Has P2P Influenced Your Music Tastes?

Whatistehmatrix asks: "About 5 years ago, when I first found out about KaZaA, it was somewhat 'underground' and had less than 1 million people. I soon discovered there was an unbelievable amount of music open to me. Instead of getting the music I always heard on the radio, I always sought out the music that was previously unavailable to me [Japanese pop & rock, overseas techno, etc]. Well, fast forward to today, and I actively buy CDs from groups I fell in love with from the songs I found on P2P. I was wondering, if any of the Slashdot community used to/still uses P2P programs to try out music that isn't heard on the radio, to expand your tastes in music from different countries & cultures?"

Comments

Streams

[Otter]

I find music streams to be much more useful for discovering new music (here's one from a couple of weeks ago that I immediately went out and bought). As a push medium, it's much better for bringing things to your attention that you didn't know about. P2P mostly assumes that you already know what you're looking for, which allows you to hear music you've read about without making you buy it but doesn't encourage discovery by itself.

Re:Streams

[tommertron]

I find music streams to be much more useful for discovering new music (here's one from a couple of weeks ago that I immediately went out and bought).

I totally agree. However, I also found a lot of good music by reading about an artist in a magazine, or hearing about it from a friend, and going and downloading a song or two of theirs. Kazaa is basically useless for finding music now, thanks to the sabotage of the music companies, but I'd be willing to shell out 99 cents or two at iTunes to find out if I like an artist.

Of course, these days I just tend to borrow a friend's CD and rip it to my computer... which is worse than the Napster days, when I'd download one or two and buy the album afterward. So, sorry RIAA, looks like your tactics are kind of backfiring... (on me anway.)

Re:Streams

[merdark]

I agree. But often, after hearing a good group on a stream, I'd download a couple of the songs via p2p to find out what the 'other' songs on the cd are like. The previews at places like Amazon are good, but often they are simply too short, or are non-existant (in the case of new/rare groups).

If I liked the group, I'd go buy the CD. I bought more CDs during that time than I did my whole life. Of course, after the RIAA decided to kill streams in the US with licensing fees, and then started suing customers for checking out music with p2p, I stopped buying CDs in protest. So far my silent protest has not had any impact, other than to give them more ammo against p2p because 'oh, their profits are down... must be because of p2p'.

Also, with the copy protection schemes becoming more prevalent, it looks like I will never be buying new music.

The only exception I make is for groups not tied to the RIAA. There are very few of these unfortunately. :(

Re:Streams

[ShamusYoung]

For me it wasn't even discovering new music, but new genres of music - I was never into techno until Kazzaa. I discovered some of it was really quite good (lots of it is also crap, and much of it is impossible to find outside of the 'net) and I built up a good collection before the whole thing went to crap. A lot of that stuff is indie, and isn't on any label, so I wasn't hurting the RIAA's bottom line at all.

But they just couldn't let a good thing last. Bastards.

3500 oggs

[davidsmind]

Way back in 2003, I searched for *.ogg with giftd and downloaded 3500 of em in one night. It took about a year before I had listened to them all and now I have an incredibly different perspective on music.

Club Music

[DemENtoR]

Acctualy, a lot of music I hear in clubs, that I couldn't find in stores here in the US. Or what you can hear on your radio station sometimes past midnight on the weekends, when they're broadcasting @ a club (at least it seams to be the trend on here in the area on the pop stations). I was able to find on P2P networks, and I also found a lot of new artists producing electronic music, that I never heared of. And polish music (let the jokes come), Kazik, etc..., (for those in the know), stuff I wasn't able to listern to since I moved here.

Re:Club Music

[DemENtoR]

Well some of us are young, college age, and acctualy do fun stuff on friday, staturday nights.

yes.

[rogabean]

I still pull a song or two here and now from P2P to check out a band a friend may have mentioned. It opened me up to alot of things I may/may not have bought before without hearing it.

Typically if I hear about a new band I do this:

1. find that band's website and see if they offer any downloads...

2. if none.. then I'll swing over to google for a quick search...

3. if none I'll jump on a P2P network and grab a file or two... listen and decide.

Then it's either off to purchase the CD or off to iTunes (typically both..as iTunes is typically lacking in my tastes). Besides I love having the original CD/Case.

