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Dean 
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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 Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:05 |
 questionsneverknown wrote:
Great discussion folks.
In many ways this comes down to Marshall McLuhan's old adage, "the medium is the message." A technology is never just a transparent means of delivering music, it fundamentally transforms the nature of the music, how it's made, produced, experienced, etc. Hell, Bing Crosby became a star because of the development of the microphone--the close, low croon as opposed to the operatic belting out--and pop music changed forever.
MP3s obviously represent a further miniaturizing and condensing of sound from the miniaturization and condensation offered by CDs. We can easily get nostalgic about lost forms (I know I often do), but they were already b*****dizations of something that came before. I have a colleague who just retired who swore by his 78s!
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That's an interesting observation that has been overlooked a little because the sequence of LP, compact cassette, CD haven't been a major format changes in quite the way 78 to LP was (after all an album is so called because originally it was an album of several individual 78s, like you would have an album of photographs) - in effect mp3's have gone back to the old format of wax-cylinders with only one song per package (even 78s had two sides) and the concept of "an album" is now purely abstract with some bands now proposing to digitally release a track a month rather than whole albums.
questionsneverknown wrote:
The greater effect of MP3s is, as many have said here, the increasing loss of the physical and visual dimension of an album, but it also leads to greater fragmentation, shorter listening patience, which is not good for prog or album-length ideas. Will a future of MP3s, and their inevitable replacement, be able to produce another Sgt Pepper or [fill in the blank]? Yet, when I get down about this, I think of a band like The Residents who keep adapting to new technologies and their recent work, The Bunny Boy, was designed with You Tube and other new media in mind, and it was stunningly creative for doing that--the album wasn't the center of the experience.
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It could be that MP3s become become transitory, like text messages and emails, something people will hear once and save/delete - singles have always been like that to some degree - one hit wonders and only as good as your last hit syndrome, once the physical nature has been removed what is left of a single song other than occupying space on your iPod?
questionsneverknown wrote:
The bigger impact, again as others have said, will be the notion that music is supposed to be free. When I speak with my students most of them already assume this is the case. The concept of paying for music seems absurd to them. This is when I feel dystopian and desperate. For everyone who wants to claim that myspace (or myface as Jeremy Clarkson nicely puts it) gets more musicians out there with greater, broader possibilities, I want to know how will these musicians be able to keep making music if no one is paying for it? The real potential here, in the not too distant future, is the end of the whole notion of the professional musician. Which is terribly sad to me, but, then again, that was a new idea that dawned in the 17th century. So perhaps we've just come to an end of a modern idea. Maybe this will all lead to everyone being a musician and no one being a star. Can't say I'm feeling terribly optimistic about it all, I must say. But, as the Firesign Theatre once (nearly) said, Everything I Know is Wrong.
God, that was a long one! |
At last, someone who (like me) doesn't see this as some wonderful Utopia. 
And where will this lead if not to a reduction of everyone to the same mediocre level of blandness, where everyone is "a bloody amateur" and the unique haecceity of any single artist is lost in the miasma? ... (of course good amateurs are always better than bad professionals, but in this vision of the future how can we tell what is good and what is bad?) ...
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Qboyy007
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 21 2009
Location: SoCal
Status: Offline
Points: 186
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:15 |
| floydispink wrote:
You might be right, but most kids that only listen mainstream don't buy CD's... In fact, only very few do. Many people also don't feel the need to spend money on an album, if they can also download it, whether it's for not caring about the artwork, or not having much money to spend.
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Well look at this way. If there are any artists who don't need anymore money from CD sales its ones that are mainstream. I mean, the bigger an artists or band is the less they depend on CD sales. The biggest bands aren't rich from how much their album sells, they get money from touring or sponsors. As popularity rises, CD sales are really only useful in determining how popular a band or album is.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:27 |
Mr ProgFreak wrote:
We discussed this above ... the pictures on the album sleeves are also merely reproductions of the originals ... fakes, if you want. I don't ... to me the medium is irrelevant. Regardless of whether the picture is printed on paper or displayed on a computer screen, the real art is the painting itself. It's the same with music ... you can enjoy the art by listening to a mp3 file as much as by listening to a vinyl disc ... as long as you manage to realize that the content is more important than the medium.
