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MP3 Quickies On The Edge Of Forever
bbt wrote in to tell us about
Gnute,
Rolls wrote in to tell us about the Tabloids' Web site promoting Napster mischief, and
Jeckle shared the Washington Post article about the Canadian band, Kittie, using the web to propagate their music. I love Kittie.
Oscarfish wrote in about a fantastic "Wall Street Journal article at ZDNet reporting that Napster executives are in meetings with record label executives.
This here is a good one. KingOfBongo told us about the Economist article that suggests "...the music industry could easily build a closed commercial news distribution service superior to rogue freeware Napster."
You are correct. The problem is that we need people topush technology away from things which the RIAA can control, i.e. Napster and mp3.com. I have a few ideas:
(1) Freeware music distribution programs like Gnutella, but that can DL Napster file. These programs should not share file to Napster, just search Napster for files to DL.
(2) More agressive free music distribution systems for non-industry bands. Example: You sing up to recieve an mp3 from some random band in your email every day. the email would contain various information about the band (like how to order their CDs and/or how to support them).
(3) Add an HTML option to mp3 tags, i.e. the players would have a little button whhich the user could push to launch a web page. This web page would contain information about the artist, song lyrics, begging for people to give the artist money, and advertising (if the artist would want to sell advertising in their songs).
Anyway, the point is we just need to make it easy for people to abandon the industry and go directly to the artist.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Creating newsgroups is easy though (Deleteing them is, too.) News server admins tend to get pissed off if you do it without following the protocol, but creating the hiearchy initially is quite feasible. There are already about 80 MP3 newsgroups on the news server I use (None related to any specific band though.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Gentlemen, we fought this fight in radio decades ago.
The result? The recording industry lost all their lawsuits to prevent people from playing songs on the air, and got small royalties.
So Napster will end up paying a token fee to the record companies, and just like cassette-taping off the radio helped artists in the past, mp3s will continue to help artists in the future.
It's a win. As long as Napster gets to carry all the music and makes enough profit to stay in business, it's an effing win.
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What is really needed is something half way between Napster and the established music industry.
There was actually a really interesting thread on /. a few days ago, it never made it to the front page and now has about 15 comments...
It is about an article by Courtney Love (worth reading) on Salon . From what she says it sounds like pretty much anything would be better than the current Music Biz...
~ppppppppö
1) With the rise of MP3 sharing programs like Napster and Gnutella, labels and bands are worried about losing control of their music. Metallica and Dr Dre are the two most prominent critics. Others, like Limp Bizkit and Chuck D are very much in favor of Napster and its ilk. I was wondering how the members of Fugazi felt about the rise of MP3 music. Do you support the trading of songs? Any reservations about it?
1.re: napster, MP3's etc. ---we don't have any real strong feelings about it mainly because we are kind of low tech - as far as i'm concerned, i'm glad people have access to the music. to me its like radio freed from the dictatorship of the programmers - as far as trading files, to us its just like trading tapes - as long as people aren't trying to profit off it its totally cool with us.
Having read numerous articles on the subject, I see repeated that many bands and labels claim that CDs cost $16 because running a record label is very expensive. I believe Lars Ulrich of Metallica stated, "For every one successful band, you have nine that flop and cost the record company a lot of money." Yet bands like Fugazi and the Dischord label can sell CDs for less than $10, and are apparently very successful. What makes Dischord able to sell a Fugazi CD so inexpensively, when I have to shell out $16 for the latest pop album? Are the labels lying to conceal a huge profit-making machine, or are the dynamics different between a small indie label and a larger corporate one.
majors are into profit maximization - that is not our primary concern. we want to make our music accessible to as many people as possible, thus the low price. making a CD costs about $2 so you can do the math to figure out the degree to which the majors are gouging people to pay off all their bloated CEOs, promotion budgets, and inflated production costs.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
They could change it to 10 seconds of Eminem... I believe the law allows for up to 10 seconds of sampling legally.
You've mistaken me for someone else. I don't have gigabytes of MP3s that I've hoarded from around the world. I've got maybe 10 or 20, about half of which I intend to delete because I don't like them.
I only download MP3's of songs I'm genuinely interested in purchasing, provided I like them, or for which I've been unable to find the physical media for. For instance, I've recently developed a taste for Devo, and (if I can find them in stores these days), I'll likely be purchasing their work. On top of that, I have several tracks off of the NIN/David Bowie collaboration "The Odd Couple" which I haven't been able to find in stores ANYWHERE. (Where can I get all of the remixes of "I'm Afraid of Americans"? I don't like the MP3s -- I want the CD, but I can't have it becuase nobody is willing to sell it to me because it's not popular enough to carry the overblown price tag they want to put on it.)
