Slashdot Mirror
Online Music Brings New Life To Old Music
Rick Zeman writes to tell us The Washington Post has a look at how online music has helped to revitalize eclectic or out of print music. From the article: " Because the Internet has changed how people discover and share music, the rules of marketing it and the hierarchy of who determines what's hot have also changed. As radio-music listenership declines, the industry finds itself spending more time courting a broader field of tastemakers who, through Web sites, are popularizing songs that never get radio play. The primary tool in this transition is the playlist -- a sequence of tracks posted on blogs or shared on music purchase sites such as iTunes.
Not just that, but also 'about 2,700 albums have been brought back through the Vault, with more than 5,000 scheduled to follow' with those albums not having enough demand to justify another printing."
When will the Left Banke CDs be back in print?
Just how much "demand" does it take?
You'd offer them for sale, on-line. There's no distribution costs.
And you wouldn't even need to keep them in stock. Just charge enough to cover printing the inserts and burning the CD. All of the costs are passed on to the buyer. It's pure profit. The "advertising" would be done by the "blogs" mentioned.
Dexy and the Midnight Runners "Come on Eileen" Do a search on Youtube, there are tons of remakes....
i know, offtopic sort of
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
A great site I found a couple of years ago is http://english.sovmusic.ru/ . It's got thousands of mp3s taken from Soviet LPs and such, going back to the 1930s. Really amazing stuff. And it's run by a communist with a real to-each-according-to-his-need point of view, so everything there is free to download.
= saintwar
If you want an idea of the mentality in Russa after the fascists attacked, listen to this:
http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/download.php?fname
"The primary tool in this transition is the playlist"
So how long will it be before someone cries foul, waves a 'playlist' patent and tries to make a dishonest buck out of this?
Stupid idea perhaps, but my god if there haven't been some godawful 'patents' showing upand causing trouble of late.
I'll go back to the cynics corner now....
Check out bluebeat. It's the best music service nobody every heard of for depth of catalog.
It has all the music from 1910 wax cylinder recordings, 1920 and 30's delta blues, ragtime etc. up to the most current hits. Best of all its currently free. (Free for windows users that is.) At 320k it's something you do want to hook up to your stereo. Anybody found anything that comes even close?
SHORT VERSION: My company is one of the back-end providers of music to Apple iTunes, EMusic, Rhapsody, and all the other digital music services. But we sell/distribute ONLY independent music directly from the artists - no record labels.
When our sales reports started coming back from Apple, I was stumped. They were artists I had never heard of. I assumed it would be our top-sellers in the physical-CD world, but instead we had artists who had only sold 2 CDs, ever, selling $5000 in downloads.
It took a lot of research, but I figured it out : all of the top-selling albums in the digital music services were albums with cover songs. Often selling their full-album if they had even one cover song on it, which means that strangers were finding them because of that cover song, then liking their original music so much they bought the whole thing.
I'm advising all musicians I know to include one good creative (not-too-covered, not-too-obscure) cover song on their future albums, to help call attention to it in this song-based search world.
As a first step to experiencing this universal availability the purveyors of the various works will pay sites that manage to attract a profitable slice of people seeking to experience a new (or old) genre.These 'cool people' who act as conduits to rediscovered works should be pushed aside when search engines can easily provide stepping stones from work/artist to another. For example there are major works by J. Hydan, Mozart and Beethoven that each draw on the same musical source, (I believe it's Mozart's 40th, Beethoven's 5th and a source work from Hydan I can't immediately recall). Once the web is in full swing a neophyte to any genre will be able to hop, skip and jump through the various tenuous associated works with an ease that unthinkable before the web.
I've posted in the past that the best way to circumvent the attacks of copyright holders on the open imaginative playground that is the web is to float on the web the entirety of folklore in terms of folk music and folktales that would present an ocean of prior art from which most modern works have drawn their inspriation.
The web in a way becomes the framework for players of Das Glasperlenspiel.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Soviet LPs play YOU!!!
