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Napster Spurs CD Sales; Gets Sued Again Anyway
hammy writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald is running this story about the results of a survey demonstrating that users of music downloading programs (ala Napster etc) actually buy more music. I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to any of the Slashdot crowd but it's nice to see a formal survey that supports our intuition. Makes many of the RIAA arguments ring a little hollow." Meanwhile, Napster is being sued yet again. That's gratitude for you.
If it weren't for napster, I certainly would have bought more music.
I hate to break it to you but a musician does not live from the music he sells. A musician lives off revenues from live shows and merchandise
Up to a certain level this may be correct. I however, make a coniderable bit more from the sales of my cd's (5 in all, and I will not men tion them or my name -posting ac-) than I do from touring (and shirt sales are a joke).
I don't make good money (I reported around 35K US last year) but I make enough to keep my house, van and enough to eat and not worry too much about where money comes from. MP3's being freely available has without question cut into my income. My music is generaly bought by people between the ages of 12 and 25 and beleive me, I feel it daily.
something to think about.
-WP
I've heard various times the argument that using Napster tends to increase the amount of CDs that one actually buys. It seems to me that this argument is meant to answer the RIAA's accusations that Napster cuts into its profits, as if to say we can coexist with the recording industry as it is and they have nothing to worry about. I think this is a faulty argument. I think they have every reason to be afraid of something like Napster. It may be that using Napster makes us want to buy more CDs, but that's only because we still use CD players. As technologies which use digital audio file formats become more widespread, we won't keep using technologies which limit us the way CDs do (for example, the limited amount of space a single disc offers), so we'll just use the files we download. And that's as it should be--we use the better technology as it advances. But looking to the future isn't the best reason the argument at hand isn't a valid one. The most important reason is that when we say the recording industry has nothing to worry about from services like Napster, we're tacitly acknowledging that the profits of the companies in the RIAA are somehow important. They aren't. We have no moral obligation to allay the fears of large companies who like to indulge in monopolistic business practices while refusing to provide consumers with what they really want. The public obviously wants online distribution of music on a per-song basis. Napster proves that. The recording industry refuses to provide us with a viable option for doing so because they fear for their profits. Instead, they lobby Congress for more draconian copyright restrictions and enforce their monopoly through strong-arming manufacturers of sound equipment to meet their security requirements. In a free market economy, companies that don't provide the public with something the public is willing to pay for become extinct. The RIAA knows its traditional distribution system is fast becoming obsolete. IMHO, online distribution could well be its death. The industry can either adapt or go the way of the dinosaur. We have no obligation to protect that industry by saying it has nothing to fear from new technologies. Its profits are not sacrosanct. Deference to those profits is foolish.
It's too bad for them that they can't sue Usenet as a whole -- alt.binaries.sounds.radio.oldtime is where the action is, so far as old time radio is concerned. My guess is they see Napster as an easy target, a way to boost their ailing stock, and maybe make a few bucks in "damages."
Personally, the number of CDs I've bought has
gone down since I started using Napster. Why
should I pay out good money when I've got the
music already?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Of course, this _is_ almost completely hit-and-run tactics and has been since around 1990: release, go multiplatinum within a year, discard, repeat. It hugely drives RIAA label sales, but it doesn't make any new artist careers. Britney Spears is the Warrant ('Cherry Pie') of 2001. Warrant went double platinum back in '91 with that- and in ten years has not added another platinum to that total. TEN years with no further sales, after double platinum in the first year. The only difference between that and Britney is that these days, sales are up so much that Britney goes _13_ platinums in the same time period... and then, nothing, when they tire of her or when she starts demanding a career, or gets too old (say, 20...).
It's sick. But it sure as hell sells a lot of records. There is no way to sanely argue that sales are down.
I'm currently studying longterm sales in the music business, and here's the deal: the bands being sought after to sell beer and things (Bob Seger, et al), are the A-List of twenty years ago.
Around ten years ago, the music business shifted to all-out A-List promotion rather than any attempt at career building. This is when you began to see bands that came out, did double platinum in less than a year, and then _vanished_. I don't mean broke up- the record remains in the catalog whether the band's still around or not, but when the record industry does this, they do incredible volume for a very brief time and when they stop promoting, NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ANY MORE.
Beer companies don't want to use bands like that to sell beer, either. They want Bob Seger or Brooce- catalog sellers from at least 20 years ago.
What the A-List artists are these days is processed stuff- 'N Sync etc. The RIAA _can't_ lose control of artists like that, because history shows that when the RIAA quits pushing that kind of act, the sales STOP. With real bands, the sales continue- sometimes in a big way, for what's called a 'catalog killer' album. There are no such albums being made these days, and that's intentional.
This is because dealing with always new and inexperienced artists means no nasty skepticism about deal terms, no griping about contracts, no questions about what's recoupable expenses: using only new inexperienced artists means they can be contractually hosed, wrung out until all the money is squeezed out, and then dropped. If the RIAA labels had to maintain careers they wouldn't earn as much relative to the artist because the artist would develop savvy and clout and ability to negotiate contracts. The RIAA needs _virgin_ artists with no savvy or clout in order to get away with the margins it needs to survive.
It needs these margins because it's viciously squeezed by rack jobbers and independent promotion- both of which have been consolidating, bigtime. The RIAA doesn't _keep_ its money- it's gotta pay a LOT of 'protection' to independent promotion, which controls radio. It's gotta bribe people to get CDs placed in Wal-Mart, when there's only 2 slots available and they're being viciously fought over. You can see why the RIAA doesn't dare allow genuine careers to develop- it needs puppet artists to manipulate and discard. They come cheaper.
The trouble is, once you quit pulling the strings, the puppet artists collapse, and sales completely stop. When you pick an act and a single and a video specifically because it's horrible enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and then you dump lots of it on the market, you can move a lot of units to half-interested people- then when you have to rely on the value of the material for back catalog sales, the sales absolutely fall off a cliff because nobody really wants to hear it- it's fake.
And this is shown by the tendency of commercial music (the beer manufacturers and so on) to want guys like Bob Seger in preference to fake A-List pop stars that have sold three times as many records as Seger ever did. They know that the fake stuff will stop selling the instant the RIAA label stops pushing- and they need more appeal than that, to sell beer. They know that the RIAA is operating on a 'push' basis and can't or won't invest in developing artists that people _want_ to hear.
And THAT is what the RIAA is so scared of.
Do the math: it's all a matter of public record. You can get the information online, about sales of platinum and gold albums, and look at the sales curves before and after 1990. That seems to be roughly the dividing point.
Aren't most of these in the public domain anyway? How can MediaBay sue for "copyright" infringement when they sell public domain radio programs?
Maybe I'm wrong here, but I think this is a much bigger problem than just the CD sales. If people have control over what they listen to, when they listen to it, then radio has to do something drastic to get people to listen to the advertisments.
Just my humble opinion.
My modem's only got 11 speeds! Where do you get one of these 33 speed modems?? I want one!! The geekiness of having 33 speeds, compared to a puny 11, would be incredible, even if the modem itself could only be running at 9600, from his description.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
However, 10 CDs at 400MB/CD (raw audio) would be about 4 GB. It would even take days to download one CD over a modem. Three cheers for mp3 compression, eh?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
They already did. Even in Canada
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
After scanning a list of albums released in one particular genre during a given week (Releases on Jun 05 2001), I have come to the sad conclusion that American radio is too homogenized, corporate and rigidly programmed to play between 50-75% of what's out there. It is often literally impossible to sample or be exposed to "new" music (new to me, anyway) simply because most of it never receives a single airing.
Thankfully, a few adventurous radio stations like KPIG and XPN exist in college towns and smaller markets and they continue to play little known artists (admittedly within their format) and anything that strikes their fancy. And I'm grateful that many of these last remaining outposts of musical education allow me to broaden my horizons by streaming their signal over the web.
Services like Napster allow piracy, of course, but most people enter and leave that greedy stage of their lives fairly quickly because they eventually have better things to do. Napster's more useful and subtle killer feature is the ability to sample any song before buying it. Why didn't the music industry give consumers the ability to do this years ago? I've seen some pilot systems but nothing that caught on in most shops I visited over the years.
Therefore, Napster helps introduce prospective music buyers to bands they have only heard about by word of mouth or while visiting a friend with different musical tastes. "What's this band Dead Can Dance all about? How should I know? They never get much airplay on the radio."
For example, one of my favorite guitarists Johnny A. covered the song "Memphis" during a show a few weeks ago and since then I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The song was a bit before my time so I asked my father who made it famous and he told me Lonnie Mack. Seeing a shrinkwrapped CD in a music store didn't do much for me so I signed onto Napster and downloaded the song. "Hey, this is great!" I thought to myself after listening to the MP3 file, and after returning to the store I'm now the proud owner of "Memphis Wham".
There's a sale the music industry would have never made if it weren't for my ability to try before I buy. So these lawsuits are yet another example of modern culture's tendency to be penny wise and pound foolish.
Ever since I could download MP3 files and burn them to cd, I have never bought another cd. I know this is true of many friends as well. Some of the local cd shops have closed down in the city. No one goes in there anymore. There is no point in buying music if I can get it for free. Right or wrong, I really don't care one way or another. I do know by the laws of the land as they are right now I am doing something wrong. But I don't care. I get free music and don't waste money on CDs anymore. And I don't use napster anymore because they are blocking some things I want. So I use one of the other 2359278435923845908345 sharing programs out there and I can ALWAYS get what I want. Never had a problem. The RIAA has lost big time. :)
IRNI
The survey isn't talking about Napster, it's talking about downloading sample tracks off of cd's, ala mp3.com.
