Because we don't want it. The airwaves belong to the public and are subject to the rules imposed on them by us. We want to believe that the music we end up liking and connecting with has made it there because it's good. Unfortunatly, good music these days withers and dies if it isn't picked up and paid for by a major label. That's a shame, cause we are missing out.
ALSO: Most people in the music biz refer to these scum as 'indies'. The first time I heard the term (and it doesn't come up that much in open discussion for reasons I'm sure you can figure out) I thought they were referring to Matador or SubPop. I wish I had grabbed a document I saw that outlined how much money goes to these 'indie' idiots. You'd be surprised. Every song in the top 40 was 'placed' there.
Re:Don't compare - What are you smokin?
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 1
Good point. The point i don't understand is how people comparing them come up with the idea that Shrek blows anything away (except for maybe the good character design guidlines;) I mean the gee whiz factor is one thing (which I don't see) but the look and design of those characters is boring. And I noticed some "foot sliding" in the trailer. You know, when the digital character's feet don't move realistically with the ground or background and seem to slide(ie the first scene with JAR JAR in Phantom Menace). Also, the detail of sleeping "Newman" character's face from Toy Story 2 looks way better than the human faces in Shrek(which is what I'm assuming the fanboys are drooling over).
You make some solid points, but your argument is clouded by some misunderstanding of how things actually work in the music biz.
OLD DAYS:
Band X makes demo, plays around city, gets some interest from label. Label throws large amounts of money at them to impress them, which they spend foolishly. Band finishes record that they spend way to much on. Label encourages them to spend too much money. Label pays INDIES (industry term form independant something or other - basically modern middleman in payola scheme) large sums to play songs. Pays large chains to feature album prominently. Pays for massive advertising. Pays for street team activities (posters and flyers, free tape handouts, etc). Pays for executives (and their assistants) to fly around and talk up band or see them play as well as their weekly salaries. Band rings up massive recoupable account with label (recoupable accounts have to paid off before the band sees any money from record sales). Label offers band, since this is their first record, only meager split of cd sales (lucky to get 1$ per cd). Label keeps copyright of music. Label has asay in how music is used.That 'less than $1 per cd' then has to go and pay off the massive moneis spent (and continuing to be spent). Majority of that money is being used to prop up bloated record company staff and pay off debts incurred from others band that have been written off. Band tours. Makes money to eat. Sells T Shirts. Buys nice house. When band tries to get better split, label decides it's easier (in most cases) to just try a new batch of one hit wonders, the profit margins for them are higher.
NEW WAY:
Band writes material and records on their home computer. Finds web scenes devoted to their type of music. Puts music out there for fans of the genre to listen to. If popular, people talk them up. if not, musicians keep day job. band has website. sells cds to hardcore fans (hardcore fans will always want to buy cd's to collect the actual artifact - just look on ebay, maybe for the booklets, maybe for the signed pictures the band includes, whatever). makes 90 per cent profit on cds vs less than 5 and can sell them for less than cahin stores, so hardcore fan wins as well. bands starts touring in regions where people like them. band sells more cds. New model forces musicians to build over time, but has added benefit of lengthening sustainable career for many artists. band eats, buys nice house, still has a job in a year (and complete control and ownership).
Also, as a side note: In the 'for once having a large crappy ISP pays off department':
``We don't see it as our responsibility, or even our jurisdiction, to police what's on our members' hard drives,'' said Kurt Rahn, a spokesman for Earthlink in Atlanta. ``So sending us letters isn't going to do any good.''
(disclaimer: I spent 6 years in the music industry) Do some reading and don't just buy the BS coming from the major labels. Most bands, including many that you hear on the radio, don't make any money from record sales. None. They make money on touring and selling merchandise. Granted the bands you mentioned probably make loads of money from record sales, but consider this: Limp Bizkit support free trading of their music as mp3s, and because of the record industry's 'indentured servant' attitude towards artists, N'SYNC pay both their current and former record labels on their record sales, so they probably don't make that much from them either. Good musicians will always be able to make a living and a career out of performing music because people will always want to see live music, and the hardcore fans will always want to bring a piece of that home, as a T-Shirt or whatever. The really important thing about a free music algorithm is in music production. If the Secure Music Stream thing (or whatever it is called) comes to be in Windows then all of your music components will need a key to play music. And of course who do you think you have to license that key from? The multi-national Digital Music Key consortium. And do you think it will be free? Is the DVD algorithm free? (no)The effect of this could be that the independant musician cannot make music that can play on anyones equiptment. And then we're back to needing record labels. Their 'revenue stream' is assured
And if you were being sarcastic, then I'm sorry I rambled on, but people really do believe what you are saying.