This sounds great to me, although not exactly a new thing. If you haven't read about the "Long Tail" phenomenon you might be interested in these two articles:
l
Chris Anderson's article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.htm
A Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
I'll sleep much better knowing that my favorite boy bands will never go out of print!
Anyone else for a group suicide?
Yet I can go to various clubs and hear new, local bands (unsigned) who are selling their CD's for $10 each.
And they had to pay that "very expensive" cost themselves for a short run.
I'm not following your logic here. If a garage band can afford the expense, knowing that they might sell only a few CD's, why would a major corporation be unable to do the same?
Yeah, but where is the original "Hair" soundtrack from the mid 70's? Or, an original "Fiddler on the Roof"?
I've got Hair on LP but I don't own a turntable anymore...Damn, I'm getting old...but at least I don't have any 8-tracks.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Most people DON'T realize that punk (no I don't mean Green Day.. think SST records, anything through Blacklist Mailorder from MRR...etc) a lot of music was/is only available on 7 inch vinyl. Because the young uns today don't know what a reecord is.. (it's what we all listened to before CDs).
Digitizing this stuff in not only a way to preserve it but to also turn the kids on what started a lot today's great bands because today's kids always need edumacatin' about music. (Well every generation does in it's time)
Somebody is attempting to use this type of publicity to get David Hasselhoff to #1 in the UK music charts.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Apple iMS promises to sell very soon - AAC coded to analogue format.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I can do something with my collection of eight-track tapes.
As radio-music listenership declines, the industry finds itself spending more time courting a broader field of tastemakers who, through Web sites, are popularizing songs that never get radio play.
If only the radio industry could begin to realize that people do *NOT* like to listen to the same 7 songs over and over again throughout the day with the occasional "older" song thrown in to attempt to trick everyone.
If they could instead harness what we really want to hear (podcasts, *true* variety (across genres and decades), and less pointless commercials). It's obvious, through the success of podcasting and sat radio, that the formats they have been using in the past are done.
It's amazing to me that they are so slow to adapt as they watch their numbers fall.
I'm advising all musicians I know to include one good creative (not-too-covered, not-too-obscure) cover song on their future albums, to help call attention to it in this song-based search world.
.mp3, of course).
This is VERY good advice. I bought The Ataris' So Long, Astoria *specifically* because of the well-done cover of Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" it had. Turns out the rest of the album was pretty good, and it remains planted on my playlist (after the requisite ripping to 320K
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
can't get enough commie propaganda at college?
It's my opinion that every song ever recorded should be available via digital distribution. The main thing keeping this from happening is that it is virtually impossible to get all the companies that own the majority of rights to recordings to come to an agreement on anything. Although I have no solution to that particular fiasco, I think a great way to price things would be on with a sliding scale that puts a premium on popularity. A good part of the revenue from current downloads is from the top couple hundred most popular. Now if the cost of those was pushed up to $2-3, it would allow for download of more obscure tunes for pennies. Thos out-of-print, "unpopular" songs cannot support premium pricing; but, seeing as they are unavailable in stores, (not profitable enough to waste the shelf space) ANY income that they do generate is purely gravy. Now if a particular song experiences a resurgence based on new attention, this upswing in popularity would be reason enough to bump it into a higher cost bracket. Now maybe it costs $.25 to buy instead of $.05. Prices could be adjusted weekly (or some other increment) with the most popular song costing maybe $3-4 and the least being like $.05. I think this would be a huge incentive to legally download songs and the owners would make scads more money than they already do. It could also be interesting how playing the market might develop wherein there would be runs on songs to drive up the price, hedging that you could get a song cheaper in a week or two, and all the other fun stuff that comes from dealing in a regulated market.
Pandering to the lowest common denominator would be less frequent if more people were prime numbers.
