Hi V.,
thank you very much!
Actually I do agree, of course, that sound samples are the best thing to offer in order to make a decision whether to buy a record or not, but there are things going on here that are not rational at all anymore. If you provide MP3s - or as now only allowed streams - you have to pay a lot of money to GEMA (like SABAM) in case it’s any registered material. But how can I always be sure a 100% ? I can’t and I don’t have the time to inverstigate that with every record. There are many lawyers around now checking all the web sites and if they find anything, it costs you already a lot of money… so all in all, I can’t afford running any risk and paying for the streams is is nearly more than I can earn from the stuff. All of this is killing the small labels and mailorders, hooray to the majors, they made it!
So I suppose, that I will only put streams up the site when I know that I do not run a risk and that can only happen if I deal with the artists directly.