can possibly think of onto a personal device smaller than a mini-walkman. The record industry laughed. While people were downloading their songs for free, the RIAA still clung to their belief that CDs were a mainstay, and digital music was a passing fad and simply a new medium for piracy. They have not made as much money because they did not offer the product that consumers wanted to buy.
If you look at music sales over the past ten years, you would note that non-CD sales such as vinyl and cassettes have been in decline for quite a while, and accounts for a chunk of money that used to be streaming into the pockets of the record industry. Gathering statistics from CBS Marketwatch, we can see that non-CD sales accounted for almost 4 Billion dollars in revenue in the year 1990. By 1998, the year that Napster went live, non-CD sales revenue had declined to just over a billion dollars, losing almost 250 million dollars per year, simply as a result of a change in format. This can easily account for a 530 million dollar loss in revenue from 2000-2002 that was claimed by the RIAA, which they attribute in part to online music piracy. It’s an inaccurate claim.
File sharers are an easy scapegoat because of the nature of their activity. But they are not simply “illegal file sharers,” whose sole interest in the music industry is to find way to obtain the music they want without paying a dime. They are in fact the same people that, according to Nielsen Soundscan for the week of January 11th, 2007, had purchased 4.7 million records of the new Nickleback album. Consumers are still willing to pay for a product that is worthwhile, but the RIAA has not done so, and as such they saw a decrease in profit.
To the surprise of many, album sales are not even the only source of income that the RIAA receives. According to the RIAA website, there is a 2% tax built into the sales of every CD-R, and a 2 dollar charge affixed to the sale of ever CD Recorder, both of which go directly to the RIAA and not to a single artist, as a result of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Even if music piracy is some kind of epidemic, the RIAA is still cashing in on the sales of products used for piracy. This certainly does not legitimize piracy, but can hinder the RIAA’s claim of being a poor helpless victim being robbed of potential profits.
And finally, let us take a look at almost every industry in the world and take a look at the recent trends. The real estate market, the automobile industry, the computer hardware industry, retail market, and the dot-com surge have all seen significant slowdown in the past 5 years. It seems almost every industry has been through tough times financially since the dawn of the millennium. I can guarantee you that a decline in car sales is not due to consumers stealing cars.
“You’re hurting the independent stores!” It is true that something is hurting the mom and pop independent record stores across the country, as they are shutting down at an alarming rate. However, one should not make the mistake of shifting the blame at file sharers. All one has to do to realize the cause of this trend is to examine stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy. Mega-stores like these create a behemoth for indie stores to compete against. If Wal-Mart and Best Buy can each sell top selling albums for $9.99, almost five dollars cheaper than the national average price per CD, there is no way for a local record store to compete and draw consumers, especially when Wal-Mart and Target add the convenience of selling everything else that a person could possibly need all in one store. We see this economic trend not just among indie record stores, but also independent clothing stores, restaurants, and grocery stores, all of which have been in decline directly proportional to the rise and growth of these powerhouse companies. Indie stores have been in decline for years, way before the file sharing “epidemic.”
File sharing programs have the potential of allowing anyone the ability to obtain unlicensed music for their own personal use without paying for it, which is hard to deny that it is not equivalent to theft. This is exactly the view of the RIAA, and they have taken staunch, strict measures to attempt to bring thieves to justice and restore the record industry to what it once was. Some of their tactics to dissuade consumers from using online file sharing include suing twelve year old girls, deceased grandmothers of file-sharers, and suing mass amounts of people at a time, which led them to create an online pay service to allow defendants to log on to a website and settle their lawsuit in advance, and out of court. These measures committed by the RIAA demonstrate their indifference to their fan’s circumstances and demonstrates that they are motivated only by one single, solitary interest. Profit. They certainly are not concerned with protecting the integrity of their artists or supporting independent stores. They simply want to maximize their profit margin at any means necessary. There are a few incidents to examine which illustrate the desperation of the RIAA and the government which it lobbies.
On November 9th, 2007, democrats in the House of Representatives introduced a 747 page spending and financial-aid bill directed at colleges and universities. Embedded within this financial-aid bill is a stipulation that threatens a school’s qualifications for financial aid based on their efforts to prevent file sharing. This bill will allow the government to pull financial aid assistance away from the entire university unless the school not only takes measures to prevent online file sharing, but also offer alternatives to it, such as online pay services like a reinvented Napster or iTunes. Potentially, this means that if a University does not obey the bidding of the government in regards to file sharing, then all students, even low-income students without a computer would lose all financial assistance, including grants and student loans that are necessary for many people to obtain an education. The people who depend on financial assistance to attain an education will be left without any support, despite the fact that they were completely void of any wrong doing. This absurd bill will be voted on in committees and brought to the House floor in the coming weeks. I’m not exactly sure this even needs to be said, but it is absolutely ridiculous to punish innocent students for actions they didn’t take, especially when their higher education hangs in the balance. A bill such as this would be akin to arresting everyone in an innocent family for the minuscule crime committed by the youngest sibling. Music piracy may be wrong, but this second wrong is considerably short from making a right.
This isn’t the only absurd, delusional action being taken to stop this epidemic from spreading. In March of 2006 Cassi Hunt, a young MIT student was notified by her University that the RIAA had traced evidence of file sharing to her computer and that the University would be handing over her personal information to allow for a lawsuit to be filed. She was accused of downloading 272 MP3s, and at a potential fee of 750 dollars per song, she was mailed instructions on how to settle her $3750 lawsuit over the phone via a hotline. It seemed like a cookie cutter lawsuit for the RIAA, but when Hunt inquired about a negotiation for her settlement, she was encouraged by the RIAA to drop out of her prestigious school and attend a community college or work full time in order to make her payments. Yes, you heard that correctly. A multi-billion-dollar-per-year conglomerate is encouraging college students to suspend their aspirations of education and careers just to put a few extra thousand dollars in their pockets!
Could file sharing really be this harmful to the industry that the RIAA thinks they can justify forcing college students to drop out and suspending their financial assistance?
Quite the opposite, actually. I contend that file sharing has brought the industry to an incredible point that could allow for success unlike anything that it has embarked upon previously. File sharing creates an environment that is free from any kind of agenda or bias from the record labels, and allows the users themselves to determine what is worth listening to, and exposure comes from word of mouth, not by paid promotional advertisements. I’ll illustrate this point with the career of the rags-to-riches Dashboard Confessional.
Chris Carabba started his music career singing for local bands in Florida. While singing for a group called Further Seems Forever, he followed the encouragement of friends and recorded his own music under the pseudonym of Dashboard Confessional, a one man, one guitar independent music endeavor. His album was quietly released by a small independent label from Florida which did not allow for anything close to heavy distribution, but the few fans who bought his CD locally were so mesmerized, so captivated by the quality of his music that they become zealots, promoting his music with urgency and passion that could rival that of presidential campaign. They posted flyers, saturated internet message boards, and most importantly, flooded file sharing networks with his music. His songs spread like wildfire. Before he could even book an east coast tour, he had a legion of fans that could sing every word back to him at his shows. He quickly found the attention of Vagrant Records, one of the largest independent labels at the time, and released a series of albums, all of which instilled the same file sharing campaign to expose countless new fans to his music. Within two years of the release of his first album, Dashboard Confessional signed to major label Interscope Records, toured across the world playing arenas and major amphitheaters, and appearing on every major late night show performing their hit songs, all the while still selling more than a million copies of their third full length “A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar.” And to forever ensure a lifetime of royalty checks, he inked a licensing deal in July of 2006 with the Universal Music Publishing Group to market his songs onto television a movies, allowing his music to be heard in countless different mediums. Chris Carrabba owes his career to illegal file sharing. It was probably the most profitable free advertising campaign in music history.
This is not an isolated incident or a fairy tale come true. It is the future of the music industry. File sharing, in my opinion, has saved the music industry from the RIAA and brought the power away from the big five major labels and back into the hands of the consumers. Even some suits in these big labels are beginning to realize the value that file-sharing has brought and the potential for future business. Edgar Bronfman, head of major label powerhouse Warner Music recently admitted to the value of filesharing and warned his fellow colleagues not to go to war with its consumers. "We used to fool ourselves,” he said. “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as… file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong.” He went on to illustrate efforts that Warner Music has made in an effort to offer consumers a valued product, such as DVD’s and ring tones packaged with their albums to entice consumers, which is a sound alternative to taking them to court.
The record industry freaked out when consumers had the power to record content onto cassette tapes and play them on walkmans, and made the same claims about music piracy that they are making today. And just like they were wrong then, they are wrong now, and file sharing is the glorious future of the music industry, and the sooner that the RIAA and its labels realize this, the better.