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I know this is slightly off-topic, but it is related to some degree. The point I was making about reproductions of art not being the same as the real thing was about the limitations of the CYMK printing process that cannot capture the full colour spectrum of real life. This is also true of RGB monitors that also cannot replicate the full colour spectrum of real life. With a tube of Ultramarine Blue and a tube of Titanium White pigment paint I can in a single brush-stroke create an infinite blend of shades from one colour to the next - I cannot replicate that digitally - the RGB and CYMK colour systems will render that as 255 shades of blue and 1 of white. In fact the two systems even cannot replicate each others colours, it is impossible to print RED, BLUE and GREEN as you see them on the screen using a colour printer because those colours are out of gamut of the CYMK system. In this respect alone there is a difference between a printed album cover and/or CD booklet and a JPEG image (regardless of image resolution or compression ration - which incidentally produce highly visible artifacts even at low levels of compression)
So in the visual art analogy the medium is important, and this is why (for me) the medium is important in aural art - though the differences between digital and analogue are less apparent and practically impossible to quantify, they do exist. (However the differneces between recorded and real life are even greater  )
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:33 |
Qboyy007 wrote:
floydispink wrote:
You might be right, but most kids that only listen mainstream don't buy CD's... In fact, only very few do. Many people also don't feel the need to spend money on an album, if they can also download it, whether it's for not caring about the artwork, or not having much money to spend.
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Well look at this way. If there are any artists who don't need anymore money from CD sales its ones that are mainstream. I mean, the bigger an artists or band is the less they depend on CD sales. The biggest bands aren't rich from how much their album sells, they get money from touring or sponsors. As popularity rises, CD sales are really only useful in determining how popular a band or album is.
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But that is a close-loop feedback system that is self-sustaining - without CD sales the band would not be popular enough to attract large audiences and sponsorship deals.
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Qboyy007
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 21 2009
Location: SoCal
Status: Offline
Points: 186
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:41 |
Dean wrote:
Qboyy007 wrote:
floydispink wrote:
You might be right, but most kids that only listen mainstream don't buy CD's... In fact, only very few do. Many people also don't feel the need to spend money on an album, if they can also download it, whether it's for not caring about the artwork, or not having much money to spend.
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Well look at this way. If there are any artists who don't need anymore money from CD sales its ones that are mainstream. I mean, the bigger an artists or band is the less they depend on CD sales. The biggest bands aren't rich from how much their album sells, they get money from touring or sponsors. As popularity rises, CD sales are really only useful in determining how popular a band or album is.
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But that is a close-loop feedback system that is self-sustaining - without CD sales the band would not be popular enough to attract large audiences and sponsorship deals. |
Try and imagine CD sales and downloading in the form of a graph. The two are linked in the sense that as Downloading (Legal or Illegal ) increases you'll also see CD sales rise, they are inherently linked. The more people that know about the band the better, and in today's technological age the best way to do that is the one-two punch of "Internet word of mouth" and bootlegging.
Edited by Qboyy007 - October 01 2009 at 13:51
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questionsneverknown
Forum Senior Member
Joined: June 22 2009
Location: Ultima Thule
Status: Offline
Points: 602
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:47 |
Some of the most intelligent discussions that I've seen, from an artist's perspective, about the effect of MP3s and downloading on music has been from David Thomas of Pere Ubu. He's been going on about this for the past few years. Check out http://www.hearpen.com/index.html for some recent points (more on ubuprojex). Here are some quotations from the page:
"What We Are: hearpen.com exists to sell soul. It's not merchandise. It's not content. It's called music."