I have far more than that number in my personal collection and don't plan to stop buying vinyl any time in the foreseeable future. There's just too much good music out there. And another 5000 albums they're going to add still doesn't scratch the surface (pun intended) as to what's available. And guess what, LPs continue to sell reasonably well even though it's a niche market, while CD sales have dropped. There is always a demand for quality, and MP3s are just the opposite. Back in the early 80s the CD was supposed to be 'perfect sound forever', and we know all too well that's not true, otherwise DVD-A and SACD wouldn't exist.
Most of what we get around here is capitalist propoganda. You astroturfing pig.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Gibson touched on this issue (the diminishing temporal correlation between artists and their fan-base) in his 1996 novel, Idoru.
Very cool. I'd be interested in seeing some examples, if you're allowed to list them.
While we're on (or off) the topic, can you shine some light onto why all the major online music stores sell music sampled at 128kbps? I'd buy much more online if the fidelity was higher. Is there any discussion at all about stocking songs in a lossless format? There has to be demand for this, and I'd think that any ITMS competitor who wanted attention would try this.
In an attempt to bring this back on topic, I'll point out that for out-of-print music, a higher sampling rate from online stores is even more desirable, because I can't buy a higher-quality copy in the store.
Cheers.
As much as I want access to new classics to discover I dread re-buying my cassettes in DRM'ed low bitrate lossy files. Normal Apple Lossless files are all I ask...I'm already intrigued but I have no interest in ever buying this material again and there's no reason in the world why I need to accept lower quality when much better is possible (they are indeed using the source materials many times when converting these files).
yeah! I signed up! spammed a lot of people with this one. thanks for the link.
Besides, my local Guitar Center (same store, different name) requires me to give my address and phone if I want to use my debit card (for "security reasons"... yeah, right).
I also don't know how Linux compatible it is. It ships with a free copy of Audacity... A bit redundant, since Audacity's free software anyway.
Ah, well... I guess I'll have to borrow a friend's turntable and go direct to my audio card.
the "general public" doesn't seem to REALLY want as much variety as they pay lip-service to wanting. ... , ask [a friend] if they can name 20 or 30 bands (or even songs!) that they wish their favorite station would add to their playlist. My guess is, most people will be able to name maybe 3-5 and then draw a blank... or else their list will consist of music very similar to what's already being played.
The poor service your friends receive is not indicate narrow tastes. You can't discover what you like if you are never exposed to it and the way the RIAA world works, you will never be exposed to much outside a few "target" audience cities. To really get a feel for how broad people's tastes are, you have to understand what's wrong and what others have done to fix the problem. The way you are looking at it is insulting and does your friends a big disservice.
First, why radio music sucks so hard. The RIAA charges so much for the few songs they let radio stations play that the average station can only have a thousand or two songs on hand, and they have to be vetted carefully. How are they vetted? From sales in "target" cities. Most radio stations won't take any risks with anything but sales prooven music. Notice the catch was the high price to begin with. Between the $500,000 FCC license fee and RIAA music fee's the broadcaster does not have much choice either. As downhill battle points out, the money is NOT going to the artists. Yeah, the result can narrow your friends music tastes - appreciation comes from experience and the rude are well .... rude.
Now what's been done that's different? Plenty! and that's what the article is all about, though they seem to have forgotten all about the pioneers. Exposure is easy when you share your playlists. Napster, MP3.com and anyone who got into online content distribution in the 90's understood this. People's tastes are much much broader than the old RIAA model could ever support - that's why they killed all the early music services and are desperate to take over the entire internet and your personal computer. Decentralized distribution will put power and money back into artist's hands and local labels. The Big Three Music Publishers are fighting for their lives.
Don't believe that people's tastes really broaden when they are given choices and guidance? Ask the people at net flicks how many of the entire 60,000 DVD library is rented out on any given day. Think 1,000? You are off by factor of three ... and an order magnitude. That's right, more than half of the catalog is rented every day! People's demand for variety is something physical distribution can not keep up with.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
can you shine some light onto why all the major online music stores sell music sampled at 128kbps?
