Slashdot Mirror
Eminem #2 on Gracenote... Before Release
asavage writes "According to this article on news.com
last week, Eminem's "The Eminem Show," which was yet to be released, cracked the chart at No. 2. This is the first time an unreleased CD has been number 2 on this list of CD's played in computers." I've pre-ordered my copy
and am looking forward to hearing it. But its pretty amazing that Gracenote
registers a pirated CD #2 without the benefit of it being for sale yet.
Thank god they shut down napster and stopped piracy.
Yahoo! is reporting that Gracenote (previously CDDB, an open source project) is planning to sell aggregate usage data to advertisers and such like. Makes me glad I use a freedb-based CD player (CD Max, for the curious).
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
you didnt read the article, did you?
sigh...
you're right, this isnt MP3's
Gracenote checks tracklength down to an obscenely small interval, and uses that to determine "source" - and apparently there are 8 different sources of fake Em cd's floating out there...
... hi bingo
His question was about mp3's and no, you couldn't do what you described with mp3's. They'd have to be saved in uncompressed avi (they could be transfered using a lossless compression though, e.g. zip)
Just like Spidey and Star Wars, The Eminem Show can be taken as a good test case for how piracy *really* affects sales.
In Spider-Man's and Star Wars's cases, it appears that the piracy either had no effect on the incredible revenue both movies generated, or actually had a marketing effect. People who downloaded the pirate version were *more* likely to go see the in-threater version.
I suspect that The Eminem Show will do the same thing. Just like a label pays a radio station to play a promo-only single before an album's release, the pirate copies of The Eminem Show will encourage people who hear them to go get the album.
Pay close attention to the figures, and when someone tries to tell you that 'piracy hurt the artist', recite them verbatim!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
As long as you make an Image or a 1:1 copy it will be detected as the same disk.. Its manly determined from track lengths and offsets.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Oh dear, my idealism is shattered, now that I know that Slashdot readers listen to "pop"ular music as opposed to only Pagannine, Vivaldi, and Mozart.
I just don't know how to handle this.
Any word on whether there will be anti-piracy measures on this album? Kinda like retro-fitting a better hull design for the Titanic, but still...
the Eminem CD was on the shelves and for sale at my local record store on May 21. i purchased it on May 24 (and have the receipt to prove it). of course, when i called the record store today to ask about when the initially put it in the shelves and started selling it, their reply was "Today!". when i told them i purchased it from them on May 24, their reply was "that's entirely possible". when i then asked again when they started selling it, they replied "Today!". i think they were afraid that i might be a spy for the RIAA. ;)
-- ken williams
"Thus, "The Eminem Show," originally slated for a June 4 release, hit stores Sunday -- an unusual step, as albums are typically released on Tuesdays. That move came after it was earlier announced that the release date would be pushed up to today -- roughly two weeks after the album's unsanctioned Internet debut."
story Here
I agree and disagree. Watching a crappy divx rip of Spidey or AOTC makes me want to appreciate their full glory on the big screen with decent sound.
.... not bother buying it.
Listening to a near perfect copy of the CD version, makes me want to
I think that piracy definately adds to the buzz of a product, but its much easier to justify the cost of the actual product when the quality for the 'real thing' is substantially better than the pirated version.
- Johnny Cash: "I once shot a man just to watch him die"
- [remainder of list is up to you to complete]
Oh my god what is the world coming to!!! Someone needs to protect the children, etc., etc...Newsflash: artists are mirrors of society--some are like hubble mirrors, some are like funhouse mirrors. Eminem is not the problem. He is merely a messenger, like Johnny Cash. If Eminem's lyrics are scary, you haven't been paying enough attention.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
The online versions and bootlegging could serve as a marketing vehicle, whetting fans' appetite for the real thing, noted P.J. McNealy, research director for GartnerG2, a division of the Gartner research firm.
It's also interesting to note that (despite the "rampant piracy") the limited edition of the CD is the #1 selling CD on Amazon.
Damn those Internet pirates!
I'm looking for a HEPA media filter for my TV. I'm alergic to reality shows.
I was in the mall to pick up some old skool music (Nerf Herder rules!!!), and I saw it on the shelves. I also saw the note that it won't be released until June, but whatever dude.
I bought a copy at the Fye Music in Holyoke, MA on the evening of the 24th. When I asked why it was released early, the girl at the counter mumbled something about the Harry Potter DVD and low sales, and that they received a call from the main office to start putting the new Eminem CD's on the shelves.
I also saw them available in a Fye's in Woodbridge, NJ the next day.