You refer to the ability to burn your own cds (when talking about music you write, play and record). But the point is that if technologies like this are allowed to replace the current ones, then a musician in 5 years may not be able to burn their own cd (or whatever the media of the day is). The copying of music on the net has not had a significant effect on the music industry, this holiday was the biggest ever in terms of sales for them. They are more afraid of people being able to put out their own albums, cutting them out of the loop. And if they make it so you can't record onto the new media formats, then they have stopped you from being able to reach people and sell your product yourself.
I am well versed in all things floyd and while it is true that Waters wrote more than the others the disparity got bigger as the band went on. The best albums, like echoes, are much more collaborations then Waters' angst ridden therapy exercises (like the Wall). And I stand by my claim that Sid introduced the band to Gilmore and that at that point Sid was the leader of the band. I am not a big fan of post Waters Pink Floyd and I do like some of Waters' solo stuff (like Pros and Cons and Some Radio Kaos) tho definately not Amused (enought of the cheesy back up singers, Roger!). Waters didn't even want to play Floyd songs for years, so why does he care that the rest of them still do? Oh yeah Final cut was also all written by Waters (mostly tossed off material from the Wall)
>What's content+a recordable media? A recording.
Exactly. And what happens when they take the recordable media off the market?
Content + no available recordable media = Content no one can access
The rant hits a few important points, but i think the most important is this: The media giants don't want you to be able to be a content provider. Not only do they want to put out their music on uncopiable formats, they don't want you to be able to use your own 'free mp3/get paid touring' business model because it could prove to other artists that the record companies are squeezing them dry. If they can keep you locked out of portable music players, home stereo components, and desktop software then their monopoly is assured.
allows you to buy a printed version of it with no adverts? You can choose not to read them the same way you can choose not to read banner ads. But you can't get an ad-less newspaper. I don't see the analogy you're drawing. I can't believe that people think they are annoying considering the alternatives (pay per use / subscription models).
Hovercraft design questions
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 1
A hovercraft or something similar is probably what IT is. But two important questions needs to be answered.
1. Power Source. The article mentions the current product that "IT" will overtake as being dirty. So what kind of clean, safe and small type of power source could fit into and adequately power a personal craft of this type?
2. Abilities. The article say that the "IT" will run afoul of some existing laws and that cities will need to be modified to work well with "IT". Do you think that it will be able to fly? Or traverse water? I think that if it could fly it would negate the 'safer' argument, but if I could commute across the Hudson River with it...
Maybe we'll need to add landing pads to our balcony.
Buried in the (deserved) hype surrounding the new hardware is the OSX improvements. Airport and printing support is fixed. The apple menu is back. The dock is now resizable and has a hierarchical pop up feature. The os9 finder is sortof back, with it's multiple windows (if you want it).
The funniest thing i heard on the webcast of the deployment of the solar panels was when the ground control person told the astronuts to "close Outlook so we can sync up your mail". It was so out of context with the images I was looking at that it took a few seconds to register what i had heard.
So lets cut through the obvious sales pitch that started the thread and ask the real question. Is there a MP3,CD-R, No Macrovision, DVD player out there that has good outs, doesn't project an image that looks like crap, and can play all dvds without horrible layer changes or lock ups?
It's not that they have THAT MUCH influence by themselves, but the do have more than their population should hold. The idea that 'one person = one vote' doesn't hold up in the current election process for President. California has something like 60 times the population of Idaho, but only 18 times the electoral votes. So a voter in Idaho gets 3.3 times as many votes as a person in California. Does that sound fair to anyone?
I think there are two segments to this discussion about overhauling the electoral college and addressing this may make it acceptable to both small and big states. The process of assigning the electors by a states representation in congress favors small states. However, the assigning of all of the electors to the winner of a state regardless of the popular division of votes in that state also skews the voting away from a popular representation. A compromise could include keeping the small state bias in number of electors, but have states divide up electors by popular vote percentage. This method would also allow third party candidates to be involved in the election of the president.
