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How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy
dugn writes to tell us The Consumerist is running a story about how a run of the mill (read non-tech-savvy) music lover was pushed to become a pirate. "I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad."
If (as the "content industry" would like us to believe) we do not ever actually "own" our music, but "license" it, then there can't be any such thing as a Music Pirte. It's more like Unlicensed Music Listener. Like an unlicensed driver. Your thoughts?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I have a collection starting on vinyl I inherited. I have many many old vinyls, and I have cassettes and cd's of many of these as well. To think, I have media pre-dating all this non-sense about RIAA, and who owns what. If I take a digital rip of a Elvis song now, I supposedly owe the RIAA money for it. Even though I realistically own multiple copies on media of various types. It seems to me especially on older classics that I should have a right to do with the music as I wish now. Is there a grandfather clause for such old media? Can I legally just acquire a new digital format for free now if I wished as to archive and preserve my collection?
Hey Bob,
For the vast majority of that fifteen thousand years you speak of, music wasn't a service that people (regular folk, that is) provided each other at all. For the lion's share of the first 14/15ths, nearly all music was for religious purposes, so at best it was a service by people for their gods, not for each other. Music for pleasure didn't become decently commonplace until the Baroque era in the West, and even then it was a service of talented professionals for some King or Prince, not the everyday folk.
Edison's phonograph did something indescribably precious. It gave people for mere pennies the ability to buy a service that once took a king's fortune to procure; even in Edison's day concert tickets were waaaaaay out of most people's price range. The easy dissemination of music in data-readable form accounts for the proliferation of music and musical styles that we enjoy today.
The only downide to commoditizing data just like commoditizing anything else, is that inevitably, outside intervention notithstanding, a cartel will form. That's the beef. Don't blame Edison for making possible the musical revolution in the modern world. It really, really, really isn't his fault that the RIAA exists.
p.s. Sorry about the Bob thing. Your nick...I couldn't resist.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Brilliantly stated!
It's a sad thing to admit, but I'm officially afraid of music now. Afraid and angry. I'm afraid of rootkits, embedded media player software that auto-installs, and CDs that will not play on computers. And I'm right pissed off about this because, while I am indeed a music pirate, I have an enormous collection of legitimately purchased music.
Now I refuse to buy music. It is no longer an option. I hate the music industry and I refuse to support even my favourite artists for subjecting their fans to such hazards. I listen to music to accentuate whatever it is I'm doing, and I refuse to change my lifestyle to suit music.
I'm done with buying music. Maybe forever. It all depends on the music industry. I want hassle-free music. I don't care what medium it comes on as long as I can transfer it to whatever media suit what I'm doing that day. I refuse to repurchase albums on other formats. I'm done buying widgets. Music is not something that fits in your hand. Sell me music or begone.
P.s., when I hear audacious BS like the recording industry suing a restaurant for playing music in the dining room my sympathy for their pleas disappears. To empathise with an industry that cannot be satisfied is futile.
The vast majority of celebrations in all the societies you mentioned were religious celebrations, honoring this or that god or mythlogical-historical event. Did music exist that was non-religous? Probably. But was it played for the commoners' consumption? Absolutely not. Musicians played when they could get paid, becuase that's how they survived. The nobles/priests/kings they played for were generally jealous of te service being provided to them, and did not look kindly upon freebies. Which was the original point I was responding to: music generally as a service of one person for another did not happen. Music only happened from religious or noble patronage, and only for those purposes, until pretty damn recently.
BTW, the fiddle had not been invented by the time Nero was emperor. So he didn't fiddle. And if one is to argue that the classically educated did know how to play, you'd be right, but two points remain. One, nearly all the music they studied was religious in nature. Two, the people who were classically educated were on the whole filthy frikkin rich or in a noble family and did not play for the common folk at all, which again was the point I was originally responding to.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Did you sign a licensing agreement when you purchased the music? No? Then there is no license, and your use of the material is governed only by appropriate laws involving intellectual property, copyright, and first sale. Period.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It gave people for mere pennies the ability to buy a service that once took a king's fortune to procure;
really? from what I remember of musical history most people got to listen to music for free and were encouraged to donate to the travelling bard or musician.
