I buy CD's at these prices all the time. I have no issue with paying good money for something I love and that enriches my life in a big way. And many of my favorite stores (real and online) let me preview CDs - so I know what I am getting so i can decide if the CD is worth all that.
But like the people in the initial topic post, I've had it with DRM and all the hassles it creates. I shouldn't have to RTFM to listen to music in the way I am accustomed to - it shouldn't have to be that hard. I don't want crap software on my PC (or my employer's PC) that for all I know is spyware. So suddenly it's not worth my $18.99 or whatever they ask for a domestic release these days.
I've stopped buying all Sony/BMG - they DRM all their new CDs as far as I can tell, and I'm not into the headaches. But I won't steal this music either - I'll play by their stupid rules.
I don't think get it that his has already cost them a lot of business from music geeks that love music, but whose basic sense of collecting things is violated by schemes that leave them feeling that don't really own what they have just purchased. It's a weird psychology but I'm 100% certain I'm not the only music obsessive that feels this way.
The loss is Sony's and the artists - I DJ and won't play this music at clubs if I don't own it. Too bad for them - and good news for the indies...
In this case full potential means competition for the major labels - something they don't want.
At a certain point, it starts to look like anti-trust teritory, since newer legitimate business models for music distro that are based on P2P are hampered by this dinosaur's last gasp effort to undo progress...
Hardly. I own close to 5,000 legally purchased CD's. I don't copy purchased CD's except to create personal copies for the car and the beach (cuz CD's are hardly indestructable, and catalogs don't stay in print forever).
The copy protection means I can't play Sony CDs at work (because loading their software violates corporate policy against loading unapproved software).
So then maybe I decide to put a copy on an iPod so I can listen that way. But wait, if you have a PC you can't do that either. But they insist someday this will work once they figure out the kinks.
And of course certain DRM'ed CD's wont play on certain CD players at all. How swell is that?
DRM is a pathetic failure at stopping pirates - making a copy is merely inconvenient.
ALL DRM does is angers law abiding consumers by making their purchase less valuable to them.
Buy indie. Tell Sony where they can stuff it...
While it pains me I've stopped buying their stuff. This hurts artists I like, but I've got enough records that passing on a few artists from the Sony family of labels is a small price to pay.
There are plenty of us who post free music on the web - we want you to download our stuff.
This frankly is also a threat to their model. While it hasn't come soon, in the next few years my hunch is that there will be a good number of hit songs that are recorded in home project studios and distributed on the internet - this cuts the majors out.
Record labels do the following things well: 1) Fund a music act for recording and development. 2) Promote them. 3) Distribute their product.
Already 1 is often a non-issue. Home produced records like Beck's "Loser" have done well, and home recording has caused dozens of well known studios to close in the last few years.
Issues 2&3 are handled better and better by the internet.
So except for big budget ad campaigns and expensive music videos (and most bands don't get either of these), there isn't a lot the majors can do that couldn't be done well by the artists themselves, or by small labels / artist management organizations.
This does scare the majors and it also scares other large content providers (TV, Movies). While broadband is a huge opportunity, it is also a huge threat. But they won't stop this one, and I don't mind the idea that a few giants will fall trying to turn back time...
As someone that records music for a number of indie labels, I'm solidly against stealing music from the internet. I am pretty much the RIAA's dream consumer - I spend a huge chunk of money on records each month.
But like you, I have pretty much had it with their stupid war and have been boycotting the majors.
If I can't make backups of my CDs for playing on my boombox on the beach, I don't care to pay the absurd prices they charge and I will gladly do without. If I can't used my PC to copy them to an iPod, well once again they've devalued their product and created one more inconvenience.
And it's only an inconvenience: I own a small recording studio and have pro gear that can still make digital copies - but it's extra work and I shouldn't have to screw around to use the content I have purchased where I want. I should be able to fell secure that a little sand won't mean I have to go to the store to buy another copy - only to learn they aren't keeping their catalog in print (and with my faves they rarely do).
This makes me unhappy as a consumer who has played things by the law. They aren't defeating music thieves, but they have royally pissed off their best customers.
I'd argue that tape editing is hardly the birth. If you take the later development of sequencers as the real birth credit gets muddy, but perhaps it was Raymond Scott...
I went to MOTO with a friend from San Francisco who wanted to try it. I expected to hate it since I read the same review (and others like it).
But it was an enjoyable experience, and while some of the dishes were a bit bizaare or pretensious, it certainly made for a memorable and entertaining evening. Some of the food was very good - some of it was just very interesting. Which sounds like a slight, but it really isn't. This has more to do with conceptual art than with simple dining.
