Throwaway Download Culture

MaxerJ wrote: I've recently found quite a bit of information about digital distribution (as the suits like to call downloading).Did you know, for example, that your internet provider has a record of everything you have ever downloaded?And that they are asked - not legally obliged however - to report illegal downloads to the police?However, they never do, because they would quickly lose all their clients. And the police aren't doing anything - I can only speak for Australia, but our police force is not equipped for the 21st century... they're living in the 80's.It is a serious epidemic. Bands have always got screwed over one way or another - a.k.a record companies giving them crappy contracts - but you would have hoped that when 16-year-olds can play in front of crowds of thousands we could spend a little time giving other bands the money they deserve.Speaking of 16-year-olds, this is why Disney is making such a big splash in the music industry - their audience, consisting of 8-14 year old girls, has no idea what downloading is, let alone are repeated downloaders. Think of that next time someone says d/ling doesn't affect how much an artist makes.

You're right about the aussie police force - Massive stereotypes about internet, music and youth all round!

I knew about your ISP knowing what you've downloaded, but I didn't know they were told to tell the police.

Great post, and welcome to PA!


-Joel

Epignosis wrote: I have younger relatives who only listen to a classic band when a song of said band is performed on American Idol or used as part of the soundtrack for a Disney movie.

Perfect point of case:



I know a girl who payed me out for liking the original, and now she listens to the crappy Glee version and think she's into classic rock

Epignosis wrote: Good example.  I've heard more than one person call the song, "Just a Small Town Girl."

Also, about the thing you said about The Wall, the point was that someone wouldn't/didn't/won't give it the time it deserves to be appreciated, and as the title suggests, form part of the "throwaway download culture".

THIS JUST IN!

On my live upload of Porcupine Tree - Radioactive Toy


(I won't name the guy who asked/posted about it though)

(BLANK 1) (1 week ago) +2    Reply | Spam
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Just heard the new "Incident" album - really quite excellent, I love it when Porcupine Tree release, always exciting, always pushing boundaries but whats great is they always stay Porcupine Tree. Cant get enough of this track, you saw it live you lucky b*****d. Gavin Harrison = bloody legend

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is it downloadable?

progkidjoel (23 hours ago) Reply | Remove
Yes it is - You can get it on iTunes and Amazon Mp3!

(BLANK) (21 hours ago)   0    
is it free?

progkidjoel (13 hours ago) Reply | Remove
No, it costs around 9USD to legally download it, or about 15USD to buy the discs in store.

(BLANK) (23 minutes ago) Reply | Remove
I found a torrent, anyone who wants a link pm me


(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhfyEUEQZao)

yeah, the answer is to limit people's ability to make & release music, force the listener into repeated plays of the same music, abolish all other new methods of entertaining one's self ...
all with the goal of banishing the cycle of life that would bring back the music industry to its' pre halcyon days, i.e. before 1965.
I often wonder about the arguements the neo cons use in wishing the 1950s as the model period of human behaviour and family values ...

progkidjoel wrote: floydispink wrote: progkidjoel wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ you can display the jpeg on a monitor (or in a digital picture frame) - then you can hold that in your hands. Its just not the same - I don't know how to explain... With a CD booklet you've got to skip pages or unfold it... on a monitor all you need to do is scroll down. Also, you can touch the monitor, but you can't touch the artwork directly, which you can do with a CD booklet. People can feel they are holding a paper booklet, while they can't feel they're holding a Jpeg... Also, one little malfunction and the monitor turns black and the artwork is gone.  That explains it a lot better - I love to feel the texture of the slipcases, digipaks or booklets...

I know what you mean. I do in fact own a copy of Olias of Sunhillow on vinyl, and of course the texture of the sleeves adds to the album somehow.

I don't want to take these little tactile sensations away from you ... but I do think that they're overrated. Like Dean said: In most cases the originals are much more impressive than any reproductions on paper, but because we know that it's not possible to have the original we are content to have a copy. For me it simply doesn't make that much of a difference whether I have a copy on my harddisk or on paper. I can't really put either of them on my wall - even the album cover would slowly deteriorate (due to exposure to air, humidity and light).