Granted history could be wrong and all artists commanded millions of rupees/gold coins/diamonds per performance from the kings of the world.
I am betting that that is not the case, most musicians worked for very little and gave away their craft, incredibly few were the "rock stars" that sold their creations for incredulous amounts of money. (Yes Mozart, Beethoven, and their likes were the exception and not the rule.)
Also most music was blatantly stolen. Most Irish jigs are variations of other jigs, and so on. Most of music's evolution is based on the original freedom and freeness the music had.
Paying huge sums of money all the time to musicians is a weird phenomenon of the past 50 years that is not the norm and will correct it's self. No matter what the RIAA and stars-in-their-eyes musicians want, it will change back to the way it was.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The great thing about lots of the past music has been the tie to visual arts, both graphic design and visual experiences. The problem with a lot of the digital music now is the loss of these cues and links. As a "collector" of music, parts of this I miss. Having the whole lot that took a dozen boxes to move (ultimately to the resale shop) on my laptop, even at 128 AAC is really appealing. It was very hard to finally make the irreversible decision to get rid of it all.
Now I have music in something where alphabetically it is really easy to find. Well, except for all of that Japanese noise! But, I don't have my visual cues, my stacks... My musical "thought" process is gone. Seeing the edge of a CD with a certain color made me think of playing it. Seeing something, made me dig for a cover. It is harder in lots of ways to find the music in intuitive ways.
He isn't simply after the memorabilia, he's after the memory. It's that subtle difference between work and working. A task is easy to break down, and code around perhaps. But, making meaningful software and work methods is a whole lot more difficult.
I would recommend you to look into the nordic tradition of folksong. Around the end of the 12th century it became popular among the ladies of the nobility to write down the songs sung among the common people. They are generally found in 4 categories
riddervise (knight songs) about courtly life and love
historiske (Historical) take a guess, yes about historical events and people
tryllevise (magical songs) about magic anf supernatural creatures
kæmpeviser (giant songs) about mythical events especially norse mythology
The two first are not religious in nature, the two last are more religous although not directly. They are more about the "trauma" of a society going from norse mythology to christianity.
I do not think you are right in your assertation that music was religous in nature until the baroque period. I think it is an integral part of human nature, just as religion is, but separate from it. What I think we are seeing is that it was not until the printing press that anyone but the religous establishment and their cheap and educated monk labour force (:-)) was able to actually pass on their music. Except for some areas where there was a strong oral tradition of not just telling stories but actually singing them, which is what the nordic folksongs are. We have just been very lucky in the nordic countries that the upper class suddenly became interested in pop music with secular content, so to speak.
This singing tradition still lives on in Denmark at least, I cannot speak for the other scandinavian countries. It is still a tradition that a guest at birthday parties or anniversaries who are close to the host of the party will write a song about the life and character of the couple or birthday boy. This tradition is not strong in my family, but i can still sing from memory five of the old folksongs above and probably 20 more old (100-300 years old, not 800) danish songs.
If you are interested, a danish band called "Sorten Muld" has released an album of reinterpretations of some of these old songs. Since the music to many of them has been lost, they have done the music in a sort of trip-hop style. Worth a listen in my opinion.
The text and a reasonable english translation can be found here:
http://www.noside.com/nsd6035note.html
They are generally very dark melancolic songs, which is true of most of the folksongs. The refrain is only repeated in all the verses in the first song, but they should be sung in all the verses. Note that the refrain does not always fall at the end of the verse.
Another interesting fact is that rap battling (as in hip hop culture) already existed in viking age. In the sagas there are examples of vikings "rapping" rythhmic rhymes insulting the opposing viking (and his momma) before a fight.
US music sales included 588.2 million albums and 581.9 million digital tracks indicates that there is perhaps a bit of money in the field of selling albums and music, and not just performing. When it is so patently obvious that owning music is worth quite a bit to hundreds of millions of people, the old argument that recorded music "should" just be used to draw people to concerts seems more than a little self-serving.
Are you implying that artists somehow benefit from music sales? I was under the impression that platinum performing artists made next to nothing from those sales but were forced to tour perpetually to promote them.
