Circa Survive Further Discuss Album Leak

August 28th, 2012

Kriston McConnell

I am sure that most, if not all of you, know by now that Circa Survive opted to not only self produce their fourth studio album, but they decided to release the album on their own as well.

The album was released today, but with modern technology as it is today, the album had leaked a couple of weeks ago. The band has already commented on the leak, but now Colin Frangicetto has stepped up to explain his perspective on the situation via Absolutepunk.net. You can read his comments below the jump.

It’s great to see such a down to earth band like Circa Survive make the decision to go solo when they’ve already established a career on a record label. It’s unfortunate that we live in a time where music is worthless and even a band as popular as them are still having a hard time. If you haven’t ordered your copy yet I would recommend heading to Circa Survive’s website to order a copy. Prices start at only $5!

i always anticipate to be surprised by reactions to our records. its interesting that this literally is the only place i have seen a large amount of negativity. as far as reviews, all of our other social media platforms as well as personal emails, this album has already received far more praise then any of other previous albums and its not even out yet. so i tend to focus on that. i think this site speaks to a very specific listener and if AP fans in general are not feeling it maybe that says something about our relationship to that type of listener these days. we have definitely grown as a band on each album and i do think that we will never be a band that puts out an album that is easy for everyone to love off the bat. so honestly, it doesnt matter that there is negativity about it, we’d prefer hate to indifference any day. strong reactions define good art in my opinion. but what do i know.

anyway, in reference to the downloading issue being debated by a few people. our position on it really hasnt changed all that much. we have always felt that if someone truly cant afford to buy our albums then we would always rather them download it illegally as opposed to not having it. we were more apt to say ” go fucking download it” because we were in situations where a) we did not set the budgets b) because of said budgets we knew it was an impossibility that we would ever recoup the cost of the records and therefore never see money from record sales anyway c) we felt that there is a certain blame to be placed on the industry for the degradation of music as a commercial art form. d) we also always felt that albums were over priced. ask anyone who has come to see us live in the past 7 years how much we sold our albums for at our concerts… answer : $5. that is what we paid the labels for those records so essentially we made nothing on all of those as well.
now it is slightly different. we sustained ourselves financially throughout the writing process, we have paid or will be paying for the recording, the promotion,(videos, etc) the manufacturing and now are going to be paying for over seas travel that normally would come out of a tour support fund.
so we made the download $5. we know you can get that download for free, in essence we are saying, we would appreciate you supporting us by buying the $5 download. a coffee at starbucks can cost up to that much. a beer at a bar often costs that much. put it in perspective and tell me that an album of 11 songs is worth less than 1 coffee or 1 beer and ill smack you in the face. its just ignorant. if you are someone who lives month to month and saves every penny to pay for your rent and bills then fine. steal it instead, we wont hold it against you. we never have and never will. we are fighting for our livelihood in the most honest way we know how. the bottomline is if we are not supported then we will have to change how we do things or potentially not do it anymore. that is the bottomline for any musician who is self sustaining. many people dont understand the costs of doing what we do. they think that if you play to 1000 people a night in the states then you live in a mansion. most of our band still rents small shitty apartments. half of us dont even own cars. we are and always will be a working class band. we arent asking for handouts or pity. we have never wanted to be millionaire rockstars. all we have ever wanted was to do what we love for a living and we have done that for 8 years now and hope to continue to do that. and thats all folks. xoxo

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