It's all about community

[oO Peeping Tom Oo]

I've found networks such as Fasttrack and Gnutella lack a sense of community. There isn't much chatting going on. I've personally been influenced to listen to/buy new artists through the soulseek network. Through its use of chatrooms and using "user lists" as a method of browsing, soulseek has opened my eyes to many new artists (most being on non-evil labels).

Yes, it has...

[R2.0]

I've discovered I like music much more when I don't have to pay for it.

Re:Not at all

[bluelip]

You may not find that 'hidden gem' just by listening to store music. Not all stores carry all artists. P2P usually does though. I've actively sought out and bought music I found from artists I wouldn't have known about if it weren't for P2P.

That's not to say that I've liked all I've found. The good are far less than the bad. I'm glad I did find them though.

Cannot search for MUSIC on p2p

[Pegasus]

P2P cannot change my taste of music, because I remember music by MUSIC (what a suprise) and not by the people playing/singing, name of band, etc.

It might start affecting it when someone developes a search sistem where i humm a certain melody and it comes up with similiar tunes.

Very much so, yes!

[thecampbeln]

I liked a few tracks off of the "Bend it like Beckham" soundtrack, so after finding the track title on IMDb and searching for the artist (B21 in this case) I ended up with a ton of results in addition to the track I was looking for (remixes he'd done, etc.). I ended up downloading a bunch of the tracks and I have to say I enjoy a bit of the Punjabi Hip Hop scene! I NEVER would have been exposed to this if it wasn't for P2P.

Also (though I'll get flack for it I'm sure), the original Russian version of the Tatu disk (remember, the two Russian "lesbians" who sung "All the things she said"). Anyway, the Russian version of their album is 10x better then the English (and I don't speak a lick of Russian - pun kinda intended >=).

Course the RIAA hasn't seen any revenues from this "exploitation" (ever try to find Punjabi Hip Hop or Russian releases in Tower Records?!)

Yup

[MBCook]

Yes, definatly. While I didn't seek out forms of music specifically, I would sometimes download other things from people's collections when I found they had something else I wanted. It was this way that I found a few of the bands that I listen to.

But more importantly, if I heard a song I liked and didn't know what it was, I could find out on the 'net and download it. But whenever I did that I would try to get other things by the artist to find out if I liked them. I bought more than a few of my CDs after finding music this way.

While the iTunes price isn't bad, it still discourages expirmatentation the way Napster and Kazaa used to let you. I think the idea of 5 or 10 cent music (as in that article that I think was posted here a day or two ago) would fix that problem for me. I think that would be about ideal without actually being free. Plus it would force the services to try to compete on a level other than price (the difference between 9 and 10 cents isn't a very good reason to switch services, so to get new people they'd have to have a better catalog, less DRM, better quality, whatever).

Absolutely YES

[justanyone]

I'm a white, upper middle class suburban 37 year old male and never would have listened to rap or dance mixes had it not been for P2P. Likewise Mel Torme, who has some incredible vocal talent that I was previously unaware of.

Since the cost of the music was near zero for the friend of mine that grabbed it online, I could see if I liked it. Testing it out and seeing if I like something is a valuable thing - used to be (I hear) that record stores would let you do that. They don't do that now, I believe (though I've not been into a record store in 10 years).

So, I did make aesthetic decisions about groups based on P2P experiences, some positive and some negative.

I should mention that I'm a lot more likely to vomit down a record exec's shirt than ever purchase a CD again. But, I only really listen to the radio anyway (and at that, NPR), so they haven't lost any money on me.

One thing I'm wondering about is something my friend mentioned - that he download the stuff directly from napster and that was over 6 years ago. The statute of limitations on theft in Illinois is less than that. So, he legitimately now owns all the songs he got then. I'm not sure if he's right, but it was a funny perspective.

Piracy in general helped me find my musical tastes

[SocialEngineer]

I never really listened to a whole lot of music before music piracy. I had one or two CDs, a couple tapes, and that was it.

A friend at school started passing a collection of mp3s on a CD around at school. I copied em' to my HDD, and gave em' a listen.

Without that CD, I might have not been introduced to Industrial, and might not have become a solo recording artist myself. I now have purchased hundreds of CDs, and occasionally purchase music from iTunes and Napster (not iTunes so much, though - I've only purchased about 10-15 songs online).

