I’m writing this letter in response to the “Issue” that the band Nuclear Death Terror have been highly active in creating. It’s about my site that I created which is www.cahdownloads.com. Let me first explain. I created the site in response to customers asking me if I knew of anywhere to buy mp3’s by punk bands other than Itunes. I thought about it for along time and decided to take action and took pretty much the last of CAH Records money and paid a team of developers thousands of dollars to create the cahdownloads site. It took over a year to develop and countless hours and headaches for me. I thought I was doing a great thing and couldn’t wait for the site to appear online to give people the option of supporting bands digitally for the first time ever without corporations being involved. YES people do buy mp3s and the amount of people who buy them increases every month and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
I got the site launched and started looking for bands and their music to sell. Right away a lot of interest was generated after I CONTACTED bands and labels. Let’s get this straight. The point of a record label is to distribute items and collect royalties for their bands. Logically rather than contacting every single band on earth I thought it would be much quicker for me to contact the labels and have them get permission from the bands to sell their songs online. Then instead of having to pay each band and taking a ton of time to do it, I could pay each label for what songs / albums sold and they could pass the cash onto the band. Now this worked out great besides a few bands not getting notified but things got cleared up with no problems in anyway.
The problem begins with NDT. Fight For Your Mind Records gave me permission after I contacted them, to post Nuclear Death Terrors CD on the site. It was and still is a brand new site and their album sold a whopping 2 or maybe 3 copies digitally and went the top seller list. Seeing as how people where buying their music I contacted them about posting the rest of their music on the site fully thinking they had been contacted and gave permission to post their first CD on the site. Evidently Flox from FFYM Records didn’t contact them and I got an email back from NDT with this exact quote?
“Hi Nick. I just looked at your site and apparently our record is your top selling download. How much money do you owe us?
I can only presume that Flox gave you permission?”
They then asked me to take off the CD which I immediately did with the complete understanding and respect that they didn’t want their songs being sold digitally. I then offered to pay them for their royalties just as if a CD or Record had sold and thought the problem had been resolve.
Flox said he would clear the matter up and apologized to me. To this date Flox has not publicly cleared it up and my name has been dragged into the mud because of something I had no control over.
On August 14th I received this message from Flox
“I’ll get back to you by the end of the week... (About this situation)
I’m working 12 hour shifts right now and have no internet access almost...
I hope this will end in good terms for everyone...
later Flox
sorry this has gone so far…”
I also found this response on NDT’s myspace page from Flox
“I’m the person responsible for this... if there are any rocks to be thrown at I guess I deserve them... this will be resolved in the next days…”
So why am I in the middle of this? I’m not calling Flox out but I think he could have done way, way more to stop and resolve this. I haven’t seen one post from him asking NDT to stop posting lies and rumors about me and that sucks because he seems like a good guy and I’ve been dealing with him for along time.
After awhile of NDT accusing me of being a rip off I told them that I had nothing to do with their misunderstanding with the label and that no longer was going to deal with them on this issue, but that I would continue to deal with Flox until it was sorted out. Unfortunately, flox didn’t follow through so I still have nuclear death terror pissed at me.
In the column in Maximum Rock and Roll Magazine and all over the net, that NDT posted you can read the letter I sent to them. So if I was into ripping them off why would I send them an email asking for more of their music with the terms and details of how they’d get paid. I don’t understand their stance on this issue. I fully respect them for not wanting to sell their songs digitally. That’s great, they can give away all their songs and more power to them. But what really irks me is the fact that they started this whole internet wide campaign to destroy my reputation and name in the punk scene when all I’ve ever done is try to run the most honest label and operation I ever could. I’ve dedicated years to this scene and it’s really depressing to witness what this scene has come to over the years with the shit-talking and false rumor spreading.
On a side note I’d like to personally thank NDT for in a small way spreading their internet filth all over the net because for a few weeks my sales spiked on that site and I made more in a few weeks than I had made in the previous 6 months which was still very little money but it helped. I’ll probably never even break even on this site. So please feel free to spread your false rumors and lies about me as it has provided advertising that has saved me a ton of money. So I thank NDT for that. I just wish they wouldn’t have gotten all “Tough Guy” on me and tried to be reasonable and understanding of the situation like I was. Read the thread at