"How We Got To Where We Are
Download audio has constricted the marketplace. We must find our proper niche. That niche will be the place where we can control our output and offer it on terms that we can live with. It is not possible to enter into a commercial contract without negotiating download rights. It is intensely frustrating to hear sound that we've spent months meticulously constructing being reduced to a dog's dinner with lousy encoding ratios. If it's going to be out there we want it reproduced in such a way as to adequately convey the meaning of the sound. So we'll do it ourselves."
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Kim?
Forum Groupie
Joined: August 09 2007
Location: Norway
Status: Offline
Points: 84
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:51 |
Dean wrote:
Kim? wrote:
Dean wrote:
Kim? wrote:
In this way I see downloading more as a way of loaning instead of stealing. I mean, would you buy a work of art that you did not like?
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no, but you wouldn't borrow it either |
Hehe, well, in a sense I think you actually borrow it. When you go to a gallery (might be a bad example), you take part in or percieve the whole artwork or whatever in some way and you take part in that stream (or lack) of emotions and it's all very cheesy, but you take a part of it with you. And then, maybe you decide to buy it.
And the artwork is freely available to the public, well, sometimes with entrance fees.
The entrance fee can be seen as the money you pay for the internet connection, and all the downloadable mp3s are paintings, and then you give them a good look, and then maybe you decide to buy the ones you like.
Does that make any sense at all? Haha. |
All you are taking away from the gallery is a memory - the same memory you would take away from hearing a song on the radio, or listening to an album at a friends house.
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I don't think it's exactly the same. I'm walking on thin ice (of a new day) here, I don't know how to explain it. In some other artforms, the nuances and layers are more easily available than in music. I think you have percieved the painting quite fully if you've been to a gallery, whereas you haven't with a piece of music you've heard on the radio. To fully understand a song in its fullest potential, you need, (as opposed to for example a painting,)to endeepen yourself in it (plus the rest of the album, in some cases). Maybe?
Dean wrote:
Kim? wrote:
With music, I don't think listening through the album once at the music store or whatever always gives you enough of an impression of the album to decide if you really like it or not. And the library collection is nothing to speak of (where I live, anyway). Would like to hear more examples of try-before-you-buy-things  |
Most obvious places to look for (try before you buy) streamed content is MySpace, LastFM and Spotify - or go to the band's websites and see where their streamed music is available. |
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. And as a way of boycotting the download culture, I think there is no point in doing that. It has come to stay, whether you like it or not. I just use it for what it's worth. It's all about enjoying art in the way that you like best. And, as Steve Hillage said, if the downloading make the labels collapse, in the long term it will cause the artists to establish new ways of communication and a more serious and intimate relationship with the people who listen to their music (through monitors, haha). There will always be a way.
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questionsneverknown
Forum Senior Member
Joined: June 22 2009
Location: Ultima Thule
Status: Offline
Points: 602
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:56 |
And, now slightly off topic (but not really): If anyone is interested, here's a link to another discussion by David Thomas about how the band Pere Ubu recently came up with their "corporate motto": ars longa, spectatores fugaces, or roughly, art is forever, audiences are temporary. This flies in the face of that other dimension of which downloadable culture is only a facet, the sentiment that the audience is more important than the artist, and that the artist is there only to serve the audience. See American or Pop Idol. See Time magazine putting a mirror on the cover for Person of the Year.
http://www.ubuprojex.net/faqs/arslonga.html
If you read the last paragraph from this webpage you'll see why I strongly believe Thomas and Pere Ubu should be seriously considered for a place on this site.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 13:58 |
Qboyy007 wrote:
Try and imagine CD sales and downloading in the form of a graph. The two are linked in the sense that as Downloading (Legal or Illegal ) increases you'll also see CD sales rise. The more people that know about the band the better, and in today's technological age the best way to do that is the one-two punch of "Internet word of mouth" and bootlegging. |
There is a line missing from your conceptual graph and that is the cost of production (i.e. recording, manufacture, distribution, promotion, feeding the band, paying the studio staff, buying equipment) - simply throwing mp3s at the internet will not magically create interest in an artist, all you think you are finding by "internet word of mouth" is artificially created by street teams and marketing specialists, all of whom take a cut of the bottom-line - all these people put a lot of effort into this to make it look like it blossomed spontaneously.