And yes, I've bought CDs because I've listened to a track or two on it, but I've never bought a CD because I heard a track on Napster.
If I'm using Napster why would I buy a CD when it's so much easier and cheaper just to download it? In the time it'd take me to drive out to the music store and buy the CD I've "sampled" off of Napster, I can just download the entire thing in about half the time.
In fact I don't even use CDs anymore. If I ever do buy a CD the first thing I do is rip it into mp3's and toss the CD into storage.
Mp3's are easier to transport(I can ftp them over to work), easier to play(everything is on one harddrive, never need to switch disks) and sound the same to me.
I don't use mp3's to rip people off, it's just a more conveniant format for me. And it just happens to be more conventiant to use the internet to get those mp3's than it is to use some 1950's system of record store distribution.
And until the records labels "get" that, they can sue anyone they want but they'll still won't get my business.
from c|net: "MediaBay, a seller of old-time radio shows over the Internet and in retail stores, on Thursday said it filed a complaint against Napster, the popular song-swap service, charging copyright infringement and unfair competition."
they filed a complaint, not a suit.
The subject is in jest and it is parodying the "study" with the realization that if you asked 100 drunks whether drinking diminishes their driving abilities, approximately 99 would say that it actually makes them better drivers. A study that asks people to give statements about their behaviours is founded in folly because people in general are liars. People will lie to try to push their views. People will lie to defend their position. People will lie just for fun.
The only way such a study could have any relevance is if the samples were totally unaware of being monitored.
So you "saw a group [you] liked" on TV, downloaded some music, then owed it all to Napster? How's that? Why did you like this band if you weren't already familiar with their music? Does Napster deserve 100% of the credit for you showing up and giving this band money?
Well, yes. I'm not in the habit of going to a live show because somebody can put together 20 minutes of decent material on TV. While the TV show turned me on to them, it wasn't enough for me to run out and blow a cool 20 on a CD. So, Napster was the missing link. Without it, no CD sales, no show sales-give me 6 mos. without seeing 'em again and I might forget who they were altogether-and this is not the kind of group you'll find on MTV. Rather obscure. Additionally, I've got a 3 year old kid, so going out is rather a pain in the ass, I won't do it on the spur of the moment.
cd they downloaded. Sounds to me it was *you* who were irrational here. You tell them you napstered their songs and still bought the cds and went to concert, and they're supposed to jump up and down, hail napster? Because of (4) people?
Not all the songs were available on Napster, but I'd have purchased the CD nonetheless. I don't have any kind of silly idea that musicians should go unpaid-not surprising seeing as how music was my career before I found I could make considerably more as a sysadmin. As for the 4 people comment, well, it's 5 including me, and in a 200 seat hall, while not overwhelming, I would not call the numbers insignificant either. I would love to have a 2.5% raise. Beats the hell outta a poke in the eye with a sharp stick...
Regards,
ehintz
About 2 months ago I saw a group I liked on a Nationally televised show (name withheld to protect the guilty from pro-napster nastygrams). I subsequently hit Napster and downloaded several tracks. I liked 'em, so I found the groups website and found they were playing locally. I purposefully held off on purchasing the CDs so that I could get them at the local gig-ensuring more profit for the group. I also bought a shirt and brought 4 people with me. End result, the group grossed well over $100 between tix and merch. And were it not for the tracks on Napster, the whole thing would've been dead before it started.
After the gig, the members of the group came out and mingled with the audience. I mentioned to one of the members that our presence was due to Napster, she made a comment about Napster being evil. I followed up with an email to the group, specifically outlining precisely what happened and how much they made directly due to Napster. They just don't get it. They're too caught up in the concept that it's a violation of copyright to grok the fact that they are benefiting from it. The irrational fear that they are losing money is totally blinding them to the reality of the situation. You can lead a horse to water...
It's all about progress. Some people embrace it and thrive, others fear it and try to stop it. They seldom succeed, and often damage themselves in the process-although many never even figure this out.
Regards,
ehintz
First, I'd like to give a classic example of strongly correlated things with no causation.
Airconditioner useage is very strongly correlated with deaths by heatstroke. It's a very very strong correlation. In the past decade, almost nobody has died of heatstroke while airconditioner usage was low.
In this example, it is very easy to spot the third-variable effect: temperature. Nobody dies of heatstroke when it is cold outside. Also, nobody runs their airconditioner when it is cold. If it is 95 and humid out, many people will die of heatstroke. By the same token, everybody who is able will be running their airconditioner.
So, as you can see, it is very possible for two things to be correlated and not have a shred of causality between them either way. Now that that's done with, I'd like to talk about CD sales patterns amoung college students. There was a study done that quite thoughourly showed that there was a strong correlation between internet access at colleges and CD sales at nearby stores. The more internet access there was, the fewer CD's were sold.
Now, the study was done such that any possible third variable effects were tightly controlled. They compared entering freshmen classes to previous freshmen classes, and they compared classes against themselves (this years sophmores against last year's freshmen). To control any differences between these groups (this year's freshmen aren't into music, older students don't have as much free cash, etc), they also compared different universities against eachother, that as best the researchers could tell, differed only in how fast they rolled out Ethernet in the dorms. By trying very hard to control third-variable effects, the study could then claim to show causality.
The writeup of the study that I saw drew the conclusion that as more and more students got fast internet access, they became able to download their music from Napster, and therefore didn't need to buy CD's. However, a later study showed that students were buying more CDs than before. Now, we have to wonder, why did the earlier study fail?
The moral of the story is: yes, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but if you're careful with third variable effects, it can mean causation. Even so, be sure you choose the correct source of causality.
How to lie with statistics.
1) Choose a specific attribute.
2) Select two groups of people with that attribute.
3) Miraculously produce statistics correlating first group with second group.
People who download music are more likely to enjoy music than people who don't download music. People who buy CDs are more likely to enjoy music than people who don't buy CDs. Making the assertion that people who download music or more likely to buy CDs is asinine. Don't insult my intelligence. Even my PHP could have figured that one out!
People who buy dog food are more likely to take their dogs on walks in the park than people who don't buy dog food. BFD!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
People keep looking at the whole Napster debate as being about the people having some inherent right to listen to whatever music they want without having to pay those evil record companies.
That's not what it's about.
It's about the right of the creator of an artistic work to sell the product of their endeavor. Do I have the right to insist on being compensated for creating an album filled with musical works? Do I have the right to insist that if you don't want to pay for it, then you can't play my music? In this country (the U.S.), I do have that right.
It is the Napster users who trample on our rights!
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
... let's not fool ourselves.
I know many people who will never buy a CD again because they can get the music in mp3.
-jfedor
But, about a year ago I stopped buying CDs completely. I've also stopped buying DVDs and going to the movies -- mostly. It's hard, and I don't enjoy it. But, what I hate more than the loss of my music and my movies is putting more money in the coffers of the greedy RIAA and MPAA.
I appreciate wanting to protect your property, and appreciate wanting to make money from your intellectual property. But, I can't condone what they are doing to our culture (holding works in perpetual copyright so that if they ever become public domain, there won't be a copy or a way to distribute any more) and their strongarm tactics in a court of law.
-------------------------------------------------
Good points, all, but this survey may have some value yet. If anything, it demonstrates that Napster users do not altogether stop purchasing CDs. The additional datum of overall increasing record industry profits establishes that that industry is doing well. These two points together make it very difficult to claim that Napster has seriously or significantly harmed the record industry. Napster may in fact be harming the RIAA, but that harm appears to be almost negligible if one looks at the few relevant measurable quantities.
My wife and I have been sharing large numbers of songs via Napster and several other file sharing programs. The flow of songs continues undiminished, but tragically the flow of accompanying information has stopped. The most important part of Napster was the chat. I'd see people getting an obscure artist, and message them. Or they'd be so happy to find a particular song and they want to know where I had first heard of this. I developed several good friends from Napster, talking about music. But most importantly, we'd talk about similar artists to the one downloaded. "Oh, you like A? You're going to LOVE B!" In this way, my wife and I have introduced hundreds of people to hundreds of artists...and doubtless sold many, many CDs. (We've never had complete albums if they were currently available.)
Gnutella, AudioGalaxy and most of the remaining file sharing apps don't have this chat system. You have no way to use the most valuable part of file sharing, the taste of people whose taste matches your own. You can find what you already know, but you have no way to discover ones you don't.
In their quest to protect their current profits, the RIAA cost themselves many more future sales.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I'm not so hot on the value of the statistics, either, but they at least reveal
And I think your criticism goes to far.
In the first case, I certainly don't buy 100% of the albums from which I download tracks. Of course, many of them aren't available on any album, or any that I can find. Others, I decide after a couple listens I wasn't into it, and usually end up deleting the file to make room, or else JUST NOT LISTENING TO IT. Of course, I could always change my mind later and decide I liked it, in which case I probably would buy it. And frankly, since I think most industry product blows goats, and nothing I like is on the radio, because all radio sucks these days (except WFMU), Napster is (or was) the easiest way for me to check out bands I've heard about from friends. Whenever the music industry is firmly in control of the music scene as a whole, music stinks. 1989 > 1999, in this case. Anyone see the 2001 music awards thing on ABC the other night? Forget Napster, let's just murder the music execs for crimes against humanity. I need Napster, because the industry does a terrible job of connecting me with music I like.