For some reason, it is only $11.99, compared to the usual ripoff at that store.
Isn't that sorta what Milli Vanilli did?
"Derp de derp."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They tell us it was #2, but they give no numbers. Was it 100, 10000, 100000. That seems like the more interesting#. After all, if there weren't any other interesting cd's put out in that time frame, then being #2 might not mean squat. I'm usually not nearly as anti-music industry as many here, but this report smacks of "lies, damn lies, and statistics".
If the album sales are a disappointment, the shit's gonna hit the fan in one way or another...It will be interesting to see what happens.
The two (well, 3) cases are pretty much incomparable. The bootleg versions of AotC and Spidey are much poorer quality than you will see in the theatre. Comparing a compressed DivX version taken from a guy with a camcorder in the theatre (which is the version of AotC that I saw making the rounds on the net) is nothing like seeing it in the theatre for yourself. The Eminem bootleg sounds (for most people) exactly like what they would get from the real thing. For most people, they have already bought their copy of the Cd, and unless there is some "super secret" extra on the official release, there isn't a reason to buy another version. The liner notes are not enough incentive for most people to spend $15 on a cd they already bought without liner notes for $5. But seeing a decent version of AotC is worth $15 even though they already spent $5 on a crappy pirated version that isn't near the quality.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Actually yes, sort of. A newer trend is to rip a CD as just one WAV file, and then encode that to a single MP3 file, "artist - album.mp3".
Got friends?
They increase the price of new music in order to make up for supposed piracy, which in turn makes people more likely to pirate. Its a catch22 of the WORSE kind.
"The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.' " -- Mike Quear, US Congressional staffer
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
even without it there's pi-ra-cy...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Does the CDDB track every time the CD is inserted into the CD driver? Perhaps it's just counting every time someone popped the disk in and out, trying to get it to start playing...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
...a way to pirate music that the artist hasn't even written yet
Too late...
The Beatles already did that to Oasis.
- StaticLimit
Celine Dion fans don't know how to use a computer.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Geeze, I'll bet you still have your autographed copy of the "Cool as Ice" video too.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
As too paying close attention to the figures I would like to see the studies showing that
People who downloaded the pirate version were *more* likely to go see the in-threater version.
Not to deny that but keep in mind that the people who go out of their way to download a pirated copy probably like that stuff already. There is a HUGE portion of the population who are not going to see AOTC of Spider-Man no matter what you do and that includes not downloading the pirate version. The people who download are much more likely to have paid for the ticket too see it anyways. I could come out with a study that says people who run on their own are much more likely to lead a healthy life style in other areas. While running does raise your energy to allow you to do other things people who lead a healthy lifestyle also go run as a part of that lifestyle.
In other words if I'm a person who would download the pirate version am I more likely to see the in-theater version? Yes.
If I download the pirate version am I more likely to see the in-theater version? Maybe, but we can't tell from a fact like the one you presented.
I stole this Sig
If you ask to receive their Top20 each week, you will read this :
:-)
Get the Digital Top 20 emailed to your mailbox every Tuesday! Be the first to know who's gone up, who's gone down and who's at #1.
Click here if you want TEXT email (recommended for Outlook email users)
Click here if you want HTML email (recommended for NON-Outlook email users)
!!!!!!!!!
Does this mean that Gracenote could be infected with the Klez virus or something else, so oulook users should receive text messages, just in case?
It doesn't require freeDB, it just uses it by default. It will use CDDB (Gracenote) if that's your poison.
My point wasn't that this program is responsible for these Gracenote stats, just that it's possible to use a CDDB-like system without having a physical compact disc.
The bootleg versions of AotC and Spidey are much poorer quality than you will see in the theatre.
Assuming, of course, that the theatre it is seen in is run by competent people. Although I didn't see the divx of either film, the quality of any motion picture in the only remaining theatre in my town is comparable to the divx movies I have seen -- only the sound is a bit louder (most of the time). I suppose that's what happens when a certain large theatre operator drops ticket prices to $2 just long enough to run all the competition out of business, and then jacks the prices back up. We're doing good here if the picture is centered on the screen. If it's on the screen AND in focus on the first try, well, it's time to go buy some lottery tickets.
[/end rant]
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
This goes to show just how much the RIAA needs to change it's sales models. They're still depending on air play to hype up people to purchasing a album. But no one wants to wait the weeks or months for them to release them. So those pirating are making out like bandits on the people who want it now.