More to the point, though, I was NOT trying to justify copyright infringement. Rather, I was trying to point out why things are the way they are (CDs are too expensive and choice is unduly restricted due to an overreaching copyright monopoly and a naturally inflexible demand).
If copyright worked the way it's supposed to work, (namely, limited copyright term) I should be able to purchase Devo CDs from the late 70s from anybody that cares to press them. But, due to the huge term assigned to copyright these days, even my great-grandchildren may not be able to do so. They'll have to rely on whichever company which owns the rights to Devo's music and their own desires for pressing albums. And in the meantime, I'll have to pay the same retail price for Devo albums today that I'd pay for current artists, because that's the way monopolistic pricing works. There's "one price", and if demand is zero at that price, no units ship.
I think a big step forward would be to add an "untended works" clause to copyright, which would put any work which is not actively being commercially exploited for a certain period of time into the public domain. That would make the classic gaming community happy, as well as purveyors of less-than-mainstream works, as many of these works that are currently "lost" due to copyright issues would then fall into the public domain.
Still, the term on copyright is far too long. It should be no longer than about 20 years, tops. Long copyrights deter advancement of the art, and encourage corporate recycling.
Bringing up health-care in a forum that's discussing copyright is a non-sequitor. I personally have health insurance, and I'm young and healthy. So, I naturally don't need to worry as much. Nonetheless, this isn't the discussion for it.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Alright, I like the free distribution of music. I use it for good and responsibly, and I am disgusted with the mentality that we have to live life by the lowest common denominator: People who pirate music that they would have otherwise bought. In society, this happens in a lot of circumstances. We need traffic lights because we would all demand the right of way. We have to wait in line to buy food because we can't trust anyone to throw the correct amount of money into a basket. This is the motherfucking Internet, and there is an ever expanding amount of people who find their way to download mp3s. If we lived our life by the lowest common denominator, we'd be living a lot lower than we would in our society, as our homeland cultures don't define the status quo here. Having said all that shit, I feel I must point out an interesting way to damage people who pirate mp3s, though I hope it doesn't happen. If people recorded mp3s at 5% of what it would take for the audio to get clipped (max volume), people who play the music would turn up their speakers to listen to the mp3. With the song being 85% done, crank up the volume in your mp3 to 100%. This will blow people's eardrums, headphones and speakers up and out. Of course, this would only exist in an arms race situation, because software would start checking for big jumps in volume, and warn users after they've downloaded the file. Come to think of it, do mp3s have a footer in the file spec? It would be pretty good to be able to tell if a file is chopped off. It seems Napster is falling victim to mp3s devolving to the point where they're uselessly short with the ends cut off, as the downloads get cut short. Bottom line is, mp3s shouldn't play properly, or you should be able to check for the existence of a footer to tell if your mp3 is cut off.
Media inforcer finds the IP address of the users on Napster, based on the name of the files they are sharing. I don't know if NetPD does that or just reports the Napster username.
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EHC
Time to check some facts.
Napster is not publicly traded and does not have stockholders to answer to. If they did, this saga would have ended a long, long time before they had multiple, concurrent lawsuits piling up.
In Microsoft terms, RIAA is not playing "embrace and extend." Apparently you do not understand the meaning of that phrase, which refers to Microsoft's repeated obfuscation of open standards into proprietary ones which work with only Microsoft products. How you got that out of the RIAA situation is beyond me. All the pot in Mexico couldn't help me find a link between the two.
Wireless TCP/IP is an oxymoron, considering that wireless would seem to pertain to an entirely different layer of the OSI model (e.g.: one) than the TCP/IP suite. I'm still struggling to make the connection between TCP/IP radios, "pirate" radio (which, by the way, was basically legalized at the beginning of this year by that same pesky, greedy FCC that you speak so highly of), and government censorship. Again, it ain't happening.
Again with your "anti-trust" rant we see that you have little to no factual knowledge of the subject matter about which you are writing. The Big 5 record labels that are RIAA have existed for half a century without government prodding - and that harkens back to the 50s and 60s when there were literally no indie labels to speak of and they owned every avenue to distribute and publicize music available. If anything, the climate has gotten more competitive over the years, not less. All history aside, I fail to see how cooperating with Napster, RIAA, Napster and RIAA, Napster, RIAA, CuteMX, iMesh, and Scour combined would net them any sort of anti-trust violation. Perhaps you could elaborate more.