In the second case, I think it's a sad admission if the RIAA labels are hurt in any measurable way by users who decide not to purchase music after hearing it and deciding it's shit. If your customers that unhappy with their purchases, you've got a problem bigger than Napster.
Finally, Napster's changed my buying habits in one important way; I can't think of anything I bought in the last year that I didn't first download from Napster, and buy once it became part of my regular listening. And most of the music that did become part of my regular listening, I eventually bought on CD. Sure, not all, but the only thing Napster's really done is become a more convenient replacement for taping stuff from friends while trying to find a place I can actually buy it or deciding whether its worth buying.
But all in all, you're overlooking the real meaning of this statistic; the vast majority of people do not view mp3s they get from Napster as a replacement for music purchases. Read that 10 times aloud, and tell me that statistic doesn't mean anything to the debate. It's disingenous to claim that they must all be lying.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Since radio sucks, I previously had no real exposure to great music. Then Napster came along, exposing me to good music, and I went out and bought that good music.
It all works out for me.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
...but only because almost everything I like is either an impossible-to-get bootleg, an import, or - worst of all- out of print. So I used Napster to hunt down things that I quite literally would never be able to find otherwise. The radio does NOT play Clock DVA and SPK, thank you- nor will it.
I used to buy CDs by the ream- and was lucky if one, two, or maybe due to some freak chance, three songs on the disk were decent. Fifteen bucks for three tracks doesn't stack up in my mind- I used Napster as a screening process for content quality. It's amusing, the high percentage of albums that are composed largely of filler. Until this changes, I shall continue to thoroughly screen every album prior to purchase- had I bought the latest Fear Factory disk, for example, I would have been out fifteen bucks and sorely disappointed. (If you liked Demanufacture, well... odds are you'll hate Digimortal ) Ten minutes on Napster, pre-filtering, and I knew it was going to be a complete miss, and spent my money on the new Tool album instead.
I'm more than willing to pay for quality music. Too bad the RIAA is criminally unwilling to market it, or allow its exposure to an audience.
Forget radio- twenty minutes of DJ, twenty minutes of loud ads, twenty minutes of the same music that got played in the last hour. As people grow more disatisfied with this kind of treatment, I'm sure we'll se a resurgance of NPR and College Radio. Much like a certain *other* monopoly, the RIAA has music in its pocket and as a consequence, with no one to really compete against, has let the quality slip to truly abysmal levels.
.Net.
With Napster, people have realized that music doesn't have to suck. I ditched my radio shortly after my television, as Britney Spears, Smashmouth, Blink 182 and all sorts of other premanufactured drivel hit the waves and refused to go away. I'm never in the mood for this crap, and I don't like listening to it once an hour- MP3s give me *choice* and the ability to select my audio environment with extreme predjudice.
The RIAA is just like Microsoft in this respect- yes, CD sales are up... because thanks to Napster, people who would otherwise be out of the loop have now heard of the Swamp Terrorists, Birmingham 6, C-tec, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Jethro Tull, and countless other bands and performers.... none of which are RIAA "A list" contrived acts. Thanks to Linux, people are beginning to realize that there's more to computers than Microsoft. The RIAA and M$ are both attacking thier percieved enemies all-out- the RIAA with lawsuit after lawsuit, and M$ with Internet Explorer, Office, and
The A-list of both groups is a mind-numbing pile of post-consumer waste masquerading as This is What You Want, and in both cases, it has been clearly proven that far, far superior alternatives exist. (Independant lables for music, Linux, Unix, BSD and Mac OS X for computers) Yet despite that proof, the hulking monstrosity of fecal matter continues to dominate both industries, simply because for every person that gives a shit (supports indie labels and doesn't run windows), there are fifty who are too ignorant to realize they should.
As long as they own the lawyers and advertising space, we're going to keep losing.
And I'd like to make it clear for me that it's just the opposite. I have actually bought MORE music as a direct result of Napster.
I have not only used it to sample songs to see if I wanted to buy albums I was aware of, but also to discover new artists, and sample their songs. And in the last three months, after losing my DSL access (thank you Northpoint), my music purchases have seriously decreased again, without this method of previewing music and exploring what is available.
I suppose it's still not something the RIAA would be pleased with since quite a few of those purchases have been independent labels outside of the RIAA's realm - but I plan on continuing to focus mainly, if not exclusively, on non-RIAA artists after their wonderful attempt to keep their distribution monopoly.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Exactly! If people don't care about music they're not going to be downloading it, or buying it.
I would say that people who buy more CD's are more likely to use Napster as well.
Where the hell does a company with this pisspoor outlook come up with money to start filing lawsuits? Maybe their legal department should start communicating with their sales or finance departments. Oh thats right... It's because of napster that they are doing so shoddy in the market. What a pile of crap. -Bob
For those who don't know the gist of it all, the RIAA is also looking into creating its own Napster-like product which is even more hypocritical.
The debate will always continue on whether Napster has a right to do so or not. I say if the RIAA is going after Napster, they should also go after TDK, Maxell, Sony, and all other cassette makers, because gosh darnit for years millions of people have stole by recording music onto cassettes and distributing them.
If I find the article with the relevant information regarding their product I'll post it, hopefully someone else who saw the article which may have been on ZDNet or so will post it for me since I'm working (har har) and not reading
And on that note I intend to sue them since I didn't know these packets would traverse to this network...
Want Root?
Napster may or may not spur CD sales, but this survey doesn't prove anything one way or another. The respondents weren't even asked about how many CDs they bought before and after, they were only asked whether they thought downloading music had stopped them from buying the corresponding single or album. I submit that the answers to this question are not interesting.
Besides, as has been pointed out time and time again, the major labels are at least as concerned with future downloadable-music revenue as they are with current CD revenue. 71% of the people in this survey said they would not pay to download music, and quite possibly some of the ones who said they would also wouldn't. I believe the worst threat Napster poses to the RIAA is that it establishes the precedent that downloaded music should be free.
3.85 Australian dollars, which is slightly less than US$2. Still seems high to me. I suspect some of them thought they were being asked how much they'd pay to download an entire album. This is a really easy question to totally botch in an opinion survey.
Take this quote from the article:
86% of all respondents believe that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them buying the album that had featured those tracks
This statiistic is vague, but I think it means one of two things:
86% of Napster (or Gnutella, Audiogalaxy, etc.) users buy 100% of the CDs whose tracks they have downloaded. Or,
Downloading a track has never stopped these users from purchasing an album that they had already decided to purchase.
I think we can all agree that the first option is unlikely in the greatest degree. And the second option is only marginally relevant, since it leaves open the possibility that these users have hundreds of MP3s whose corresponding albums they never intended to buy in the first place. So basically this is either a meaningless statistic or a lie. I'm betting on the latter.
I, too, would like to confess. I have not bought one Metallica cd since I started using Napster. I have bought Agents of Oblivion, Zen Guerrilla (both who I would otherwise not have known about), several jazz and blues cds-- all because I sampled them first on Napster, well, Lopster, actually. I didn't buy any new Stones or Beatles or many cds from rich, dead people.
So I have been on the side of napster. I believe that it ultimately benifits musicians. I believe that the the way giant record labels current do business is a detriment to musicians.
Right now I have guests from Denmark staying with me. They tell me that there is a large balck market for CD sales in Denmark. I guess the cost of an internet connection is very high there and in other parts of Europe as well. (Thats socialism for you). So napster use is not as wide spread. But the people who do use it burn CDs and sell them for around $5. Compared to the $15 to $20 the CD would cost in a retail store, my danish friends tell me that many people buy the burned CD's.
Now I don't know what sales in denmark are but I do know that black market CD sales have to hurt legitimate CD sales. Maybe the record companies should lower their prices, but even if they did they wouldn't be able to compete.
This gives me a little pause and another perspective to look at the situation. I don't think it will change my mind though.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I am currently adding the total seconds of music I have on cd so when I rip it all to a hard drive I will know how much space it will take.
I currently have 71 albums at 212,749 seconds of music. Should I encode all that at 192kbps (which is a respectable rate with good quality sound) it would consume 5.1 Gb of space.
Just thought that would help put things in perspective. 71 albums in 5 gigs at high quality.
For the record, I am a Napster user and love it.
However, look at the study. Basically it says that people who use napster buy more music than people who don't, but that's all it says. It doesn't say anything about causality, meaning it doesn't say whether Napster makes people buy more music or whether Napster users are music lovers who are predisposed to buy more music than the general population. Think about it! If you don't like music that much you aren't going to buy music or listen to Napster, are you?
I rip my CDs at 160K, and a complete album takes between 84 and 32MB.
Just some names from du:
re>84M ./Superhuman ./You've Come a Long Way, Baby ./The Saint (Motion Picture Soundtrack) ./Step Up To The Microphone ./Real Live ./Neverburn ./Transmitter CD Sampler Vol. 3 ./Transmitter CD Sampler Vol. 2 ./Loud and Clear
81M
86M
51M
32M
78M
67M
60M
58M
Too bad that Capital bought out XFM... :-(
It seems people really need a lesson in correlation and causation. Just because two things are correlated (ie they have some link, whether casual or otherwise) doesn't imply causation (that one caused the other). CD sales went up and people used Napster. These things may be related, or they may not be. People who use Napster buy more CDs than other people. This could be caused by them using Napster. It could also be that people who buy more CDs are more likely to use Napster. There are many factors that can affect something like this, and just saying "CD sales went up and a lot of people used Napster, so therefore Napster caused CD sales to go up" doesn't hold any more water than saying "CD sales went up less than they have, and lots of people used Napster, so it must be Napster that is impeeding the growth". There is no proof that the relationship is causal in either direction, because there is no control group that never has seen Napster. There is no way to say with any kind of certainty that Napster has hurt or helped CD sales (not that that will stop either side from trying).