Order bulk cable, order connectors. Solder away...
My recording studio is all Mogami cable with Neutric connectors - thousands of feet in cable. No way could I have afforded Monster, and what I installed is far better spec-wise. There are lots of reasons while audio profesionals sneer when the say Monster cable....
Check out Redco for good prices on bulk cable and connectors.
I have similar categorizations for passwords, but where a password sits also varies on how secure it is. If it's a site that clearly doesn't hash the password (i.e. they can email your password to you), then I work under the assumption that this password could be compromised by an insider at the website. As painful as it is, these sites get their own passwords, unless the password is my low security, "I don't care if you know" password. I don't want some insider taking this password and from some shopping site and using it to try to use my Amazon account, for example.
37% were sleeping in until 4pm 33% had their phone disconnected for non-payment last month 18% couldn't hear the phone over the drums and Marshall stacks 12% were intoxicated to the point of being temporarily incapacitated
Actually most small bands barely scrape by touring. It's really hard to make money on tour. It's hard to make money doing music period.
A good book to read for those bands that want to go it alone is "Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991," by Michael Azerrad. While many of these bands were on labels (small indy ones though), all of them spent their life on the road touring and pushing their records. In certain ways, the world depicted in this book is long past, but it is still useful to see how things worked in the golden age of independant rock. And of course the bands in this book are the rare sucess stories...
I have a 1st generation GPS device so maybe my info is out of date, but it has a hard time getting a location in heavy forest, never mind in a massive concrete and steel building. All this seems like it would rule out most real world applications, so I think something is missing in this story - Woz aint no dummy. Any conjectures?
It seems to me that this is a natural role for Nader - he is a consumer advocate after all.
You can sneer at him all you want, but you do so at your own peril. We know there are problems with the voting processes and machines - and personally I'm glad he's taking this on.
I don't see that age has anything to do with it. Kerry has been practicing dumbing down his answers for everyone, not just youths. Even complex topics are not to be afforded a nuanced answer.
But IMHO youths today are more sophisticated than in past generations. Chalk it up to the internet, or to living in truly strange times, but I think there are far more kids today who are able to tackle complex issues in a thoughful fashion.
A friend sells vintage photos by famous artists - sometimes from his site, sometimes from places like ebay. The funny thing is that by posting the images, he hurts his own market - there are dozens of folks who take the jpgs of the originals and print them on a high quality printer and then sell them as the real deal. The market is hurt by these poor imitations and his business suffers. He has turned to putting lettering over the images - but this doesn't look so swell and some folks use photoshop tricks to circumvent this measure so the lettering has to be very obtrusive.
Depending upon the image used and how the printer recognizes it, this might (or might not) be a less obtrusive way to foil (or at least annoy) the counterfeiters - and would be kind of interesting. My hunch is it couldn't be done, but...
I'm wondering how this pattern could be embeded in images so that you prevent printing images taken from a web page. Anyone have inside track info on how this might be done?
Well call me uncoordinated, but I do better rapidly flicking my index finger over the thumb wheel than trying to rapidly track the circle with with any finger.
You can argue which is inferior all you want - I'll still prefer my stick shift to your automatic tranny. And both kinds of cars will still be sold...
I'm with you on this one. I don't like the interface of the iPod for whatever reason. But the clickwheel on my Rio Carbon works well for me - it is much like my Blackberry and this familiarity works well.
Odds are someone (not the artist) spent money marketing them.
While I'd love to see the complete collapse of the Major Labels, this ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Artists are unlikely to ditch the majors for your service - they can already get their music out there on an indie label, iTunes, etc if they want to go without the massive promotional and distro mechanisms of the majors. To enter into a legal deal with you (which is the only practical way if they want to accept money and still have legal rights when they believe your service is doing what music companies have always done - rip off their artists) they would have to pretty much pass on a Major or Indy contracts and finance all promotion themselves (this is not cheap). And in the end their music sees the world as crappy sounding MP3's with little in the way of proper cover art, credits, etc. etc. Serious players (i.e. most people's favorite artists) ain't generally gonna wanna play this way.
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I buy CD's at these prices all the time. I have no issue with paying good money for something I love and that enriches my life in a big way. And many of my favorite stores (real and online) let me preview CDs - so I know what I am getting so i can decide if the CD is worth all that.