After getting that CD, I got a taste of NIN and KMFDM - And I was thirsty for more. I asked friends online if they would recommend me other artists. Once I got a recommendation, I usually hit Morpheus or whatever P2p client I was using at the time to check em' out if I couldn't find samples legally.

Now, thanks to p2p networks, I am a music fanatic. I listen to classical, industrial, 80s/early 90s metal, blues, jazz, funk, electronic rock, and more. I also am a huge fan of indie artists.

I'm all about doing things legit, so I don't keep the music I download. In fact, I don't download anymore - I can't. All P2P traffic is blocked by my college. We can't even use BitTorrent.

Oh well, it just helps me to stay legal while boycotting the RIAA. I buy used CDs nowadays, anyway. It's cheaper, and since I just rip them to my HDD, I don't need a CD that's going to last forever.

Now, if I could just get my fans to distribute my music on p2p networks ;)

A small note: A year ago IIRC, I was using Limewire to do genre searches. Rather effective way to find quick artists in a genre, assuming people rip their music and edit the id3 tags properly :)

Oh god yes,

[LordMyren]

music plasma saved my life! it shows a graphical map of artists and how they connect to other artists (in way of "genre"). Its some entirely arbitrary linkage and the breadth isnt that great, but its supposedly all based on user inputs.

i find audioscrobbler to be too over-run by the songs everyone has on their playlist. it doesnt really help you discern genre's, which is what is so great about musicplasma. its much more directly peer to peer, but somewhat less useful. you pretty much have to find well done groups, but even well done groups rarely play the music in the group.

Mood + genre awareness has a long ways to go.

-Myren

How to select a good band

[jon_oner]

I recently found out a great way to pre-sort the good bands from the crappy ones. If the song you just downloaded is a 30 second loop or 3:15 of silence, then it typically means the band sucks and is in it just for the money (no talent or art). Thank you RIAA for helping us choose.

Yep

[The Bungi]

I discovered a shitload of artists I've grown to like and listen to. Indie stuff, foreign (well, foreign to the US) and so on. Much of it stuff you mainly find at B&N.

I had never really purchased that much music before. But here's the funny part: between 1999-2002 when I was really into Napster/Kazaa and other P2P networks I actually bought more music than ever before. Why? Because the stuff I really like to listen to I have to have in a CD. A downloaded MP3 just doesn't cut it for me in most cases. So I went out and bought the whole CD for those one or two songs I wanted. In some cases I found even better stuff, and in others the rest of the CD was crap, as is mostly the case. But them's the dregs.

I'm not going to try and make the point that music sharing promotes CD sales, because I don't think it's true regardless of my personal experience, but there's definitely something to say about a worldwide, diverse network of people who share their music. Back in the day you woudl find the most incredible stuff on Napster. Today (on the other networks) it's difficult to find anything beyond the top 40 crap, which is ironic considering that's precisely what the *AA people are trying to get off the networks.

Patronize your local college radio station

[jarsyl]

This is slightly off-topic, but for broadening your musical knowledge I recommend you start listening to your local college radio station. Assuming you are in the US, and not too far from an urban area, you've probably got at least a couple stations with hugely varied programming available to you on your dial. A couple of my favorites: WRUW of Cleveland, and WFMU, a non-college indie station in New Jersey. Share eand enjoy.

Yes, but we've lost something...

[starglider29a]

Upside of P2P:

• A friend can hear a song somewhere in the US, can tell me about it on the phone, and I can download it, even if the record store or radio stations here never heard of it.
• Looking for something, you always find something else you weren't looking for
• I LOVE the various versions of the same song, that you'd never hear or. Plus remixes.
• If you get a shard of lyric of a new2U song, you can find the title from google and d/l it to hear the whole thing, including determining who the artist is.

Downside of P2P:

• Having grown up in the years of "the Concept Album" P2P dissociates the music from the album and the effect is lost.
• As artists mature, their music changes. Imagine a young kid trying to figure out the flow of RUSH's career from album to album just by what they found on P2P.
• My friends and I share life experiences through a "Soundtrack of life". Certain albums remind me of certain people, and we share thoughts and express ideas using those themes in those albums. P2P'ers (pronounced 'kidz these daze') will never listen to "the same album". Their loss.
  -
  "All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted" (Name that album ;-)