April 18th, 2013 
Adrian Garza 
Trevor Strnad of The Black Dahlia Murder recently took to his band’s Facebook page to detail some of the issues of piracy with fans of his band and how they affect their personal livelihood.
Some things just need to be said and addressed, and while Strnad brings a strong point and piracy is one of the biggest issues plaguing the industry, there’s no need for one to talk down to their fans. We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not he crossed any lines with what he had said.
As of now, both of the posts that had made have since been taken down for obvious reasons, but here’s what we’ve obtained from Lambgoat:
HOW IT IS: We have almost 1,000,000 likes on here. Will we sell 1,000,000 copies of Everblack? Fuck no! The reality is that 98% of you ‘fans’ are going to be content to steal the album and in turn we get nothing… a laughable fragment of the ‘likers’ will actually be cool and pick it up.
“It’s not about the money, the reality is that we get chump change for CD (and digital) sales BUT WE NEED TO SELL THEM TO EXIST! If there are no record sales the music industry will stomp us out like a bug and it’ll be completely over… the sales show them ‘how relevant’ we are.
If you don’t buy the albums they’ll determine that there is no demand for TBDM, and there won’t be any more awesome concerts, tours, dvds nor new music. Sure we understand you may really love our tunes, but if you haven’t paid for them, it’s a total loss to us… all the love in the world isn’t going to mean shit in the end. We need your support and every two years I am going to ask the same thing of you and make the same goddamn argument.
Think of it like a vote… If you’d like to see us continue our reign of terror over the metal world, you’ll pick up a copy of “Everblack”. It’s as simple as that. – Trevor on behalf of The Black Dahlia Murder
Post 2: Clarification for the alarmists: I’m not saying you who come to the shows and buy merch aren’t appreciated… what I am saying is that we need to sell this album because each sale means something in the grand scheme of things. WE ARENT FUCKING RICH. I don’t really care if we see ANY money from the preorders or any CD sale AT ALL… like I said…. it’s literally a fraction of a penny per album… you can fucking keep it.
WE MAKE THE MONEY WE SURVIVE ON FROM YOU ALL COMING TO THE SHOWS AND BUYING TICKETS AND MERCH. We are eternally grateful for your support in this manner. This is absolutely true and has not changed. What I am saying is that we need BOTH kinds of support… they are both integral. All I was trying to do is to rally the troops… to help them understand that selling the copies IS important to us… it was not an attempt to alienate anyone. I should have worded things better…. yes.
For those of you saying that the industry is operating on a completely archaic model… I completely wholeheartedly agree… but until things change this is how it is.
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I don’t think that he is talking down to us (their fans) at all. I believe that he is shedding light on the subject that people refuse to see to save money for something else. It’s good to buy the actual album, I continue to buy physical albums because I want my kids to know what I listened to in the future. If you think that you’ll be find having all your music saved on your computer, you are stupid. Hard-drives have life spans…. The other point I want to say is that when you buy the actual album you are definitely showing the record label you want more from them and the purchase actually gives profit to the label to produce the damn records.
Has he ever considered the possibility that not every fan on the page has had a chance to purchase the album? That would account for a huge portion of “lost sales”