Just having the assumption that they can eliminate piracy and continue using the same sales tactics isn't going to show the improvement of CD sales they're looking for. They should be releasing the albums for sale at the same time tracks are released for airplay. Then impulse buyers can run out and get the CDs immediately. If buyers have to wait for the overly far away release dates they will look to other means of getting what they want.
I think the same really applies to most media nowadays. Movies should be released for purchase sooner, TV shows should be released when their seasons finish, and so on. The public are tired of having to wait for what they want. Once it's been released and aired you should be able to purchase it then. You'll then have the choice of a possibly inferior in someway pirated copy or the real thing.
I wonder if the promotional versions of that radio stations and others recieve were somewhat different, say fewer tracks, for the public releases what will these pre-released bootleg versions be? Promotional releases are controlled so they should monitor that.
However now they'll just focus on the piracy issue and the public will suffer from it.
Thank god they shut down napster and stopped piracy.
The CD-Rs were most likely burned from mp3s downloaded from P2P networks. Besides, 10s of thousands of CDs distributed mostly in urban U.S. cities is hardly comparable to the millions that were downloaded across the globe on napster.
Besides, Taco, you almost sound like you condone music piracy. Aren't you the one who said "I wish people wouldn't steal"?
Read both CDs out in digital and do a bit-compare of them. You'll find that they are, indeed, extremely differet, because of the MP3 conversion process.
From a technical standpoint, the record legally available for purchase and the downloaded thing are nothing alike.
I'm a fairly major player in the MP3 "scene" if you will. The proper releases (this stuff rarely hits the P2P networks in all it's glory) are done by people who know what they're doing and rip things with good software. If all the tracks are from a proper release, and burned using DAO, they will almost always be recognized by CDDB services as the original CD. People ripping for P2P nets though generally use low bitrates and bad encoders (Realjuke, AudioCatalyst and the like). Not to mention that most people using P2P networks don't bother to ensure that all tracks are complete, from the same source rip, and of reasonable quality. Thus small differences in encoders/rippers (are track delays recorded in the preceding track, or the subsequent one?) result in different final CDs. Rest assured, however, that the people who know what they're doing (and there are thousands of us) get proper copies, distribute them to our friends, and burn copies for anyone who asks. Hence the numbers on Gracenote. Don't think the mp3 scene is as disorganized as it appears from the P2P crap, the real underground scene is very organized, well structured, and produces good releases.
Sorry for the AC, I dunno how much crap I could get in if some copyright nazi read this and investigated what I do.
I just checked on gracenote's site.
"The Eminem show" is now on top, number 1, the most-played this week.
And the issue is the futility of piracy protection. It only takes one person to rip an MP3 and list it on (say) Audiogalaxy, and the success of the protection is null and void.
The Eminem album is a classic example: it isn't available (ie, people can't rip it) and yet the MP3s are doing the rounds. It just takes one person with a loopback cable and... poof... your copy protection is gone.
The irony is - of course - that copy protection might *harm* sales. If I know I cannot rip a CD and put it on my iPod, I might not bother buying it.
Those people that would never buy and would always find a pirate copy will anyway.
So, that's media industry logic for you...
--- My dad's political betting
The concept of anticipatory plagiarism was invented by Robert Merton (http://www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1997/), though the French Oulipo movement (http://www.nous.org.uk/oulipo.html) stole the idea and passed it off as their own decades earlier.
Ever heard this guy play Paganini?
Of course, still not what I would call "pop"...
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
I downloaded the album in MP3 and immediately made a music CD of it. When I put it into a Windows box and Winamp queried CDDB, it came back as Eminem/The Eminem Show. And obviously, I'm not the only one who's done this. I just wonder what percentage of the early discs are MP3 downloads and what percentage are physical copies someone bought...
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Mozart, Vivaldi and particularly Paganini *are* popular music. Just by dead guys. There isn't really a karass of "slashdot readers", but if there were I don't think it would consist of people that *only* listen to any one thing. People that think all the greatest music was written by europeans between 1700-1900 are just as stupid as those (more common) that think all the worlds best music was written in the last 18 months.
That said, Eminem is a talentless corporate hack. The sooner the vortex of history sucks him into the black hole that contains Vanilla Ice and Millie Vanilly the better.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
The original release date was June 4th, but due to 'rampant piracy' the release was pushed up a week. It was officially released today.
MTV News Article
Andrew
Assuming that none of the bootleg cd's are identical to the released cd, it would be nice if gracenote gave every request a unique identifier. Then we could see that A used a bootleg before the cd came out, but when the real cd came out, A bought that and had to re-download the songlist.
