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Stream-ripping Is 'Fastest Growing' Music Piracy (bbc.com)
Stream-ripping is now the fastest-growing form of music piracy in the UK, new research has suggested. From a report: Several sites and apps allow users to turn Spotify songs, YouTube videos and other streaming content into permanent files to store on phones and computers. Record labels claim that "tens, or even hundreds of millions of tracks are illegally copied and distributed by stream-ripping services each month." One service alone is thought to have more than 60 million monthly users. According to research by the Intellectual Property Office and PRS For Music, 15 percent of adults in the UK regularly use these services, with 33 percent of them coming from the 16-24 age bracket. Overall usage of stream-ripping sites increased by 141.3 percent between 2014 and 2016, overshadowing all other illegal music services.
How many PCs are equipped with a Dell cup holder?
I bought an app last night in Microsoft's Windows App Store to rip content from YouTube. It isn't underground and you don't need to even use dubious apps or warez anymore to rip.
People don't care about anything but 'FREE'. So who cares about paying for the product any longer.
Then their favorite artist stops touring and producing music and they complain because "They were my favorite band".
do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
if you checked out the quality of the average ear-buds that people use with their phones, you would have the answer to that question.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This is worse quality than recording off the radio and they still survived, plus their stats are bullshit, unless you know of ANY stream ripping sites that publish their visitor stats and demographics publicly ?
the biz is just pissed that Joe schmoe in his bedroom with a copy of Ableton gets to the front of itunes/spotify on musical merit whereas they have to buy their shite leftover acts into the charts via the Philippines/Malaysia click farms or Simon Cowell
Recording radio stations to cassette tape. I don't recall the media companies expressing outrage back then but perhaps they did.
If you're going to listen to it on your phone while traveling on the noisy subway train, quality doesn't really matter.
And if you're ripping from a lossless stream, such as those provided by Tidal or Qobuz, and if you know what you're doing, then the loss of quality is minimal or non-existent.
Is this ripping and the demographics mentioned, any different than when the Sony Walkman (or whatever the first 4-track tape recording radio available was) came on the scene and recording/mixtapes became ubiquitous?
If that is considered music piracy, I remember dozens to hundreds of people when I was a kid being involved in it in the form of sharing mixtapes of whatever music was available, even though I was too young to own a portable music player of my own (it was portable cd players by the time I had one and while ripping was possible, not many people did it because of the recordable cd expense, as well as the limited capacity of redbook audio CDs compared to their size.)
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
I believe this is the reason... Bluetooth audio is also really bad and people still pay big $$$ for bluetooth
headphones.
Back in the day it was recording off FM onto cassette tape!!
Have you heard modern pop music lately? The lower the quality, the better it sounds. :)
It's the same thing we did in the 80's with tape recording music from the radio. Guess what, industry... YOU CAN'T CONTROL EVERYTHING.
I would guess this wouldn't sound very good even on a portable player or in a car, much less even a modestly decent home sound system....
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
I would guess this would sound identical to the sound that you'd get on the stream. If you find that quality to be acceptable, you'll find the ripped version to be acceptable too. The only time I've done it was for a fan-made parody song that was not available on iTunes or Amazon due to RCIA claims. The quality is fine both in the car and in headphones. I don't need 7.1 FLAC audio for playing on $5 headphones.
I stumbled across this website a couple of years ago and I'll occasionally use it to rip the audio from YouTube. I primarily download audio that I can't find other places, like live songs or rare performances. As a reformed Pirate Bay avid user, I now very rarely download any audio now that I don't pay for.
As for quality, I typically find that it's adequate for general use.... working out, playing through motorcycle speakers, etc. A true audiophile won't like the quality, but most of us can't tell the difference.
My mp3 player has a burnished walnut knob.
I know the difference between an integrated amp and a "receiver."
But that Grateful Dead you listen to with your pristine Dynaco amp and vintage Klipsh speakers was originally recorded on cassette.
People are stupid.
Here some folks like Spotify, Deezer etx give you what you want. Latest music, (streaming as anyone wants) to a really fair price. Actually maybe too low. And still people gonna download it instead.
Come on!
I'm guessing they're getting FAR less than even dismal mp3 quality music ripping off of streaming services, that aren't putting out very high quality music at all....
I would guess this wouldn't sound very good even on a portable player or in a car, much less even a modestly decent home sound system....
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
I can only speak for YouTube as I don't use Spotify, etc., but YouTube vides have MPA audio at 128 kbps at the lower resolutions and 192 kbps at 720p and up. It's arguable, but 128 kbps should be roughly equivalent to 192 kbps MP3. So it's not as bad as you think. But honestly, no, no young people care at all about sound quality. If it's not terrible, it's good enough for them. One thing my conversations with young people has made clear is that they are simply not ever going to buy music in a physical format, like CDs, ever. They'd rather not have music than do that. And streaming meets their needs because they prefer to listen to pretty random selections of songs rather than being fans of specific artists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C2%B730_C%C2%B760_C%C2%B790_Go
Anymore? Dude, they NEVER did. At least, not by the standards of someone calling mp3 quality "dismal". You audiophiles are in the minority, and have been since the very first vinyl pressings. MP3's are beyond adequate for the vast majority, which makes this rips near acceptable as a result, especially when you consider the cost and ease of acquistion - free and easy.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/Asus-Xonar-D2-Sound-Card-review-asus-xonar-d2-sound-card-page-2
ASUS call ALT DRM backup, which lets you record what you are hearing, circumnavigating DRM restrictions."
I won't provide details, but 256/320 MP3 and also 720P video are available from various services. I'm surprised the quality is as good as it is.
Certainly good enough for laptop viewing and using for offline guitar practice. It's the only way I know of to get the video of "I'm On a Boat" for offline use (such as when one is actually on a boat and wants to share the song/video).
Back in the day there was this thing we called "radio" that sometimes streamed music, and we used mechanical apps to store that music on a physical medium. We could "download" streamed video too, with more sophisticated mechanical apps of the "VCR" category.
I did this VERY briefly early on...but also, early on, I noticed the sound sucked, and well...hard to always get the intro/outro of the song without the fscking DJ talking over it, or starting a new song over top of the last one....
But at a young age...I and most of my friends were sold on good quality audio.
We all worked, mowing lawns, baby sitting...later we got jobs washing dishes and bussing tables in HS.
But starting about 12 years old...I went into a high end audio shop, and heard a McIntosh tube amp hooked to Klipschorn speakers and my jaw hit the floor.
Starting from then...I earned and bought piece by piece as good of audio equipment as I could save and afford at the time...and have been trading up over all these years, till I now essentially have that first system I heard as a kid.
Of course, too many loud concerts have made my hearing not quite as sharp as back then, but still...I love good audio.
For the gym or car, sure..high quality mp3 is just fine, but for home...I want CD quality...usually I rip my stuff to FLAC and listen on the good stereo to that....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Technically, it's not "piracy" even in the idiotic sense in those jurisdictions where recording is allowed.
Ezekiel 23:20
Avast flags the site as hosting malware. I practice safe hex and avoid digital whorehouses, but just out of curiosity, is there any verification?
This is no different than recording a broadcast off of the TV or radio and they are still in business.
I used to use a streaming service that supplied 192kbps streams. It's good enough for my computer & cheap earbuds. They had several connections that he was sure were ripping his music so they switched to a lazy ID tag. It would change anywhere from 15 seconds before the end of a song to 15 seconds after the new song started. That way the ones ripping songs couldn't rely on an automated system.