Yes, hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay for music. The greedy pigs who own the entire history of recorded music, unfortunately are so busy both artists and fans that no one is getting what they deserve.
The vast majority of music is still acquired on CDs, but history is all they will provide in the future. Everyone but the majors are sick of the majors. New music is being produced, promoted and enjoyed without them. Online, they are just one of many providers. The future belongs to those who meet people's need for entertainment. Lawsuits, restrictions and bad deals are not fun for anyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
People joke about the pricipal export of Lichtenstein being false teeth and the main export of Greece being culture, but Cuba does 'lend out' a phenomenal number of doctors to other countries.
I've visited and been very impressed at the serious level of effort they put into education and medicine.
Yes, they can't compete on level terms with the West and the phenomenal amout of cash we can put into solving a problem (viz. shotgun gene sequencing) but it very much reminds me of theoretical physics in Russia in the late 70's - frequently we were surprised by solutions to normally intractable problems they produced. We would say it would require many months of CPU time to simulate and their reply was 'we have no computers to do the simulation - we just invented new mathematics'. Cuban medicine and education appears to rely on inventiveness and necessity being the mother thereof.
uh, no, it doesn't.
the bible doesn't state how old the earth is.
the problem with most people is that 1. they input into text what isn't there and 2. they tend to listen to what everyone else in their group believes, regardless of the data that contradicts their view.
gen 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
yes, in the beginning, god created the universe. then, at some undisclosed point in time after that event, god took a formless and void earth and did some more creating. you and others ASSUME verse 2 occurred instantaneously after the event described in verse 1, but that doesn't have to be the case.
"in the beginning, i was born. now it came to pass that i had a college final exam."
is my exam necessarily the instant after i was born? would you assume it IN CONTEXT? of course not. yet that is EXACTLY what you do with genesis verses 1 and 2.
the bible speaks of original creation being perfect and beautiful and not "without form and void." the "without form and void" state could have occurred billions of years after the event described in verse 1.
the bible is 100% consistent with an earth billions of years old.
btw, reading into scripture what isn't there and valuing the traditions of men are EXACTLY why the false belief in an eternal hell exists (leveraged by selfish people in order to ultimately control people to suit their own ends - knowingly or not). a parable about regretting a lack of kindness after a resurrection from the dead has been twisted and distorted to mean something that was never intended and blatantly contradicts on topic scriptures.
yeah, people engulfed in flames are going to ask for a drop of water to cure dry mouth. that flame sure must've been hot to make dry mouth the rich man's #1 physical concern! -lol-
the wages of sin is death (ro 6:23) and the dead know nothing (ec 9:5).
look it up yourself. not many people teach these basic truths, instead, they teach death is life and love is torture and the masses eat it up like cherry pie on the weekend.
apparently, they do not know god is love (1jo4:16) and love does NO HARM TO ITS NEIGHBOR (ro 13:10). an eternal torture chamber for billions of people IS NOT LOVE AND CONTRADICTS THE VERY ESSENCE OF THE BIBLE*, yet almost every "christian" organization teaches it and nobody speaks out against it. the irony is that a god of love is consistent with the bible and inconsistent with the traditions of men (like plato's inferno hellfire), yet, "christians" tend to latch onto the traditions.
the facts that death is the wages paid to sinners (actually earned by sinners - failing to care for others EQUAL to oneself) and the death means one knows nothing are both are concise and on point teaching in the bible. most modern day christians REJECT these simple teachings so they can hold on to their traditions.
and, no, death != eternal life. read ro 6:23 - death is CONTRASTED to eternal life. death is exactly what ec 9:5 says it is... a state of knowing nothing, like before you were born.
read ezekiel 37 to see a time pictured when the great masses (in his case the whole house of israel) are resurrected to life from their state of knowing nothing (death!) and learn of god ways - well after this first life has passed away.
you won't find many modern day "christian" churches teaching this truth, either. yet, there it is for someone to see if they put aside their biases and believe what is written.
* yes, god did some physically harsh things to people, but remember that his actions were taken against clay, as it were. he ended a pretty miserable existence and will resurrect those people (see ez 37 for an example) to a much brighte