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Challenging Music Downloading Myths
The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.
recording companies around the globe will likely ignore this piece of common sense and prefer to continue their tagline of "all pirates are evil and they steal millions from us". I wish I was just being cynical, but at this point the stubborness of the *IAA to fight pirates is really disheartening.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I know it's illegal and that it can possibly hurt artists, but if it wasn't for downloading music illegally, I would have never bothered listening to Michael Buble, would have never bought two tickets to his show, and would have never spent over $200 on merchandise afterwards. So there's a good side to it as well that isn't always as obvious.
I spend as much money as I can afford on CD and vinyl and am completely unapologetic about downloading leaked pre-releases, deleted releases, music I'd consider buying but only after hearing (RIP John Peel, there are fewer and fewer places to do so), and sometimes just music I've not yet the money or time to buy...
I like the way the spokespeople in the article speak entirely as though the recording industry's major problem with filesharing is not that it's illegal, but that it costs them money - probably a more accurate reflection of their sentiments, but certainly not the line the RIAA has been spouting.
One day I am going to find and buy - or else delete from my hard drive - all the music I have illegally downloaded.
qntm.org
It's nice to hear the CD before you pay $20 for one good song and fifteen crap songs. I have never downloaded off of a P2P myself though.. ((smile))
/. spaztech
The whole piracy/peer-to-peer argument has been done and done. And no matter how powerful the argument, the industry believes that every single time you download something, they lose a sale. And that's that.
Statistics and studies do not matter to these people. Your desire to kick the tires before you buy doesn't matter either. You got it - you didn't pay for it - we lost money. Of course the reality of it is something totally different, but these organizations have had a stranglehold on their commodity for so long, they're not comfortable with anything less than a stranglehold.
So they fight. And if that means ignoring studies and taking up ridiculous positoins - so be it. We're convinced - but they are never going to be.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The Register story also points out that although they spend more on song downloads, that's still less than they used to spend on CDs - so the RIAA still loses out.
Please note: I'm not arguing that the RIAA doesn't deserve to lose out. The whole music distribution system (incl. most legal download sites, imho) is one big rip-off and should go down as soon as possible, to become a faded memory of the 19th century.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Because not every bit of music is available with iTunes... If you're looking for music from American artists, then you'll probably find it there, but don't try finding more "local" music or you'll be deceived.
What I truly hate about iTunes though is that they actually have the music I want, but it's only available on their German store, or on their British store, or even sometimes on their US store, but not on the Canadian store, which I am required to use because I live in Canada (global market my ass).
They have the file I want to pay for, but they won't let me pay for it, so guess what? I'm gonna figure out another way to get it, and that other way might not involve payment.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
For me: DRM. If I'm going to be paying someone for music, I want it in basically the same flexibility that I would get off a CD. Lossless and with the ability to exercise my fair use. ITMS is completely useless to me if I can't transfer the songs to my portable. And no, there's no way I'm wasting my money on an ipod just so I can carry my DRM tunes around when I already have a perfectly functional portable that I can fill with ripped vorbis or downloaded MP3.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
Anyone else think the people who are harming the music industry are the RIAA? People who download music off the Internet (hardcore music lovers) probably take up a majority of the people who spread awareness about music artist's songs.
How about record companies sign bands that are fresh and innovative not the same old crap and perhapse overall record sales and legal downloading revenu will go up.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
Answer, they don't run windows or macos, don't own an ipod, don't care to run their software, etc, yada, etc.
Though to be fair of the friends I have who were mass mp3 "pirates" [arr, avast ye matey!] in last decade or so they're less so [if stopped completely] now.
It's cool when you're a teen and you wanna download everything and anything. For myself, I was part of the generation that grew up with mod/s3m/it/xm tracks and then this "net thing" hit us. So for us it was all new, fresh, cool, etc.
I think most kids grow out of it once they get a good salary and can afford 20$ for a cd...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I can only speak for myself, but a lot of times I download songs to see if I want to buy them. Or I download the remaining songs off an album to see if I want to buy the album. Or I download songs off albums I already own because I'm too lazy to go get the CD and rip it.
iTunes is good, but sometimes I look at songs and think, "This isn't a one dollar song". Add to that the fact that downloading the all the MP3s of an album costs the same as buying a physical album, and you see that, a lot of the time, the music available online is too expensive. There is no reason that the cost should be the same.
What they need are better download services, with wider selections, and variable pricing depending on demand. I don't care if the top ten downloads are 1.50 or 1.75, but I don't want to pay 1.00 for something that only me and two other people find appealing.