Stream ripping has been going on since Shoutcast days with programs like Odd Sock Streamripper https://web.archive.org/web/20...
Nothing new...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
youtube-dl FTW. Hint: it handles more than youtube, and has one cajillion command line options to suit you necessities.
My cellphone ringtone is a ring tone.
So in other words they're copying the broadcasts on-the-fly. Like good 'ol VHS tapes of TV shows.
Therefore the quality must be stellar, and the sales & distribution must be ruining the streaming stations' bank accounts.
Companies can not WAIT for us to stop paying-to-own and instead continuously pay-to-rent :'
A service that requires you to download audio to use it would allow you to download audio?
I'm a developer for a high end streaming box. All you would need to rip content from one of the lossless streaming services supported by our box is the root password. (Yes it is terrible that we have root password access enabled)
Gangsta! In! Disquise!
Live! By! The! Stream! Die! By! The! Stream!
Cabin! Fever! FIVE!
Why? Probably for the same reason some people download tens of thousands of pirated movies... so they can brag about the size of their collection which they never watch.
#DeleteChrome
Several sites and apps allow users to turn Spotify songs, YouTube videos and other streaming content into permanent files to store on phones and computers.
You mean "time shifting". This has been litigated already.
Overall usage of stream-ripping sites increased by 141.3 percent between 2014 and 2016, overshadowing all other illegal music services.
Except that this isn't actually illegal. So now I wonder how many other apps services are incorrectly called "illegal" by this group.
Nope, no sig
Well... these people are happy listening to streams. That have the same quality.
Back in the day it was recording off FM onto cassette tape!!
When I was a teenager, for a few years my best friend and I used to set up a cassette recorder at one end of my parents' coffee-table hi-fi to record Casey Kasem's annual top 100 countdown at new year's (on AM radio!). We'd get a few extra-long-play cassettes, and set an alarm for the times we needed to switch tapes - try as we might, we couldn't manage to stay awake all night.
#DeleteChrome
...Are the same people that are worried about going over their data limits on their mobile devices.
Remind me again how this is different from the days of cassette tapes and VHS. People have been recording songs off the radio for years. And the same with recording videos off the tube with VHS tapes. Either way, we're still recording songs and video for FREE to watch as often as we like.
have most people ever cared about sound quality? it's only as good as what you're used to. we were perfectly happy with shitty walkmen-sound at the time, and the same probably goes for (arguably less) shitty streaming sound today. sure, hi-fidelity was a sales termes in the past, but it isn't any more. same goes for video. 99% of people don't even care to switch off all the preset "extra" functions on their tvs that make movies look like crap (e.g. local dimming, smooth motion, over-saturated colors...), most don't even care when old 4:3 content is stretched to 16:9, and just look how many use really shitty illegal streaming sites or download cam-rips. so, no, nobody except the producers ever care about quality - it usually already stops at broadcasting (e.g. using an optimod or focusing on tech specs rather than on quality).
Before the licensing rules changed and drove most legitimate streaming radio offline because they were little one or two person operations done for fun I was using streamripper software all the time to record the catalogs of different streaming stations that I enjoyed so I could listen to them when I was out and about. Everything old is new again I guess, except apparently you need to use hosted 3rd part stuff rather than run your own app to do so. I'd much rather run my own stuff.
I just don't see how this is any different than recording songs from the radio or recording shows on TV. It's perfectly legit.
People don't care about anything but 'FREE'. So who cares about paying for the product any longer.
Then their favorite artist stops touring and producing music and they complain because "They were my favorite band".
I don't pirate music- but I don't exactly think the music artists of large bands are really struggling for money. They tour because THAT's where they make most of their money.
Smaller bands probably aren't going to be on most streaming sites anyway.
In reality, stream ripping isn't really much different to copying to cassette from the radio like everyone was doing in the 80's.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The quality of Bluetooth audio depends heavily on the codec supported by both devices. You can stream AAC or MP3 without re-encoding over Bluetooth or one of the newer transport codecs like aptX.
The problem is that it's not easy to find this information out.
honestly, bluetooth audio has come a long ways. I use a pair of jaybird X-2's, and the audio quality is basically indistinguishable from wired headphones.
(granted i'm no audiophile, I have a life -- but for spotify and assorted MP3's while working out, they are just fine)
I'll tell you my use-case and then you can be as judgy as you want.
I have an 11-year-old. Before a long road trip or plane ride, she makes a YouTube playlist. We use a tool to convert the entire playlist into music files (MP3?) and load them on her tablet for the ride. Quality is unimportant, as the headphones are a $10 pair from Walgreens and the ambient conditions are either a car or airplane.
I have a similar use-case for when my wife goes jogging.
Personally, I tend to use iTunes to keep my music organized and SubSonic to serve it to my various devices. My music tends to be either legit or ripped from usenet, but I'm not above grabbing a hard-to-find track from YouTube.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The sound on a HD Youtube video is not actually that bad. Sure it's not CD quality, but good enough on a portable MP3 player or in the car.
I've been using 4K Youtube to MP3 and it works very well. https://www.4kdownload.com/
If you think the earbuds are bad, some of the crap over-produced loudness wars inspired music they put through those headphones couldn't sound good even if gold-plated monster cables actually worked. Hell, Wikipedia even has a nice image of how more recent releases of old songs suffer the same problem: Waveforms for 3 releases of Black or White by Michael Jackson
Look at classic rock songs before that era to get a good idea how much its changed and how much it affects music. Here's Stairway to Heaven which I'm sure most people are familiar with. That song would be practically impossible today since whatever dick weevil would be put in charge of mastering the album would have maxed it out immediately, removing any ability for the song to build-up musically as well as lyrically.
Any song being crafted for mainstream radio play just isn't going to be as good of a listen (I'm not even talking about whether the song is good lyrically or musically) because the shit stain producers utterly rob it of expressivity in order to make it stand out more amidst all the other noise. There needs to be something like a Director's Cut for albums that give us something other than the radio mix.
My earbuds are Sennheisers. I got them for $20. They sound pretty good. Not as good as my V-Moda M-100s, but better than the entire Sennheiser HD 2xx line.
Youtube ripped music is actually quite good.... (I heard somebody say that :/ )
Stream ripiping? More MAGA!
Love that Trump! Winning!
haven't pirated an mp3 since. what a waste of time hoarding music files is when you can just stream anything anywhere.
Yes, "Hi-Fi" was really only a thing marketed to baby boomers. No one wants a "home entertainment system" when they don't own homes and prefer to stay mobile.
I just don't see how this is any different than recording songs from the radio or recording shows on TV. It's perfectly legit.
Recording something you are receiving has generally been OK'd in the legal arena. Distributing that copy hasn't.
Thats because the X-2's uses gold plated connections.
"His name was James Damore."
Not hard to do even without some sort of software solution or website, if you have any technical smarts at all. Go straight from your headphone jack into the Line In to record with, then edit the recorded audio later. Don't know if headphone jacks these days are looking at the impedance of what you're plugging in or not, but a couple audio transformers would take care of that problem very nicely. I'm just waiting for them to try to 'close the analog hole' by removing baseband analog headphone jacks from everything and forcing people to use Bluetooth; would not be difficult at all to take a BT stereo speaker and hack a couple transformers into that, create an analog output that could be recorded just as easily.
