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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

>AE behaved like total jerks but they are a mainstream pop metal band, so it's not really surprising.

It's a little weird that they got so vitriolic in defense of a sponsor, having no stake in it themselves. Not extremely weird, but a little weird.

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Based on the reading it appears that the clothing company sponsors are a small etsy style company owned by close friends of the band.

So they have a personal stake... plus a commercial one if they want more merch to wear by keeping the sponsor happy.

I find it terrifying how easy it is to influence people, basically, half the internet jumped to the conclusion that the band is in the wrong based on a single article, depicting only one point of view, witch conveniently leaves out the fact that most likely the photographer signed an agreement allowing the band to do whatever they see fit with the photos produced at the event. Plus the thing happened 6 months ago and was surfaced at a very convenient moment for both the band to not be able to react quickly and hit their bottom line.

Its extremely uncharitable to assume he signed something. He even mentions in his article that other bands do require signing a license agreement to photograph but this band did not.

Can you please point me to the paragraph stating this? I have troubles finding it

> In the past, artists like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and even The Foo Fighters, have gone beyond merely assuming that they have this right, choosing instead to force concert photographers to sign contracts where they have to, quite literally, surrender all of their rights over the photos. Aware of the fact that most photographers are not exactly versed on legal terminology, that photo pits aren’t great places to read contracts, and that many photographers simply can’t afford not to shoot a big band, artists have been able to profit from the many photographers that, for whatever reason, end up signing their rights away.

Thanks, forgot about that, but it doesn't imply he didn't sign such an agreement. It's been vehiculated that in Nederland, a third party photographer has to sign an agreement, that states the photographer retains the copyright, while the artists retain the right to use the images as they see fit. Giving these pictures away, for promotional reasons, to a small subset of close to the band 3rd parties, like fan clubs and sponsors, sounds to me like fair use of the right the artist has.

About how fair this arrangement is, you should remember that photographers with an accreditation do not pay the admission fee for the event and for a 3 days festival this is quite a hefty fee, I payed about 600 GBP for 3 tickets for Graspop festival.

I suppose metal bands aren't making as much money as they did 20 years ago? that's probably why they have to put in the extra effort to hang on to the sponsor. Perhaps I'm wrong.

I mean really, if you're not one of the old-timers like Iron Maiden or Megadeth or something, is being a metal artist really a good career choice these days? Genuinely want to know.

Being a metal artist hasn't ever really been a good career choice, unless you consider glam a metal genre, in which case for a while in the 80s it at least had a large potential payoff if you got really lucky, sort of like a high effort lottery ticket.

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