I expect so. It simply costs less in bandwidth. That's one of several reasons why I don't bother with iTunes. I prefer to buy the CD and rip my own mp3s at 192kb/s. Not because that format/bitrate is ideal by any means, it just gives me an optimum sound quality to storage space ratio for my iPod and mp3-CD car stereo.
Too bad CD Baby won't take care of the accounting when it comes to cover songs. Last time I checked the Harry Fox Agency wanted monthly statements for online sales of covers. This can be a pain in the ass for the small band who doesn't have someone doing their books full-time. Pressing discs and paying royalties is easy--make a thousand discs, pay $X to Harry Fox up front and you're covered for those discs. CD Baby is doing a great job of getting discs out there, and I think the idea of them being the middleman with the online distributors is good too. But the actual mechanics necessary to play by the books with the accountants and lawyers when it comes to distribution of covers still needs a lot of work.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Glad to see The Washington Post remind us of what Wired Magazine first described in 2004...maybe the RIAA will get it eventually if enough media outlets broadcast it... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
Did anyone notice the trackback to a blog named Fuckthemusic.biz.
It's pretty juvenile of me, but I thought it was hilarious to see the word "fuck" in the Washington Post.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Chris Anderson of Wired magazine describes this as the "Long Tail Effect", where the availability of search engines and easy means to get at obscure material, be it music, books or whatever, opens up previously unavailable markets. He's even written a book about it. It just baffles me why the RIAA and MPAA have pursued the policies they have in terms of very aggressive enforcement against end users, when the technologies these people use have actually led to independent and obscure artists getting more exposure! I am 100% in favour of the artists getting paid for their work, but perhaps it's time for the old media companies to address their business models and move with the times?
If they want go after someone, go after the pirated media industry in Asia. I live in SE Asia and I can tell you that it's harder to get a legal copy of a DVD or CD than it is an illegal one. That's arse backwards. They could start by making iTunes and their competitors available here. That might make a difference. And perhaps pressuring the governments to better enforce IP and copyright law (that they have signed international treaties on).
"The fun of collecting is gone," said Michael Crowley, who said he spent his childhood hunting for bootlegged copies of obscure acts in hidden-away record shops run by edgy people with nose rings. "They're not that fun if you can download them with a few mouse clicks," said Crowley, a Washington journalist who wrote about the rock snob's demise by digital music for the New Republic.
I don't find this to be true at all. There's plenty of obscure albums which I remain unable to find on bittorrent, despite continued effort. Every so often, I find one.
If I were paying, it might be another matter. But that's a different discussion altogether.
There's still a hunt, still an effort needed, it's just moved down the long tail as more and more music is made available online.
The whole "orphaned works" problem is a special case of this phenomenon.
It also encourages piracy. A few weeks ago I was looking for a particular piece of foreign music from the early 90s. I searched lots of stores, both used and new, for a copy of the album in question. A few stores had it in their listings but, you guessed it, "out of print." I wasted hours looking for a legitimate copy of the music. Then I went to a pirate MP3 search engine and found it within minutes. If there were some way for me to buy it, I would. (I have no good way of tracking down the artist to send her a small payment.) I was fully ready to pay import CD prices to get it. And if it should come back into print at some point, I will buy it. Meanwhile, I get to enjoy it thanks to piracy.
Now, I'm sure someone will tell me how I'm robbing the artist here, getting a copy of her song without her permission -- but do you honestly think most out-of-print musicians say, "I'm so glad nobody can get my music any more! When I signed that contract for my album I really hoped the publisher would stop selling it some day. I'd rather nobody listen to my old music than someone listen to it when there's no way for them to pay me."