Depends.
I'm an old person. But back when I was a teenager, I used to record stuff off the radio to listen to--the AM Radio. Why? Because it's free. Yeah, the quality sucked. Yeah, I sometimes ended up with some DJ talking up the song. But I was willing to forgo all that because it was free.
I assume it's a similar thing here.
Strictly prohibited piracy, just like mixtapes from the 70s...
Close...
They emit gold particles that when ionized create a gold nano-filament between the ear buds and the device -- allowing for perfect signal transmission. It gets kind of expensive having to refill the reservoir with fresh gold (i don't have the money to invest in the recycling adapter), but still miles and miles better than wired headphones.
Songs with high dynamic range are annoying to listen to in a lot of everyday situations, such as in a car or while working out at the gym, as volume has to constantly be adjusted. Not everyone listens to music in an underground bunker with perfect noise isolation, $10000 speakers, etc. Also, I doubt anyone here can truly differentiate between a lossless audio file and a reasonable MP3/AAC, most of you are just full of yourselves (many blind AB tests out there that people tend to ignore due to bias). Most people really just care about the music; sound quality is secondary. Heck, people can't even differentiate between a modern violin and a Stradivarius, let alone the difference between MP3/lossless.
I'm a 26 year old guy, and you pretty much described me. Music has never been an important part of my life. I like having something angry to listen to while running (usually metal), something non-vocal to listen to while working (usually ambient music from movies), and anything really at a party (usually pop). But I don't care what bands I'm listening too, and most of the time can't even remember their names or songs. It's something I enjoy very passively, as something in the background that just slightly alters my mood. Because of this, I do have a Spotify subscription, and it's more than sufficient for my needs. But I have bought a total og 3 CD's in my entire life, and do not plan on buying any individual albums again. (Before Spotify, I would usually download generic torrents like "top 100 metal tracks", use them as a playlist, and delete anything that was annoying afterwards. But since Spotify, I haven't pirated music.)
Spotify is 320kbps, and I assume uses a better algorithm than MP3, why would it be worse than dismal MP3 quality?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
People care a bit about sound fidelity, But they don't care enough to spend an extra $1 per song.
Let them get their high-fidelity audio files for $0.05 per 3 minute song or 20 songs per $1, and people will buy it.
How is this any different than recording songs off the radio on to cassette tape. That was ruled nearly 50 years ago to be legitimate personal use.
If you're going to listen to it on your phone while traveling on the noisy subway train, quality doesn't really matter.
Modern day (as in like the past 10 years) earbuds fit into the ear canal and block outside noise very well.
IDK.. quality sounds fine to me. When I hear a song on Pandora I like I click a button in Firefox to download the song and then put it on my phone. Easy Peasy....
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
Fidelity went out the window with the loudness war. It was made worse by the rise of portable jukeboxes whose audio "quality" woudn't satisfy a cassette listerner of old, let alone audiophiles. High quality audio has been a losing battle for a least 1 generation. Today what passes for "good" music is shouting with no nuance, highs or lows. A portable headphone is sufficient for that.
Been ripping from random shoutcast stations since ages.. even setup scripts to filter out all kind of crap ;-)
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
They don't care. People don't need a lot of fidelity to enjoy music. As long as it isn't actually dropping out left and right, people can enjoy it. My wife frequently listens to her ipod with her earbuds sitting on the table next to her. I've enjoyed songs heard through the leakage of the headphones of the person sitting next to me in a waiting room...
The noise reaching our ears isn't the music we hear in our heads. Normal people don't continually focus on the fidelity of the noise hitting our ears... we're re-living the music performance when we heard it live in concert; etc.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer good fidelity music; and will choose it if its available; but mp3 is more than good enough on a plane or bus or in my car. Stuff i've ripped from youtube to mp3 ... also perfectly serviceable. I'd be irritated if I bought a CD or otherwise purchased the song and it sounded like some of my youtube rips... but at 'free' its more than 'good enough' for me to enjoy listening to it.
I have a 70" 4K TV with a surround sound setup; but I went to the elementary school for movie night with my kids and watched despicable me or something in the school gym run through an old lousy projector and blown speakers... They got the focus good enough that it wasn't unwatchable, and the volume loud enough you could hear it without too much distortion... and 5 minutes in I didn't even notice anymore just how objectively bad the audio and video was; and just enjoyed the movie.
Bullocks, I didn't see any ceramic standoffs or directional crystals.
Never trust someone who doesn't like music. They have no soul.
Easy fix. Playback speed limiting.
That puts it in a similar category of recording music from the radio like your grandpa used to do in 1979. Non-story.
Man, I remember in the 80s when the music industry collapsed because people could cheaply and easily record music off the radio FOR FREE
Buncha freeloaders forcing record label management into slightly smaller mansions.
My computer has an audio output. My digital recorder has an audio input.
So, people can save files, they can rip streams, or they can hook up some extra hardware.
There is NO WAY to stop people from recording content that you choose to make available... so just deal with it.
When I was a teenager I had a Rio 600 Mp3 player.... I reduced all my songs to a 96 bitrate to fit as many song as I could on it. (Hey in my defense it could only hold 64 MB)
Part of this is offline usage, part of it is ads.
Not everywhere has good reception. There are plenty of buildings around me that have 0% cell phone service (from any carrier) and no Wifi. If I am using a Youtube video in a presentation, it will certainly get downloaded so that the presentation goes smoothly and I don't have to worry about buffering or if it plays at all (or having to get permission to access a company's wifi, etc.).
I know school teachers who do the same thing. Many schools don't let teachers use Youtube in any form. So if a video exists on youtube that would be helpful to class, the teacher downloads it on a home PC and brings it in on a flash drive.
The other part is the unskippable ads in front of some clips. While Youtube's ad placement AI is decent, it is nowhere near perfect. Having an unskippable ad for "50 Shades Darker" play before the intended clip "Let's Count with Elmo" doesn't sit well with preschoolers, the school, the families, etc. Playing "Ad roulette" is enough to make people think twice about Youtube in any professional setting. Will it be a 5 second skippable ad? Will it be a "Content Plays after ad"? Will the ad be objectionable/unprofessional/NSFW to current audience?
If children are going to be using tablets on a long road trip or other activity where-not-screaming-bored-children is a good thing, favorite videos on the tablet (because no wifi on the road) is a good thing too. Netflix's downloadable shows certainly wins here.
So the makers of various cassette recorders, CD recorders, VHS recorders, DVD recorders, PVRs, etc. should be busted for distributing too.
Really? I can't stand 4:3 stretched, or 235:100 clipped or vertically stretched etc..
However, you're probably right. No one gives a damn anymore. It's too bad.
The last few cars that I've owned boosted the volume as you sped up or slowed down. This is a much better technical solution than ramming saturated music down everyone's throats.
And even my old-ass Sony tube TV has a dynamic range compression feature to help watch movies at low volume.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I remember songs and sometimes replay them entirely in my head. Is that OK? What about if I sing along to the song in my head, and someone else hears?
the music of today (rap, bro country, pop), would the "quality" matter considering the junk blaring out of some car speakers you have to hear, driving down the road?
Ever more draconian laws and technology will never get piracy under control so stop expecting it.
I work for a living. I get paid, and that's the end of it. I don't get paid every time someone uses a window I installed or a door I made or lung I transplanted.
To hell with the entertainment industry and with IP in general.