I remember watching the YouTube video of the production of the Led Zeppelin vinyl boxset that was posted in this or another thread a while ago. Isn't it amazing how we can put so much emphasis on this that don't have anything to do with the music? It almost seems like a weird form of fetishism to me ... and as far as I'm concerned, I choose to be obsessive about music rather than paper sleeves and plastic/vinyl discs.

^ the best strategy would be for new bands to record and publish their music all by themselves, bypassing the record industry. You can do that for example via TuneCore.com. You can register your music there and they will distribute it to iTunes, Amazon MP3 etc.. Of course they're doing it for free, but still ... I think this is the way to go.

rdtprog wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ the best strategy would be for new bands to record and publish their music all by themselves, bypassing the record industry. You can do that for example via TuneCore.com. You can register your music there and they will distribute it to iTunes, Amazon MP3 etc.. Of course they're doing it for free, but still ... I think this is the way to go. Yes, that's legal download, but can this could live with the illegal download? How many people will choose I Tune if they can have for free their favorites cd's by a peer-to-peer files?

This subject has been talked over, through and around since mp3's were invented and it is a paradox without a solution. The same paradox that filled the UK album charts with Micheal Jackson and Beatles albums last month when all were available for free somewhere in torrent-land. At the moment the two systems co-exist, and p2p is 100% dependant on the music industry to keep producing new product, but once the music industry stops being able to make money, the system will collapse.

MaxerJ wrote: Did you know, for example, that your internet provider has a record of everything you have ever downloaded? And that they are asked - not legally obliged however - to report illegal downloads to the police?

That's a very touchy issue. How are they supposed to know if you're making illegal downloading? Let's say they see you've downloaded from Rapidshare a .zip archive which contains .mp3 files. How can they tell whether it's an illegal download? If it's music made available for free by the band, how could they know? Do they have an expert which knows all the legal aspects of music industry and works like "Hey this guy just downloaded what appears to be a Gentle Giant album, and we know from the record company that there is no legal Gentle Giant music provided through that particular website, so let's report this downloader!" or something? I don't suppose there is such a thing. The same with torrents - lots of free music is made available via torrents. What are they going to do, try a "behavioural" approach? Get a warrant for house search for those who use exceedingly much particular sharing sites or the torrents? That would make sense, but it would be no different than Big Brother society : suspicion ruling the world.

Epignosis wrote: Just like I only read excerpts of the original post and skipped the rest.

So very true; I skipped the OP completely


Back to the topic, I do like to buy CDs.

It's a wonderful experience... unwrapping the plastic, touching the object, smelling it, admiring the shining CD, browsing the booklet, reading the information... A wonderful experience which lasts for about 30 minutes

After that I rip the CD to .flac files, v0 quality .mp3 (for listening) and v5 quality .mp3 (for my portable player), I put the CD on the shelf and I don't touch it in years. Why would I anyway? I don't have a CD player and don't intend to. I rather like organizing my listening experience via PC, and having all my listens transformed into statistics which help me for future musical explorations and for social networking via last.fm and any site where I can embed last.fm widgets.

So why do I keep buying CDs? There are two reasons:

1. The bands I buy albums from are underground bands, who will most likely never get the chance to reissue their albums in the future. Having the original albums now makes me a sort of special "librarian"; in 20 years from now most of the albums I now buy will be collector's items.

2. My future children will definitely need them, as I don't plan to have computers around them until they grow up to be adolescents. I will rather encourage them to play in the garden, draw, paint, make sculptures, play an instrument, take care of animals, do gardening, playing sporting games, read books etc., instead of playing PC games and consuming most of their time with TV and Internet. So if they'll want to listen to music they'll definitely need a CD Player and real CDs.

MaxerJ wrote: I've recently found quite a bit of information about digital distribution (as the suits like to call downloading). Did you know, for example, that your internet provider has a record of everything you have ever downloaded? And that they are asked - not legally obliged however - to report illegal downloads to the police? However, they never do, because they would quickly lose all their clients. And the police aren't doing anything - I can only speak for Australia, but our police force is not equipped for the 21st century... they're living in the 80's.

Well, here in Germany ISPs are expressedly forbidden to monitor their customers' activities. They may monitor when a DSL connection is established, but nothing else. And there's the monitoring they're supposed to do for the government to aid in the fight against terrorism ... but that data is also expressedly forbidden to be used for other purposes (like tracking down copyright infringement).