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questionsneverknown
Forum Senior Member
Joined: June 22 2009
Location: Ultima Thule
Status: Offline
Points: 602
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 14:03 |
[/QUOTE]
There is a line missing from your conceptual graph and that is the cost of production (i.e. recording, manufacture, distribution, promotion, feeding the band, paying the studio staff, buying equipment) - simply throwing mp3s at the internet will not magically create interest in an artist, all you think you are finding by "internet word of mouth" is artificially created by street teams and marketing specialists, all of whom take a cut of the bottom-line - all these people put a lot of effort into this to make it look like it blossomed spontaneously. [/QUOTE]
Exactly. Well put.
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Qboyy007
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 21 2009
Location: SoCal
Status: Offline
Points: 186
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 14:11 |
Dean wrote:
Qboyy007 wrote:
Try and imagine CD sales and downloading in the form of a graph. The two are linked in the sense that as Downloading (Legal or Illegal ) increases you'll also see CD sales rise. The more people that know about the band the better, and in today's technological age the best way to do that is the one-two punch of "Internet word of mouth" and bootlegging. |
There is a line missing from your conceptual graph and that is the cost of production (i.e. recording, manufacture, distribution, promotion, feeding the band, paying the studio staff, buying equipment) - simply throwing mp3s at the internet will not magically create interest in an artist, all you think you are finding by "internet word of mouth" is artificially created by street teams and marketing specialists, all of whom take a cut of the bottom-line - all these people put a lot of effort into this to make it look like it blossomed spontaneously. |
I agree with you somewhat but I think that with today's technology, words and rumors spread like wild fire. Creating internet hype is absurdly easy, thus, it's much easier for a band in today's world to sell albums and make a profit. Cost of Production is always an issue, its just one that doesn't deserve as much attention as it used too, especially when you factor in the idea that some artists don't even use studio staffs, as availability to new technologies as increased, I mean Devendra Banhardt recorded his album in a damn log cabin.
Edited by Qboyy007 - October 01 2009 at 14:16
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sealchan
Forum Senior Member
Joined: March 12 2009
Status: Offline
Points: 179
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 14:13 |
...I skipped the middle pages on this thread...
I think that with the advent of music delivered digitally we will want to embrace that and solve the problems that this brings (particularly piracy). Anything that reduces physical resource consumption and material waste is probably a good thing, even a necessary thing.
Music came without art work for centuries so certainly it can be appreciated without it. But I also think that there is no reason to abandon it, only good reasons for cultivating it. As our media playing technology develops there should be room made for re-introducing the artwork and other types of information (song lyrics, musician and studio credits, etc) into the purchased song or album. Windows Media Player, as one of the commonly used programs to play digital music, needs to make improvements in facilitating this aspect. But an industry standard may need to be developed in order for Microsoft to put effort into this. In fact, with the transition of music to a digital format this should open up the range of visual art created for music to such things as simple animation and/or song queued galleries, etc. Again the players out there with any color graphics capability will need a standard set for doing this...perhaps, a knockdown or something derived from the DVD format which has its video and audio components.
Another development that I see as necessary in the various digital music players is that although randomization is valuable, there needs to be a way to serially link songs that are separate files but are meant to be heard one after another. That way we can listen to the "Abbey Road medley" properly and still have this come up as a "surprise" when we set our player to randomize songs. Again this would require a new industry standard for the digital music file. This feature might also help encourage artists to continue to compose music in collections (albums) rather than just single songs.
Probably there are already those out there advocating, developing and otherwise working on these new standards. Anyone hear know anything about this?
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Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 5195
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 14:49 |
Dean wrote:
Mr ProgFreak wrote:
We discussed this above ... the pictures on the album sleeves are also merely reproductions of the originals ... fakes, if you want. I don't ... to me the medium is irrelevant. Regardless of whether the picture is printed on paper or displayed on a computer screen, the real art is the painting itself. It's the same with music ... you can enjoy the art by listening to a mp3 file as much as by listening to a vinyl disc ... as long as you manage to realize that the content is more important than the medium.