I had the Rio PMP 300 which only had 32MB. I installed a 32MB SmartMedia (remember that shit?) card for a total of 64MB. It could hold approximately a single album at 128kbps, so I would put a new album on it each morning for my commute to and from work.
Now I have a tiny Sansa Clip Zip with a 128GB micro SD and my entire music library.
Hey, people will ride standing up in an airplane if the price is right.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Audio streaming won't come anywhere near any bandwidth limitations. Comcast's 300GB monthly limits means you can listen to music 24/7 and stream 1.5 HiDef movies a day and still be fine.
When has this EVER happened?
Bands get screwed over all the time. They do NOT stop touring or performing. That would be like Ford closing up shop because people steal cars.
Speeding up/slowing down isn't the issue; it's the ~70 dB noise floor of driving that makes anything quiet in the music impossible to hear (without going deaf during the loud parts). The simplest technical solution, which the industry has adopted, is to normalize the loudness in the track. No special music playback hardware required, works for all makes & models & years of cars/whatever playback device. Sure there may be better technical ways to do it, but cost and adoption will be a problem.
I've ripped an mp3 320kbps from a stream.... So it can be done... If there is a quality source, it can be ripped.
I can capture pure aac off the air of some great symfony performances with nothing but a $20 rtl dongle and https://github.com/theori-io/nrsc5/
Oh, you need to buy the special glasses for that, silly.
No, cost is not a problem. The circuit is trivial and the trick can likely already be pulled off with the DSP electronics already present for tone control/equalization. This was even available in the analog days as a "loudness" knob.
"Adoption" would happen more or less immediately if the music wasn't already compressed. It was widely adopted in ye olden days.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I still keep a sound card capable of the record " What you hear " feature.
Fire up whatever audio editor you use, hit the record button, press play. Done.
Edit and save.
Good enough for workouts, car environments and non-audiophile demands.
If I really like the song, I DL it from Amazon and add it to the collection.
Simple as that.
Swear the RIAA just whines to whine these days.
In reality, stream ripping isn't really much different to copying to cassette from the radio like everyone was doing in the 80's.
I think that the technology/customer/industry will figure all this out eventually, but this statement is way, way wrong.
In the 80s you had to listen to the radio (and its ads) to catch the song. You had to record it on physical media. To re-distribute, you had to purchase additional physical media, duplicate the content in real time, one-at-a-time for the average person, and then deliver those physical copies, either in person or by paying for mail.
There are significant constraints to this process that have been completely wiped out by the modern version. Songs are on-demand and distribution at practically unlimited volumes is practically free.
In my country law allows consumer to record and even give copy to "close" friends. Heck goverment has budject category to pay compensations for this to copyright holders..
Problem is theres no decent service consumer could buy what he wants at consumer friendly price. And then some companies try to limits consumers rights to listen music to any device he might own...
Songs with high dynamic range are annoying to listen to in a lot of everyday situations, such as in a car or while working out at the gym, as volume has to constantly be adjusted.
Or... they could put compressors in the playback hardware.
I certainly hope it doesn't kill the music industry. Y'know, like it did last time. And the time before that.
You sound predictable, one dimensional, and jaded.
If you're truly representing your generation, there are sad times ahead for the world...
The fun thing about digital is that it doesn't degrade when you copy it -- as long as the source stream is good quality, the rip will be equally good. And there are a lot of streams that offer good-to-high quality audio providing you have sufficient bandwidth to handle it.
But generally speaking, no most people don't care much about quality. Obviously if given an equal choice between the two, almost everyone would choose the higher quality. But if its a choice between a low quality and not having the song/movie/other work at all.. well the low quality starts seeming pretty good in that scenario.
I received a trial subscription to SiriusXM when I bought a new car 2 years back. It's anecdotal, but I would say that free streaming audio sounds better than the quality of the subscription radio, which sounded tinny and low bitrate. With the amount they charge for a "legitimate" listening experience, I don't begrudge those that record their music from other quality sources.
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
I believe this is the reason... Bluetooth audio is also really bad and people still pay big $$$ for bluetooth headphones.
Or Beats headphones. Those are fashion accessories, not functional.
I've heard the license to play the music required the DJ to talk over a portion of it, so that recordings were not perfect. A very early form of copy protection, really. Don't know if this is true however.
I doubt anyone here can truly differentiate between a lossless audio file and a reasonable MP3/AAC
As someone who did professional audio engineering for quite a few years, I have to disagree --- sort of.
First, you say a "reasonable" MP3. A "reasonable" MP3 is indeed hard to tell from a lossless file, but most MP3s aren't all that "reasonable" and can be pretty easily distinguished.
My second caveat has to do with the listening environment. If you're listening on the Apple earbuds that came with your phone, you surely can't tell good from bad. If you listen on the JBL professional setup I had in my studio control room, you sure as heck can hear small differences.
I do agree that many modern (and many somewhat older) mixes are way over-engineered. The engineers try to get them to sound acceptable in loud environments, in stereo and in mono, on crappy car systems and crappier earbuds, and so on ... and what loses out is listening in a good environment on good equipment. Note that I say "many" mixes, not "all" mixes. In particular, New Age seems to be mixed with more of a view to quality listening.
Of course, taste is subjective. I'm sure some people like the sound of their Apple earbuds.
No, cost is not a problem. The circuit is trivial and the trick can likely already be pulled off with the DSP electronics already present for tone control/equalization. This was even available in the analog days as a "loudness" knob.
Your point is valid but just a minor point of correction: the "loudness" control didn't exactly do dynamic range compression. What it did was boost the bass at lower volumes.
You seem to have described the common music hipster.
I will let you know, Sir, however cliche it might be, that many of us youngings don't subscribe to this way of life.
I tend to rant.
If you can LISTEN to it, it can be ripped and "pirated". GET OVER IT! This is just as bad as the old "20/20" news show where they were demonizing "taping parties" and dual cassette decks back in the 80s. People always have copied music, people always WILL copy music. If you struggle to make money in the music industry, it's NOT because people are "stealing" from you, it's because you suck at marketing and possibly at making good music!
Music is somewhat different to movies. Most of the time, movies can only be watched once or twice and then they're boring. Maybe a few really good ones you'll go back and rewatch once every year or three but on average, they're use-and-forget.
Music on the other hand can be played over and over again and generally doesn't get boring. It can also be played equally well in the background (or sometimes better) while doing something else rather than having to fully focus on it as you usually do with a movie.
You can easily have a 10 or 20 day long music collection, throw it on shuffle, and just listen to everything a bit at a time and eventually you'll have heard the entire library. You can't really do that with movies.
I mean certainly most libraries that large will have some things that nobody listens to -- you downloaded (legitimately or otherwise) an entire album but only like one or two songs.. or somebody sent you a song you didn't really enjoy but never got around to deleting.. or songs you used to like but have since gotten sick of, or songs that only suit you in a rare mood, etc.
But generally speaking its not going to be the the same scenario as movies where you simply can't watch them as fast as you can download them. I'm sure someone somewhere tracks the new release listings and blindly downloads every album that comes out just for the sake of doing so, but that's not the majority.
...you can pirate it. So obviously they need to sell CDs and MP3s that won't play and music players without speakers or any audio outs.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Because stream ripping is perfectly legal in analogy to recording radio to tape.
The only (and big) BUT is, that you need to have live access to the stream while ripping it. Downloading rips while the stream is down is not legal.