I guess what really annoys me about this post is how it got moderated up to 4 (and probably 5) for basically taking a bunch of buzzwords - "embrace and extend", "wireless TCP/IP" - injecting a healthy dose of anti-government sentiment, capitalizing some random and stigmatized words like KILL or FORCED, mixing them up, and praying for the best in terms of currying mod points.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I see a lot of (justified) bitching on Slashdot about people who just don't get it but hardly any support for the people who do get it.
So I'd like to throw a link out to the people at emusic who do get it. Music by well known artists, at a reasonable price, in the lovely non-proprietary mp3 format. These guys rock and deserve our support. Come on Slashdotters, put your money where your mouth is!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Pretty sure whoever submitted the trymedia link didn't read the "mandatory webuse agreement"... It's hilarious, but my favorite bit is
System Integrity
You may not take any action which imposes an unreasonable or disporportionately large load on the Site or Trymedia Systems' infrastructure.
Um, does that mean slashdotting is a no-no?:}
Michael Robertson (510) 428-9866
michael@thetabloids.com
Don't forget to tell his wife Tracy hello when you call.
Is that Gnute better be based out of some country that the RIAA can't even pronounce, let alone have heard of, or the RIAA isn't even going to bother with police and lawyers this time. They'll nuke it from orbit - only way to be sure. But it seems like it might be located in California. Even better! A RIAA executive with a chainsaw can go over there in person.
On a technical level, the site is very interesting, and very powerful. It uses Gnutella to transfer the underlying files, and has very few graphics. What does this mean? You could practically run this site on an old amiga with a 28.8 link. All it has to do is feed it's queries to Gnutella - it only delivers the front page and formats the search page.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Who was the research genius who thought up this brilliant earth shaking concept? Of COURSE the music industry could embrace digital distribution of their content, and because they're fuelled by so much capital, they could probably put together a really slick and well marketed system. People would flock to it.
But they haven't. They've been content with their high priced markups on CDs, and until now haven't really been pushed to do anything about that. Sure, distro channels like Napster encourage illegal distribution of copyrighted material, but legalities aside... I'm just glad it's giving the music industry a sufficient kick in the bloated backside to compel them to do something substantial in the way of innovation.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I'll be keeping track of the news while listening to my MP3 collection with XMMS. :^P
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
Personally, I think that a scheme where one pays x dollars to download y songs is better. With a time limit, one month might have more releases you like than the next, so you'd waste money on months you hardly used the service. I don't think it would work on a per song basis, because then they'd just charge some inflated rate just like they do now. (Remember when they said CDs would cost less after they had been around for a few years?)
it's green.
Oscarfish wrote in about a fantastic "Wall Street Journal article at ZDNet reporting that Napster executives are in meetings with record label executives.
Finally. Instead of suing, they're trying to work out a reasonable solution (or so it seems). This should be interesting.
This here is a good one. KingOfBongo told us about the Economist article that suggests "...the music industry could easily build a closed commercial news distribution service superior to rogue freeware Napster."
A closed commercial news distribution service? Anyway, a "legal" version of Napster and of distributing MP3s would be great, but since the software would now be under the control of the RIAA et al. instead of Napster, I see a potential for price gouging or other similar abuses. For example, "Napster 2 is now out in stores! Works just like the original Napster, but uses your credit card to ensure legality! Only $59.99!" But who knows, maybe that won't happen. Time will tell...
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Um, is it just me, or is their site terribly misguided? I mean, sure, they're against Napster/MP3 trading, and I think they're wrong (speaking as a musician myself, even), but I can respect that (not that that means I'm not going to mock them and call them idiots).
First off -- uh, is it just me, or are these people trying to parrot the Major Label line so they can get signed? I mean, really -- how many of us have downloaded anything by The Tabloids. Wait, don't answer that -- how many of us have HEARD of the Tabloids. Something tells me that Tabloid-piracy isn't high up on the list of napster-users. Hell, I got bored, so I fired up Napster and did a search for "tabloids". I found two tracks. One a Dennis Miller rant, the other a Bob Rivers novelty song. Whee, they've got a lot to worry about.
Two, check out the faqs... one of them, I'll take the liberty of posting here so you don't have to go and find it:
>>>>
CD prices are too high and I don't want to pay for songs that are crappy.
Simple economic theory will tell you that CD prices are not too high because people continue to buy them at that price. The only reason that CD prices are as high as they are is that that is what the market will bear. Maybe CD prices are, in fact, too high for you personally. Sure, that sucks. But the price of a Porsche is too high for lots of people, too and even though they'd like to have one, they can't just go and take one off the showroom floor. Perhaps the argument would be effective if there were no other ways for people to listen to music, but there are. There is the radio, there are stores that sell used CDs, there are web sites that auction used CDs and legitimtate sites that allow you to download individual songs for about a buck.
