Don't most Slashdot readers read K5?
by
ALoverOfPeace
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That's pretty old news, I would think most have seen it already.
I read it a few weeks ago. The author attempted to portray his company as an innocent victim of the RIAA, and I certainly wouldn't support what they did. However, AudioGalaxy, at least the later versions, were a piece of trash. The most recent one before they were shutdown had tracking software that you couldn't not opt-out of. They were in the p2p business to make money through gathering consumer information and violating privacy, and I would support them no more than the RIAA.
This guy notes that the two things that distinguished Audiogalaxy from other p2p clients were the "use a web based interface, and [the ability to] queue songs for delivery later."
I've often wondered why this feature is lacking in gnutella clients. I, for one, am frustrated when I have to continually search for that one song I want. Shouldn't I be able to tell gnutella to search for a specific song and download it when I find it (without resorting to macros)? Is there any development going on in this area?
AG was the best...
by
Frank+of+Earth
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The only good thing about Napster was that it took the brunt of the traffic and hype from AG. While Napster was changing and millions of people were flooding the system, AG was running along quite happily.
Of course, the best feature was that you didn't have to search for the song. Just throw whatever you want in the queue, come back a little later and you had all the songs you wanted.
Re:Idea.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
what about those who dont want access because *gasp* they dont share/download pirated files. why should they have to pay for it. and yes there are more users on the internet that dont do that stuff, than do.
im not talking the p2p legal uses. im talking about people not using p2p at all. why should i pay for content i dont want when all i do is use email and news websites
Re:Kuro5hin
by
JabberWokky
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Slashdot links to a Kuro5hin story?
Yeah? What's so surprising? K5 was hosted with the help of/. for a brief period, and the editors discussed the various methods of moderation back when it was first being implemented. I'd say the only loathing going on is that of a certain facton of K5's readership (including what's his name who made a big stink when he left Slashdot, and now I can't even remember who he was. Signal 11? Or did he just spoof the mod system?) who hates and despises/. for, imo, juvenile reasons. Sour grapes and "I'm leaving now and you'll all be sorry when you miss me!" diatribes marked the exit of some of the more vehement/. bashers on K5.
I'd say the lack of cross links between the two (since they share pretty much the same thematic news) is the fact that the majority of "stories" are comments on articles elsewhere on the net. So, when they share stories, most submittors just link to the primary source. Some of the meta news sites will credit with "Spotted at foo", but neither K5 or/. generally does, although it happens enough to make me think the submittors are the ones not crediting the link (which, again, imo, is unnecessary. If I wanted to read Fark, I'd go there).
-- Evan
-- "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Re:Good plan, though
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
The only people who really make money in the music business are the songwriters.
As it should be. Musicians are a dime a dozen. Good writing makes good music. Musicians, with rare exceptions, are interchangeable.
Too bad it is not that way in the movie, and especially television business.
Re:Audiogalaxy lost it.
by
OwnedByTwoCats
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It's funny. The files the RIAA really wants to stop, Brittany, Nickelback, etc. are available on any one of the hundreds of P2P providers out there, they aren't stopping a single pirate by shutting down AG, but the lesser knowns and out of prints now are homeless.
Maybe that's the point.
The Moral Thing to do
by
FreeUser
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The moral thing to do, of course, is to actually buy the CDs and put money towards the artist, to reimburse them for providing you with nice music.
No, the moral thing to do is to send the artist one or two dollars directly, rather than buying the CD.
Artists are generally at the mercy of the recording labels, and are typically paid $0.25 for each cd sold, while the recording label pockets the vast, vast majority of the profits. Supporting those institutions which are ripping off the artists, of which the recording industry is by far the worst offendor, is a very immoral act. Your $1.00 to the artist for downloading their entire CD off of whatever p2p or distributed service you use puts a great deal more money in their pocket than buying the CD legally does.
When it comes to buying the music online, where artists are paid fractions of a penny per song, the difference is even more pronounced and the artist treated even less fairly by the recording label. Download the ogg or mp3 file for free and pay the artist via fairtunes, or directly, instead. You will be doing a great deal more to support the artist than you will be if you go and buy their CD legally.
Note: I say this is the moral thing to do, not the legal thing to do (for those too clue-challenged to tell the difference). IANAL and am giving moral, or ethical, not legal, advice.
But the vast majority of college students are just too selfish to realise that.
Hearing that from someone who is promoting a "support the music industry, it is your moral imperetive" shill is really precious. I would simply point out that, for anyone defending the RIAA on this tack, to ponder the following words:
In comparison to what the Recording Industry has done to artists over the last 70 years, the p2p services and the worst non-commercial copyright violators on the planet are saints, and that includes those college students you so deride.