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I know this is slightly off-topic, but it is related to some degree. The point I was making about reproductions of art not being the same as the real thing was about the limitations of the CYMK printing process that cannot capture the full colour spectrum of real life. This is also true of RGB monitors that also cannot replicate the full colour spectrum of real life. With a tube of Ultramarine Blue and a tube of Titanium White pigment paint I can in a single brush-stroke create an infinite blend of shades from one colour to the next - I cannot replicate that digitally - the RGB and CYMK colour systems will render that as 255 shades of blue and 1 of white. In fact the two systems even cannot replicate each others colours, it is impossible to print RED, BLUE and GREEN as you see them on the screen using a colour printer because those colours are out of gamut of the CYMK system. In this respect alone there is a difference between a printed album cover and/or CD booklet and a JPEG image (regardless of image resolution or compression ration - which incidentally produce highly visible artifacts even at low levels of compression)
So in the visual art analogy the medium is important, and this is why (for me) the medium is important in aural art - though the differences between digital and analogue are less apparent and practically impossible to quantify, they do exist. (However the differneces between recorded and real life are even greater ) |
That's all true. But you personally have to make a choice whether this is an important issue and distracts you from enjoying the art, or whether you can simply ignore these distractions. I choose the latter.
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J-Man
Prog Reviewer
Joined: August 07 2008
Location: Philadelphia,PA
Status: Offline
Points: 7826
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 15:15 |
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Wow, I can't believe I've never saw this debate. My thoughts on downloading are actually NOT negative.
I don't fileshare online much, but I don't see much of a problem with it anyway, being that you don't abuse it. Whenever I do burn a disc from a friend, if I like the album I almost always buy it. I don't use it as much more than a sampler. When I get an album from the library, I do burn myself a copy, but if I like it, I buy it and if I don't like it, I don't buy it. I only use stuff like this for sampling reasons, or for out-of-print albums.
With that said, I only support it when it's not abused. There are so many people that will download everything and never buy it whether they like it or not. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem ith people downloading an album and then buying it if they like it afterwards.
Just my two cents.
-Jeff
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Qboyy007
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 21 2009
Location: SoCal
Status: Offline
Points: 186
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 15:25 |
J-Man wrote:
Wow, I can't believe I've never saw this debate. My thoughts on downloading are actually NOT negative.
I don't fileshare online much, but I don't see much of a problem with it anyway, being that you don't abuse it. Whenever I do burn a disc from a friend, if I like the album I almost always buy it. I don't use it as much more than a sampler. When I get an album from the library, I do burn myself a copy, but if I like it, I buy it and if I don't like it, I don't buy it. I only use stuff like this for sampling reasons, or for out-of-print albums.
With that said, I only support it when it's not abused. There are so many people that will download everything and never buy it whether they like it or not. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem ith people downloading an album and then buying it if they like it afterwards.
Just my two cents.
-Jeff
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Yea, this brings up another question to ponder. Is borrowing a CD from a friend or family member also considered stealing? Its essentially the same thing as using a fileshare. Hell, one could argue that even youtubing music is the same as filesharing.
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J-Man
Prog Reviewer
Joined: August 07 2008
Location: Philadelphia,PA
Status: Offline
Points: 7826
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 16:52 |
Qboyy007 wrote:
J-Man wrote:
Wow, I can't believe I've never saw this debate. My thoughts on downloading are actually NOT negative.
I don't fileshare online much, but I don't see much of a problem with it anyway, being that you don't abuse it. Whenever I do burn a disc from a friend, if I like the album I almost always buy it. I don't use it as much more than a sampler. When I get an album from the library, I do burn myself a copy, but if I like it, I buy it and if I don't like it, I don't buy it. I only use stuff like this for sampling reasons, or for out-of-print albums.