>>>>
OK, read the bit about used CDs again. Um, really -- when you get down to it, isn't it MUCH worse to buy a used CD than to download an album from Napster? In both instances the labels^wartists don't get jack, but with the used CD, not only do you just get the music, you get it in CD Quality AND you get the packaging/album art. Also, with Napster, there's a CHANCE that the downloader will go and actually BUY the album (apparently this happens less often than you'd think, according to the site, though, weird -- everyone _I_ know does buy the records, if anything, to free up HD space -- but I know that you CAN'T go by anecdote when proving things, so just leave that as an aside, eh?) -- but why would anyone later buy the CD NEW if they already have it USED? Doesn't especially seem well thought out, does it?
Thirdly, isn't that cute, they seem to think that artists actually get money from making and selling records! Isn't that adorable?! I'm not going to reiterate the whole argument here, because most of you have already heard it, but if you haven't, check out "The Trouble With Music" by Steve "Record Producin' Guy Who Had a Wesley Willis Song Written About Him" Albini (BTW, the "I hate Christians" shirt the intro mentions that Negativland sells are actually "Christianity Is Stupid" shirts after the Negativland song from "Escape From Noise" -- it's not part of the original article), or that one Courtney Love thing that was adapted pretty much wholesale from Albini's rant -- Love's version can be found at Salon.com -- just poke around a bit if you haven't read it already.
Anyway, sure, think Napster's Satan or whatever, but for christ's sake, is it too much to ask for people to THINK THEIR ARGUMENTS THROUGH FIRST?! AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT?
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"Music is music, but anarchy is stupid." -- Eli Armen-Van Horn
I've found some weird and obscure shit on Napster. I've tried to fill scratched songs from my Cd's before, and sometimes I'd have to try a few days in a row, but did end up finding it.
You're obviously just not a user of Napster. Really. It's numbers! CDDB.com lists about 500,000 albums with 400 new ones a day. EVERYONE in the world with EVERY album in the world just isn't on Napster. Let alone the same holy hour that you got on that one time. What's wrong, couldn't you find that Hanson Bootleg song that they played at your birthday? Why am I even arguing with someone that mentions 18-25 group as a stereotype. Besides 14-21 is a much more accurate range. Let alone argue with Signal 11. Sigh, I knew I shouldn't have gone in to work today.
Oh, and one last thing, most of the music is held by individual users, not mp3 servers, not universities, and not napster (as you seemed to mention). The average user has 100 - 150 songs. And they make up the bulk of all Napster listings. No shit! Another power-in-numbers thing.
Rader
They are not publicly traded but they do have stockfolders to answer to. Napster is a privately held company, with private stock holders (several in fact), not the least of which is a large VC (Hummer Winblad) that is Chaired by a lawyer that used to work for the record industry. Does this mean Napster will settle with the RIAA? Possibly, given that Napster is a business, it has no revenue model presently and its shareholders, the people that pay Napsters bills are going to demand, if they havent already that Napster start making some money - so they can get a return on their investment. Now, given that Napsters largest investor is a VC with connections to the record industry it stands to reason that Napster will try to work out some amicable arrangement with the labels (RIAA). Its anyones guess if it will happen. mp3.com settled for a very similiar reason: Its good for business.
So, make no mistake, Napster is a business first and last. Its not an open source project. Its not a revolution. Its a business. NApsters marketing people can say what they want. They can claim they are a revolution. They can say they are here to save the world, or whatever they want you to hear. But ultimately at the end of the day, they have to pay their employees and answer to their shareholders just like any other business.
They have no revenue stream presently so they are absolutely at the mercy of their investors (also refered to as stock holders... thats what investors buy, stock in a privately held company) or they won't get anymore money from those investors. They have to do something, settle, create a new model or sometthing to make money, or they will simply go out of business. Keep in mind that even if Napster wins their lawsuit, they have to change something about their current model because they can't make any money at all doing what they are doing now. No business can survive without revenue.
Again with your "anti-trust" rant we see that you have little to no factual knowledge of the subject matter about which you are writing. The Big 5 record labels that are RIAA have existed for half a century without government prodding - and that harkens back to the 50s and 60s when there were literally no indie labels to speak of and they owned every avenue to distribute and publicize music available. If anything, the climate has gotten more competitive over the years, not less.