You probably can argue that some websites like youtube-downloader may be illegal as you're not directly ripping the stream, but I guess a court will rule what's the process and result, not the technical details.
And you can use the youtube-dl tool to rip yourself instead of using websites. It includes the youtube-music-grabber tool, which allows you to ripping the audio part of a video.
You don't look like someone who buys a lot of music do you. The only times I don't buy music is when I want a song which is not available at any price nowadays. When songs are available for a dollar, making a low quality rip out of YouTube is a nuisance.
Posting AC because I'm using my cellphone and I don't have my password at hand.
Yes, "Hi-Fi" was really only a thing marketed to baby boomers.
Well, as a baby boomer myself ...
Hi-Fi was a big thing back in the day because AM radio sounded terrible, and most record players (we played those old 45 RPM discs with the big hole in the center) sounded almost as bad. Hi-Fi, with a good amp, good speakers, a decent preamp, and a turntable that didn't feature 50dB of rumble, provided a listening experience orders of magnitude above the ordinary.
The advent of digital technology of course brought big changes.
Now, today, vinyl is back for whatever reason. Maybe it's a hipster thing. Perhaps they like the limited dynamic range, limited high and low frequency reproduction, surface hiss, scratches, and all the other "advantages" of old technology.
Heck, maybe wax cylinders are next.
Not to mention that by the early '00s a small handheld unit could have astonishingly good sound quality when provided with good speakers and good files. My Nomad Juke Box 3 had really impressive sound quality for something that size.
If I want to purchase a song but it's not available on iTunes/Amazon/etc for my country, is it really piracy?
No it's not, because piracy means sailing a ship on water and stealing physical goods.
#DeleteFacebook
Well the cat's out of the bag, we had a good run of ultra-convenient piracy. Back to torrrents where necessary I guess. I'm buying a lot of music DRM-free from Bandcamp these days anyway.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You seem to have described the common music hipster.
You wish. All the 6 to 14 yo people I know (my son, nephews, sons of friends and respective friends) pretty much follow what you called "common music hipster" music consumption behavior. Does the world is slowly going "hipster"? I don't think so.
A good friend of mine got his CPA as an older college student. Then he went to work for the big CPA firms in NYC. They used him for auditing and then spit him out at the end of audit season (after having told him, "You play your cards right and we'll put you on track to be a partner." Yeah, as if!). One audit he did is worth noting.
It seems this one former rocker whose group was filling the stadiums "back in the day" was accosted by a paparazzi and the rocker may have struck the paparazzi. He called his attorney when he got a letter from the alleged victim of his fist and asked for him to defend him. His attorney told him what it would cost to defend. The former rocker said, "But I'm broke!" His attorney said, "That's crazy—your music is still selling. In fact, my daughter just told me that she got your entire album from 1970-something on iTunes."
"I haven't received a royalty check for five years from anyone!" replied the former rocker.
His attorney, who drew up the contracts informed him that he had the "right to audit" the sales of his recordings. So, my friend Jim was hired to do the audit.
Here is what he found out:
To say the least, after the audit, the record company agreed to arbitration and wound up paying the members of the group unpaid moneys and had to pay interest to keep the story from the press. Jim never told me who the band was, but he did tell me that I would know right away who they were.
So, the next time you see the recording industry whining about people stealing "their" music, understand that it's the artist's music you are stealing—if you are, indeed, illegally copying music. But also understand that the recording industry, themselves, are just as guilty—they blame you for what they, themselves do.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
If it wasn't for music piracy, I would have never heard of any of my favourite bands. I've spent thousands of dollars going to gigs and buying merch from bands whose music I haven't paid for.
You could certainly make an argument that piracy hurts music sales: some people who would have bought it will get it for free instead, but some who wouldn't have heard it otherwise might buy it. Which side you think is a bigger influence is definitely up for debate.
Tours, however, are only ever HELPED by piracy. "A band I love is in town, but I won't bother going to a gig because I can just listen to the MP3s at home" said no one ever in the history of live music. The availability of free music is what got people interested in these bands to begin with; nobody I know buys music from someone they have never listened to. Scalping, third-party fees (looking at you, Ticketmaster) and high venue-mandated pricing are what's dangerous to live music at the moment, but sorting out those would require getting in the way of the rent-seeking middle-men and their sweet talent-free, work-free, risk-free profits.
The music "industry" isn't about music; it's about taking as much money as possible from fans and giving as little of it as possible to artists. The music is just a byproduct, and is treated as such unless it can be further monetised without actually doing any work. The PRS who published this "report" are just a cancerous cog in that infernal machine, demanding money with menaces under the guise of supporting artists, whilst passing on virtually no money to any actual talent.
There are significant constraints to this process that have been completely wiped out by the modern version. Songs are on-demand and distribution at practically unlimited volumes is practically free.
Just as the distribution process has become cheaper for the consumer, it also has for the producers/distributors.
There is zero reason, other than greed, that a digital download should cost the same as physical media... but yet, here we are.
In reality, stream ripping isn't really much different to copying to cassette from the radio like everyone was doing in the 80's.
"But *this time around*, home taping will be killing the music. For sure. Honest !"
-- brought to you by the industry that keep crying "wolf".
(Under the command of CEOs who would like to outlaw the huming of copyrighted music)
{...} but I don't exactly think the music artists of large bands are really struggling for money.
The large bands aren't struggling for money anyway and won't feel the impact of piracy much.
The smaller bands are actually under horrendous contracts where they don't actually make that much money anyway. Piracy at least helps getting their music known, and might actually help them getting invited to play in some festivals. Helping them raise on the ladder.
(I don't have a concrete *music* example right of the top of my head, but lots of organisers are watching music popularity trends close to determine up going bands to invite. That also includes watching what happens on the piracy maket. /. )
Netflix is a well known *movie* example : they have admitted to also watch piracy popularity to determine which series to license. - there are even articles about this on
They tour because THAT's where they make most of their money.
It used to be that *discs* are where they made money, and concerts were glorified ads campaign for new discs.
Currently it's the opposite : there isn't much money in CDs (most of the money end up in the pockets of the label), or streaming, but it helps getting the band known, and then subsequently get invited to play at concerts).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well you need to find them an option where you get paid and the uses find the value. I personalty pay my monthly fee for YTred+GPM. Spotify has a free tier but i have been hearing lately its been song, ad, song, ad, ad, song ,ad.
The solution to that is for a mastered track with good dynamic range have a corresponding 'gain adjustment info' file (basically bounce the audio before smashing the crap out if it with a compressor - then record what the final stage of compression does to it - using standardised and publicly known algorithms). A playback device could then easily give the overcompressed output.
John_Chalisque
What you do is download the videos onto your home PC, transfer the videos onto a hundred GByte SD card and view them that way, rather than blowing your monthly data network allowance on streaming the same video over and over again. So the solution is ... get rid of the data caps or allow Youtbe to use DRM to store a video that you mark as "cache locally". You also use a decent pair of DJ/gaming headphones to listen to the music rather than the tinny speaker.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
when it's done for personal use. It's legal in the UK and likely the United States. Don't believe me, go read some interwebs. Ever hear of TiVo? You CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS RIAA/MPAA - GO phuck yourselves.
There is also the matter of investment. A song you are not enjoying that might might be preferable to listen to for the sake of variety. Its only ~3-4min after all of your time, which as you say is often not even dedicated time.