Also, those who say that the small states will vote against reforming the electoral college because of the bonus that they get may not be right. Lets assume (or hope) that the people of this great country can actually see the validity of the greater good, see beyond their own benefit and make a choice to better the country.
Corporate Napster, I love it!
"A little sharing of private user info never hurt anybody. Besides, you online types make too much money. You expect us to pay you for your info? Information wants to be free!"
>Windows has been the dominant OS and GUI during the last 5 years, where more
>people have gotten involved in computing than have used them previously. The sub
>$1000 system almost universally has Windows on it, and thus it defines how
>computing is supposed to work for a lot of people.
What? The gui that most of the people you refer to in the first sentence really know and love is AOL And the second one about the "sub $1000" computer market is just silly. Most of those sub $1000 companies are out of business and in the sub $1500, Apple is kicking a$$ and taking names with their Imacs.
>OSX may be cool and innovative
i don't know what you'd call it, but all ye Linux faithful consider: Be spring next year apple will be shipping a *nix os with a pretty shine to the masses (and on a large number of multi proc machines!). All those drivers and programs you always wished you could run will be there or forthcoming . It's an os you can have on the family computer that can be as powerful as you want and as easy to use as is needed by your less computer friendly family members.
But who knows. Maybe the public will not receive it. Then I guess you could call it "Pet Sounds", a commercial failure, but influencing generations of musicians after it.
First of all, this story was already posted to slashdot a month ago when Spaceworld took place - the game show that just happened was the Tokyo Game Show. Secondly, the amazing Star Wars, X-Wing in the trenches of the Death Star, demo was in fact very playable - view some action here . It looks amazing.
So I got this wand/cat/reader thing from Wired Mag. I haven't used it, but reading the posts and whatnot, I see that it has a unique serial number. Since I have not and will not use it, that's not that big of a deal - except the whole part about how they want to know who is using theirs from Wired, or Radio Shack etc. Since Wired ALREADY HAS private info about me, I want to know if any of that info was already tied to my Unique serial number on the CueCat servers (and now in the hands of the EVIL HACKERS) without my consent. Does anyone know? (or anyone at Wired who reads this care to comment?)
Sorry. I think I may have read that elsewhere. But take a look at the pictures, a regular sized dvd fits. I think I may have read the dvd thing at cube.ign.com. Like i said tho, there will be Matsushita DVD players with GameCube abilities. And game developers can use regular dvds for games. Curiously, the hardward specs page does mention hardware motion compensation - a feature of dvd-video playback cards. The mini dvds are a copy protection scheme.
Regarding your numbers comparison: Take the numbers you know to be true for a GeForce II (I think they are the undisputed heavy weight champ) and compare to a dreamcast. Then compare screens. They look about the same. (althought soul caliber looks better than anything i've seen, Quake III curved surfaces included). The GameCube will be at least twice as powerful: Twice as fast, more than twice the memory, faster memory, no bottlenecks. I'd say thats going to be one slamming system for $200.
With a dedicated game system, programmers can always push the envelope of their hardware, and because of the fragmentation of the PC hardware market, PC software developers just cannot. Look at how many games actually SUPPORT T&L, a much bandied about goodie that's been around for some time now - not many. And what about those much vaunted SSE instructions - they're already taking about the next generation of them and almost nothing but photoshop uses them now. And AGP, you can count on one hand the number of games that push the 2x spec and Intel is ready to go to 8x.
I will try not to sound too harsh, but rtfa before you spout. The Gamecube can also read regular DVD's and developers are free to put out games on regul;ar DVDs, they just offer the proprietary DVD format to thwart piracy (probably not possible - but they're trying to appease their developers). It is unclear if it will include software to play DVD movies, but Nintendo has a deal with Matsushita to produce DVD players with GameCube functionality as well.
Also, a 400mhz machine this is built from the ground up to play games could easily give a $3000 PeeCee with a 1Ghz processor, 256Mg memory, and whatever 64mg video card you want to put in it a good fight in the performance category, and Nintendo has made it clear that they will not charge more than $200 for this machine.
Take another look at those screen shots. A dreamcast looks as good as anything out for PeeCee right now, and the Cube will easily be much more powerful. Take another look at those screen shots.
...Because fans will always want to go to the live show - the place where 90% of musicians actually make their money! Give the songs away as mp3 - offer for sale albums to the hardcore fans, sell merchandise and go on tour. Cut out the wasteful and sanitizing Record Companies for good.