Actually, all the major labels were recently found to be engaging in illegal price fixing of CDs. Hardly a competitive climate when your so called competitors agree not to under cut your prices and instead illegally collude to keep prices at an artifically high level. Competition exists in markets without price fixing. The CD market was hardly competitive by anyones measure.
--
Python
Python
It's quite simple, actually:
They propose to take a song, and splice inane garbage into the middle of it.
In devious fashion, I've come up with a plan to foil these would-be saboteurs:
I propose that in the middle of that "Charlton Heston" speech in the middle of my Dr. Dre "Slap Dat Bitch Ho" MP3, we place snippets of Metallica!
Not ONLY does it demoralize those who believe Chuck's fiery rhetoric, it also fools Lars! Imagine, hundreds of Metallica sound clips, hidden in Charlton Heston speeches in Back Street Boys songs. Take that, Lars and crew!
Waiting to be sued,
Ronnie
The press on this subject makes me sick. Napster settling with the RIAA is *BAD*, for us, and the artists.
Does anyone REALLY think the Record Companies/RIAA are trying to KILL Napster? Even if they could do so, another would follow in its place, so the answer is no. Music is going digital, and the carpetbagging middlemen in the music distribution business cannon stop it. In Microsoft terms, the RIAA is playing "Embrace and Extend".
However, if the RIAA can abuse the court systems to force mp3.com and Napster to the table, then they are in a position to negotiate. MP3.com and Napster are corporations with stockholders to answer to... if they are offered partnerships with the RIAA, they'll accept. The trick is for the RIAA to do this without providing evidence that they are colluding and violating Anti-Trust laws.
Napster can offer musicians a way out of indentured slavery. It can change the music industry forever, and free artists from writing MTV-specific music which promotes brands and consumerism. We can get "albums" that were not churned out like some Metallica Load/Re-load episode, to satisfy "contractual obligations".
Furthermore, when wireless TCP/IP goes into EVERY radio, we can if we choose give a big middle finger to the US Gov't and the FCC, and tune into offshore "pirate radio" in such numbers that they will be FORCED into more narrowly defining their roles into guarding the people's bandwidth, rather than auctioning it off for-profit and acting as censors.
MP3.com's already making deals with the RIAA. If we lose Napster, we are handed a setback. The best possible outcome for us is if we support the free music distributers, and if Napster, etc. make deals DIRECTLY with the ARTISTS themselves.
alt.mp3.*. Want the latest metallica, go to alt.mp3.metallica. Want the latest Perl Jam? alt.mp3.perljam. Want the latest Live Goat Porn? alt.mp3.livegoatporn.
The usenet store and forward method allows for truly anonymous posting. There is no central company to attack (Much like gnutilla) and there's no way for the poster to tell who's downloading the data.
Moreover, an anonymous poster could establish a GPG key he could use to sign his postings, establish it on a keyserver somewhere, and manage to be an anonymous poster with a reputation. A web of trust will eventually be necessary given the countertactics the industry is currently developing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't see how the industry could possibly create something competitive... most people are cheap. They will put up with a lot of inconvenience to save a few dollars. And Napster is very little inconvenience, compared to previous alternatives to coughing up retail for a CD.
Napster will be improved upon. Either they will spend some of their VC money on something other than legal fees, or something better will appear and replace it. I don't see what the existing industry has to offer that fans couldn't offer to each other with a little work--better quality files, a good indexing system, info from liner notes? And if artists got involved in the new distribution systems, that doesn't really leave any place for the RIAA members.
The Internet has profound implications for the notion of "intellectual property". Many laws are not at all enforceable anymore, and most people cannot convince themselves that there is any harm in freely copying information meant for mass consumption in the first place. The recording industry will of course fight the changes, but ultimately they cannot stop the tide.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
http://www.stopnapster.com/artists.html Sean "Puffy" Combs says Napster is blatant "abuse." Well, then I'll stop using Napster right away. But next time someone pisses me off in a bar I'm springing my Glock, cause you know, thats ok.
What if someone set up a system that let each user distribute digital signatures for given combinations of filenames and data? Then each user could distribute a list to help people find real copies of songs, and then sign the entire list. A single malicious user (someone trying to break the trading system) might report that his/her copy of a file matched the correct signature for the file, but the bogus file wouldn't get very far. dissemination of poor-quality copies of songs would also decrease.
Something similar to Advogato.org's "trust metrics" might be useful for deciding whose list of signatures to trust.
Discl: Just thought I'd toss this idea out. I'm not actually knowledgable about digital signatures, and I only skimmed advogato's page and don't know that much about graph theory.
The shareholder is always right.