A movie on the other hand running ~2hrs amounts to 8-10% of your waking day. Even if you are using a movie as 'background' it still consumes much more of your attention than the radio. The bar is simply higher for movies for those reasons.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I've heard this too, but someone told me I was wrong (on this very forum) using an anecdote of a good station in their area.
I don't know the truth, just putting that out there.
Until then I believed that cross fading and over talking were required, but now I do not know.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
ONLY if you are copying it in a lossless format.
If you are taking a mp3 (which has already lost fidelity by its nature)...and rip that to another mp3 copy...you lose more...do it again...you lose more quality.
SO...it depends if the whole copy workflow is lossless vs lossy.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I pay $14.99/month for Apple Music and the entire family listens to whatever they want whenever they want. No tracking down rips, no messing about with torrents. We always listen through the AppleTV, headphones, or the car, and it's it being Apple has never stopped any of that from working. I imagine the same holds for Spotify, etc.
Piracy just doesn't seem worth the effort anymore. The time to proactively track down music as opposed to just throwing $15/month at having an instant search just isn't worth it.
You are right that "loudness" controls don't really do DRC, but only the cheapest only boosted bass.
In any event, in the digital age we don't need kludges like prerecorded music with dynamic range compression. First of all, it assumes everyone's primary music environment is the car. My 15 minute commute barely affords me 3 or 4 songs. Second, the nicer car stereos (and premium cars) do background noise compensation, so people who care about their car audio already have solutions. Finally, I mean, it just sounds like ass - why would you advocate for this crappy sound?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
80's child here. Its not a generational thing. Its a money thing. I grew up recording songs from AM radio to cassette tape. My first online movie was a realplayer rip of Baseketball in 1998. In early 2000's I was using an audio cassette to mic adapter hooked up to either a cd-rw or laptop in the front seat. If its "good enough" people are happy. I've personally grown out of watching cams and moved on to netflix, but I haven't bought music in a decade. Anything old was ripped from my CDs (which i've now donated) and anything new is streamable.
ONLY if you are copying it in a lossless format.
Nope. Once its digital, the bits don't change.
If you are taking a mp3 (which has already lost fidelity by its nature)...and rip that to another mp3 copy...you lose more...do it again...you lose more quality.
Yes, but the solution there is "don't do that." If its already in mp3 format, then why would you bother reencoding it back to mp3? Just copy it as it is.
SO...it depends if the whole copy workflow is lossless vs lossy.
Only for the original encoding. After that, there's little reason to reencode unless you absolutely have to format shift for some reason, but that's rare these days. Audio has settled into a small handful of formats that are all generally recognized by modern players, and the ones that don't usually have plugins available to fill the gap.
All copies are virtually no different than my radio others tapes and my blank cassette tapes.
That is the fact jack and if you think otherwise I have some bridges for sale.
I can only speak for YouTube as I don't use Spotify,
Spotify do the compression themselves from original audio (so there aren't many copy-generational problems).
Spotify uses Vorbis (better quality than MP3 at same bitrate according to A/B test. Definitely better than WMA), because back when they started, that was the best license-free codec guaranteed to be available in the largest set of browsers (it was an IETF standard), and a permissive free library (easy to embed into apps).
(This was back before OPUS, the current IETF standard came and basically killed nearly every other codec performance wise - with the sole exception of some extremely low-bandwidth usage that are not found on internet)
Spotify uses bitrates of
- 96kbps for its low quality setting (around the same quality as MP3 @~128kbps. So clearly audible, but still largely acceptable quality)
- 160kbps for its normal quality settings (very good quality for vorbis, hard to tell appart in most typical settings)
-. ~320 for the high quality settings for paying customer for local saves (should sound lossless nearly everywhere).
Spotify has mentionned thinking of adding lossless codecs for local saves (I think it was FLAC ? I'm not sure. But it was recently mentionned on /.)
I think they have considered OPUS now that its a IETF standar (like nearly every one else online is doing) (and even the industry is doing informally/experimentally with Digital Radio Mondial).
If you rip the high quality streams from Spotify it means that you have access to an extremely good quality stream (but it also means that you're a paying customer, at which point ripping doesn't make that much sense, as opposed to simply locally saving on the smartphone's SD card with the app and having your music offline everywhere you want it)
At least that's for DRM-busting the cache/local saves and for high quality setting.
Regular settings are of lower (but still very good) quality.
S/PDIF loop is going to add copy-generationnal loss of whatever you use to re-encode the raw S/PDIF stream (unless you go lossless, e.g.: FLAC).
Analog loop is in practice going to add even more artefacts specially with poor analog connections in an electrically noisy environment (cue in jokes about Apple's shitty audio jacks)
but YouTube vides have MPA audio at 128 kbps at the lower resolutions and 192 kbps at 720p and up. It's arguable, but 128 kbps should be roughly equivalent to 192 kbps MP3. So it's not as bad as you think.
the quality of AAC is *extremely* dependent on the quality of the encoder. See FFMPEG's older codec. (though in this case, it's google. so I would assume that their codec doesn't suck too much).
That's just one of the available codecs on youtube. Youtube will actually generate lots of different formats for each video (that also include completely different codecs), so there is much variability depending on which alternative format one descides to use. e.g. they also provide OPUS @160kbps which is the same kind of "hard to tell appart in A/B/X test" as AAC@192kbps.
But the main problem is in the process itself :
Youtube *generates* lots of different formats, from whatever the user has uploaded.
In theory, it's possible to upload an MKV using h264 lossless for video and FLAC for audio (been doing that).
But in practice, people will upload whatever the "export" button of their video editor does.
Which is very often MP4 file with AAC for the audio.
So you have copy-generationnal artifacts due to recoding from one lossy format into another.
Also add to the factor that the AAC codec of the video editor might be crappy.
(This is part of the reasons why official youtube recommendations for MP4 and AAC audio are 384 kbps - just to be sure that even crappy codecs manage to make a high enough quality compression).
So that 192 kbps AAC audio you get on
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Nope. Once its digital, the bits don't change.
I suppose to clarify, that should really be "once its encoded," whether lossless or not.
But what if Apple can make $14.99/mo on you, and the RIAA can sue you and settle for $10k-$100k?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In the late 70’s and early 80’s I worked as a DJ in a roller rink. Kids would line up their boom-boxes along the wall and record our whole show. Then they’d play it back to their friends in the parking lot. The recorded sound was awful (those built in mics were crap, not that the speakers were much better), but they didn’t care. They had their music – the quality of which must have been augmented by the memories of it when they heard it over our actually pretty good Altec-Lansing sound system. They would have totally shit their pants to have the quality of a YouTube rip.
A shout out to anyone that ever skated at The Skate Ranch in Milan Illinois. I’m the guy that designed and built an Apple ][ controlled scoreboard style sign in the parking light with 8,556 light bulbs (in four colors none the less). I’m talking full text scrolling, animation, and WYSIWYG on the monitor. Circa 1980. I was the shiz before I went to college (self taught programming and TTL logic circuit design). Now I'm struggling to keep up with the new kids.
Letter To Iran
Actually....
Tools exist to download the highest quality possible. I know because I do this (RIAA; dont bother because I'm behind 7 proxies).
Its worth noting that just because I do this doesn't mean I'm all that bad; I do buy MP3s; but I will NOT use a service like iTunes. Probably should invest in non-DRM if you want people to take you seriously.
