If you, as a musician, are willing to do business with people who you admit are ripping you off right at the get-go, I have no sympathy for you. Give these goons fifteen bucks so you can get your dime? Not a chance in hell.
Well, for me personally, I don't have the talent (or more accurately, no desire to make my family starve) to do music professionally, but for those who are professional(tm), what choice do they have? Either they go indie, which is becoming more and more feasible and popular, or they sign with a major should they be so "lucky". The definition of "lucky" is left as an exercise for the reader...
What you should understand, in case you don't already, is that allofmp3 does NOT pay royalties to the artists, depsite claims to the contrary. DRM is going to eventually lose the audio war, but in the meantime we have to deal with this shit.
As a musician, people claiming that "media belongs to the people" or whatever is just ignorance on parade. The artist (or whomever they have signed away their ownership rights to..) is the owner of the music. The whole system is fucked, so people justify ripping off the corporation, which in turn rips off the artist (who is already being ripped off by the corporation).
The future will be better for the artists.
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
I take my web stats with a grain of salt. Since I have a music download site, I generally can count the number of humanoids by the number of downloads of my free mp3 or counts of some of the other page accesses. Even those numbers are suspect, as some of the bots seem to traverse more of the site than others.
So whaddayou lookin at? Go download your free mp3...
To quote Happy Bunny: "I can't help it if your music sucks!"
However, what is happening (my opinion, worth what you're paying) is that we are seeing the gradual decline of the major labels, as more and more bands go indie and take control of their own distribution.
Now repeat after me: I want to hear how bad your music sucks at bitworksmusic.com.
I sense a new marketing campaign: "not quite as sucky as you'd think".
Right.
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
Here in central North Carolina I haven't heard anything about HD radio (yet), not that I'm interested. The only real radio stations around here are the 3+ excellent college stations I listen to daily (WXYC, WKNC, WXDU). I had the opportunity to rent a car with Sirius for a weekend, and while the selections were pretty good, my local dudes kicked their collective satellite asses! (Subliminal message: support college radio).
There is no substitute for a good teacher, and lots of practice, and more practice. Even if you can't find an ideal teacher, even a "good enough" teacher can help you get to the next level in your playing, if only to point out what you need to work on.
Also, I have learned a lot by playing with great musicians, especially about improv. That's something you just have to feel.
OK, how do you define quality? With CD's we're already digitizing down to 44.1 Khz. Remember the audiophiles who swear that vinyl is much better than digital?
So the "same quality" is a perceptual judgement. Now, from asking people who know more than I, 128 Kbps is audibly poorer quality than CD. I haven't done tests myself, but it is said that 192 Kbps is "pretty damn good" for mp3 encoding.
As for middle men, you're still paying them. Instead of paying a CD store for their shelf space, you're paying for the download server infrastructure, the support guys, the programmers, the mp3, aac, or other royalties, and the Apple shareholders if you're using iTunes for example. So you're paying for the distribution channel. OTOH, the download model is much more efficient than printing CDs and artwork, so things should cost less, and they do, but you are still paying for infrastructure, not to mention executive salaries!
Now, the rub is that there is nothing really technically complicated about the distribution channel. Sure, they add all sorts of complicated stuff to track your preferences, manage your account and so on (did I forget to mention DRM?), but none of this is essential to the download business, and for me this represents a weakness in the business model. That plus the fact that most of the music sucks.
Pardon the troll subject line, but I think lossless encoding is way overrated. MP3 and AAC are fine standards, but the "powers" have decided we don't deserve decent bitrates.
What I decided to do was to offer MP3's at around 260-270 kbps. If you can tell the difference between that and lossless,.. you should be an audio compression engineer.
david
BTW, have you bought my compilation yet? It'll cost ya 1 lousy buck.
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/ odd tunes for odd times
I agree that FairPlay is one of the more benign DRM systems around, but the problem is that "most people" are barely able to use their barely functional machines to begin with. Then DRM layers on another piece of inconvenience, which translates to bewilderment and frustration to many non-technical users. Case in point: a person of my close acquaintance (who shall remain mercifully nameless) wanted to switch from using a workstation to a laptop as her main iTunes host. Well, this was fortunately covered in the iTunes use cases, so it was managed almost, but not quite, automatically, so while the end result was successful, the intervening few minutes of despair caused me mild trauma, as the local "expert" (cough cough, but uh, I play one on TV!). Oooh ooh I sense a PTSD lawsuit coming on!
Anyway, the moral is: anything that makes the user experience even slightly more confusing or inconvenient is to be avoided. Your suggestion about users being able to burn their FP tracks to CD is fine, but keep in mind that this is beyond the capabilities of the majority of users.