I didn't bother with that album, I bought the CD single instead. Still the only reason why I got it (The Ataris - Boys of Summer) was due the radio airplay it got localy.
i live in new york city, and the evolution of my musical taste has been from american pop to... asian and european pop. i like my empty headed music in a language i can't understand damnit! ;-)
and for those of you who say that stealing from foreign conglomerates, i mean, er, artists is just the same as stealing from american cartels, i mean er, artists, please first tell me how the heck i would have been exposed to these artists in the first place were it not for free music sharing online?
figure that one out and then you can get back to condemning me and my actions
pffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Of course, manufacturing costs would probably be prohibitive for large pressings but with digital distribution and one-off pressing, there's some money to be made. Incidentally, I checked on iTunes music store and was surprised to find a large part of his discography available. To boot, most of the albums were less than $8, a surprise considering I thought all albums were at least 9.99. I also was surprised by their "collections" service, which is a type of curated playlist. The breakbeat collection, at least was fairly extensive. I may wind up going with iTMS but would prefer unencumbered Mp3s. Actually, considering I've already downloaded most of the MP3s, I just wish there was a simple escrow service where I could toss some bucks directly to the artist--consider it a hat on a digital street ; )
harmonious design
While we're on (or off) the topic, can you shine some light onto why all the major online music stores sell music sampled at 128kbps?
Keep in mind that 128kbps AAC is higher quality than 128kbps MP3, so if you're avoiding the iTunes Music Store because you don't like the sound of 128kbps MP3s, I suggest you try downloading some of the free tracks they offer (look in the bottom left corner of the home page, new free songs released every Tuesday). You can do this without giving them any credit card information, although you do have to register with a valid e-mail address.
Of course if you've heard 128kbps AAC and aren't satisfied, then I fully agree that you shouldn't send them your money.
To answer your question, the reasons Apple and their competitors offer compressed music are:
1) smaller files use less bandwidth for the user to download, therefore costing Apple less money
2) smaller files take less time to download, so the user gets closer to instant gratification
3) smaller files take up less space on disk, which isn't really significant on most desktop computers but is quite significant on portable media players such as iPods
4) the average person doesn't notice an audible difference between 128kbps AAC and lossless
Given #4, the demand for higher quality really isn't as strong as you expect, especially in light of #2 and #3. Throw in #1, and it's a no-brainer.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Turns out the rest of the album was pretty good, and it remains planted on my playlist (after the requisite ripping to 320K .mp3, of course).
I hope you understand that if you bought a 128kbps AAC file, then re-encoded it as 320kbps MP3, the resulting MP3 file will be WORSE quality than the original AAC file (in adition to being 2.5 times the file size). Interoperability is the only valid reason for doing this; if that's why you're doing it, carry on.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Sure, 5,000 is a lot to listen to at one setting, but compare that to the potential back catalog that's nothing. Records have been produced for a hundred years, even counting the ones that are out of copyright there must be hundreds of thousands of recordings setting on shelves somewhere... I'd guess Sony's out of print Jazz catalog would be tens of thousands of albums...
I tried to find a way to send this privately, but no-go. Just wanted to thank you for mentioning the Ataris " Boys of Summer". I'd never heard that version before, but the Henly version is one of my fave tracks. You've just scored another Ataris convert - purchased the album a few minutes ago. No, the RIAA must be correct - music downloads don't have any impact on music purchases... ;-)>
He's spot on. I downloaded a truck load of music recently (just felt the urge), probably less that 20% of it was from this century with many of the songs going back as far as the 60's (long(ish) before I was born). With online downloads available I can get all the great tunes that make up my tape collection (remember tapes[cassettes]? No?). And it ain't just old stuff, a lot of what I buy online I just can't get at my local stores because it's not popular enough.
Glad to hear it. My inclusion of the track/album/artist info WAS in fact a subtle attempt to maybe see if anyone else would go check it out.
But yeah, I still don't understand the well-entrenched belief in the recording industry that downloading tracks always costs them money and is pure, unadulterated theft. I found the Ataris track while looking for a copy of the Don Henley version. I downloaded it. I liked it. I then went and dropped my genuine, hard-earned CASH on a genuine, pressed CD! Scary, I know. Sorry, RIAA, I don't know what came over me. Next time I won't bother giving you or your artists or your distributors any cash, and you can go on ranting about being ripped off, okay?