But like the people in the initial topic post, I've had it with DRM and all the hassles it creates. I shouldn't have to RTFM to listen to music in the way I am accustomed to - it shouldn't have to be that hard. I don't want crap software on my PC (or my employer's PC) that for all I know is spyware. So suddenly it's not worth my $18.99 or whatever they ask for a domestic release these days.
I've stopped buying all Sony/BMG - they DRM all their new CDs as far as I can tell, and I'm not into the headaches. But I won't steal this music either - I'll play by their stupid rules.
I don't think get it that his has already cost them a lot of business from music geeks that love music, but whose basic sense of collecting things is violated by schemes that leave them feeling that don't really own what they have just purchased. It's a weird psychology but I'm 100% certain I'm not the only music obsessive that feels this way.
The loss is Sony's and the artists - I DJ and won't play this music at clubs if I don't own it. Too bad for them - and good news for the indies...
If it's a pain in the ass to the users, they will get frustrated and the promise of on-line music distro suffers.
I don't see most average consumers having a good time of this...
In this case full potential means competition for the major labels - something they don't want.
At a certain point, it starts to look like anti-trust teritory, since newer legitimate business models for music distro that are based on P2P are hampered by this dinosaur's last gasp effort to undo progress...
Despite what most people believe the recording industry is tiny, and for the most part jobs there pay for crap.
Look at the numbers sometime, you'll be surprised.
Illegal activity?
Hardly. I own close to 5,000 legally purchased CD's. I don't copy purchased CD's except to create personal copies for the car and the beach (cuz CD's are hardly indestructable, and catalogs don't stay in print forever).
The copy protection means I can't play Sony CDs at work (because loading their software violates corporate policy against loading unapproved software).
So then maybe I decide to put a copy on an iPod so I can listen that way. But wait, if you have a PC you can't do that either. But they insist someday this will work once they figure out the kinks.
And of course certain DRM'ed CD's wont play on certain CD players at all. How swell is that?
DRM is a pathetic failure at stopping pirates - making a copy is merely inconvenient.
ALL DRM does is angers law abiding consumers by making their purchase less valuable to them.
Buy indie. Tell Sony where they can stuff it...
While it pains me I've stopped buying their stuff. This hurts artists I like, but I've got enough records that passing on a few artists from the Sony family of labels is a small price to pay.
There are plenty of us who post free music on the web - we want you to download our stuff.
This frankly is also a threat to their model. While it hasn't come soon, in the next few years my hunch is that there will be a good number of hit songs that are recorded in home project studios and distributed on the internet - this cuts the majors out.
Record labels do the following things well:
1) Fund a music act for recording and development.
2) Promote them.
3) Distribute their product.
Already 1 is often a non-issue. Home produced records like Beck's "Loser" have done well, and home recording has caused dozens of well known studios to close in the last few years.
Issues 2&3 are handled better and better by the internet.
So except for big budget ad campaigns and expensive music videos (and most bands don't get either of these), there isn't a lot the majors can do that couldn't be done well by the artists themselves, or by small labels / artist management organizations.
This does scare the majors and it also scares other large content providers (TV, Movies). While broadband is a huge opportunity, it is also a huge threat. But they won't stop this one, and I don't mind the idea that a few giants will fall trying to turn back time...
As someone that records music for a number of indie labels, I'm solidly against stealing music from the internet. I am pretty much the RIAA's dream consumer - I spend a huge chunk of money on records each month.
But like you, I have pretty much had it with their stupid war and have been boycotting the majors.
If I can't make backups of my CDs for playing on my boombox on the beach, I don't care to pay the absurd prices they charge and I will gladly do without. If I can't used my PC to copy them to an iPod, well once again they've devalued their product and created one more inconvenience.
And it's only an inconvenience: I own a small recording studio and have pro gear that can still make digital copies - but it's extra work and I shouldn't have to screw around to use the content I have purchased where I want. I should be able to fell secure that a little sand won't mean I have to go to the store to buy another copy - only to learn they aren't keeping their catalog in print (and with my faves they rarely do).
This makes me unhappy as a consumer who has played things by the law. They aren't defeating music thieves, but they have royally pissed off their best customers.
[obligatory Simpson's reference]
Obnoxious ringtones and overly loud phone conversations in public lead to calls for blocking.
The only problem is, do you really want blockers going when there could be a real emergency that requires 911?
I'd argue that tape editing is hardly the birth. If you take the later development of sequencers as the real birth credit gets muddy, but perhaps it was Raymond Scott...
...probably caused brain tumors and killed her.
I went to MOTO with a friend from San Francisco who wanted to try it. I expected to hate it since I read the same review (and others like it).