I don't like unique identifiers either, but in this case it certainly would be nice if they were able to give us the data that says either "Yes, people who pirated the cd before it came out did purchase the cd within 6 months of release" or "No, people who pirate don't buy the cd within the first 6 months."
A oneway hash of the computer's mac address + ip address as encapsulated in the packet would be easy enough to do so that Gracenote could track instances of contacts without tracking who is at the other end or giving any agency a method to quickly and easily determine who was at the other end.
I'm sorry, i couldn't hear you over your blatant disregard for other peoples tastes and opinions. I'm sure there are plenty of people that dislike whatever music you listen to.
The release was put forward a month by what Em called `internet bootleg djs' and Interscope called pirates.
But you can still try steal the album - you'll probably eventually get a full copy of it. But currently it might take a few days, at as a lot of the file sharing services are currently filled with bad mp3s, probably by Interscope, another organization they have hired, or a recording industry body. Most of the tracks you'll see from the Eminem show on file sharing networks are simply a ten second loop played over and over again. Others have a near complete track but stop and switch to country music in the middle, and others have quick noises thrown in there. The file sizes are often identical to the real tracks. There's probably a few different techniques, so its harder to look out for - a looped waveform is pretty easy to detect (with an app, or by listening to the music as it downloads), but the country music one is a lot harder to deal with (you'd already have downloaded 1/2 of the track before you realize its bad). There might be other techniques whoever is doing this has used.
Of course, you are taking the line completely out of context. And the fact that you can compare Eminem to one of the greatest modern musical performers is just a joke. What next, Eminem and John Lennon?
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
For a while there were rumors that this CD would be released as a copy protected CD. Was it? Can you play it in your computer? Please respond, because i'd like to buy it, but if i can't play it on the computer there's no real need to.
What a coincidence; it's also unplayable in CD players due the horrible sounds that come out of the speakers when you hit the play button.
</end recycled joke>
share and enjoy
The bootleg versions of AotC and Spidey are much poorer quality than you will see in the theatre.
I beg to differ...
A friend recently showed off a Spider-Man DVD complete with menus. Full quality. I was shocked...
You can buy them in the Detroit area for $10.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
When I was a kid, one of the older boys... 13-ish, 14-ish, actually made a ring of fire with gasoline around some people and set it ablaze. They had been spending the day firing illegal fireworks and stuff, and that was one of the straws the broke the camels back. The cops were called. I didn't witness the alleged ring-of-fire incident; it may have been just a tale told by the older kids, but the cops *were* called (as confirmed by adults talking about it) and I did see something I had never seen before--a model rocket (no doubt they were planning to fire it at an angle less than that recommended by the Estes junior rocketeer's guidelines). At any rate, maybe Johnny Cash had something to do with it... Ring of Fire was Cash, right? or was that Elvis?
A while later, this kid was playing army with b-b guns, and he got shot in the neck. He was lucky it didn't hit anything important. Maybe he thought he would "be all that he could be" if he decided to engage in live fire exercises instead of just playing football or something...
Then again, I can't think of what might have inspired this guy I knew to blow a log 6 feet into the air with home-made explosives, or for me to start a fire with methanol on a concrete driveway and extinguish it mere seconds before my friend's mother turned the corner, or to play with bottle-rockets, matches and stuff. It seemed like there was that age... like... 13 to 14, where fire and explosions were the thing to do. Most of us grew out of it. The ones who had all of their fingers left and didn't grow out of it must have joined the army or something.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As a result of the leak, the album will now be released on Monday (May 27).
If the problem is defined as "pre-release cheap copies will stop people buying later, full price copies", haven't the advocates for change won a battle here?
I mean, hasn't the record company just realised that artificial marketing delays inherent in the offline distribution process are likely to hurt their sales?
By releasing the album electronically with (1) fast servers, (2) lossless compression and (3) a reasonable price, and simultaneously sending "gimme airplay!" copies to radio stations (etc.) as is done now, they could cut this sort of "I don't want to wait" piracy down. Sure people will still re-rip the album at 128KB/s and make it available through P2P, but they were going to do that anyway. What do the record companies have to lose, by adopting the practice I have described?
Ditto for software. Clearly you're not going to get packaging, cover-art, glossy manuals or whatever, through TCP/IP, but doesn't the prevalence of warez and pirated music blatantly show that a sh1tload of people simply don't care? How hard is it to put a "download PDF manual | snailmail me a hardcopy for $5" option together? Or just make the manuals available in normal bookstores?
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Would you mind saying what theater chain did that? I'd like to avoid patronizing them if possible.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
OT so I nested this under your post.