Interesting side note on that album. The Ataris included the full lyrics to all of their tracks in the liner notes, something I really appreciate when it happens. But oddly, the lyrics to "Boys of Summer" were left out. I wonder if there was some legal restriction on their inclusion?
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
Oddly, I never knew if this one got much airplay, since I haven't intentionally listened to the radio (at least for music) in something like a decade or more. I stumbled across it while looking for the original Don Henley version. See my reply to mcocke below for musings on the RIAA's attitude about that.
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
And I hope you understand that I actually - gasp! - bought the CD and ripped and encoded it all by myself. I know, I know - it was a moment of weakness, and I really hate myself for having done it. I'll try not to let it happen again</sarcasm>
Seriously, though, I have no regrets having bought this album or any others out of the small handful of original, pressed, expensive CDs I've purchased in the last few years. But in almost each and every case, I've come across the tracks online somewhere, downloaded them and given them a test listen before the cashola left my pockets. If the RIAA had their way, I'd be out several million dollars in legal penalties, and maybe behind bars. I just don't get that.
Back to the original point. Bands that are getting started and want exposure: pick a good cover song, and include it alongside your original material. You WILL get more attention that way. Just do us all a favor, and don't destroy the memory of the original by doing such a fantastically bad job of covering it that we end up hating both your version and the original as a result! Case in point - Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams (are Made of This)". If you enjoy the original, for the love of god, don't listen to this "cover".
"I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer
Also known as Democracy. That's offtopic, but this isn't: to satisfy the greatest number of people with the latest hits they want to hear at various times during the day, they inevitably end up playing the same stuff over and over again.
I did some vacation work at a CD factory. They had machines that assembled dvds, cds and even double cds. You just had to insert the inlays, the halves of the cases and the cds and the machines assembled them and boxed them in cartons of 25.
However, they also had a number of fulltime employees that did a similar thing by hand; inserting the inlays in DVD cases and adding the disc or adding lyrics booklets to music cds for example.
The machines were run in shifts, 24 hours a day but for small runs I think manual labour is better (cheaper/easier). The assembly and shipping would not even be the most expensive/difficult thing for small runs. The making of the screens for the screen printing and the pressing/burning of the cds would most likely be the major focus points.
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
That would explain the trend seen with the Promo Only discs. A good 30-35% of music on the latest promo only sets are bad cover tunes.
If a record company goes out of business where do it's properties go? Usually some lawyer ends up with them and the only time you may hear your favorite song from years ago is on a commercial for jockitch cream. Then there are the record companies that only want to spend money on the million selling pap that lines their pockets yet they won't release their iron grip on even the biggest dogs in their catalogue for fear of another label making money off of it. With filesharing you have the chance to find that song or album and it would be nice to slip the artist a bone or two but the record company will squawk because we just figured out we don't need them anymore so that's out.
I think there is a great opportunity out there for serious/classical (meaning anything from Bach to Messiaen to Reich to... ) music as well as popular music.
Leaving copyright questions aside for the moment, I'd love to have digital recordings available from college orchestras (or small city bands, or whatever) of such works. In some cases, I'd like to have a pile of recordings of a single piece - just to compare and contrast. (For example, I'd like to hear any recorded performance of Steve Reich's "Music for Eighteen Musicians".) I'd also like to have lots of samples of different composer's works that may not be in the mainstream catalog.
This would be a great way to discover composers, to discover interesting performers and generally to both broaden my musical tastes and deepen my appreciation of pieces I already know.
Thanks for the info. I was working with the assumption that 128kbps AAC is the same fidelity as 128kbps MP3.