Its also worth noting that thanks to streaming services people pirate LESS; so if you are really going to bitch about not getting enough money from ads services like youtube because people will stream rip; then all I have to say is FUCK YOU.
You are quite right. The point is that pre-engineered "fixes" take away choice. Let the end-listener make any desired adjustments on their own equipment in their own environment. Don't make everyone listen to some engineer's idea of a questionably "good" compromise(d) mix.
I have a bunch of YouTube music videos that I downloaded, but can't figure out for the life of me how to get it on my iPod playlist. iTunes won't work w/ that. Any other options?
People don't care about anything but 'FREE'. So who cares about paying for the product any longer. Then their favorite artist stops touring and producing music and they complain because "They were my favorite band".
I downloaded a bunch of music videos from YouTube. Despite that, I went on to buy some of them on iTunes, since I needed that on my iPod, which is the only way I can organize them into playlists and play them in the car, w/o paying too much attention to them while driving
Problem is that not all of them were available on iTunes as music videos, and I didn't wanna buy any audio only songs. Vevo at one point used to sell music, but that seems to have stopped, or else, many of the missings songs I mentioned above are certainly available there. But aside from those, there are some others that are just available on YouTube from random people, but which happen to be the official music videos of groups from the late 80s-early 90s. I'd want to be able to get those on my player, not b'cos I don't wanna buy them from Apple, but simply b'cos they're just not available there.
Songs with high dynamic range are annoying to listen to in a lot of everyday situations, such as in a car or while working out at the gym, as volume has to constantly be adjusted.
That's why there are technical solutions available to these people who need to destroy the sound to make it listenable, e.g. the "loudness" option on my car radio which dials in the amount of dynamic range compression I get.
No need to mess up the source material. You can always compress. You can never uncompress.
But honestly, no, no young people care at all about sound quality.
You missattribute this to age. The vast majority of adults don't care about sound quality either.
The reason they tour is that they make a pittance from music sales. It was bad enough when record companies sold CDs, which were lose-lose propositions for both artists & customers: one had to sink something like $20 for a CD w/ just 1 song worth listening, while the record company took the biggest cut and the artists were left w/ crumbs. It didn't help that most songs were quickly in & out of favor w/ the public.
Once Apple entered, they introduced granularity by allowing people to buy 1 song at a time, which enabled one to buy exactly what s/he liked and nothing more. Which made things better for consumers, but didn't resolve the issue from the artists' end. Which is why they still tour.
dat lyk sumtin a faget wud du
Orrr....it's music, and it's subjective. Perhaps he enjoys fine art, or cuisine, or any other number of things you audiofags shrug off with a "that just looks like vase with flowers in it" or "tomato sauce out of the jar is just fine". And you know what? That's fine. It's ALWAYS been this way, and society won't crumble as a result.
Gold you say?!?
Teh New Monsta Cabelz !
https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1056022
It also depends on the listening environment. I use cheap amplified bluetooth headphones at work to listen to music. It is a noisy environment (lots of big machines running) so loudness is more important than quality. Having the best quality gear and music format would be a waste because you can't hear it clearly enough over the machinery noise to tell the difference between a 320k and 64k mp3.
Or vertical video, when will people learn to record video in landscape?
If you don't listen to music performed live every time, then you're just a poser.
I'd love to have my own orchestra so I can say that.
What the hell were people expecting? Mobile data costs a shitload. Why would anyone stream over their portable device (aka the most convenient/commonly used device), when they can download to it and replay as often as they want and save on data usage charges.
Depends.
I'm an old person. But back when I was a teenager, I used to record stuff off the radio to listen to--the AM Radio. Why? Because it's free. Yeah, the quality sucked. Yeah, I sometimes ended up with some DJ talking up the song. But I was willing to forgo all that because it was free.
I assume it's a similar thing here.
We used to do that as well. Later I ripped satellite radio simply to be able to listen to it off line. In either case QA quality didn't matter. We also made party tapes in college by recording songs onto reel to reel tape so we had hours of music with a mix of slow and fast. Making them took time bevause we would try to fade smoothly from one song to the other with two turntables as a source, and rotating the album so the song start would pickup as soon as we started the turntable, much like DJs did.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Vile necromancer! If that thread were a human being it would have a drivers license by now.
There were online music sites you could buy individual songs from most major record companies before Apple had one. Let's not rewrite history.
I used to like to watch Night-Time on ITV, but couldn't really stay up to 6am in the morning. So I would get a long-play VHS tape (8-hours) and record the whole six hours from midnight to 6am.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
You mean like Whole Lotta Love and almost all of II that is terribly distorted and clipped as hell? Listen at around 3:00 for about 20 seconds for a perfect example
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Sometimes the recording added an interesting effect to the music. There's one song I remember, but I can't find on Youtube. It sounded like Prince's Bat Dance but it was all muffly and echoey like a music hall. Never been able to find any video with that effect.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Name one or STFU.
Good enough.
But why bother rather than adapt?
I play music through YouTube rather than saving but for portable use I may save it.
I buy games and comics for 1000+ USD though I could pirate them and aren't playing 99+%.
Deal with it and let me pay for the content I enjoy.
If music had good prices maybe I would buy that too. I actually have very little. Bur the music industry seem to have the same insanely high prices on their content. Their problem.
Rhapsody/Real for one. Had all 5 major labels on board in mid 2002, they had the service running with less than all of the major labels at least a year before that. Unlimited streaming for a monthly fee and tracks to purchase for 0.79 then eventually 0.99. iTunes was not selling until April 2003. I know as time goes on not many people seem to remember the early days of streaming and believe Apple was the one responsible for bringing online music but that is not correct. Apple got a lot of people into it but the path was already paved. You could have a portable MP3 player attached to one of these services and play DRM songs before the first iPod. In your mind, anything but the Apple experience may have sucked and no one used anything else and justify why Apple the first but... Did you actually use them? I doubt it considering you didn't even know they existed.
Kinda all headphones are portable.
Plenty are also very good.
Exactly. ..
I can get games for half to 4 dollar a piece which may not be more enjoyable but atleast contain much more content.
There's competition going on
Buffering.....
Recordings on metal tapes actually sound really good. A well mastered metal tape recording is better than a poorly mastered CD recording.
Gonna have to look into it.... for educational purposes
Slight correction. aptX is not a newer codec. It dates back to the 1980's, and the advantage it has over AAC and MP3 is latency (which matters when watching video or playing games - not so much when listening to music). Sound quality wise, it needs a lot more bandwidth (and therefore higher signal quality on the Bluetooth link) than MP3 or AAC to get comparable quality.
Hmm... 70 dB is kind of high. I get less than 65 in my Supra, and barely over 60 in my Volvo S60R. Measured at 70mph (not that it changes much unless I'm over 3000rpm) with a sound meter, not a cellphone. And no, this is not a small difference. Your 70 db would be 10 times as intense, and sound to us twice as loud.
On top of that, I have ambient noise cancellation in both cars, although the one in the Supra works much better, probably because it is newer, and was installed by a friend's shop, as opposed to by the factory. Making everything super loud is not necessary.
This said, everyone says that I have a tin ear anyway, and my usual equalizer settings favor the vocal range. But when I let my passengers play with the controls, they seem pretty happy. My wife can definitely tell when a CD has been assembled from MP3s, so I won't argue that no one can tell... but I don't care.
No good deed goes unpunished...
I don't really care how much bands get as long as the people doing nothing get nothing. That means people who buy IP rights and just sit on them, asking money.