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Statistics show that napster users buy more music. Lets not assume causation though. I'm neutral on whether Napster has a negative impact on music sales or not. But you can just as easily say that the hard core music lovers choose napster, not that it's napster causing them to buy more music.
--
Twivel
People are giving out chapters of the newest Grisham novel on the street. A few people have all the chapters available, but you have to look all over the city for them, and in most cases, you have to go to other cities (servers) to find them. Many of the people giving out free chapters photocopied them poorly. Some of the chapters get cut off before the final few paragraphs or even pages. Some of the people took the time to make very high-quality copies, but again, they are few and far between and you have to look all over the place before finding them. some people don't even bother to number the chapters, so you're going to have to find a list of those chapters elsewhere to be sure you have the whole thing. Then there's the whole problem that Grisham's books all read pretty much the same (think Brittney Spears.
Now, *my* intuition tells me that if Joe Blow were to get his hands on a free chapter and likes it, he's more likely to go buy the book than he is to go through the hassle of finding all the other chapters, making sure they're in the right order, and making sure they're from the right book.
-Legion
only criminals will have kulcher.
illegitimii non ingravare
I am on a pace to purchase about one music CD per three years since the last time that home taping killed music and I don't use music downloading software!!! Somehow the idea that, while the cost basis of music production was halved, the price at the pump should double, as was the case when we rolled over from LPs, didn't sit right with my punker attitude. Its a bit humorous, really, twenty years on, to watch the cost basis shrink by an order of magnitude while the brazen bastards force an annuity model on the peeps. Don't think these guys don't know exactly what they are doing. Once Napster and the rest are dead, watch the proliferation of music downloading software linked to number of replays and your hardware IDs. Fscking fabulous.
Gotta nice pile of vinyl, though. Okay, the refrain from Capital Radio; altogether now!
illegitimii non ingravare
I'm sorry, i posted in the wrong story :-/
= \=\=\=\
Please feel free to mod my post down. Dang, I really wish there was a panic button to remove a comment made by mistake like this.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
Of course this story isnt about the RIAA at all, it's a about a totally different, unrelated company that sells recordings of old radio show.= \=\=\=\
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At any rate the game is far from over. The old economy companies are doing just fine. You don't see them dying by the hundreds yet and you're not going to in the future. Will they make changes? Yes. Will they start to use new methods to do business? Yes. Will they abandon their current methods of having actual people doing a lot of the work? Not likely.
Take a look at an old economy company once. They still manage great sales on old methods. Look for the ones that start to adopt the new economy methods in addition to their current plans. Those are the companies which will last. Its as simple as using all the options available to you.
If not now, when?
Thats what it does! You can buy a recorder for the price of 15-20 CDs. So it pays for itself in no time.
What are we comparing against when we say "more CD's"? If we are saying that these people buy "more CD's than they would have without Napster" then great, it sounds like Napster (and other programs) have a positive impact on people's tendency to buy.
On the other hand, if we are saying that Napster users buy "more CD's than people who don't use Napster" then we haven't really said anything at all. People that are more interested in music would be more likely to both download and buy music than people who aren't interested in music at all.
So, which one are we really proving here?
--
It does, however, show that the napster-using segment is important to the music industry, and if the price of keeping them happy is letting napster thrive, then maybe they should back off a bit.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I don't know anyone who buys more music since napster came out. I know I sure the hell don't.. I have a burner... CDs run all of 10 cents. I'll buy indie albums because they need the money.. thats it.
Surveys are just that... surveys. The magical thing about a survey is... you can lie! I don't trust survey data because I rarely tell the truth when I take them... this may come as a suprise to all the companies that believe my real name is Spanky Twoshoes and my occupation is professional masturbator. -gerbik
You might have 'troll' in your nick, but you're spot on!
...now back to posting hidden goatse links anonymously...
I don't know about your intuition, but according to mine, if someone were to give out exact copies of the latest Robert Grisham novel for free on the streets, sales would go down.
Indeed, this is no surprise. If someone likes napster a lot, it's because they like music a lot, and not napster itself. And, once you have access to the immense archive napster once had, you're free to discover new kinds of music that you will, probably, spend your bucks later buying CDs or going for concerts.
Nope.
Joe Schmoe doesn't care about the politics of the situation; he just wants music, as cheap as he can get it.
Sorry, but the dedication to ideals required for this is only found in people with the knowledge of the situation and the desire to correct it. The average person has neither.
So does our legal system, but they are still allowed to do so.
----------
do { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); } while (alive)
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
This sort of article shows that the RIAA feels the same way - it's not about money, it's about maintaining their monopoly.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
I see a lot of miguided posts here suggesting that downloading music from napster is stealing.
Check your dictionary. It isn't stealing unless you take property from someone and therefore deny them access to it. Copying clearly does not stop the original user/purchaser from using their paid for music.
Using napster for copyrighted materials is copyright violation. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
So does our legal system, but they are still allowed to do so.
Under tightly controlled rules in an attempt to ensure that the adversarial system does not unduly support either side of the case. With the understanding that errors in applying those rules will be sternly handled by a higher level court.
Hardly the same rules that surveys have :-)
along with the RIAA's own data which shows increased CD sales?
It is a fallacy to assume that since overall sales have gone up, that Napster has not suppressed sales below what they would have been otherwise. I'm not supporting the RIAA here, just pointing out a logical fallacy in your argument. Record companies are entitled to try to make the most money they can, as long as they do so within the law not within ethics or morality (which you might hope they would consider anyway), and when someone costs them sales in violation of the law (which is what is (or rather was) at issue with Napster), they are entitled to a redress of their grievances against that party, and perhaps damages. In a civil case, as far as I am aware, incidentally or accidentally helping out the party you have "wronged" is not an affirmative defense, i.e. if you broke the law and the opposing party actually came out ahead, that is not a defense (you still broke the law). Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I may be wrong on this point....
Whether you support Napster or not (I'm actually on the fence), you can't use surveys to bolster your argument. Neither can the RIAA. Surveys are inherently flawed as a scientific method of producing data. Surveys can use misleading questions, slightly unusual definitions, and a host of other methods to twist the results even before they are collated. Even if you have NO agenda, and just honestly want to know the answer to a question, results obtained from surveys are highly suspect, and must be taken with a huge grain of salt.
I have some (small) experience in this area, as I used to do work for a group that wanted information that could only be obtained by asking our patrons questions. After working for months to design a survey with overlapping, interlocking questions so that we could run cross checks on the results, carefully picking wordings, working long into the night to tailor the questions to specifically address the issue we wanted data for, and then administering and analyzing over 3000 responses, we discovered that: what we thought we were very clear in asking was not at all what some of the patrons thought we were asking; that nearly 30% of the survey responses were internally inconsistent as far as we could tell (ask the same factual question two different ways, and obtain two different responses); that even when the data was unambiguous, it was very difficult to understand (interpret) what the answers meant; and many other problems.
Surveys to answer the question "Does napster encourage or suppress music sales?" will never produce a valid, reliable answer. There are just too many variables. The only way to answer that question for sure is to take a representative cross section of Napster, non-Napster, and former-Napster users, and analyze their music buying behavior before and after the introduction of the Napster service, and correct the results for economic growth, socio-economic status, locale, and many other factors. And then, you MIGHT be able to say something statistically valid. MIGHT.
Oddly enough, I loved Demanufacture (except for that lame cover of Dog Day Sunrise) and Digimortal :)
:)
I think the duet with the guy from Cypress Hill could use a little less repetition in the chorus, but hey, it's a rap song. Other than that, I've no complaints about the record (I got the digipak).
Fear Factory has been one of the few bands (along with Dream Theater, Rush, Tempest and Clutch) who puts out albums that are consistently good and almost all the tracks on every CD are worth listening to.
That's just my opinion, of course - you're entitled to yours as well
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
The fat guy I don't even know (was he in the band?) who went back for seconds and thirds for free cake at my wedding is likely to spend more money on unstolen food. He is also more likely to say that he would pay for it were it the expectation.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
...found that MP3 users buy as much or more conventional music media (CDs) as non-MP3 users. Admittedly, the study had a fairly small sample size, but it is much more professional and scientific than the above survey. It compares the habits of the two groups of music users with respect to things like discovering new artists, making compilations, and buying music. The results are very interesting to say the least.
Here's a good quote from the paper:
"...like the conventional music users, copying not only encouraged [MP3 users] to experiment with new music, but again did not appear to make them any more reluctant to buy CDs. In fact, some said that this had increased their music purchasing (a finding also confirmed by other questionnaire studies of MP3 users (Jupiter, 2000))"
Overall, the paper backs up pretty much everything that RIAA opponents have been arguing all along.