Long ago when I had a Diamond Rio (I was quite the early adopter), I learned quickly just how important the sampling rate is. To squeeze a 60-minute album on the rio's slim 32 MB of storage, I had to rip mp3's at 80kbps or sometimes 64 if it was a longer album. They sounded terrible, especially piano music and other acoustic sounds were very distorted and tinny. So I'd pick 8 tracks from the album, rip them at 128, and get by with a partial album and decent sound quality. Aah, momories.
I didn't mean to claim that I can tell the difference between 128kbps AAC and lossless. But on any decent stereo system, anyone can tell the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and a real CD, for sure. (Not so much on an ipod tho.) I just assumed that 128-AAC was as poor as 128-mp3, so I've been buying CDs and ripping them at a higher rate into iTunes and WMP.
Do you know what a comparable rate is for AAC? For instance, 96kbps in format WMA is similar in quality to 192kbps mp3. Is AAC a 2-for-1 compression too, compared to mp3?
Again, thanks.
My mistake, I thought you said you bought the album online. Never mind!
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I don't think it's at all "insulting" to analyze the situation the way I have. ... People have *many* opportunities to explore and hear all sorts of music. If they stay locked into a very narrow view of what's "good", that's by their own choice. [list of expensive and time consuming ways to get music].
Essentially, what you are saying is that the RIAA way is good enough for everyone. What your recommended was an insulting test, which would reveal how poorly the RIAA works and trying to convince your friends that they really don't want any thing better based on that. You might as well wear a T-Shirt that says, "Look how smart I am and how dull your are."
People want variety, it's that simple. The case was effectively proved by MP3.com and others who were shut down by people who don't like competition.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Long ago when I had a Diamond Rio (I was quite the early adopter), I learned quickly just how important the sampling rate is. To squeeze a 60-minute album on the rio's slim 32 MB of storage, I had to rip mp3's at 80kbps or sometimes 64 if it was a longer album. They sounded terrible, especially piano music and other acoustic sounds were very distorted and tinny. So I'd pick 8 tracks from the album, rip them at 128, and get by with a partial album and decent sound quality. Aah, momories.
There's a reason why Apple sells 60GB iPods, and has never sold one with less than 512MB.
I didn't mean to claim that I can tell the difference between 128kbps AAC and lossless. But on any decent stereo system, anyone can tell the difference between 128kbps Mp3 and a real CD, for sure. (Not so much on an ipod tho.) I just assumed that 128-AAC was as poor as 128-mp3, so I've been buying CDs and ripping them at a higher rate into iTunes and WMP.
Like I said, try before you buy. I'm not saying you won't be able to tell the difference between 128kbps AAC and a CD; the only one who can answer that question is you. It's good enough that it doesn't bother me.
Do you know what a comparable rate is for AAC? For instance, 96kbps in format WMA is similar in quality to 192kbps mp3. Is AAC a 2-for-1 compression too, compared to mp3?
No idea. You may want to try ripping a CD in iTunes, using AAC at different bit rates (from Preferences, go to Advanced, Importing, select Import Using AAC Encoder, and in the Setting menu go to Custom).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
In Soviet Russia, music listens to you!
Let it be known that I am the Alex Kilfoyle, Washington Electrical Engineer, interviewed in this article. I hope this will vault my budding career of random guy that listens to a lot of music. Newspapers everywhere will call me for their throw away quotes in music articles. I will be signing autographs tommorow at 5.
It's hard to compare the two directly, since they have different kinds of artifacts that vary for different types of music. In addition, the encoder you use makes a big difference, especially if you are comparing against fixed-rate (ie not variable bitrate or VBR) MP3s. MP3s encoded with the latest version of LAME sounds are as good as WMA IMHO. But as a quick rule of thumb 128kbps AAC is about as good as 256kbps MP3. Ogg Vorbis is more or less the same. However, in my experience 128kbps WMA is only as good as about 192kbps MP3, ie a factor of 1.5 better rather than 2.