Holding businesses are parasites.
"As someone who did professional audio engineering for quite a few years, I have to disagree --- sort of.
First, you say a "reasonable" MP3. A "reasonable" MP3 is indeed hard to tell from a lossless file, but most MP3s aren't all that "reasonable" and can be pretty easily distinguished."
My bet is that the poster you responded to has somewhat impaired hearing without knowing about it, and thinks that since they have a hard time hearing the differences, everyone else does too. I've met a few of those, and they are just as annoying as the audiophiles who believe gold plated fibreoptics improves sound etc.
"My second caveat has to do with the listening environment. If you're listening on the Apple earbuds that came with your phone, you surely can't tell good from bad. If you listen on the JBL professional setup I had in my studio control room, you sure as heck can hear small differences."
Fully agreed, the right equipment is a must. The home sound setups I've built, I've built out of studio gear, and then made nice front-ends for the looks, and pay maybe 40-50% of what an equivalent "enthusiast" brand setup would cost. I think one of the big problems is that today, for cheap systems, you either get an integrated solution, like a "soundbar" or compact stereo, with no flexibility, or a home cinema surround system. It's hard to find a baseline, flexible 2-speaker amplifier nowadays, without having to go to specialist shops.
Now that someone has named one, will you be the one who will STFU?
Apple copied others (as they often do) and apple fanboys think apple invented the world.
Steve Jobs, 1996: "Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal"
what kind of ridiculous BS is that saying that small bands aren't on streaming sites??
soundcloud and youtube are full of indie bands and artists not to mention apple music (I can't vouch for Spotify).
When I was a teenager, this new thing called 'Napster' had just come out. It was getting massive news coverage, and those of us with internet connections would be online all evening straining our modems to get as much as we could.
This isn't in any way immoral, it's just that companies only want you to be able to listen to music while they shove ads down your throat and/or keep you on a contract. To those i say: Fuck you, start paying your artists and just wait until we criminalize corruption (aka lobbying).
I can't wait until offline Netflix and hbo on Hulu comes out and we stream rip videos too!
There were online music sites you could buy individual songs from most major record companies before Apple had one. Let's not rewrite history.
I wasn't trying to claim that Apple started it: yeah, a lot of us did go through the Napster saga. But this was before internet access was fast or cheap, or computers were commonplace. The main ways to get music was buying CDs, and I for one would be bombarded w/ mail from BMG or Columbia House. On the rare occasion that there was a feature CD w/ just 1 or 2 songs, it certainly didn't cost
Apple copied others (as they always do)
FTFY.
Just check Apple vs Braun.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/apple-design-doesnt-fall-far-from-brauns-tree-176668
This exactly.
I have owned stereo equipment in years past with this feature and my current cable box has dynamic range settings as well.
LOL, next thing you'll be telling us you don't even own a TV.
For someone to not like music is just weird. There are so many different styles of music and it's all so easily accessible now, including all of the indie stuff. Someone who doesn't like music is analogous to someone who doesn't like the beach. Or someone who doesn't like love. It's just fucking weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
youths of today are clearly incredibly stupid. They need a "service" to "stream-rip". Back in my day, the dual-tape-deck had a record button. You pushed it. It would record radio, or the other tape, or the cd. Today, windows has a record button too. Hit it in your favourite free audio app. Perfect digital copy.
As for any concept of value/fairness/ethics...
First off, the value of music is the live performance. Pay to see the band and have the experience. I go to two dozen theatrical shows every year.
Second, the "stream", as it were, is being produced by hardware that I own. My speakers, my cables, my computer. So the "performance", as it were, is all mine. My computer is "covering" the original. So the value of the music is already reduced to the licencing cost that a cover-band would pay to perform the say.
Third, I'm performing it for me, myself, and I. Hardly a public for-profit scenario.
It's little more than the sheet-music, since the always-perfect musician is sitting on my desk, owned by me.
Yes I buy CDs, to support to artists that I see live. Do I play them? No. Music through speakers just sucks. But I want them to return to my local theatre. Gotta support the tour.
Damn it! I just can't find the 'like' button anywhere!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
When I was a kid, I'd bring over blank cassettes to a friend's house and record his older brother's CDs. That was the rampant form of music piracy at the time. This never changes.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
This doesn't sound any different than when I was a kid and we used to record songs off the radio onto a cassette tape.
Speaking of which
Argument in the comments between people who claimed they could hear the tones above 16kHz and those who claimed there were no such tones.
16 kHz is close to 15 kHz : that high pitched "mosquitoe" hum that analog TV set, and some un-plugged PC CRT sceen did, and that only some people heard.
Not everybody could hear them (age is a factor).
That shows you that even if the sound was delivery losslessly, not everybody could hear it.
the OPUS stream contained the original signal descending from 20kHz but all of the AAC streams had artificially chopped off everything above 16kHz.
Considering the above (not everybody is able to hear the 15kHz mosquito hum of an old analog TV set), clamping AAC is a safe bet and a good compromise for compression, probably nobody is going to pay attention to 15 kHz and up frequencies in the middle of a complexe piece of music.
OPUS' clip at 20 kHz is by design. It's designed for human listeners, and we lack any receptor for such high frequency. There's no point in recording and keeping something that could not be heard anyway. If you have a special corner case use where you do need that frequency, don't use a general purpose codec like this (FLAC would be better).
(That would be like trying to record the UV and IR light in photographs of your vacations.
UV and IR photography is *a thing* in some scientific fields (e.g.: astronomy, medical imaging.), but there's no point in recording it for everyday picture - the eye's len don't let any UV through, and the receptors of the eye don't even react to high energy UV* nor to IR. R/G/B is plenty enough for everyday pictures).
The same way photography is designed for humans and not pistol shrimps/bees/etc. and thus R/G/B is enough,
the same way OPUS is designed for humans and not for dogs and thus 20 kHz is enough.
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*: there's a thin band of near UV that could be picked up by the retina, but would burn and damage the retina, so the len has evolved to block it.
Some early-gen cataract replacement artificial lens where transparent at that wavelength, enabling cataract-operation patients to see this tiny bit of UV, at least until they burn their retina.
Still it's definitely NOT something you need to record for your vacation pictures. R/G/B will suffice.
Turned out it depended which audio stream Youtube was sending to the listener
And that's a pretty dumb idea (posting your "sound test" on youtube) to begin with.
Youtube is designed to share regular music/speech over internet, heavily compressed to make it easier to stream and cheaper to store.
Your wierd audio test is guaranteed to hit some unusual corner case and suffer heavily from the compression.
What did the uploader expect ?!?
"Hey I'm trying to record bats' calls using an oldschool portable tape recorder and it doesn't work !"
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm a boomer too and have about 800 albums still. I've been listening to vinyl since Nixon was prez and have a lot of things which never made it to digital. So I still run a turntable due to my legacy recordings.
But mp3 pretty much sucks the life out of music when played back on a good system, and given that modern recordings are compressed so they'll sound better played on ear buds connected to an iPhone and streamed from Spotify, there is NO reason for me to rip.
Like many boomer audiophiles, I've spent years refining the system and have gotten it pretty much to the place where it really cannot be improved. No. I don't bother with exotic cables or insanely overpriced components. But no visitor hears my system and leaves the house without envy. On a system like this, the degradation of mp3 is all too apparent.
99% of the public NEVER cared about fidelity. The never will.