Ok, we need to think more about this. Does anyone know who is being hurt by napster? The artists aren't really hurt, because they increase thier listening population and it allows them to fill venues at thier concerts, except for the huge block buster artists whose shows are always sold out. Therefore, the artists are not especially hurt by Napster usage. The RIAA record labels, on the other hand, are. Remember, these are companies which do not make a penny unless the music is purchased, and music downloaded is not music purchased. They want artists like britney spears, which gets pushed on the radio like nobody's business, to be sucessful. What about bands whose music is not played on the radio? They don't want them to suceede. That is why they kill napster, not because they are losing money, they want to defend thier business as being the only source of music. The Radio is a HUGE advertising scheme for them, they make money on the sales of the music to the radio station, and they reap the benifits when the music is played repetivly until people buy the music. It has nothing to do with music to them, its about profit. When is there going to be a lawsuit against the RIAA for dominating the radio medium? Probally never, they are the only music anyone has ever known.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
well you're exactly freakin right!
RIAA is putting out crap and they don't want us to know it until we've bought the disc. no, it's not FUD, it's why they release singles to become hits and make such a big deal about promoting one song off an album of 20 tracks. the industry is and evil evil thing but they're out to make money just like the next guy. trouble is they're not selling the quality product that the people deserve.
trouble is, it's working. sheep go out and buy the new CDs by the coolest bands with the hit single and they listen to that song over and over again because it's the one everybody loves and they know this b/c they heard it twice in the last hour on the radio.
yes people, this is the same reason that 16 year olds are saving up their nickles and dimes to buy 100$ jeans. if it's promoted as 'pop' and 'the thing' then the sheep (people) will sell their souls for it.
the days of the singer who loves his fans has gone. those preformers are few and far between now. these days any old no-talent with a good looking face can be a star! talent and love for the music went out the window with fame and fortune. support local bands! support indie labels! if you don't know these bands then seek them out! these are ARTISTS! these are people who play for the love of playing. these are the folks we want to support!
now that's just a generalization i know. there is no 100% rule here but it's my experience talking. the industry is about money and they're taking advantage of the music lovers.
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
I can't wait to see the RIAA start putting everything out on vinyl to slow down ripping. ;-)
I was wondering the same thing myself: why a company that apparently does radio shows would care if Napster encouraged CD sales, and what (if anything) that has to do with gratitude and/or RIAA. It makes one wonder if the editor read the link at all.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
they are called CD-R's :)
actually nah ... i don't even have a cd writer.
hell, i don't have a home pc ... but i can't believe these stats, cos there are many guys i know that won't buy an original cd unless noone else (that they know) has it.
(same with office XP (: )
The survey claims that 86% of respondents claim to have downloaded free music online. What this immediately suggests is that almost none of those polled were non-internet users, which isn't terribly surprising as it seems the poll itself took place online. Why his this pertinent? Because it offers no comparison between traditional music buyers and those influenced by Napster. None of this is made terribly clear in actual writing, though.
Furthermore, both the article and poll itself identify that those polled were "music fans." What about those millions of casual Napster users who aren't "fans" to a significant degree that they would both download music files AND do the right thing and purchase the CDs?
"86% of all respondents said that they HAD purchased a CD album as a direct result of downloading free tracks from it."... so they've purchased "a" CD? I know very few people who've downloaded only music from a single CD while using Napster. A better question may ask respondents whether they purchase CDs for the MAJORITY of the music that they download online.
Heck, even the question as to whether music downloads have stopped users from purchasing CDs is silly. Napster doesn't stop people from purchasing, it merely offers another option.
Worst of all, this poll conflicts with almost every other poll discussing online purchasing trends, particularly among internet users under the age of 18 (which make up a good portion of those polled). While I do feel it's reasonable to blame those organizing the poll for the wording of some questions, they can't be blamed for not adjusting their results to adequately account for outside factors, which are almost always required with online polls. All I know is that there are countless other polls and surveys, performed by more reliable sources for the most part, that conflict what one may be assumed from face value analysis of this poll. Maybe if they'd offered some interpretation of their own along with the poll results, and some analysis of sources of error, I'd be more accepting.
Oh, and the article's HTML title mispells "dowqnload." Maybe that plays some roll in my misunderstanding, heh.
Nice try, but it's still only a survey of peoples opinions, and people lie, especially to people taking surveys. It's not hard fact, and that's what it's going to take to convince the RIAA guys who make all their decisions based on the bottom line.
So what's needed? A study of say 5000 people, that for 6 months records all the MP3's they download, and all the CD's they purchase. Compare this to an equivalent control group who don't download. Crunch the numbers, and see who buys more CD's, see if there is a link between sampling and purchasing. Then show the numbers to the RIAA, watch the dollar signs light up in their eyes as they realise we were right all along...
contributory advertisments
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
If they could get an injunction to shut down the Internet, they would do it. Just because it's easier to go after a company than the people who are actually making illegal exchanges of copyrighted material doesn't make it right.
ISP's also help to make illegal exchanges of copyrighted material possible. Maybe the RIAA should go after them. Heck, people couldn't trade MP3's without computers. Watch out Dell & Compaq!
Whether or not the RIAA can make a case against any individuals who are copying MP3's illegally, they shouldn't be able to go after anyone else. There are enough valid, legal ways to use Napster in compliance with fair use and copyright law that Napster should be allowed to go about their business without all this legal entanglement.
include $sig;
1;
how many people have hard drives with the hundreds of gigabytes of memory required to store more than a few dozen CDs? About 10-12 CDs worth will completely use up the memory of a 3GB hard drive.
Let's do the math. Even with their most conservative estimate:
10CDs/3GB * 100GB = 333 CDs
333CDs * 1 dozen CDs/12CDs = 28 dozen CDs!
Sounds like these "hard drives with hundreds of gigabytes of memory" can handle substantially more than "a few dozen CDs." Even my 40GB hard drive should be able to handle 11 dozen of their 300MB CDs.
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
I couldn't agree more.
I found it interesting that immediately after I finished the MediaBay article, there was a stock quote for MediaBay. Its down 6 cents to $0.94. About a year ago, this stock used to be worth $14. Now this isn't a comprehensive stock analysis, but it might say something for the desperation of this company.
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
RIAA doesn't want you to see the pig in the poke. They want you to buy it as is by the pound. Whats worse is you can take the choice piglet without paying while leaving the sow.
The truth shall set you free!
It's very hard to stem the tide of the flow. MS is the only one in a postion to change the tide of the flow to pay to listen. The current flow is MP3 which is unrestricted. It will be a very hard sell to get people to toss the RIO and in dash MP3 player to switch to a closed format. Watch out for the Windows Media Format. With a player on every Windows machine, it may create a big enough opening for a new tide of music for sale to flood the market. Real audio and Liquid Audio have tried it but couldn't become big enough to be the defacto standard. Too much stuff was pay and couldn't compete in the face of free. They didn't provice enough hasle free, legal, free, content to become an established standard. This could make an end run past MP3. RIAA would love MP3's have the same fate as the 8 track tape.
The truth shall set you free!
A lot of assumptions are being made here. Assume I don't care about music in any form. I wouldn't be on napster or buy CD's. Assume I love all the music I can get and try. I would buy CD's and log in to Napster. Does that prove I buy more CD's because I log in to Napster? RIAA can't prove either way Napster causes more or less CD's to be sold. They do however assume a song downloaded is a song not bought but taken anyway. This distinctive lack of a KerChing is upsetting them.
The truth shall set you free!
If you were a happy Napster user and you were asked, what would you say?
"Hell no, I have never bought a CD after I got Napster and a CD-burner".
I don't think so. The even the average Napster user would have enough brains to provide a "clever" answer.
--------
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe I am overlooking something obvious here, but why doesn't Napster simply relocate their operation to another country? Surely there is somewhere in the world they could operate from.
Surveys like this (as opposed to scientific studies) are junk, because they can't control for the subjects telling them what they want to hear (how dumb would you have to be to use Napster regularly and tell some survey caller "no i don't buy anything anymore"!). They also can't control for the most basic variable of all, viz., are Napster users ALREADY predisposed to buy more music, whether they learned how to download or not? Many would guess that's a yes, and the question becomes whether one of those predisposed people ends up buying more or less music after getting on Napster. I have seen surveys that at least tried to go after this crucial question, but the Aussie one doesn't come near it.
Even if it could be proved that the unauthorized copying and downloading of copyrighted music helped sales, the question at the end of the day is whether the authors and publishers of creative works ought to have the right to decide for THEMSELVES how they wish to help sales. Napster defenders are basically saying screw you, this probably helps you, and hey by the way if it doesn't actually help you, screw you anyway, we're taking what we want.
I want to make it clear, and I want to say with no ambiguity or doubt, that I have not bought a single CD since I started stealing music from Napster. Not one. So therefore I have to say, speaking totally for myself, that Napster has caused me to buy less music. I also want to go on the record as saying that I believe it is stealing. I am a thief.
Yours,
Bob
All the best,
--Bob
It's nice to see our intuition quantified, with regard to Napster use and CD sales, but to address the previous posters' comment about cause and effect, Napster allows users exposure to new music they would not have been exposed to otherwise (and would never have even considered buying for the simple reason that they didn't know about it). This suggests an alternative reason for the RIAA suit. Because these organizations determine residuals paid to artists based on Radio Airtime, the popularity of Napsterand other such services would cause those payments to become more skiewed than they already are. This would threaten the vary existance of the RIAA and other such organizations, because if the membership felt they were not being served (read: paid) fairly, the organization would fall apart completely. Cornered animals fight back even more firecely when you're swinging a spiked clup over their head. As I suggested, these organizations use outdated techniques to measure listenership, and pay those residuals as described in this extremely good essay. Napster threatened to bring this to light and expose it to scrutiny.