Retail sales are odd.
For the past two weeks the PS2 has been advertised as costing $299 but the xBox for $199.
Didn't Sony say it first?
Get your Unix fortune now!
I know I've downloaded more than five songs... legally. They may be trying to figure out how much of a market there is for downloadable music, not whether you're a leech.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
How can the Vivendi/Universal complain of piracy, when it was someone *INSIDE* the company that initially *Pirated* the copy that is now on the internet.
Heh, but not going to see the movie is *stealing*. You benefit from the economic boom that these movies provide in times of war, and there is an implied contract in that benefit that you will go to see the film, possibly many times....
Yeah, and thank god they arrested Jeffrey Dalmer and stopped murder!
This is the reason why it's so hard for people who would be against the RIAA to be totally on the side of the average pro-napster guy. This argument FOR napster is every bit as ignorant as the RIAAs argument AGAINST it. There are many similar examples on Slashdot regarding the DMCA. Yes the RIAA is evil, yes the DMCA is evil, but we need to stop pretending that they are trying to sneak into our houses at night and murder us in our sleep if anybody with influence is going to take us seriously.
Yeah, and so what if I blew the Laika link. Here's the one you were supposed to get..
Bowie J. Poag
Or it could be all those iMac users who can't get the darn thing out of their CD drives.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Whoever put my shit on the Internet, I want to meet that motherfucker and beat the shit out of him... - Eminem
So has Eminem's attitude changed since he recorded "The Real Slim Shady"? "I say download the audio on MP3 and show the whole world..." -- Eminem
Will I retire or break 10K?
Assuming that none of the bootleg cd's are identical to the released cd
They are identical. The highest-quality pirates, the ones who trade .shn and .flac instead of .mp3 or .ogg, include "cue files" with their audio sets that describe exactly how long each track lasts. Because Gracenote's CDDB system works solely on track lengths, Gracenote has no way to distinguish some pirate discs from genuine discs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Here's an interesting article I found at www.nme.com...
Link (http://www.nme.com/news/101808.htm)
EMINEM'S PIRATE WAR!
EMINEM is threatening to "beat the shit" out of fans who have illegally uploaded his music onto the Internet.
Despite his new album, 'The Eminem Show', being one of the most closely guarded pre-release projects in history, it is now widely available to buy and download illegally weeks ahead of release.
Despite strict security measures, all 20 tracks from 'The Eminem Show' are available on the Internet, almost a month ahead of the album's June 3 release - meaning his label Interscope could lose millions.
The rapper said bluntly: "I think that shit is fucking bullshit. Whoever put my shit on the Internet, I want to meet that motherf***er and beat the shit out of him, because I picture this scrawny little dickhead going 'I got Eminem's new CD! I got Eminem's new CD! I'm going to put it on the Internet.' I think that anybody who tries to make excuses for that shit is a fucking bitch."
Internet downloading of music has concerned labels and artists, but there is an even greater fear about bootlegging - selling copies of the downloaded music to fans who can't wait for the real thing or can't afford it. Copies of 'The Eminem Show'' were being sold openly in New York last week for $5.
As a result of the leak, the album will now be released on Monday (May 27). For more on this story, see this week's NME, which is out in London now and nationwide tomorrow (May 22).
---
Ouch. Eminen should really take some Prozac or Ritalin before press conferences...he might get better PR...
You're not gonna get a -1 Flamebait modded as +1 insightful unless you mention how your poor post is gonna ruin your karma!
[o]_O
Record Label A pays $X,XXX,XXX to rent the #2 position for a week, to promote their artist, while Record Label B pays $X,XXX,XXX for #4, #11, #24 and so on, and so on.. Its carved up like a pie with the best slice given to the highest bidder. Wake up.
This is bullshit folks. My brother works with one of the biggest rock bands in the country, and hangs out with the guys in the band. He is good friends with the guy that manages the band, and gets to see the exact sales numbers each week. The billboard charts are absolutely legit.
The burden of proof is on you, if you want to dispute the validity of a standard chart like that.
C) This is neither news for nerds, nor stuff that matters. I just opened a site for the Linux community, to give them a place to share desktop themes without all the foo-foo bullshit of Freshmeat/Themes.org. I tried submitting the opening announcement here no less than 3 times, and had it rejected every time. Meanwhile, you want to tell your Oprah book club about controversy that isn't really a controversy. You running a infomercial site now, Rob?
Sounds like you'd rather he allow you to post your infomercial, so why are you bitching? I'd much rather read about a possibly large case of internet piracy than YATS (yet another theme site).