Case 2: I was testing my download service with a friend who is a non-technical user. He had major trouble following my written download instructions, which basically only describe downloading and unzipping a few zip files to get the mp3's (no DRM, should be simple right?) Unfortunately, this is par for the course. Moral: bring back my vinyl man!
Well sure, iTunes may be up to their billionth download, but my streams are louder.
The interesting thing is that people don't realize how bad they have it. iTunes has opened the door for independent musicians to finally market their streams online, but iTunes suffers the problem of serving the mass market. In short, they suck, because the industry sucks. They have to offer DRM to appease the suits. They force people to install their crappy software for the privilege of being told what they want to listen to. They have started the revolution, so thanks for that, but we'll take it from here..
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for me personally, I don't have the talent (or more accurately, no desire to make my family starve) to do music professionally, but for those who are professional(tm), what choice do they have? Either they go indie, which is becoming more and more feasible and popular, or they sign with a major should they be so "lucky". The definition of "lucky" is left as an exercise for the reader...
What you should understand, in case you don't already, is that allofmp3 does NOT pay royalties to the artists, depsite claims to the contrary. DRM is going to eventually lose the audio war, but in the meantime we have to deal with this shit. As a musician, people claiming that "media belongs to the people" or whatever is just ignorance on parade. The artist (or whomever they have signed away their ownership rights to..) is the owner of the music. The whole system is fucked, so people justify ripping off the corporation, which in turn rips off the artist (who is already being ripped off by the corporation). The future will be better for the artists. http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
So whaddayou lookin at? Go download your free mp3...
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
BitWorks Music - don tinfoil suit before listening
Who needs a wimpy planet like Pluto when you have Jupiter? Jupiter kicks extraterrestrial ass!
BitWorks Music - recommended by 4 out of 5 aliens
However, what is happening (my opinion, worth what you're paying) is that we are seeing the gradual decline of the major labels, as more and more bands go indie and take control of their own distribution.
Now repeat after me: I want to hear how bad your music sucks at bitworksmusic.com. I sense a new marketing campaign: "not quite as sucky as you'd think". Right. http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
BitWorks Music - buy;lather;rinse;repeat
It sucks way less!
http://www.krimson-news.com/
Have a random day,
david
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
Also, I have learned a lot by playing with great musicians, especially about improv. That's something you just have to feel.
All that said, I currently use Cubase SE.
Rock on,
david
BitWorks Music - odd tunes for odd times
http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html
Get moving mad scientists!
So the "same quality" is a perceptual judgement. Now, from asking people who know more than I, 128 Kbps is audibly poorer quality than CD. I haven't done tests myself, but it is said that 192 Kbps is "pretty damn good" for mp3 encoding.
As for middle men, you're still paying them. Instead of paying a CD store for their shelf space, you're paying for the download server infrastructure, the support guys, the programmers, the mp3, aac, or other royalties, and the Apple shareholders if you're using iTunes for example. So you're paying for the distribution channel. OTOH, the download model is much more efficient than printing CDs and artwork, so things should cost less, and they do, but you are still paying for infrastructure, not to mention executive salaries!
Now, the rub is that there is nothing really technically complicated about the distribution channel. Sure, they add all sorts of complicated stuff to track your preferences, manage your account and so on (did I forget to mention DRM?), but none of this is essential to the download business, and for me this represents a weakness in the business model. That plus the fact that most of the music sucks.
Take care,
david
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
What I decided to do was to offer MP3's at around 260-270 kbps. If you can tell the difference between that and lossless, .. you should be an audio compression engineer.
david
BTW, have you bought my compilation yet? It'll cost ya 1 lousy buck.
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
odd tunes for odd times
All together now... "ARRRRR!"
At least he didn't share the files with anyone else! :-)
Pandora's a good idea, but I have admittedly been too busy to try it, so that's my lame excuse. Guess I'd better get to surfin...
Anyway, the moral is: anything that makes the user experience even slightly more confusing or inconvenient is to be avoided. Your suggestion about users being able to burn their FP tracks to CD is fine, but keep in mind that this is beyond the capabilities of the majority of users.
Case 2: I was testing my download service with a friend who is a non-technical user. He had major trouble following my written download instructions, which basically only describe downloading and unzipping a few zip files to get the mp3's (no DRM, should be simple right?) Unfortunately, this is par for the course. Moral: bring back my vinyl man!
Hey man, bite your tongue! I have 10's of fans! .. and a few aren't even my relatives.
The interesting thing is that people don't realize how bad they have it. iTunes has opened the door for independent musicians to finally market their streams online, but iTunes suffers the problem of serving the mass market. In short, they suck, because the industry sucks. They have to offer DRM to appease the suits. They force people to install their crappy software for the privilege of being told what they want to listen to. They have started the revolution, so thanks for that, but we'll take it from here..
david
http://www.bitworksmusic.com/
odd tunes for odd times