Slashdot Mirror
Because we don't want it. The airwaves belong to the public and are subject to the rules imposed on them by us. We want to believe that the music we end up liking and connecting with has made it there because it's good. Unfortunatly, good music these days withers and dies if it isn't picked up and paid for by a major label. That's a shame, cause we are missing out. ALSO: Most people in the music biz refer to these scum as 'indies'. The first time I heard the term (and it doesn't come up that much in open discussion for reasons I'm sure you can figure out) I thought they were referring to Matador or SubPop. I wish I had grabbed a document I saw that outlined how much money goes to these 'indie' idiots. You'd be surprised. Every song in the top 40 was 'placed' there.
Good point. The point i don't understand is how people comparing them come up with the idea that Shrek blows anything away (except for maybe the good character design guidlines;) I mean the gee whiz factor is one thing (which I don't see) but the look and design of those characters is boring. And I noticed some "foot sliding" in the trailer. You know, when the digital character's feet don't move realistically with the ground or background and seem to slide(ie the first scene with JAR JAR in Phantom Menace). Also, the detail of sleeping "Newman" character's face from Toy Story 2 looks way better than the human faces in Shrek(which is what I'm assuming the fanboys are drooling over).
You make some solid points, but your argument is clouded by some misunderstanding of how things actually work in the music biz. OLD DAYS: Band X makes demo, plays around city, gets some interest from label. Label throws large amounts of money at them to impress them, which they spend foolishly. Band finishes record that they spend way to much on. Label encourages them to spend too much money. Label pays INDIES (industry term form independant something or other - basically modern middleman in payola scheme) large sums to play songs. Pays large chains to feature album prominently. Pays for massive advertising. Pays for street team activities (posters and flyers, free tape handouts, etc). Pays for executives (and their assistants) to fly around and talk up band or see them play as well as their weekly salaries. Band rings up massive recoupable account with label (recoupable accounts have to paid off before the band sees any money from record sales). Label offers band, since this is their first record, only meager split of cd sales (lucky to get 1$ per cd). Label keeps copyright of music. Label has asay in how music is used.That 'less than $1 per cd' then has to go and pay off the massive moneis spent (and continuing to be spent). Majority of that money is being used to prop up bloated record company staff and pay off debts incurred from others band that have been written off. Band tours. Makes money to eat. Sells T Shirts. Buys nice house. When band tries to get better split, label decides it's easier (in most cases) to just try a new batch of one hit wonders, the profit margins for them are higher. NEW WAY: Band writes material and records on their home computer. Finds web scenes devoted to their type of music. Puts music out there for fans of the genre to listen to. If popular, people talk them up. if not, musicians keep day job. band has website. sells cds to hardcore fans (hardcore fans will always want to buy cd's to collect the actual artifact - just look on ebay, maybe for the booklets, maybe for the signed pictures the band includes, whatever). makes 90 per cent profit on cds vs less than 5 and can sell them for less than cahin stores, so hardcore fan wins as well. bands starts touring in regions where people like them. band sells more cds. New model forces musicians to build over time, but has added benefit of lengthening sustainable career for many artists. band eats, buys nice house, still has a job in a year (and complete control and ownership). Also, as a side note: In the 'for once having a large crappy ISP pays off department': ``We don't see it as our responsibility, or even our jurisdiction, to police what's on our members' hard drives,'' said Kurt Rahn, a spokesman for Earthlink in Atlanta. ``So sending us letters isn't going to do any good.''
(disclaimer: I spent 6 years in the music industry) Do some reading and don't just buy the BS coming from the major labels. Most bands, including many that you hear on the radio, don't make any money from record sales. None. They make money on touring and selling merchandise. Granted the bands you mentioned probably make loads of money from record sales, but consider this: Limp Bizkit support free trading of their music as mp3s, and because of the record industry's 'indentured servant' attitude towards artists, N'SYNC pay both their current and former record labels on their record sales, so they probably don't make that much from them either. Good musicians will always be able to make a living and a career out of performing music because people will always want to see live music, and the hardcore fans will always want to bring a piece of that home, as a T-Shirt or whatever. The really important thing about a free music algorithm is in music production. If the Secure Music Stream thing (or whatever it is called) comes to be in Windows then all of your music components will need a key to play music. And of course who do you think you have to license that key from? The multi-national Digital Music Key consortium. And do you think it will be free? Is the DVD algorithm free? (no)The effect of this could be that the independant musician cannot make music that can play on anyones equiptment. And then we're back to needing record labels. Their 'revenue stream' is assured And if you were being sarcastic, then I'm sorry I rambled on, but people really do believe what you are saying.