BTW, I checked out your site, and it sucks.
Now that's a flame.
"And like that
avoid patronizing them? i will patronize any chain that will give me tickets to new releases for $2. i am sick of paying the outrageous $8.75 i pay in cincinnati. the only place that sells tickets for $2 around here is about 2 years later in getting the movie than everybody else. not only that, but the quality sucks and the springs in the seats poke me in the butt.
Actually, I picked it up today, and there's a bonus DVD included with it with interviews and videos of him live, so it was really worth it. Also, this is the first rap CD i've bought where the full lyrics to all the songs were in the liner notes, so that also was a bonus.
Once upon a time...
I suppose that's what happens when a certain large theatre operator drops ticket prices to $2 just long enough to run all the competition out of business, and then jacks the prices back up.
The other thing that happens is that large theatre operator gets sued for anti-trust violations.
the cost of production for anything always decreases over time, until such a point when demand begins to drastically decline.
Music production is a labor-intensive industry, and the cost of employing songwriters, vocalists, musicians, and recording engineers has not gone down.
Since demand has done nothing but increase
An "increase in demand" means an increase in quantity demanded at all price levels. It pushes the demand curve (the one shaped like a \ sign) up and to the right. This causes an increase in both price and quantity supplied.
and since the technologies employed in the production of CDs have not decreased in efficiency
How are you sure of this? The primary thing that has become more efficient since the dawn of the CD has been the studio process, and in general, studio costs are completely recouped out of the artist's royalties.
In fact, the promotional expenses (also recouped out of the artist's royalties) have actually increased. The promotion agencies are able to bleed the labels more for "adds" to Clear Channel's playlist. Music videos become more extravagant each year. Courtney Love would be glad to do the math for you.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Skip James (Robert Johnson did this too):
"If I send for my baby, and she don't come
All the doctors in Wisconson sure can't help her none"
"I would rather be dead and in some cypress grove
than to have a woman I can't control"
Robert Johnson:
"Me and the Devil was walking side by side
I'm gonna beat my woman until I'm satisfied"
Mississippi John Hurt:
"Some these morning's gonna wake up crazy
gonna grab a gun, kill my baby, nobody's business but mine"
"Frankie shot Albert, shot him two of three times
said 'stand back, I's smoking my gun, let me see my Albert dyin'
He's my man, but he done me wrong"
The list goes on. Granted, these are taken out of context, but so are Eminem's lyrics.
The blues was america's first exclusive music form. Along with it came country, and after it jazz. Today, we have rap. In a way, liking Eminem is being patriotic.
While the blues are simply great tunes with appropriate words, Eminem has the preternatural ability to rhyme almost every goddam word in every line and still make it flow as if he's just talking straight. To really appreciate it, just try it yourself. It's really unbelievable. Just thought I'd add to your point.
c-hack.com |
And besided, Fulsom Prison Blues is nothing compared to Cocaine Blues.
Early one morning while making my rounds,
I took a shot of cocaine
And I shot my woman down!
(Sung with gusto like a work song)
As far as I'm concerned when you use the word "shoot" with cocaine in the same clause, you're talking about shooting up coke with an IV needle which is way hardcore krazy kowboy stuff compared to smokin' crack. You don't have to hit a vein to smoke some crack and nothing hits the blood stream with quite the same tidal wave rush as a full syringe of coke. (At least that's what William Burroughs said, I certainly wouldn't know.)
While shooting up coke is a wild time, shooting your girl after you slam down a hit is definitely the razor's edge and must have been a helluva rush. Of course Slim Shady might have tortured her first, but Johnny was clearly selling the hardcore image if you get into some of the more obscure stuff.
Part of it is the packaging (album art, liner notes, etc), part of it is a desire to support the artist, part is owning an "original" copy from which "near-perfect" copies can be made endlessly and at will, and part of it is really that a rack full of CDs is just cool.
I buy the disc, rip it to mp3, burn a duplicate, and shelve the "original". The duplicate gets played when I don't have a computer handy-- when I 'm in the car or out walking around-- and otherwise I listen to the mp3s. The mp3s I'd downloaded get tossed, mostly because it's easier to just rip a disc with iTunes than it is to re-tag and organize a bunch of junk I skimmed off the net.
Incidentally, my record budget has grown dangerously since the advent of good music-swapping systems and the proliferation of internet radio; I just find more stuff I didn't know about and that I like. I think I'm averaging a disc a week now, compared to a disc every 4-6 weeks just a couple of years ago. Almost every CD I buy now is something I've already heard in mp3s someone gave me or caught on a stream; the remainder are other albums by those artists. MTV and commercial radio never did a damn thing for me or my music purchasing habits, except perhaps cause me to cringe and lament the state of music in general.