I also get real sick of being locked into a player. Half those services try to make you use WMP or Realplayer, god I'd rather die. iTunes is only just tolerable.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"'...which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing,' he [Philips] said."
What carrots? All I see are sticks. Are good file-sharers being rewarded at all? Let's see...
New CD at Best Buy, at a cut-rate price: $12.00
Paying for an entire CD with 15 songs off of iTunes: $14.85, not including the hidden costs of their DRM.
It seems all we're getting are sticks and heavier sticks from the recording industry. Yet they think they're being nice by offering to license music for a more expensive price. Fuck them, I'll save my $15 bucks and download free music off archive.org.
When you can buy a CD at a record store and only pay for the songs you want from that particular album, get back to me.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
While going through some old magazines, I came across a copy of "Modern Recording" from early 1981.
24 years ago, the recording industry was making the same exact claims that they are making today -- they are losing huge amounts of money due to "piracy". Back in those days, personal computers and the Internet were almost non-existant. CDs didn't exist and the main form of recorded music was the vinyl LP. According to the RIAA back then, the villain was cassette tape recorders. People were borrowing their friends albums and recording them onto cassettes instead of buying their own copy.
So, the RIAA commissioned a study that they hoped to take to Congress as proof that they needed tougher laws to deal with this terrible problem. But a funny thing happened. Their study showed that people who had a good quality cassette deck in their stereo sysytem bought nearly twice as many albums as people who didn't.
Sound familiar?
I rarely, if ever, download music - legally or not.
Interestingly, I haven't bought a CD for myself in years...
I wonder if the RIAA assumes I'm a pirate because I'm not feeding their monopoly. I wonder if the RIAA is even aware that people like me have stopped buying music because we got sick and tired of being treated like criminals - copy restricted CD's, lawsuits against music fans, etc...
I wonder if it ever occurs to the **AA's that their revenue shortfalls are due more to the manner in which they treat their customers than piracy. Face it - while the average Asian may have a good reason to commit music piracy, the average American is affluent enough that they'd rather buy music than steal it. Yet, most Americans want to know they like something before they buy it. And this is what P2P provided.
I don't use P2P. I don't buy music, either. Wonder how long it will take the likes of the RIAA to figure out the connection between the two...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I used to use Napster and some of the others for two things: (1) downloading music that can't be bought, i.e. out-of-print albums, b-sides, etc. and (2) trying music. Back then, I bought numerous CDs after trying music I really liked. Some of these CDs were retail CDs, where I wanted a higher quality sound than a low-grade MP3. Others were b-sides I bought on CD singles off of eBay because I wanted the better sound quality. But I also bought a lot of retail CDs I never would have bought if I had to buy them without hearing them first. So the bottom line for the RIAA is that the P2P effect is not simple: file sharing has caused me to buy music I downloaded, but not always at retail. More music may be sold as a result, but it's not all profit for the RIAA.
The unfortunate part about the new online services is you can't browse the catalogues without first signing up and selling your soul to their DRM. I would love to see if out-of-print music is available on some legal download services, such as out-of-print albums and b-sides, but I doubt there is anything on these services you can't find in Circuit City or the mall, so I don't ever sign up for the DRM.
The one thing no one ever mentions is the CD replacement effect. People who grew up listening to cassettes and LPs in the 70s and 80s got jobs in the 90s and could afford to dump their cassettes and buy CDs. This sort of generational shift in media will never happen again, and the RIAA's sales figures were bloated by people buying albums they already had. The effect is over. Everone now is buying music on CDs from the beginning, and has nothing to replace.
Seriously, with quality services such as iTunes out there, what legitimate reasons do people have to download mass quantities of music they haven't paid for?
Do you have a magical way of knowing whether you'll like music before you hear it? No? So I guess you'll have to hear the music before you buy it. For many people, downloading illegally is the most convenient method of hearing the music before they decide whether or not they are going to buy it.
iTunes is indeed lacking many things. This is not, however Apple's fault. This is because many recording industry folks have yet to license music for download. Often, the contract for producing an album will not allow the recording label to re-sell the product to a third party. The future herein lies in the fact that new artists and music will be iTunes compatible.
As for local music, this will change as apple expands its network of content managers and iTunes will probably end up dealing with the artist directly.
This is perhaps why some albums will never appear in iTunes, the record label wants the boxed cd set to be sold and not the download.
I must mention another alternative, where many good artists are trying something totally different. I am of course talking about Magnatune, where music is not evil. You should really check it out
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
As technology becomes more widespread and digital music distribution becomes the norm rather than the exception, there's no reason why all the major record companies can't disappear. As an artist, you would no longer need a big company to make all the CDs, and you would get more profit from your songs without a greedy middle-man skimming off the top all of the time.