Of course there's always the newsgroups and hotline for a whole bunch of good DivX movies ;)
...until someone hangs a VW bug off of one?
You refer to the ability to burn your own cds (when talking about music you write, play and record). But the point is that if technologies like this are allowed to replace the current ones, then a musician in 5 years may not be able to burn their own cd (or whatever the media of the day is). The copying of music on the net has not had a significant effect on the music industry, this holiday was the biggest ever in terms of sales for them. They are more afraid of people being able to put out their own albums, cutting them out of the loop. And if they make it so you can't record onto the new media formats, then they have stopped you from being able to reach people and sell your product yourself.
I am well versed in all things floyd and while it is true that Waters wrote more than the others the disparity got bigger as the band went on. The best albums, like echoes, are much more collaborations then Waters' angst ridden therapy exercises (like the Wall). And I stand by my claim that Sid introduced the band to Gilmore and that at that point Sid was the leader of the band. I am not a big fan of post Waters Pink Floyd and I do like some of Waters' solo stuff (like Pros and Cons and Some Radio Kaos) tho definately not Amused (enought of the cheesy back up singers, Roger!). Waters didn't even want to play Floyd songs for years, so why does he care that the rest of them still do? Oh yeah Final cut was also all written by Waters (mostly tossed off material from the Wall)
>What's content+a recordable media? A recording.
Exactly. And what happens when they take the recordable media off the market?
Content + no available recordable media = Content no one can access
The rant hits a few important points, but i think the most important is this: The media giants don't want you to be able to be a content provider. Not only do they want to put out their music on uncopiable formats, they don't want you to be able to use your own 'free mp3/get paid touring' business model because it could prove to other artists that the record companies are squeezing them dry. If they can keep you locked out of portable music players, home stereo components, and desktop software then their monopoly is assured.
allows you to buy a printed version of it with no adverts? You can choose not to read them the same way you can choose not to read banner ads. But you can't get an ad-less newspaper. I don't see the analogy you're drawing. I can't believe that people think they are annoying considering the alternatives (pay per use / subscription models).
A hovercraft or something similar is probably what IT is. But two important questions needs to be answered. 1. Power Source. The article mentions the current product that "IT" will overtake as being dirty. So what kind of clean, safe and small type of power source could fit into and adequately power a personal craft of this type? 2. Abilities. The article say that the "IT" will run afoul of some existing laws and that cities will need to be modified to work well with "IT". Do you think that it will be able to fly? Or traverse water? I think that if it could fly it would negate the 'safer' argument, but if I could commute across the Hudson River with it... Maybe we'll need to add landing pads to our balcony.
Buried in the (deserved) hype surrounding the new hardware is the OSX improvements. Airport and printing support is fixed. The apple menu is back. The dock is now resizable and has a hierarchical pop up feature. The os9 finder is sortof back, with it's multiple windows (if you want it).
The funniest thing i heard on the webcast of the deployment of the solar panels was when the ground control person told the astronuts to "close Outlook so we can sync up your mail". It was so out of context with the images I was looking at that it took a few seconds to register what i had heard.
So lets cut through the obvious sales pitch that started the thread and ask the real question. Is there a MP3,CD-R, No Macrovision, DVD player out there that has good outs, doesn't project an image that looks like crap, and can play all dvds without horrible layer changes or lock ups?
It's not that they have THAT MUCH influence by themselves, but the do have more than their population should hold. The idea that 'one person = one vote' doesn't hold up in the current election process for President. California has something like 60 times the population of Idaho, but only 18 times the electoral votes. So a voter in Idaho gets 3.3 times as many votes as a person in California. Does that sound fair to anyone?
I think there are two segments to this discussion about overhauling the electoral college and addressing this may make it acceptable to both small and big states. The process of assigning the electors by a states representation in congress favors small states. However, the assigning of all of the electors to the winner of a state regardless of the popular division of votes in that state also skews the voting away from a popular representation. A compromise could include keeping the small state bias in number of electors, but have states divide up electors by popular vote percentage. This method would also allow third party candidates to be involved in the election of the president. Also, those who say that the small states will vote against reforming the electoral college because of the bonus that they get may not be right. Lets assume (or hope) that the people of this great country can actually see the validity of the greater good, see beyond their own benefit and make a choice to better the country.