You bold-faced liar.
You've heard it, you liked it, you even managed to get the mp3s in high-quality, cd quality even. You've probably already burnt it to cd audio for listen in your only stereo that won't play mp3s.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
This was officially released in the UK, and probably sizable chunks of the world, on Monday 27th May.
:-)
This ain't piracy, it's the world
Of course they see sales numbers.. But those numbers have absolutely nothing to do with how many albums their label ships. Tell your brother who works for "one of the biggest rock bands in the country" that his record label decides in advance wether or not their album will go gold, platinum, or quadruple-platinum, usually before the album is even recorded. The record company doesnt care if the CDs end up in the bargain rack. If they want to have an act "go quadruple platinum", its because they ship the album in that quantity, not because it actually sells in that quantity. Again, wake up. Its been an established practice in the recording industry for decades. Hell, i've got a damn Devo video from '79 that even makes a joking reference to that practice...
"Parcheesi, a new group! Ship platinum!"
Its like this. The recording industry only has to be smart enough to fool their core demographic---teenagers. That means, they develop scams that can out-think an 18 year old with $20 to his name. It aint that hard, in other words.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Good point. I can buy an old movie on DVD for ten bucks, because it was released a long time ago, the number of people willing to buy it have decreased, so the price goes down to try to get more people to buy it. Meanwhile, the price of a new CD is often less than that of an old CD. I should be able to get Nirvana's Nevermind for less than a newly released CD, but it works the other way around. The new CDs go on sale, and everything else is more expensive.
Maybe they have a good reason for this, but what could it be?
I guess it drives people to buy new music and forget old music, but why would they want to do this? Support new artists? Why, when they can make money off of existing artists?
The distribution costs of sending someone an MP3 are near zero. I should be able to buy an old CD in MP3 format off the web for three bucks. The artist already made most of the money they were going to make, and I'd be likely to buy more at $3/CD than at $15/CD. I understand that new artists need to make money, and that they wouldn't be making as much at $3/CD, so why not release old music in MP3 format and only sell CDs for the newer music. People would still buy them, even if their only use would be to rip the CD to MP3 and store the CD in a cool, dry place.
It would be exactly like hardcover books, gaming consoles, and other new tech. Get the early adopters to pay more at first, then lower the price later to get more people to buy it.
Synergy is your friend
Of course they see sales numbers.. But those numbers have absolutely nothing to do with how many albums their label ships. Tell your brother who works for "one of the biggest rock bands in the country" that his record label decides in advance wether or not their album will go gold, platinum, or quadruple-platinum, usually before the album is even recorded. The record company doesnt care if the CDs end up in the bargain rack. If they want to have an act "go quadruple platinum", its because they ship the album in that quantity, not because it actually sells in that quantity.
Don't be a friggin idiot. You didn't think anyone here could call you on this, and I did. Do you think the labels could (or would?) ship platinum levels of these CD's to retailers, to have them sit in the bins? Do you think the retailers would continue buying, week after week, as their bargain racks get filled up with this same CD?
The stores aren't going to keep buying it if it ain't selling! Duh.
You act like it's free to ship 10 million CD's for the label, and it's free for the stores to acquire these 10 million CD's.
Its been an established practice in the recording industry for decades.
Uhh yeah, an established practice with no proof whatsoever (or even LOGIC).
Hell, i've got a damn Devo video from '79 that even makes a joking reference to that practice...
Wow, I stand corrected! A reference from Devo! Solid proof if I've ever heard it.
"And like that
Think about the Gracenote server logs. Wouldn't they be logging the transactions and information requests.
I recall, way back when, when I was looking at CDDB that you had up to 1000 free checks with your application before they would want to charge you for the use of the service.
Add in the fact that they KNOW that the CD is one of the top requests... So if you put 2 + 2 together they HAVE logs with IP's of those PEOPLE that have a pirated copy
yerricde wrote:
1. Longer albums. Back in the day, when vinyl was king, 35 minutes was considered an album; nowadays, CD albums average 70 minutes.
Double albums were quite common (at least among the artists I listen to, and many artists would put extra tracks on their cassette releases because they wanted to get the music out and it wouldn't fit on the vinyl.
