Downloading Music

Im curious on what people feel about this subject here, and please justify
what you think. How do you obtain all this great music that is housed on the
archives? Downloading music is incredebly easy now days and you can have
any album you desire in minutes. I personally have never been a fan of
downloading. I always feel bad when i do it, and also i dont have the
satisfaction of owning anything, lyrics, an album cover. I spend all the
money i get on vinyl, which has caused me to look back and see if i have
been wasting my time and money on something i could easily get for free
and not have to wait due to how ever rare or expensive it may be. What do
you think??

the good side is that you can check the band for free and if is a good albun you gonna buy it.[you can have the whole collection of yes but you are a prog fan so you going to by everithing,you need the cover ,you need the lirics you need the whole thing.or you can check it outon progarchives].

Jazzis wrote: Downloading is killing the music - pretty soon there will be no music - just a matter of time. If a musician can't feed himself fom his art - he will stop being an artists.

In the last 3 months I have downloaded and listened to a number of the bands mentioned here,this has resulted in me buying CD's by Pallas,Pendragon and Mostly Autumn.Had I not heard the downloads  would never have bought the CD's

The information age will bring (and has brought about) major upheavals in corporate practices. As Mike pointed out, Napster is a prime example. Shawn Fanning was public enemy number one of the music industry, not so long back. Now these same companies are embracing his new file sharing model. Nothing will ever be how it was, as the internet brings us closer to the one people one world concept. Embrace it or hate it, but it ain't going away.

martinprog77 wrote: the good side is that you can check the band for free and if is a good albun you gonna buy it.[you can have the whole collection of yes but you are a prog fan so you going to by everithing,you need the cover ,you need the lirics you need the whole thing.or you can check it outon progarchives].

I can listen to the whole discography of Rush, Yes and Camel on Napster and Staytuned.de. And eventually I'll end up buying some of these albums, but only my absolute favorite ones.

The problem is how incredibly easy is to get music for free. I don't know about others, but, on my case, it is cheaper to download a lot of albums and forget about covers and stuff (I don't need more paper, I have enough of this passive assasination of trees). Now, when it comes to the musicians... well, they should see it coming. There's no way to stop free downloading, and the pay sites such as Napster (wich was actually the one that started all) will never compensate the huge amount of "free gettings". ¿Who hasn't made a copy of any CD for a friend? ¿Should we pay something to Virgin music any time we decide to make a copy of one of their products?. As you can see, the limits aren't clear, and are absolutely determinated by nothing but a personal idea about what is right.. and that's always an uneven territory...

Jazzis wrote: Downloading is killing the music - pretty soon there will be no music - just a matter of time. If a musician can't feed himself fom his art - he will stop being an artists.

Considering that studies have shown that the people who do the majority of the downloading are also the people who purchase the majority of the albums, this appears to not be the case.

The music industry is changing due to technololgy.  The monopoly of the record companies is being broken.  Downloading of music has the potential of making more music available to the market, and having more bands' music being accessible.

Also, there was music long before there was a mass medium.  Music is hardly dependent on the traditional marketing methods.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Why should anyone risk criminal prosecution when they can access millions of songs legally through Napster, Yahoo Music or other services?

Maybe because of

napster wrote: The Napster music that is downloaded to your computer is in Window Media Audio (WMA) format at 128 Kbps stereo

. I think MP3 at 128Kbps quality has been obsolete for a fair while, let alone WMA!

And claiming to sell music from independent labels when I can't see a single one.

Yahoo was rather vague about what it makes available, but I can rest assured that it's a "dazzling array", anyway . I guess 192kbps isn't so bad though, although I could still get much better quality illegal rips from probably faster servers, that I'm not restricted in how to listen to them.

Actually truth be told I'm going out of my way to pick faults, and these services would probably replace my illegal downloading if I actually downloaded music instead of getting the CDs and if they were in a higher quality. But when the only reason I download is because they're free, this sort of defeats the object since I'd have to pay to have the possibility of paying once again to get the CD !

My daughter is sick, so I stayed home today.  Having nothing better to do, I installed Napster on my computer and signed up for a free Napster Light account.  Then I looked for every one of the top 500 albums.  Here are the results of my search.

Of the top 100 albums, 52% (or 52 for the mathematically challenged) are listed on the Napster database.

Of the top 200 albums, 39% are listed on the Napster database.  Only 26 of albums 101 to 200 are listed.

Of the top 300 albums, 35% are listed on the Napster database.  Only 27 of albums 201 to 300 are listed.

Of the top 400 albums, 32.75% are listed on the Napster database.  Only 26 of albums 301 to 400 are listed.

And of the top 500 albums, 29% are listed on the Napster database.  Only 14 of albums 401 to 500 are listed.

To make life a bit more complicated, not all of the albums listed are actually downloadable.  And if the album is available, you might not be able to download each song individually.  One example of this is YES Fragile (listed for some reason on their website as We Have Heaven).  You can download every song individually except for Heart of the Sunrise.  If you want that song, you have to get the entire album.

Lastly, the earlier comment that Napster downloads songs in 128 meg WMA is correct.  The decision as to the acceptability of that format will be different for each person.  The days when I had audiophile level equipment is long gone.  But my listening environments are also noisier than they were in the past.  So the extra quality will be wasted in my normal listening environment.  Other's will come to other decisions.

WMA is used so that a cheap digital rights management (DRM) can be in place.  If you subscribe to Napster (as opposed to buying single items), you can download anything and everything you want.  They'll play as long as you keep paying Napster.  Once you stop paying, the songs stop playing.  The only way to set this up is using some sort of DRM.  This should also (theoretically) address the issue of one person buying a song and then passing it out to all of their friends, as can be done with mp3s.

Apple iTunes also uses a DRM.  But unlike Microsoft which will license their DRM to anyone, Apple's keeping theirs for their own use on iTunes and iPods only.  I think that in the long run this will start to seriously cut into their market.  But that's a different thread.

The bottom line is that while some Prog is available for download from Napster, there's an awful lot that's not available.  So Amazon will continue to make a lot of money from me.  I'm still waiting for a dedicated download service that seriously supports Prog.  (If I had the money...)

Please, will someone check out the other download services and see how they compare?  I'd be interested in all of the other services, even iTunes.

If you want a copy of the Excel spreadsheet that has all of this data, please PM me.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ most of what you said is true, however: songs which have been added to Napster more recently are in 192kbps WMA. 80% of the songs that I downloaded (subscription) are in that format. However, all streaming is in 128kbps, and I cannot comment on the format of the purchased songs - I don't purchase songs online. The availability of the songs varies from country to country, so my results will be different from yours. I think that the most reasonable aopproach for us music enthusiasts is to subscribe to Napster and other services, and to use them as a nice tool for listening to the albums which they provide. But for all other stuff - and for the albums we really want to buy, most of us (including me) will prefer the good old CD/vinyl.

I got my information about the 128kbps from the Napster FAQ, which also seems to trail their own technology.  I think you summarized the best use of a subscription service best.  I still want to know how the other services stack up prior to giving anyone my money.