Finally a band that has come to its senses!

[Stealth]

I've always wondered why CDs are sold at $26 here in Canada when they could be a lot cheaper. And I've always thought that bands should find a way of allowing fans to download albums. They should use the internet to find out where most of their fans are in order to play concerts there.
SevenGates, an Italian band, is doing exactly that. No more restrictions and oppressive laws telling you what you can't do! Now this is a band I would be happy to support. Here's what they say about their albums in their website:

SEVENGATES - THE FUTURE IS THE WEB
Free mp3s on the site and pressed cds at 5€ (the "real" cd price)

We could talk for hours and write a whole book trying to explain the endless obstacles we had to face for publishing this cd but SevenGates want only to say they are very satisfied about how the things came to an end and especially about the possibility to share our songs on INTERNET which will be the FUTURE for all the next SEVENGATES works.
We are tired about deals asking us money for pressing the cds,tired to see cd with very small distribution both in space (10/15 stores if we are lucky) and in time (cd are in those stores for less than a month,then they disappear) and mostly tired to see people selling cds at 18/20 euros when, actually, the real pressing cost is about 2/3 euros! Yes: the press of ONE cd is about 2/3 euros. We can reach a selling price of 5€, which seem a good and honest price to us. A nice price for those fans who want a "real cd" in their hands, with booklet ,cover, artwork, and "master glass" pressing with high audio quality.
5€ : THIS WILL BE THE PRICE FOR THE NEXT SEVENGATES ALBUMS.
We will ask only for the shipping price too. This is what we will ask for the next cds. These cds will ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD IN MP3 FORMAT.
"CD" OR "DEMO"?

This choice will be not good for reviews of our cds.
Most of the webzines and magazines consider a cd in a better way if that cd is pressed by a record label, even if its quality is worse than a self published cd, which will be considered as a "DEMO CD". We hope media will judge us for the quality of our products and not for the record label we signed or not. This is the way we want to take,and we will take it 'til the end, trusting in our love for Metal and in our fans support!
The future is the web.

The future is the legal download.

The future is a high audio quality cd with booklet for 5€ its real cost.
Stay Metal!
SevenGates

You can download their new cd (with booklet, lyrics, etc.) here:
http://www.sevengates.it/

[dirge]

Sounds great idea to me, downloading it to see what they are like. I just checked last.fm and it's tagged them as power metal, so I will probably like it!

[browneyedgirl]

This all sounds very cool! Hope it catches on! I always thought $18.00 was a ridiculous price for a CD&some, even more. $5 for a CD&booklet, etc. sounds very fair to all concerned, IMO.

[Stealth]

I think they are going to have a new singer on the next album. The singer in "The Good and the Evil" is Federico Puleri, who plays rhythmic guitar in Vision Divine's concerts. If you read the booklet, you will see that Puleri says he would like all of those singers who are going to make fun of him to know that he is originally a guitar player, not a singer.

[R.F.]

I`ve heard this album about a month ago. Very interesting, may recommend it to bored stratofans//))
Speaking of the web... well, actually as for me and people around me in my country - we do not feel the difference between legal and illegal download. A download is just a download for us. Someone maybe even doesn`t know it is illegal to download music. There are laws, but who cares =) They still do not work, those laws))
Many people find it ridiculous when they find out that those in the West buy albums x_X Our logic is "What the hell I should look for that album if I can download it?!". From one point of view it is not so good just because the value of the piece of art is decreasing for you when you get it so easy. From another point - there are so many stupid topics about someone looking for some shitty single with one bonus song (maybe available on youtube) and spending lots of money =) So it`s controversial. But you see - the bands are getting the point. They know that they will be definetely heard if they put upload their music to the net. And megafans will always buy their digipack for their shelves. Band is simply mastering new ways to contact with the audience.

[icecab21]

thats fair, free for the low quality mp3 and if you want to hear what they actualy put in their music you can buy the cd and get a better representation. i think they should set something up that offers downloads in the varius qulaitys and the more you want to pay per song the better quality music you get.

[Stealth]

The quality of SevenGates' mp3s is not bad. Anything below 128 kbps sounds very bad, but 128 and up are all very reasonable. Hell, I use 128 on my mp3 player to save space. SevenGates' mp3s were encoded at around 165 kbps. And yes, the higher you go (up to 320) the better, but a lot of it is make believe. Yes, technically speaking, 320 sounds better than 192 for example. But there's a limit to what the human ear can detect, so many people fall victim to the power of suggestion. In many cases, you can measure the difference in quality on a computer by comparing two different mp3 files using advanced software... But after a certain limit, we can't hear the difference, even if a computer can detect it. No one would be able to tell the difference between 320 kbps and 560 kbps.

[stratoplayer]

Only in storage space, 560 is almost the same as uncompressed WAV and those are about 10 megabytes per minute...

[icecab21]

Well there are people with super ears and if you buy the cds for your pets and want your pets to have the best lol. Trent rezner has what I think should be the example to go by with his last album. Since you can download it in wav, flac, mp3 and other formats. I have never really done the hearing tests I’ve just looked at the wave differences between different formats and what happens when they get converted back and forth. I think for the higher quality to really show quality surround sound speakers really complete the package. My complaint of the quality problem comes from too many people "reviewing" music when they either have a bad speaker system or lower quality version of the music and thus miss a great deal of the complexity and fullness of the sound and then blame the band for that. of course there are many other problems with the way people "reveiw" music such as attitudes and preconceptions

[stratoplayer]

Thats true, but a mediocre audio quality with a good set of speakers beats very good audio with lousy speakers. So I'm all up for medium quality in order to save space. Plus, if you mess around with the audio settings ad equalizer you can overcome "bad" audio.

[icecab21]

I’m perfectly happy with 128 and great speakers. At a certain point it’s just a matter of essence between being content with the sound or demanding the closest to perfection and the fullest sound possible to get every mathematical change to perfection. There are so endless ways to hear the same song and mix a song that that really fascinates me, For any talk program that I have I just put it at 16 to really save space.

[Miss Destiny]

What about lousy speakers AND lousy audioquality BUT saved space

[icecab21]

ive fine with live recordings and demos and those only have a couple of tracks on them but it's intersting to see the variations in the songs and how they sound with the differnt live mixes