With that said, I only support it when it's not abused. There are so many people that will download everything and never buy it whether they like it or not. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem ith people downloading an album and then buying it if they like it afterwards.
Just my two cents.
-Jeff
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Yea, this brings up another question to ponder. Is borrowing a CD from a friend or family member also considered stealing? Its essentially the same thing as using a fileshare. Hell, one could argue that even youtubing music is the same as filesharing. |
Yeah, it could be considered "stealing", but here's how I look at it; there are two types of people. People who love music and are dedicated to the bands they love, and people who like a song or two every now and again, but can really care less. 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. The people who can care less, about music, well.... They aren't big consumers anyway. Who cares if they get a song every now and again? Also, these people are always buying from the big groups. The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, and NSync don't need (or deserve) any more money than they already have, and these people are fare weathered fans anyway. Sure there are people that are exceptions, but that's how I look at it. -Jeff
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 17:45 |
sealchan wrote:
...I skipped the middle pages on this thread...
I think that with the advent of music delivered digitally we will want to embrace that and solve the problems that this brings (particularly piracy). Anything that reduces physical resource consumption and material waste is probably a good thing, even a necessary thing.
Music came without art work for centuries so certainly it can be appreciated without it. But I also think that there is no reason to abandon it, only good reasons for cultivating it. As our media playing technology develops there should be room made for re-introducing the artwork and other types of information (song lyrics, musician and studio credits, etc) into the purchased song or album. Windows Media Player, as one of the commonly used programs to play digital music, needs to make improvements in facilitating this aspect. But an industry standard may need to be developed in order for Microsoft to put effort into this. In fact, with the transition of music to a digital format this should open up the range of visual art created for music to such things as simple animation and/or song queued galleries, etc. Again the players out there with any color graphics capability will need a standard set for doing this...perhaps, a knockdown or something derived from the DVD format which has its video and audio components.
Another development that I see as necessary in the various digital music players is that although randomization is valuable, there needs to be a way to serially link songs that are separate files but are meant to be heard one after another. That way we can listen to the "Abbey Road medley" properly and still have this come up as a "surprise" when we set our player to randomize songs. Again this would require a new industry standard for the digital music file. This feature might also help encourage artists to continue to compose music in collections (albums) rather than just single songs.
Probably there are already those out there advocating, developing and otherwise working on these new standards. Anyone hear know anything about this?
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All those "standards" are already existing and have been for some time now.
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progkidjoel
Prog Reviewer
Joined: March 02 2009
Location: Australia
Status: Offline
Points: 19643
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 17:48 |
J-Man wrote:
Qboyy007 wrote:
J-Man wrote:
Wow, I can't believe I've never saw this debate. My thoughts on downloading are actually NOT negative.I don't fileshare online much, but I don't see much of a problem with it anyway, being that you don't abuse it. Whenever I do burn a disc from a friend, if I like the album I almost always buy it. I don't use it as much more than a sampler. When I get an album from the library, I do burn myself a copy, but if I like it, I buy it and if I don't like it, I don't buy it. I only use stuff like this for sampling reasons, or for out-of-print albums.With that said, I only support it when it's not abused. There are so many people that will download everything and never buy it whether they like it or not. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem ith people downloading an album and then buying it if they like it afterwards.Just my two cents.-Jeff
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Yea, this brings up another question to ponder. Is borrowing a CD from a friend or family member also considered stealing? Its essentially the same thing as using a fileshare. Hell, one could argue that even youtubing music is the same as filesharing. |
Yeah, it could be considered "stealing", but here's how I look at it; there are two types of people. People who love music and are dedicated to the bands they love, and people who like a song or two every now and again, but can really care less.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.The people who can care less, about music, well.... They aren't big consumers anyway. Who cares if they get a song every now and again? Also, these people are always buying from the big groups. The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, and NSync don't need (or deserve) any more money than they already have, and these people are fare weathered fans anyway.Sure there are people that are exceptions, but that's how I look at it.-Jeff |
I do the same thing as you about buying albums - My friend burnt me a PROTEST THE HERO album, and I've since bought both of them and ordered their DVD. The thing is, the friend who burnt me the disc, had illegally downloaded that album.