Bands wouldn't need to spend large amounts of money on studio time to release and album because with a new distribution model they could just release single after single, which is how a lot of online music shoppers purchase their music. Startups could even offer their music for free to get people to listen to them (like some bands are doing now) and pay money to see them live.
Right now the music industry is full of middle-men that screw everyone involved. If a company doesn't like a band they don't have to offer them a contract. We're probably missing out on a lot of good music in the mainstream because the music industry doesn't think it would be popular. While there are certainly a lot of albums out there worth the price they ask, there's a lot more that have only a few songs worth listening too on the album. Right now a lot of consumers (those without computers or the ability to use iTunes, Napster, etc.) are forced to pay $15 for what's really $5 worth of music. Then when someone doesn't want to subscribe to this business model called "fuck everyone" the music industry does as much as it can to resist any change.
They're all quite happy having their pockets lined by someone else's hard work and dedication and exploiting the customer base as much as they can bear. This article is also pretty telling about some of the business practices these companies employ. Frankly, they don't give a damn about music, only making money. Here's hoping that the rotten bastards have a steady decline and are remeber only as a horribly oppressive and unsuccessful business model that no one will ever try again.
I download music with no intent of paying for it, I go to live shows make bootlegs and sell them.. after stealing the bands equipment from the back of the van of course... I kick kittens and puppies and beat up old people while selling smack to their grand kids. Britney Spears and all those wonderfully manufactured musicians are going hungry because of me.
I am evil hear me roar.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
The real upside is that, while downloading free music, the downloader might buck up and pay to go to a concert.
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And my point is tough shit. You don't need the latest britney spears hit to survive.
A lot of things in life are unfairly priced [one way or another]. Doesn't mean you can just take them when you want.
Whether "piracy == lost sales" or not doesn't really matter. The whole point of a music career is to make a living producing and performing music. If you feel that paying for that is not worth it then you might as well not have professional musicians.
Are the RIAA and labels totally disgraceful? Doesn't matter. That's how they choose to do business.
Know that there are ways of getting good music without going through the RIAA labels. Local bands, indy bands, etc, are out there and if you were soooo concerned with unfair music practices you'd go look for them.
Imagine if all you stupid children spent energy spreading word-of-mouth about indy bands instead of further spreading label music. You'd have a WIDE VARIETY of music to choose from, it wouldn't cost 20$ per CD and you'd be happier.
But no, you're stupid and ignorant and fuel the things you hate the most.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
But they do need to cry foul, and keep up the appearances that every single download is a crime, and a lost sale. They are using the same strategy of fear mongering that our government is fond of.
The reasons are simple. If they were to let up and say, ok so some music downloads are ok, but we still think we are losing sales, then their entire basis for legislation is thrown out the window.
I hope it doesn't sound like I'm defending them. I think the RIAA, and cooperations like them, are some of the absolute WORST things about this country.
But I can understand why they are keeping up the public relations stint of crying foul. They don't need music fans to believe them. They just need congress to. As soon as they "convince" congress with their "arguements" ($$$,$$$,$$$) they will get more legislation that will introduce more DRM, and possibly even remove the free-use clauses from current law.
They know full well that some bands are discovered soley through the internet. They just don't care. That is a small drop in the bucket compared to the marketing machine that makes acts like Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys sucessfull. They don't need underground marketing when they have pepsi jingles and MTV in the middle of time square.
What I can't figure out is why they pay so much for marketing crap bands when we would be just as happy with zero marketing for good bands. We'll find the music on our own. The RIAA could probably make just as much money if they just gave up. But I hope they don't. I hope they legislate themselves into the grave.
How is downloading music to "test-drive" it any different?
Copyright isn't property and downloading it doesn't take it away from anybody.
If you are going to download illegal music files, at least call it what it really is.... theft
Copyright infringement isn't theft, and anybody who persists in saying that it is is either an idiot or a troll. Dowling vs US, 1985, even the Supreme Court says that it isn't theft. Or try looking in a dictionary, they generally say something along the lines of "the object must be moved, however slightly, from it's original position", or a definition involving taking something, which does not occur in copyright infringement.
These arguments have come up many, many times, and nobody has ever put across a convincing argument as to why I should believe some random stranger on Slashdot about what is and isn't theft above and beyond the dictionary and the Supreme Court.
Why would you shop at a grocery store that sells food you don't like? Would you buy a peach if you were also required to buy a sack of dried beans, a muffin and a tin of Ovaltine?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
There are other websites that like Magnatune allows free or low cost music downloads. Some of these are:
Also there's Berklee Shares where you can find free music lessons.
FalconShould there be a Law?