Because the indexing worked so well, that meant you could queue up a song and the system had a good idea of where to find it. It would look for someone who had a file with the same artistID/songID pair, and then alert the two clients to begin the transaction. Once you began downloading a particular file, it would make sure you would only get the file with that specific file size/check sum. Doing it this way also allowed the satellites to resume easily and transparently. It was awesome to jump on the web site before you went to bed, queue up a few hundred songs, and when you woke up in the morning most of them were there. You didn't have to care about who had the songs, it did that for you. I can't stand having to micromanage my downloads, having to pick 5 different versions of a file to assure myself of getting one of them. Some of the newer p2p apps are much better at this, but still none can compare.
YES! This is, by far, what made AudioGalaxy so much better then Gnutella, OpenNap, KaZaa, FastTrack, and any of the others. The result of the above feature is that you could find the rarest stuff out there, because the system would automatically start transfering the song when it found a host.
Does anybody know of any other applications which operate in a similar manner?
Re:Audiogalaxy lost it.
by
medcalf
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's funny. The files the RIAA really wants to stop, Brittany, Nickelback, etc. are available on any one of the hundreds of P2P providers out there, they aren't stopping a single pirate by shutting down AG, but the lesser knowns and out of prints now are homeless.
Just think about this for a second. Which is the greater threat to the RIAA, 1000000 ripoffs of the latest Brittany single (maybe a thousand real sales lost) or the possibility of independent artists finding a way to distribute music and make money without needing the RIAA's member companies? I'd bet that RIAA is way more worried about the latter than the former.
-- --
Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
This story proves the RIAA's real motives
by
Uttles
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How does something gain value? There are a few ways, but the best way for something that's readily available to gain value is to manufacture scarcity. That's right, make people think they can't get the stuff anywhere else, and all of the sudden you can charge them an arm and a leg for it.
This is what the RIAA has done, and continues to do. This is why the RIAA wants to make mp3 sharing illegal, unless of course you're paying them for songs on their labels. You see, if we can share any music we ever find, on a label or not, popular band or garage band, then the manufactured scarcity of good music is destroyed, and therefore it loses it's monetary value. When that happens, the bands will start making all the money off of touring or other means, because with all that competition they'll actually have to earn their money, and that will in turn put the RIAA and those big labels out of business because they won't be needed. Who needs sony's promotion when people just want to see your concert because they heard all your mp3's?
I could go on and on about this, but I just wanted to say a quick word or two because reading this article really made me see that this little theory of mine is pretty close to what's actually happening. AG and it's community really did open my eyes up to music I never would have appreciated before, and some of the band names I had never heard of and haven't heard of since. There's great music out there by all sorts of people and the only reason the RIAA, labels, or anyone for that matter can make money from a lot of the crap bands (like the lip-synching N-SYNC) is because they unethically (and hopefully one day illegally) control the market so that people can't get access to other, more original, artists.
I think it's kind of funny that so much controversy has been going on over what is basically a re-engineeering of one of the oldest internet services. Why not just resurrect Archie?
Re:It's simply expensive to tour
by
colmore
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If your band can only fill a 200 person bar on a 3 band ticket, then you're not going to be profitable no matter what. There have been some great bands in that position, but never any profitable ones.
However, if you're able to draw 1000 fans or so in an urban setting, if you aren't making enough money to at least pay for equipment, hotels, and studio time, then someone is giving you the shaft.
as someone on VH1s "1 hit wonders" said "first thing you gotta do is get a good accountant and a good lawyer, and then get another good lawyer to look after those two guys"
-- In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Re:Young and not so bright...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Funny how the old guys are still there only because the young turks saved their ass with 20 hour work days.
This isn't a question of who is "bright" or not. The young members of the tech field were filled with youthful idealism. They still believed in the American Dream; that a little guy could be number one. That the corporate bullshit which plagued the 80s and 90s could be torn down and rebuilt anew. I will grant you that a large number of dot coms were fucked from the first investment capital to fall into their hands, but there were many competent dot coms that were crushed by the self-consumed stock market.
The only thing the old school biz guys have done is perpetuate an outmoded business model. The societal revolution is still coming..you have just added more fuel to the fire, as the average joe becomes more affected by corporate scandal and the me-first attitude of old school business.
Time to re-think p2p
by
emil
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Self-contained, proprietary p2p agents will be stomped by the RIIA et al. We need a core GNU distributed p2p agent. The agent should implement all downloads via stripped-down HTTP and perhaps all search functions as stripped-down LDAP. It should not be audio/video centric.
If the agent is released by some party as "GNU p2p" under the GPL, we might be able to get the FSF and also MIT to defend it, as well as the EFF.