Dante3000 (rich) (November 16, 2008)

I know Mutiny didn't come out that long ago. It must be all the rereleases and represses that make it seem like forever since they put an album out.
-Dante

2+ Replies

eazyd2 (November 16, 2008)

2 years ago champ. id imagine that would seem along time if youre unhealthy obese who could keel over any day.

Dante3000 (rich) (November 16, 2008)

Dude, whatever. You know all the cock I suck and the gay sex I have keeps me fit as a fiddle.
-Dante

edgelife (November 16, 2008)

first dante3000 comment that i like.

wonton (November 16, 2008)

Barrack Obama

3+ Replies

Jake358 (November 16, 2008)

who?

eazyd2 (November 16, 2008)

Denzel Washington

Rudy87 (November 16, 2008)

mixedracescomingoutinoneguywhoisnowournextpresident power

joemomma420666 (November 16, 2008)

epitaph

reinventingkyle (November 16, 2008)

i've said it once and i'll say it again
fuck this band

i hate all these pop-hardcore bands, but i hate set your goals the most

2+ Replies

edgelife (November 16, 2008)

popcore?
moar liek popcorn amirite lol

MyChoice (November 18, 2008)

more than A Day to Remember? not me, those guys i just can't stomach at all.

sugarfull (November 16, 2008)

Well it looks like they set their goals.

1+ Reply

diplodocuscore (November 16, 2008)

superlol.

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