Throwaway Download Culture

debrewguy wrote: Please, there has always been ephemera in pop culture. Always will be. Just because most people don' choose to hold onto what you feel is important is just your choice of priorities.

words of wisdom

Hi, just a thought here about this mp3 discussion. I had bought a lot of music in the cassette tape era, and these were copyrighted, legally distributed stuff by their appropriate labels. Of course, the artists had their share of the sales. Years gone by, cassette players became obsolete. Legal MP3 download off amazon or itunes mean nothing to me as my country is not eligible. Do you think downloading in this case is wrong?

I do buy some albums i really like on CD format, even though i already paid for the cassette fifteen years ago. But to buy back all of those albums in CD i need to be a millionaire, even if I hunted most of my CDs on ebay.

"...And all of a sudden, kids can download an album in the space of minutes. Not just an album - The band's entire back catalogue. Think about it - A kid downloads The Wall, listens to a couple of tracks, doesn't like what he hears and deletes it. This is the true danger of the download - When music can be so easily obtained, it can be cast away with just as little thought." - Steven Wilson

Damn kids.




Edited by KoS - October 02 2009 at 22:31

Dean wrote: Kim? wrote: In my opinion, this is not any good if it does not give me the whole album. I want the overall feel of an album. And also, what is the difference between me downloading an album, and then buying it, and me listening to some tracks on myspace the buying it, or the opposite. I've got the impression that the fact that it is illegal is just a dormant law, at least here in Norway. I'm no expert on Norwegian law but I suggest you check first. I quick search on the internet has revieled that the Norwegian Copyright law clearly outlaws the illegal downloading of files. "The Norwegian Copyright Act determines what we can legally do with music, films, books, pictures and other so-called intellectual property. Let’s start with the easy bit. It is illegal to download and use music, films, books and pictures from the Internet without the permission of the owners of the material" - source: http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2006/1158924659.59   or try this: Norway's Supreme Court has upheld the lower court's earlier ruling and decided that linking from a website to MP3 files is illegal even when the actual MP3 files aren't hosted by or in any way associated to the website linking to them. So the Norwegian Supreme Court says that even posting a link to an illegal download is illegal. That suggests that illegal downloading is far from being a dormant law in Norway.

Oh, maybe I misunderstood the concept of a dormant law, then. I know that the law is there like you said, but what I meant was that it is almost never executed, and that everybody admits that they are downloading (using torrents, etc.) and it is commonly accepted (not that that makes it legal, though), so the law exists, but is not really 'active'.

But I see the points many of the anti-downloaders are making, and I agree with most of them - I just find it hard to be idealistic/anti-hedonistic enough to stop downloading and to implement those concepts in my own life. It's a bit like my relationship with vegetarianism - I accept and support the ideas, but I somehow am to hedonistic to stop eating meat, etc. It's silly, really.
But maybe one day I shall see it all much clearer and delete all my digital files and stop downloading.

I'll be purchasing the new Red re-release though ... it comes with a 5.1 DVD-A that was mixed by Steven Wilson!

^ What's so special about the cover art of KC - Red?

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ I rather think that 30 years from now serious musicians will simply record their music and publish it themselves ... recording and publishing will cost next to nothing, and the musicians can simply offer the music on their websites and charge whatever they want, or ask for donations. Once you eliminate the *industry* from the equation, it doesn't look so hopeless anymore.

The problem is, with recording your own music, you gotta know how to do it. Yes, in 30 years technology will have changed, but the best gear will always be expensive, no matter what and that isn't an option for the struggling musician with working class/lower middle class day job.
It's not as easy as getting your 25 dollar heaphones, your cracked/pirated copy of Cubase and an amp and a mic and calling yourself an audio engineer.
Anyone and their dog can do that.
Production, mixing and mastering (and to an extent engineering) are just as much as an art form as the music itself and it's something many people take for granted. It's just as much part of the package as the music itself.
This is why we have dedicated producers, engineers, mixers engineers and mastering engineers, because they know what they're doing. In 30 years we will still need them because no matter how much technology will have evolved, it's no substitute for something with not JUST the gear, but the talent and knowledge.

If suddenly every band/artist decided "Let's do it at home where we have no room treatment, computer speakers, cracked copies of software and no idea how to actually do it/use the software and equipment" suddenly the job of producers, engineers, mixers engineers and mastering engineers goes out the window.
The result is suddenly the average production value level just plummet.
And to be honest, no a goddamn chance am I gonna be paying for products with sub par production jobs because joe average thinks he has the skills but the reality is his product sounds like a muddy, undefined mess.
So I honestly don't want to see the day all musicians record their music and call them commercial products happen.

moshkito wrote: The entire industrialized world is definitely  the throwaway culture ... and it it so clear and vivid in the top ten world from music to Hollywood ... to anything else.

Fixed.

J-Man wrote: The people who love music will usually buy the album after "stealing" it. If I like an album that I copy from a friend, I'll always buy it.

Sorry, but I don't think that this is generally true. More than five years ago I was into file sharing, too. Back then (2002, 2003) you could do it without any legal consequences, and I must have downloaded tons of stuff. It was a time when I (re-)discovered prog, so I would download tons of stuff. In retrospect I only purchased a small fraction of all those albums. It's not that I wouldn't want to purchase them ... but even though I have a fairly big budget for music (especially compared to those who live in poorer countries), I simply couldn't afford buying those albums. For example I had the *entire* Zappa discography, more than 100 albums.

One day I realized that what I was doing was wrong ... so I deleted all my downloaded files, and I haven't engaged in illegal downloading for more than five years now (no music, no movies, no software ... nothing).

My point is: I'm sure that many people who download illegally are doing it with the best intentions (buying stuff if they like it) but at the end of the day they will not buy everything they download and enjoy. That's a problem IMO, because it means that people are listening to the work of an artist, enjoying it, but not compensating the artist. The fair solution would be to use legal offerings to sample the artist's albums and then buying albums based on those samples. I know that people who are used to listen to whole albums in order to make the decision are cautious to trust samples ... but from my own experience you rarely get disappointed by an album compared to the myspace samples (for example).

MaxerJ wrote: Oh and as a side note, a uni lecturer i know was telling me about the theories behind digitizing rays, a.k.a a machine to turn digital material into physical material. She thinks -and i'm inclined to agree with her - that if such a device was ever made, it would mean the end of capitalism/the WORLD. Think about it: why work when you could download a pizza for free off the net? Or a Lamborghini? It's related to the topic because... this could be the breakdown of the music industry some of these posters seem to be waiting for

Sorry to get side tracked but wouldn't that just make ISPs charge outrageous prices and limit internet use? But then people could go to McDonalds or Starbucks for free wifi, but they would be closed because people would be dling they goods for free instead of buying them. Hmm, interesting.

Oh and as a side note, a uni lecturer i know was telling me about the theories behind digitizing rays, a.k.a a machine to turn digital material into physical material. She thinks -and i'm inclined to agree with her - that if such a device was ever made, it would mean the end of capitalism/the WORLD.

Think about it: why work when you could download a pizza for free off the net? Or a Lamborghini?

It's related to the topic because... this could be the breakdown of the music industry some of these posters seem to be waiting for