With regard to MediaBay, the afore mentioned survey results do not refute their argument, since they are making a detailed and precise argument rather than the wild generalizations made by the RIAA. Aside from the extremely ambiguous copyright status if the content they claim ownership of, they seem to have a decent case, as much as it pains me to say so.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I've been buying a lot more CDs since Napster came about. Strangely, I usually buy CDs that are totally different from what I download. Other times if I'm really impressed with tunes I get, I buy the CD. It seems that in my case, having so much music available has just increased my hunger for music, and I buy CDs willy-nilly. Despite being so gung-ho about buying CDs now, I never spend over $17 CAD. Anything more and I feel like I'm being ripped off severely. A lot of the time, when something comes out, it's available at Future Shop for around $13.95. I listen to some tracks, and if half of them are good, I go ahead and pick it up. I saw Moving Shadow 99.2 (D&B 2 CD compilation) for $10 and didn't even think about it: I bought it right away. I can't argue _for_ Napster, though, because I know for sure that a lot of people seek out free music and never buy CDs or pay artists in any other way.
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
To make this more informational lets do the math:
/. and dont know what the heck a Vorbis file is take a look at this site.
1 minute at 22.100 Hz, 16 bit, stereo = 10 (ten) megabytes.
after this this track is encoded and becomes an MP3 or ogg vorbis file the size shrinks to about 1 (one) megabyte.
this means an album that uses all the capacity of an audio CD (74 minutes) can be stored in 74 megabytes.
3 gigabytes = 3072 megabytes
3073 / 74 = 41.5
Yes. A 3 gb hard disk can store up to 41.5 albuns after processing the songs in an MP3 or Vorbis encoder.
BTW, if youre new to
What ? Me, worry ?
Oooops ! My mistake. I realy meant 44.2 kHz. Sorry.
Other thing I tought after posting that is that not all albuns use the full capacity of a CD, this means that you can have even more than 41 albuns in a 3 gig drive, depending on how long the riped audio CD are.
What ? Me, worry ?
33.6k and 56k modems can change their speed based on line conditions. I believe there is about 20 different possible values in 21600..56000 range.
Or perhaps VBR (variable bit rate). I've actually had it save space over a 192 with better quality.
The story reads "About 10-12 CDs worth will completely use up the memory of a 3GB hard drive."
Huh?
Hate to tell the authors, but I can fit a LOT more than 10 to 12 albums in 3Gb of disk space; right now I have 80 complete albums (sampled at 128Kbs) in 5.86 Gb of disk space.
--Brandon
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Many people rely on KerChing to feed their families.Napster is in business to make money off of other people's works.
i think that's nice, but still the survey was of what... 4000 people in australia or something? we must consider that those who were targeted as well as those who responded might be just the ones who are more opt to buy albums based on downlaods... those who are not just might not want to participate in the surveys... not saying the survey is wrong, but you just can't take surveys to be cannon
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
I did a double take when I read the hard drive requirements for storing MP3's. :) I think it's obvious that this article was really biased in the pro-Napster direction. I'd be the first to admit that I steal revenues from record companies, but this article doesn't prove anything.
Of course napster users tend to buy more CD's. I'm a napster user and I bought 100 of the little buggers today, to burn my MP3's :p
This is not a Fugazi
Good call... I didn't catch that :). I was enjoying the article right up until this point where it seemed that he was on more of a misinformed rant than anything else.
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
lets say 10 tracks apiece with 5 meg size with 10 cds, thats 500 megs. Maybe he meant some super high quality mp3s? I think perhaps the point was missed that noone buys 3GB drives anymore, and most people don't care about the difference between CD quality and mp3 128kbps quality...
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
Who gives a shit if poor ol' Napster is getting another bitch-slap? The stats "proving" Napster spurs more CD purchases are simply ridiculous. There is no way anyone is going to prove any causal relationship between CD sales and Napster (good or bad) - even if such a relationship exists.
Bottom-line... Napster and its users (that includes the 6 songs I downloaded) are absolutely all about stealing music. Period. This geek media fascination with the new, reformed Napster is becoming a sad and pathetic spectacle of denial. And before anyone flames me, the Napster debate is NOT in the same universe of 'fair use' laws.
There...I feel better now.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Napster isn't sued because it takes away from current profit as much as the possibility exists for it to take huge shares of profit away when broadband gets more and more widespread usage.
Another thing... If I were someone with hundreds of mp3s and asked if it stopped me from buying cds, wouldn't I say that it didn't, to try and prove that Napster et all are good?
...is independent labels.
I believe all of these surveys - that overall, the availability of samples is a great promotional tool. I'll bet that RIAA believes this too. However, now everyone will be willing to try "unknown," and worse, unsigned, bands.
RIAA is not worried too much about the piracy, but that is the only legal front they have against Napster. What really scares them is the availability of a distribution channel that they don't control. As another post mentions, they are pushing bands that they can control, not necessarily those that are best. That strategy naturally limits the number of bands that can be made available in a given time frame.
Napster gives artists and consumers a real choice. Artists will now see competition for their work, rather than relying on a lottery system to get signed. Consumers can pre-sort the good stuff from the junk. RIAA knows they've got tons of un-salable junk if better music becomes available.
P.S. For all the rhetoric out of RIAA about respect of copyrights, why are so many artists claiming that the studios do not own many of the on-line distribution rights they claim to own?
Yes, sales are up among napster users. But which sales? How are the sales of major labels versus independent labels? Prior to napster, the RIAA pretty much controlled the entire process by means of controlling play time on radio. Which, as this article noted, is unbelievably corrupt. But with P2P, people don't have to listen to the radio - they just search for the song they want to hear and get it immediately, no commercials, no filler, and browse to your heart's content. Grass roots publicity suddenly becomes much easier, there is no cost in time or money to listen to a song once. The trouble with Napster, then, is it puts the big labels on an even playing field with the indy labels, and could thereby suck some of their business away.
More importantly, if you can do almost as well with an indy or even your own label, why the hell would you want to go with a big one? The big labels could still control the manufactured stars, but all the real talent would stay away from them. In other words, the big labels would lose not just consumers but artists as well.
Furthermore, the recording industry clearly doesn't want any competition when it comes to digital distribution. They're not opposed to P2P distribution per se, just that they aren't getting paid for it. If they can sell by the song (or even pay-per-play) they can charge amounts equal to or more than it would take to buy the whole CD without even having the overhead of shipping the physical product.
cryptochrome---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
For music, this is intuitive, but one sort of wonders whether this goes for movies as well? How about e-texts? No doubt, an increased interest for the medias as such may be generated, but not for the instances of media being shared. Where does that put us on copyright-protection - allowing free music sharing, simply on the grounds of increasing revenue, but not sharing of other kinds of media? Sort of tough, principially speaking..
Here's the deal. There are two types of people in this world when it comes to music; Those who love every aspect of music and would do anything to know every part of it, and those who listen to music as a relaxing or mind-numbing exercise.
The latter typically tends to listen to Pop, Top-40 radio and may buy a few cd's a year, if the artists have had 2 or 3 really good singles. Assume that a majority of these music-dabblers have napster on their computer. The typical downloads by these people are singles. They don't care whether they have liner notes, the original album, or any other perks that come with a store bought cd. Hell, most of them don't even consider downloading other work from them. As well, before Napster, these were the people who made radio recordings of their favorite songs to listen to with their tape player.
Next, we have the music-lover's group. These people need help(I know; I'm one of them). They _will_ take their time to download entire albums off Napster, even all albums by an artist that they really have gotten into(I know; I've done it). However, as the recording industry is so conveniently overlooking, this is simply not enough for them. They travel around they're city on the weekends looking for vintage lp's and original packaging albums at snobbishly overpriced record shoppes(notice the snobbish spelling) and try to accomplish their one true goal:
_Own every album known to man_
And they don't mean the songs. If someone really enjoys a band, they want the pictures, the lyrics, the cover, and the nice-looking professionally designed cd. The whole package is part of the art form known as music. I can't tell you how many times myself and people I know have downloaded an entire album only to buy it for $18 at Better Days a few days later(The latest Weezer album for example).
Even if you are not as obsessed with music as I am, the majority of you must admit, it is extremely nice and coveted to own the actual cd, the cover, the liner notes, maybe even have a vinyl collection. It's not always about just the songs.
Also, these people are the ones who would make mix tapes for their freinds and copy albums onto cassettes in order to try to get others interested in their favorite music.
Napster has allowed those who would tape singles off of the radio to download them... oh damn! they are pirating the same amount as before.
Also Napster allows music lovers to download entire albums (it's not like they weren't going to get it from their freinds anyway) which they buy a week or two later. Also Napster has opened the doors for bands that are not as well known. Searching for Radiohead, I find songs by the Beta Band, Air, and Portishead. hmm... If I happen to see that Thom Yorke did a project with Portishead I might download that song, and then, if I like it, a Portishead album. Eventually I own all of Portishead's albums. I think you see my point.
If anything- Napster has sold more records. Common Sense.
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Never trust anything cute... i mean hell, look at an iMac...
Is it possible for Napster to enter these things as evidence that, far from being "contributory infringers" (or whatever the legal mumbo-jumbo word is), they are in fact "contributory salespeople"?