I don't download, unless its legal, and even then, usually only if its free. But some examples of downloading which were important to me are on the Marillion site - They offer free sample album MP3 or CD packages, and they'll even mail them to you for no cost whatsoever. This discourages illegal downloading, because you can get it for free, easier.
I agree with what alot of people said about the natural progression of music storing media, although I think it'll be a sad day when CD's go out of production.
-Joel
Edited by progkidjoel - October 01 2009 at 17:49
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J-Man
Prog Reviewer
Joined: August 07 2008
Location: Philadelphia,PA
Status: Offline
Points: 7826
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 17:50 |
progkidjoel wrote:
J-Man wrote:
Qboyy007 wrote:
J-Man wrote:
Wow, I can't believe I've never saw this debate. My thoughts on downloading are actually NOT negative.I don't fileshare online much, but I don't see much of a problem with it anyway, being that you don't abuse it. Whenever I do burn a disc from a friend, if I like the album I almost always buy it. I don't use it as much more than a sampler. When I get an album from the library, I do burn myself a copy, but if I like it, I buy it and if I don't like it, I don't buy it. I only use stuff like this for sampling reasons, or for out-of-print albums.With that said, I only support it when it's not abused. There are so many people that will download everything and never buy it whether they like it or not. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem ith people downloading an album and then buying it if they like it afterwards.Just my two cents.-Jeff
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Yea, this brings up another question to ponder. Is borrowing a CD from a friend or family member also considered stealing? Its essentially the same thing as using a fileshare. Hell, one could argue that even youtubing music is the same as filesharing. |
Yeah, it could be considered "stealing", but here's how I look at it; there are two types of people. People who love music and are dedicated to the bands they love, and people who like a song or two every now and again, but can really care less.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.The people who can care less, about music, well.... They aren't big consumers anyway. Who cares if they get a song every now and again? Also, these people are always buying from the big groups. The Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, and NSync don't need (or deserve) any more money than they already have, and these people are fare weathered fans anyway.Sure there are people that are exceptions, but that's how I look at it.-Jeff |
I do the same thing as you about buying albums - My friend burnt me a PROTEST THE HERO album, and I've since bought both of them and ordered their DVD. The thing is, the friend who burnt me the disc, had illegally downloaded that album.
I don't download, unless its legal, and even then, usually only if its free. But some examples of downloading which were important to me are on the Marillion site - They offer free sample album MP3 or CD packages, and they'll even mail them to you for no cost whatsoever. This discourages illegal downloading, because you can get it for free, easier.
I agree with what alot of people said about the natural progression of music storing media, although I think it'll be a sad day when CD's go out of production.
-Joel |
Yeah that'll definitely suck.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: October 01 2009 at 18:05 |
Qboyy007 wrote:
I agree with you somewhat but I think that with today's technology, words and rumors spread like wild fire. Creating internet hype is absurdly easy, thus, it's much easier for a band in today's world to sell albums and make a profit. |
Where did you get this information? Just look at the volume of bands on MySpace desperately trying to hype their music on us and see how many actually make it - if it was as easy as you say it is they'd all be selling CDs by the truckload. The ones that succeed are the ones with big money backing - name one truly independent unknown artist who has broken through by Internet Hype alone, then look to see what label they are signed to, and who owns that label.
Qboyy007 wrote:
Cost of Production is always an issue, its just one that doesn't deserve as much attention as it used too, especially when you factor in the idea that some artists don't even use studio staffs, as availability to new technologies as increased, I mean Devendra Banhardt recorded his album in a damn log cabin. |
Devendra Banhart is a LoFi artist with the corporate power of Warner Brothers behind him - he recorded in a log cabin through choice and I would imagine that the level of equipment used was still pretty expensive for all it's lofi-ness
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What?
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Throwaway Download Culture