Each of the remaining p2p players needs to endorse and convert to the new protocols before they get stomped by the RIIA. Kazaa and friends can still stamp their version with all their spyware and other "value-add."
As the agent matures to circumvent blocking techniques, the network moves as a whole.
If the thing is POSIX, this might be a good way to get a minimal Cygwin on a whole lot of systems.
The one thing that has been able to put a stop to Microsoft at this point is the GPL. Perhaps it could be useful against the RIIA - somebody should try and see. The value of the IP behind any of these systems is not that great - the GPL would be a fantastic curve-ball.
p.s. IANAL, nor am I a win32 programmer, so I really don't know what I'm talking about.
Re:It's simply expensive to tour
by
joshsisk
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Amusingly, I already linked that in another thread on here. I've been involved in helping bands tour, and I currently book shows. Tours can, and do, make money. NOT if you run it like the band in the Baffler article - that is, letting your "managers" handle everything. The bands that make money from touring are either popular, or simply smart. The more things you handle on your own, the less cuts come out. Instead of letting the record company handle your mechandise (and reap the majority of the profits), you arrange for them to be made, or better yet - make them yourself. It's mind-numbingly easy to screen shirts. You can make 200 in an afternoon at a cost of about $3 a shirt. If you sell these for $10 a pop, that's $1400 profit right there. Shirt sales and alnare the thing that keeps most small bands going on the road, more than door receipts.
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty old news, I would think most have seen it already.
I read it a few weeks ago. The author attempted to portray his company as an innocent victim of the RIAA, and I certainly wouldn't support what they did. However, AudioGalaxy, at least the later versions, were a piece of trash. The most recent one before they were shutdown had tracking software that you couldn't not opt-out of. They were in the p2p business to make money through gathering consumer information and violating privacy, and I would support them no more than the RIAA.
This guy notes that the two things that distinguished Audiogalaxy from other p2p clients were the "use a web based interface, and [the ability to] queue songs for delivery later."
I've often wondered why this feature is lacking in gnutella clients. I, for one, am frustrated when I have to continually search for that one song I want. Shouldn't I be able to tell gnutella to search for a specific song and download it when I find it (without resorting to macros)? Is there any development going on in this area?The only good thing about Napster was that it took the brunt of the traffic and hype from AG. While Napster was changing and millions of people were flooding the system, AG was running along quite happily.
Of course, the best feature was that you didn't have to search for the song. Just throw whatever you want in the queue, come back a little later and you had all the songs you wanted.
Live web cams
what about those who dont want access because *gasp* they dont share/download pirated files. why should they have to pay for it. and yes there are more users on the internet that dont do that stuff, than do.
im not talking the p2p legal uses. im talking about people not using p2p at all. why should i pay for content i dont want when all i do is use email and news websites
Yeah? What's so surprising? K5 was hosted with the help of /. for a brief period, and the editors discussed the various methods of moderation back when it was first being implemented. I'd say the only loathing going on is that of a certain facton of K5's readership (including what's his name who made a big stink when he left Slashdot, and now I can't even remember who he was. Signal 11? Or did he just spoof the mod system?) who hates and despises /. for, imo, juvenile reasons. Sour grapes and "I'm leaving now and you'll all be sorry when you miss me!" diatribes marked the exit of some of the more vehement /. bashers on K5.
I'd say the lack of cross links between the two (since they share pretty much the same thematic news) is the fact that the majority of "stories" are comments on articles elsewhere on the net. So, when they share stories, most submittors just link to the primary source. Some of the meta news sites will credit with "Spotted at foo", but neither K5 or /. generally does, although it happens enough to make me think the submittors are the ones not crediting the link (which, again, imo, is unnecessary. If I wanted to read Fark, I'd go there).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The only people who really make money in the music business are the songwriters.
As it should be. Musicians are a dime a dozen. Good writing makes good music. Musicians, with rare exceptions, are interchangeable.
Too bad it is not that way in the movie, and especially television business.
The moral thing to do, of course, is to actually buy the CDs and put money towards the artist, to reimburse them for providing you with nice music.
No, the moral thing to do is to send the artist one or two dollars directly, rather than buying the CD.
Artists are generally at the mercy of the recording labels, and are typically paid $0.25 for each cd sold, while the recording label pockets the vast, vast majority of the profits. Supporting those institutions which are ripping off the artists, of which the recording industry is by far the worst offendor, is a very immoral act. Your $1.00 to the artist for downloading their entire CD off of whatever p2p or distributed service you use puts a great deal more money in their pocket than buying the CD legally does.