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
...Counting blank CD-R sales _might_ be a bit misleading...
I mean no offence to Americans in general with this, but it's always struck me that the US in general is a haven for anyone who wants to sue anyone else for anything they an think of. The RIAA hasn't made me think otherwise.
As to whether Napster has caused me to buy more CDs or not ... No. I'm a cheap bastard and wouldn't have bought any CDs anyway - besides, most of what I listen to can't even be bought on this continent, so they'd not have profited even if I could get them - so they're not losing anything from me using Napster. If it wasn't for Napster, I'd probably still have to be listening to Commercial Radio ... thank God for Napster. (CBC all the way)
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If I cared anymore about what the RIAA had to say about anything, I'd not have asked anyway and saved the effort taken to ignore them.
The real issue is not what any survey says. It's about what rights a private company is entitled to.
:(
They are entitled to control how, where, and when their properties are distributed.
They are entitled to commit suicide if they choose to.
They are entitled to make as much or as little money as they wish.
So whatever these moronic surveys say is irrelevent. There is a more important principle at play here: intellectual property rights. Their music belongs to them, NOT YOU! It doesn't matter if you grew up with the music, or that hearing a particular song is the only way to get you a boner. The songs belong to THEM, not YOU nor napster.
There are so many commies on slashdot these days it's not even funny.
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Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?
eTrade SUCKS
All I know, is that if the big record labels come out with a service that in any way resembles our beloved Napster, there is gonna be hell to pay. It is obvious to any one with half a wit that they are so aggressive against Napster only because a pimply teenager beat them to it. Add on top of that Napster helps traditional record sales and I'm baffled! WTF IS GOING ON?
Come on, this survey was awful. Take the time to read the story and understand the questions posed in the survey. The survey in no way showed that CD sales were "spurred" by downloading MP3's. People were merely asked whether or not they would buy music after downloading it.
And if you read on to the end of the story, you'll see that the guy writing the story has no idea what he's talking about...
a quote from the story - "Seriously, how many people are prepared to spend several days - because that's how long it wil take on 33 speed modem - downloading a whole album and then listening to inferior sound quality; additionally, how many people have hard drives with the hundreds of gigabytes of memory required to store more than a few dozen CDs? About 10-12 CDs worth will completely use up the memory of a 3GB hard drive."
I think that says it all right there... 3GB for 10 albums in MP3 format? I don't think so.
I support Napster, free downloading, etc... but this "Scientific Survery" was garbage.
I've purchased a lot more CDs since I began using Napster...blank ones, that is.
The Sydney Morning Herald must start looking for a very good lawyer, because now that they are defending Napster RIAA will sue them too.
I also agree with EschewObfuscation, in his comment about this subject, It's not about money.
CAUTION SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. RIAA IS COMING AFTER YOU NOW!
Don't worry, I'm too angry [to|every]day
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
I was on Napster yesterday for the first time since the filters were put in place. Only about 4000 users were online, and I could only search by letters of the alphabet.
I just bought a CD which I had completely downloaded in MP3 format (through gnutella), and was very impressed with. So I would answer to the survey that, yes, I would buy a CD that I downloaded music from. But on the other hand, I probably would have bought a CD at that time anyway, so gnutella downloads simply helped me make that decision. I'm certainly glad I bought the CD since there is so much more to hear that doesn't come through on MP3's 128 kbps quality. I'm not a raving audiophile, but I'm not deaf either. Somewhere inbetween. :-)
But will gnutella/Napster cause me to buy more music than I would ordinarilly? Maybe -- it allows me to sample a larger diversity of music, which might get me to buy CDs I wouldn't buy ordinarilly and thus inspire more of an appetite for music. Or, maybe I'll just find out that the CDs I've been considering really don't sound as good as I hoped. I think the former scenario is more likely, but I honestly don't know the answer, even for myself!
So this should make it obvious that any kind of survey like this one is not going to disclose any truth about whether or not Napster is helping the music industry. Also the major source of bias in a survey like this is: Who's choosing to take this survey? It's obviously people who are familliar with Napster, as the first statistic showed. It's probably also people who think Napster is good, and want to "prove" it. So even if the survey questions were insightful it still wouldn't mean anything.
I also hated the comments about the music industry needing to be more selective, supporting only a couple dozen artists! I agree with the general conclusion that the music industry should be worried about things other than Napster, but I think the music industry is much too limiting rather than permissive, way too comercial and concerned only with the bottom line.
I think the best music is the stuff that would never be released as a single. The bad songs are the ones that you instantly like the first time you hear them, and get tired of quickly. These get airplay because the execs are listening only for that instantly-appealing hook. The good songs are the ones that take some time to grow on you. These are stamped out by the industry as much as possible.
I thought the most unbelievable part of this survey was that the people would pay $3.85 for a single track.
In addition, the questions about whether downloading tracks had prevented them from buying a CD don't specify that it would be in every (or nearly every) case. Answers could be interpreted as "In one case, I bought the album anyway, but the other 2000 times I didn't." This is a poorly written survey and even worse interpretation of the results by the author of the article.
IMHO it doesn't matter one ounce if Napster increases CD sales. The fact of the matter is there is a revolution afoot. Any digital medium can and will be traded on the internet, despite all means to suppress it (CSS, SDMI, etc). The old economy companies are just trying to hang on to the way they've done business for the last 50 years.
I honestly believe that the media companies realize this and are suing to slow everyone else down until they can rework their business stratedgy (God, I hope that's true).
The game is almost over. Adapt or die. In ten years CD sales will be zero.
</rant>
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Correlation issues aside, what people are forgetting is that the rise of Napster coincided with a strong economic boom. CD-sales will go up no matter what during a period of economic growth.
IIRC, a year ago there were reports of cd-stores located near college campuses who were selling *less*, which could, probably, be traced back to Napster usage. This phenomenon was, however, limited to a very small group of retailers, hence it probably didn't affect overall sales figures at all. There's more people buying Britney 'cos the economic boom lets them - this shows up in overall sales figures. Small indie bands sell less - 450 copies instead of 500, the remaining 50 get Napstered. Doesn't show up in the statistics.
At this point Napster is like an empty Pinata that the kids keep beating, not for any goodies inside, but just because they enjoy beating on it. Suing Napster has become sport for copyright holders.
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya
I've bought more CD's since I started downloading music, I keep finding these artists who I thought were one hit wonders but their other songs are actually really good and I decided I needed the whole package, every song, cover art, ect. I am different from a lot of people though, my current hard drive is 6G (I'm not a gamer, I don't need a lot of space so it's the last thing to get upgraded), I don't have a CD burner, I have moral issues with not paying an artist for something so eventually I like to make sure they get something somehow. I only bought 2-3 CD's a year before I broke down and got Audiogalaxy (it's cooler than Napster), then I bought four CD's in a month, all used, but still purchased legally.
spacefem.com
- One in three women will be sexually assaulted.
- You are 8 times more likely to shoot someone you know than an unknown intruder in your home.
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for Napster all-the-way, but we should really beware of media-generated statistics like this.Translation: 1-in-3 will get drunk and have consentual sex, then regret it and decide that she was raped. Mike Tyson was a victim of one such woman. Additionally, you take the number of incidents and divide by the number of women - NOT ACCOUNTING for the fact that a lot of these women are habitually dating abusive guys.. they're the low-lifes you see on COPS every week. 1-in-3 my ass...
Translation: Yes it's true, (and guess what Einstein,) usually the person who is assaulting or robbing you IS somebody that you know - an ex-boyfriend, or a former friend or relative who has a problem with you and won't leave you alone. Such people SHOULD be shot.
How about we look at the actual data? And that in particular, none of the answers state whether or not the respondant has purchased more or less music as a result of downloading music.
95% of all respondents said that they had never paid for a music download.
Okay, the basis of the whole discussion.
71% said they would not pay for a download.
Doesn't mean much, but does imply that downloads are viewed as a way of paying less for music (which personally I think should be the case but that's not the debate here). Dangerously laying ground for the RIAA'a argument that less money gets spent on CD's as a result of Napster.
Of those who would pay for a download, on average, they would be prepared to pay $3.85 per track
Whether that's a fair price is irrelevant, here the respondents would not be willing to pay for a download what they would for a CD single.
86% of all respondents believe that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them buying the album that had featured those tracks.
86% of all respondents said that they HAD purchased a CD album as a direct result of downloading free tracks from it.
Let's deal with these two together. On the basis of the second response, that a sizeable majority had - wonder of wonders - purchased an entire CD album as a result of enjoying a downloaded track or two, the same majority could justifiably state that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them from purchasing an album featuring those tracks. In other words, these facts mean absolutely nothing. (If you want to be really predantic, it is not stated as "purchasing the albums that featured those tracks" and so we are indeed talking about a single example, which tends to render all statistics null and void.)
95% of all respondents said that they would purchase concert tickets of an artist whose music they'd downloaded.
So if they like an artist they would go see them live? Amazing - but irrelevant to CD sales. The equivalent question would be, "If Napster allowed you to get into gigs for free, would you spend money on concert tickets?" (aside: the quality of music would probably improve if artists had to be good enough to earn from concerts rather than CD sales, as labels wouldn't be able to fund extravaganzas that cover up poor talent without the revenue for successful CD launches, one of the great arguments for cheaper CD's in my book)
79% of all respondents said they would purchase t-shirts or other merchandise from an artist whose music they had downloaded.