I was being sarcastic.
Corporate Napster, I love it! "A little sharing of private user info never hurt anybody. Besides, you online types make too much money. You expect us to pay you for your info? Information wants to be free!"
>Windows has been the dominant OS and GUI during the last 5 years, where more >people have gotten involved in computing than have used them previously. The sub >$1000 system almost universally has Windows on it, and thus it defines how >computing is supposed to work for a lot of people. What? The gui that most of the people you refer to in the first sentence really know and love is AOL And the second one about the "sub $1000" computer market is just silly. Most of those sub $1000 companies are out of business and in the sub $1500, Apple is kicking a$$ and taking names with their Imacs. >OSX may be cool and innovative i don't know what you'd call it, but all ye Linux faithful consider: Be spring next year apple will be shipping a *nix os with a pretty shine to the masses (and on a large number of multi proc machines!). All those drivers and programs you always wished you could run will be there or forthcoming . It's an os you can have on the family computer that can be as powerful as you want and as easy to use as is needed by your less computer friendly family members. But who knows. Maybe the public will not receive it. Then I guess you could call it "Pet Sounds", a commercial failure, but influencing generations of musicians after it.
First of all, this story was already posted to slashdot a month ago when Spaceworld took place - the game show that just happened was the Tokyo Game Show. Secondly, the amazing Star Wars, X-Wing in the trenches of the Death Star, demo was in fact very playable - view some action here . It looks amazing.
So I got this wand/cat/reader thing from Wired Mag. I haven't used it, but reading the posts and whatnot, I see that it has a unique serial number. Since I have not and will not use it, that's not that big of a deal - except the whole part about how they want to know who is using theirs from Wired, or Radio Shack etc. Since Wired ALREADY HAS private info about me, I want to know if any of that info was already tied to my Unique serial number on the CueCat servers (and now in the hands of the EVIL HACKERS) without my consent. Does anyone know? (or anyone at Wired who reads this care to comment?)
Sorry. I think I may have read that elsewhere. But take a look at the pictures, a regular sized dvd fits. I think I may have read the dvd thing at cube.ign.com. Like i said tho, there will be Matsushita DVD players with GameCube abilities. And game developers can use regular dvds for games. Curiously, the hardward specs page does mention hardware motion compensation - a feature of dvd-video playback cards. The mini dvds are a copy protection scheme. Regarding your numbers comparison: Take the numbers you know to be true for a GeForce II (I think they are the undisputed heavy weight champ) and compare to a dreamcast. Then compare screens. They look about the same. (althought soul caliber looks better than anything i've seen, Quake III curved surfaces included). The GameCube will be at least twice as powerful: Twice as fast, more than twice the memory, faster memory, no bottlenecks. I'd say thats going to be one slamming system for $200. With a dedicated game system, programmers can always push the envelope of their hardware, and because of the fragmentation of the PC hardware market, PC software developers just cannot. Look at how many games actually SUPPORT T&L, a much bandied about goodie that's been around for some time now - not many. And what about those much vaunted SSE instructions - they're already taking about the next generation of them and almost nothing but photoshop uses them now. And AGP, you can count on one hand the number of games that push the 2x spec and Intel is ready to go to 8x.
I will try not to sound too harsh, but rtfa before you spout. The Gamecube can also read regular DVD's and developers are free to put out games on regul;ar DVDs, they just offer the proprietary DVD format to thwart piracy (probably not possible - but they're trying to appease their developers). It is unclear if it will include software to play DVD movies, but Nintendo has a deal with Matsushita to produce DVD players with GameCube functionality as well. Also, a 400mhz machine this is built from the ground up to play games could easily give a $3000 PeeCee with a 1Ghz processor, 256Mg memory, and whatever 64mg video card you want to put in it a good fight in the performance category, and Nintendo has made it clear that they will not charge more than $200 for this machine. Take another look at those screen shots. A dreamcast looks as good as anything out for PeeCee right now, and the Cube will easily be much more powerful. Take another look at those screen shots.
...Because fans will always want to go to the live show - the place where 90% of musicians actually make their money! Give the songs away as mp3 - offer for sale albums to the hardcore fans, sell merchandise and go on tour. Cut out the wasteful and sanitizing Record Companies for good.