Yes, CD albums are probably longer on average than Vinyl albums were (Vinyl you could get about 18 minutes per side / 36 total before having to make sound quality compromises), but I question your "70 minutes" figure for the average CD albums. The longest many CD players can handle is 74 minutes, and most albums are far from full. My guess is the average new music CD is about 45 minutes (not counting compilation or "Best of" CD's, where it's trivial to just add tracks until it's full).
2. Inflation. CDs cost USD 17 now, but $17 in AD2002 dollars is worth about $9 in AD1983 dollars (when CDs were first released).
According to the CPI, $17 in 2001 money (USD) is $9.65 in 1983 dollars. I don't think there are formal figures for 2002 yet, but your figure sounds plausible.
The thing is, how many people were buying CD's in 1983? CD sales didn't pass Vinyl sales until 1988 ($11.36). CD's didn't become the dominant form of music sales until they passed the cassette in 1992, and $17 in 2001 was $13.61 then (in terms of sales, cassettes were king from 1983 to 1992). As I recall, CDs themselves often sold for $9.95 in 1992 (because they were still competing with cassettes). We're talking about much more than just inflation here.
I don't have figures onhand, but my understanding is that CD production costs have dropped to the point where they are considerably cheaper to produce than cassettes (and have been for a while), yet the cassette version is sold for less than the CD of the same album. We're definately talking about much more than inflation here, and more than "longer albums".
----
Open mind, insert foot.
The CDDB uses the TOC and a checksum of the data. After going through lossy compression and back, things will have changed.
track the IP address of people requesting album information before the album was released?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thanks for missing the point entirely. The point is that it was unfair competition to force competitors out of business by lowering prices so ridiculously. There's this little thing called "ethics", and the aforementioned theater manager seems to lack them. In our society, it's generally considered a bad thing to support unethical behavior.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
This would make a lot more sense than some story about how if you get all the mp3s and assemble them in the right order and burn to CD it still is recognised as the original.
But that does work. Works very well, in fact.
One of the ways the freedb/cddb protocol recognizes a CD is a hash of the track timings. Like track 1= 1:30.57, track 2= 1:45.13, etc..
You take these, run them thru an algorithim, and get a number out. Then fuzzy search for the number. It works. Very well. The algorithim works in a way that compensates for minor differences. And really, all it takes is for someone else to have the same MP3s that you do. The *vast* majority of albums in these databases is not CD's inserted into a drive, it's a folder full of MP3's.
There's even MP3 tagging programs that will let you do a freedb/cddb search on a folder full of MP3's. "Tag and Rename" is one of them that comes to mind. So if you have a folder with all the songs from an album in it, then all you have to do is put them in the right order and hit the freedb query button to get the tracknames and so on.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Ditto man.
I was going through my CDs the other day and realized that I had purchased a full third of them (~200) because I had been exposed to the music on the internet first.
The only thing that is a pain in the ass is ripping my old discs. I'm only up to the "Gs" as of right now.
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Hi, I work for the record company, you are the purchasing supervisor for all the YYY chain of record stores. We know that the backstreet boys are selling well, so if you still want us to ship you the CD's at (insert discount prices), then you also MUST buy 10,000 copies of RANDOM_NEW_BAND. Don't like the deal? then fine you lose your discount on the Backstreet Boys CD.
First of all, there is a HUGE difference between getting a new band on the shelf in small numbers, and "buying a multi-platinum" rating by somehow forcing millions of CD's into the retail channel, as the the guy that started this thread claims.
And you have as much proof as the other person arguing. My brother works for one of the largets bands in the country. Wow, that's solid proof right there.
I don't have to prove anything. The billboard charts have been a standard way of ranking album sales for DECADES. If someone can prove it's a sham, they would of done so by now. If the guy that started this thread wants to spout his bullshit about how the rankings are bought by the labels, then let him show us the proof (Devo quotes aside).
"And like that
Most of the "voodoo" in MP3 is in the encoder. The encoder is where differences in programming will result in major differences in the sound of the MP3 file.
I think decoders have little leeway, if any, to play with. So the same MP3 will lead to the same WAV file, probably independent of the decoder.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A simple Google search for "Billboard AND Scam" will produce the answer you're looking for.
Here's a hint. Tackle it in chunks.. Read the first 10 pages today, then the next 10 pages tomorrow, then 10 more on the day after that, etc...
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Not in a small town where corporate america/the wealthy own the place. Example: Our poor schools are falling apart and have yet to be placed in low speed 'school zones' while our private school have long been augmented with bright flashing lights to warn everyone of the impending school zone...despite the fact that no one walks to those schools.
The people who try to change things get slapped around by the local newspaper^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H tabloid.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.