When I am looking for a specific electronic remix of a song from long ago, I'll type it into Limewire and it will list most of the "covers" of that song. Often times it'll be by an obscure EDM producer that I had never heard of. If I like their version of the cover I will also download more of their stuff and usually end up enjoying that.
Granted, the artists (nor the songwriters) don't get a dime from me, but I'm poor and couldnt afford to pay for it anyway. It does however increase awareness and promote the existance of non-major and often times unsigned producers/DJs.
First, the FCC does *not* charge $500,000 for a radio station license. It's quite a bit less than that. The actual fee varies from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, based on the size of the population of the area they serve, and their transmitter power/coverage area. (Also known as "Market size".) The New York Metro area is the #1 market, because it is the biggest population center. You have Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas/Ft Worth, etc. which are all large markets. Then you get down to the medium markets, like Hartford, CT, or Worcester, MA. Finally, you have the little towns out in Osh Kosh.
:)
It is not RIAA that carges the stations money, it is ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. All three have their hands out, demanding payment. The songs played have little effect on those fees, because the fees are based on how much money the station brings in. (A percentage of the station's gross revenue.) So, large market stations make a whole lot more money, and they pay much more than the Podunk stations, but it's still a *percentage*.
The only way stations can reduce those fees is by playing a little music as possible, or playing nothing but genuinely Public Domain works. (Usually limited to Classical.) Non-Commercial stations also must pay, but their fees are lower than for the commercial stations.
As for the limited playlists, that has nothing to do with ASCAP, etc, but rather with "Market Research" where they survey people, they track music sales, etc, and only play the stuff that the majority of people really want to hear.
A lot of people do, in fact, treat the radio as "background" and many only listen while in their cars. They don't tend to get "burned out" on the limited playlists that quickly for those reasons. The stations play this stuff, because it's what a good majority of poeple want, and advertisers do well because a lot of people listen.
I work for a radio station, so I have a pretty good working knowledge of this stuff.
Willie...
The ability to legally time-shift, format-shift and backup was made legal last month in Australia.
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
Having once played in a local band myself (all original music that I'd guess you'd loosely categorize as "alternative rock"), I think I know a little bit about the "musicians clamoring to put their music in front of people" and finding it difficult.
I also think that as I've stepped back from actively being involved in that "scene", I've come to realize that it's a perpetual and universal complaint among musicians. I'm also not so sure there's any real "failure" of the system involved with it. Selling yourself has *never* been anything but a lengthy, uphill battle. Many musicians have an inflated ego which leads them to believe their music is something the masses would really enjoy listening to, if they only had the chance to really hear it. In reality, 99% of the time, the world could easily do without it.
When the average person speaks of wanting "better choice in music", they're not usually saying "I want my local radio stations to play a bunch of new stuff by completely unknown musicians, playing genre-busting songs I can't even categorize!" They're usually just saying "I wish my favorite station would play a few more songs off my favorite albums, instead of putting the same 1 or 2 songs in endless rotation."
Commercial radio is going under.... no argument. But that's because the conglomerates destroyed most of the individual "personality" the stations had before. That personality doesn't take a whole lot of change to create or nurture, and not a whole lot to destroy. It can be as simple as playing some favorite songs from a few local/regional bands, rather than a generic playlist of only nationally known acts, or as simple as having local DJs instead of syndicated morning shows heard in 50 markets simultaneously.
The ability to legally time-shift, format-shift and backup was made legal last month in Australia.
No. The government has merely flagged a move (read your linked article again) to legalise these. That's not the same thing, and given their record for rolling over when the money talks, I won't believe it until it's happened.
- Rhapsody Data (Long Tail of Music)
- Tim O'Reilly (Long Tail of Books)
- Blockbuster v. Netflix, Record Stores v. Online Music (long tail is very flat!)
- The Long Tail of Beer
And these are just a few recent ones. If you want the economic & statistic nitty-gritty of how to sell things these days, he's a good one to keep an eye on.Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.