But it was an enjoyable experience, and while some of the dishes were a bit bizaare or pretensious, it certainly made for a memorable and entertaining evening. Some of the food was very good - some of it was just very interesting. Which sounds like a slight, but it really isn't. This has more to do with conceptual art than with simple dining.
Order bulk cable, order connectors. Solder away...
My recording studio is all Mogami cable with Neutric connectors - thousands of feet in cable. No way could I have afforded Monster, and what I installed is far better spec-wise. There are lots of reasons while audio profesionals sneer when the say Monster cable....
Check out Redco for good prices on bulk cable and connectors.
I have similar categorizations for passwords, but where a password sits also varies on how secure it is. If it's a site that clearly doesn't hash the password (i.e. they can email your password to you), then I work under the assumption that this password could be compromised by an insider at the website. As painful as it is, these sites get their own passwords, unless the password is my low security, "I don't care if you know" password. I don't want some insider taking this password and from some shopping site and using it to try to use my Amazon account, for example.
Courtney basically stole this from an earlier piece by her archenemy Steve Albini. Of course, who isn't her archenemy these days...
Really it's more like...
37% were sleeping in until 4pm
33% had their phone disconnected for non-payment last month
18% couldn't hear the phone over the drums and Marshall stacks
12% were intoxicated to the point of being temporarily incapacitated
Actually most small bands barely scrape by touring. It's really hard to make money on tour. It's hard to make money doing music period.
A good book to read for those bands that want to go it alone is "Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991," by Michael Azerrad. While many of these bands were on labels (small indy ones though), all of them spent their life on the road touring and pushing their records. In certain ways, the world depicted in this book is long past, but it is still useful to see how things worked in the golden age of independant rock. And of course the bands in this book are the rare sucess stories...
I have a 1st generation GPS device so maybe my info is out of date, but it has a hard time getting a location in heavy forest, never mind in a massive concrete and steel building. All this seems like it would rule out most real world applications, so I think something is missing in this story - Woz aint no dummy. Any conjectures?
It seems to me that this is a natural role for Nader - he is a consumer advocate after all.
You can sneer at him all you want, but you do so at your own peril. We know there are problems with the voting processes and machines - and personally I'm glad he's taking this on.
I don't see that age has anything to do with it. Kerry has been practicing dumbing down his answers for everyone, not just youths. Even complex topics are not to be afforded a nuanced answer.
But IMHO youths today are more sophisticated than in past generations. Chalk it up to the internet, or to living in truly strange times, but I think there are far more kids today who are able to tackle complex issues in a thoughful fashion.
A friend sells vintage photos by famous artists - sometimes from his site, sometimes from places like ebay. The funny thing is that by posting the images, he hurts his own market - there are dozens of folks who take the jpgs of the originals and print them on a high quality printer and then sell them as the real deal. The market is hurt by these poor imitations and his business suffers. He has turned to putting lettering over the images - but this doesn't look so swell and some folks use photoshop tricks to circumvent this measure so the lettering has to be very obtrusive.
Depending upon the image used and how the printer recognizes it, this might (or might not) be a less obtrusive way to foil (or at least annoy) the counterfeiters - and would be kind of interesting. My hunch is it couldn't be done, but...
I'm wondering how this pattern could be embeded in images so that you prevent printing images taken from a web page. Anyone have inside track info on how this might be done?
Well call me uncoordinated, but I do better rapidly flicking my index finger over the thumb wheel than trying to rapidly track the circle with with any finger.
You can argue which is inferior all you want - I'll still prefer my stick shift to your automatic tranny. And both kinds of cars will still be sold...
I'm with you on this one. I don't like the interface of the iPod for whatever reason. But the clickwheel on my Rio Carbon works well for me - it is much like my Blackberry and this familiarity works well.
Odds are someone (not the artist) spent money marketing them.
While I'd love to see the complete collapse of the Major Labels, this ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Artists are unlikely to ditch the majors for your service - they can already get their music out there on an indie label, iTunes, etc if they want to go without the massive promotional and distro mechanisms of the majors. To enter into a legal deal with you (which is the only practical way if they want to accept money and still have legal rights when they believe your service is doing what music companies have always done - rip off their artists) they would have to pretty much pass on a Major or Indy contracts and finance all promotion themselves (this is not cheap). And in the end their music sees the world as crappy sounding MP3's with little in the way of proper cover art, credits, etc. etc. Serious players (i.e. most people's favorite artists) ain't generally gonna wanna play this way.