When it comes to buying the music online, where artists are paid fractions of a penny per song, the difference is even more pronounced and the artist treated even less fairly by the recording label. Download the ogg or mp3 file for free and pay the artist via fairtunes, or directly, instead. You will be doing a great deal more to support the artist than you will be if you go and buy their CD legally.
Note: I say this is the moral thing to do, not the legal thing to do (for those too clue-challenged to tell the difference). IANAL and am giving moral, or ethical, not legal, advice.
But the vast majority of college students are just too selfish to realise that.
Hearing that from someone who is promoting a "support the music industry, it is your moral imperetive" shill is really precious. I would simply point out that, for anyone defending the RIAA on this tack, to ponder the following words:
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Mote. Beam. Eye.
Glass Houses. Stones.
In comparison to what the Recording Industry has done to artists over the last 70 years, the p2p services and the worst non-commercial copyright violators on the planet are saints, and that includes those college students you so deride.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Does anybody know of any other applications which operate in a similar manner?
Just think about this for a second. Which is the greater threat to the RIAA, 1000000 ripoffs of the latest Brittany single (maybe a thousand real sales lost) or the possibility of independent artists finding a way to distribute music and make money without needing the RIAA's member companies? I'd bet that RIAA is way more worried about the latter than the former.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
How does something gain value? There are a few ways, but the best way for something that's readily available to gain value is to manufacture scarcity. That's right, make people think they can't get the stuff anywhere else, and all of the sudden you can charge them an arm and a leg for it.
This is what the RIAA has done, and continues to do. This is why the RIAA wants to make mp3 sharing illegal, unless of course you're paying them for songs on their labels. You see, if we can share any music we ever find, on a label or not, popular band or garage band, then the manufactured scarcity of good music is destroyed, and therefore it loses it's monetary value. When that happens, the bands will start making all the money off of touring or other means, because with all that competition they'll actually have to earn their money, and that will in turn put the RIAA and those big labels out of business because they won't be needed. Who needs sony's promotion when people just want to see your concert because they heard all your mp3's?
I could go on and on about this, but I just wanted to say a quick word or two because reading this article really made me see that this little theory of mine is pretty close to what's actually happening. AG and it's community really did open my eyes up to music I never would have appreciated before, and some of the band names I had never heard of and haven't heard of since. There's great music out there by all sorts of people and the only reason the RIAA, labels, or anyone for that matter can make money from a lot of the crap bands (like the lip-synching N-SYNC) is because they unethically (and hopefully one day illegally) control the market so that people can't get access to other, more original, artists.
~ now you know
I think it's kind of funny that so much controversy has been going on over what is basically a re-engineeering of one of the oldest internet services. Why not just resurrect Archie?
If your band can only fill a 200 person bar on a 3 band ticket, then you're not going to be profitable no matter what. There have been some great bands in that position, but never any profitable ones.
However, if you're able to draw 1000 fans or so in an urban setting, if you aren't making enough money to at least pay for equipment, hotels, and studio time, then someone is giving you the shaft.
as someone on VH1s "1 hit wonders" said "first thing you gotta do is get a good accountant and a good lawyer, and then get another good lawyer to look after those two guys"
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Funny how the old guys are still there only because the young turks saved their ass with 20 hour work days.
This isn't a question of who is "bright" or not. The young members of the tech field were filled with youthful idealism. They still believed in the American Dream; that a little guy could be number one. That the corporate bullshit which plagued the 80s and 90s could be torn down and rebuilt anew. I will grant you that a large number of dot coms were fucked from the first investment capital to fall into their hands, but there were many competent dot coms that were crushed by the self-consumed stock market.
The only thing the old school biz guys have done is perpetuate an outmoded business model. The societal revolution is still coming..you have just added more fuel to the fire, as the average joe becomes more affected by corporate scandal and the me-first attitude of old school business.
The one thing that has been able to put a stop to Microsoft at this point is the GPL. Perhaps it could be useful against the RIIA - somebody should try and see. The value of the IP behind any of these systems is not that great - the GPL would be a fantastic curve-ball.
Amusingly, I already linked that in another thread on here. I've been involved in helping bands tour, and I currently book shows. Tours can, and do, make money. NOT if you run it like the band in the Baffler article - that is, letting your "managers" handle everything. The bands that make money from touring are either popular, or simply smart. The more things you handle on your own, the less cuts come out. Instead of letting the record company handle your mechandise (and reap the majority of the profits), you arrange for them to be made, or better yet - make them yourself. It's mind-numbingly easy to screen shirts. You can make 200 in an afternoon at a cost of about $3 a shirt. If you sell these for $10 a pop, that's $1400 profit right there. Shirt sales and alnare the thing that keeps most small bands going on the road, more than door receipts.