Again, a separate issue to CD's. Currently you can't download a t-shirt for nothing.
The whole thing avoids the central issue, one way of looking at it is this:
An individual buys, say, an album every week. If they use downloads as a way of choosing the next album to be purchased, then no more or less money is spent on CD's by this individual, and they can state both that they purchased albums with those tracks, and that downloading tracks had not stopped them from buying an album. RIAA revenue: unchanged.
Another individual does not have an album budget, they buy an album whenever they think they might like it. Maybe downloads let them hear it, they realise they don't like it, they buy fewer albums than before because they don't experiment with a new purchase. RIAA revenue: reduced.
Another individual again doesn't budget for CD purchases. They buy stuff when they like it, maybe they prefer the improved quality of a CD to an MP3. But they like music, most of the time the MP3 is indistinguishable from CD, and better than radio, they download a lot of music, encounter a lot of temptation, and buy a lot of albums because they get a chance to hear stuff they might not otherwise. RIAA revenue: increased.
There's a hundred ways of looking at this, and similar scenarios whereby for a given individual, more or less money is spent on albums. Because of all the facets, there's a need for a far better dataset than opinion polls.
This has been mentioned before. I believe when the RIAA posted it's profits of some 40 billion dollars which was several billion over what it had made the year before that many people had mentioned this, and other "reports" or "studies" had shown that, yes, users of Napster tend to buy more CDs. This gets a two "Duhs" up from me.
The 99 year old gay men of the world who make less than ten thousand dollars a year, enjoy cooking, skateboarding, and fencing, and would NOT like to be notified of any exciting new offers. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
The survey may be good, but the author hasn't got a clue. They claim 10-12 CD's would take up a 3 Gig disk. I get 10-12 disks worth of MP3's per CDR that I burn. Other incorrect information in this article makes me question the authors ability to properly research what they are talking about and leads to qustions of accuracy in the meat of the article.
On the other hand BMG had their hands in creating the survey, so it's nice to see that we can go *there*there* It's not just Napster fans trying to skew the facts!
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Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
The RIAA has attacked every new technology from day 1. We all remember cassettes. They did the same with CDs - ever wonder why computer CDRs are 1/8th the cost of "Music" CDRs, and why they don't work in standalone burners? The "Music" CDR is nothing more than a regular CDR with data encoded on it. The standalone burner sees this data and allows you to record on the disc. The extra cost you pay to buy these "special" CDRs goes right into the RIAA's pockets. In essence, they assume you will pirate music and are extracting a fine from you based on that assumption.
Personally, I refuse to pay $17.99 + tax for a CD that has maybe 2 or 3 good songs on it. CDs should cost less than tapes: the media costs less to produce and the data is worth the same regardless of the format. Yet they're still $8 more than the same album on tape. The whole thing just screams "rip-off", and I haven't bought a CD in years for this reason alone. Instead, I download the one-hit-wonders, listen to them for a couple of weeks, and move on to the next one. I've yet to download an entire album - it's too darn much work to find every song perfectly encoded.
I'd be willing to pay a small monthly fee - $5 or so, but certainly not more than $10 - for a service full of high quality music and unlimited downloads. IMHO, considering the fact that CD sales continued to rise greatly last year in spite of Napster, I think the RIAA could add a ton of money to their bank accounts with such a system - and hopefully give some of that to the artists. I'd never pay for a peer-to-peer system like Napster, though. Too hard to find high quality encodings, and why should the RIAA profit over the use of our bandwidth?
As for this survey, it's obviously flawed, as are most surveys. I never did understand why anyone thinks they can interview a few thousand people and call it good, considering there are billions of us. If they interviewed a few million, the data might be a little more valid.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Isn't it funny that whenever a large institution counts the loss of sales caused by piracy, they estimate the amount of illegal copies made and just multiply it with the price of the product. But if copying were impossible, would everybody have bought the product anyway or have saved their money instead?
Every time a piece of music (or a software product) is being illegally copied, it is also being advertised for free; no expensive music videos or other promoting methods needed. Did they ever think of that?
Having just a digital copy on one's hard disk is not very satisfying. It is nice to have one's favorite music on CD. Such artifacts are important to people. Who wouldn't appreciate a collection of such objects more than the just absolute price of those objects (or a corresponding collection of mp3s)?
A CD is also a backup of your music. And: if you like the music you listen, you might want to pay for it. Why? Because it is more enjoyable to listen to one's favourite music when not feeling like a thief.
But buying a complete CD by just hearing a piece on the radio and the rest in the record shop? Not if you can evaluate the CD in your home in mp3 form first.
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It was bound to happen. Napseter emerges, people hear about napster, napster rises, people like napster, napster becomes glorious. Napster gets sued, napster falls. The cycle starts over again replacing Napster with XYZ. Men know glory and will persue it. Napster will live again, even if under another name.
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Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
"...Makes many of the RIAA arguments ring a little hollow."
I could not have said that better myself. I have always held on tho the common-sense maxim of "No harm, no foul". I have questioned the whole validity of this lawsuit on the grounds of "is it hurting sales".
An analogy can be taken from a real-life experince I had in a shopping-mall parking lot at Christmas time. I stopped for a stop signat the end of an aisle in the lot. However, the driver behind me was not quite so alert, he rear-ended me rather gently. After looking at my car and assessing that I had no damage, the other driver came to me all apologetic, I said" no problem here, it's clean. Is your car alright?" now if I had behaved like the recording industry, I would have slapped him with a lawsuit a short time later. Since I was not harmed or damaged in any way, I did not deem it necessary to vilify the other driver in any way.
After looking at this and other data at RIAA's website, I find that the whole P2P sharing phenomenon is not affecting sales much in either direction.
The bottom line: We live in a far too litigious society. Instead of wrking together and compromising a solution, we sue, this only fosters hostility.
They do however assume a song downloaded is a song not bought but taken anyway. This distinctive lack of a KerChing is upsetting them.
;+)~
Correct. Only an assumption. So why do they not hear the Ker-ching? No one holds a gun to a Napster user's head and tells them NOT to buy the CD.
Wait a sec?
A lot of assumptions are being made here. Assume I don't care about music in any form.
Huh? Another assumption? Not going to help matters, you know...
People seem to think that increasing RIAA revenue automatically means their sales haven't been hurt.
To actually determine this, the only relatively accurate measurement would be an applied measurement of the acceleration of sales over the last few pre-Napster years (or even the derivative of that, if you want a better figure). It still wouldn't predict everything perfectly -- societal trends tend to repeat themselves, but not that quickly.
I'm not pro-Napster, but I certainly take no ethical high ground; I DL music rather than buying it, and damn their price inflation. Pity the artists. -phu
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Who ARE you?!
Assume 2 types of people taking the poll: 1.) User A uses Napster and buys the music that he downloads. He answers the poll with "I buy more music". 2.) User B uses Napster to simply take all the music he wants. How do you think that person will likely answer? "I don't buy music anymore. Please shut down my free music service for me." Or, "I buy more music, which shows you how valuable this service really is." I am aware that there are Napster users out there that don't fit into either category, but I've got a suspicion that the bulk of the users fit one of the two above profiles.
It's always the same thing, napster users pirating music illegally or hackers stealing music. Well, frankly, I am very sick of hearing about people who are ignorant as to the actual reason for all of this (the internet). It is my hope that this email will reach my fellow slashdotters and penguins out there as to what exactly uneducated people and media wish to do to our beloved home. From what I have gathered from the mentioned groups above is they want one thing and it is simple this, free advertisement. That's right, these people do not care about the fact that so called hackers and elites are creating places to download (sample) music at no cost. All they care about is money, and they know just who to exploit to get it. Can you guess who that is? That's right people, THE AMERICAN PUBLIC! I recall a movie by the name of Hackers which depectied a character very similar to the one that I am describing. In that movie, the character was distinguished in his supreme ability for ignorance and his genius level of inguienity to invent new and lasting ideas that could potentially crush our world with just a simple call to the wonderful American Public. This character was very real and very dangerous. He is the average uneducated politician and media. Do I blame them? No, not at all. It is not there fault that most of them have not the single most clue as to what free information is all about. If it were not for people like us there would be no America. Think about it. Free information, or the use of obtaining information that would not otherwise be free had someone gone and looked it up, was able to win us the war against England. I am not saying that it was not also the brillilance of colonists to hide in the trees and hail fire down at unsuspecting British columns. Which caused devistating results. I am, however, stating that if people always follow the rules as assigned to them by liberals, then we might as well just elect a media representitive spokesperson so they can run us all into the ground with ignorant prattle and imagined purposes. That being said, I also watch the news and television, which, in of itself, is typical of an American man in his early 20's. The reason for me writing all this is to vent my fustration at the ignorance of people who always seem to come to ultimate conclusions without first sifting through the "facts". Thank you.
Umm...yeah. To my knowledge, Napster isn't making any money off of this at all. If memory serves, Napster was just a software application written by a bright young programmer for fun. Wasn't he from a European country? Anyway, your statement makes absolutely no sense. Napster isn't taking the KerChing away from poor people's food stamps or weekly allowance, it's helping sell CDs and helping spread musicians' works to people who may not have otherwise been exposed to them. I myself have bought CDs because I downloaded songs from Napster and/or other MP3 sources and I liked what I heard. I ripped all of my good CDs to MP3s so that I could hear them all in a Random sorted playlist. But, I'm straying from the subject of greedy organizations picking on intelligent young people, so I'll conclude now.