Online CD sales and piracy
Discussion
All,
Just noticed this on the BBC website - what pure conjecture!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2396283.stm
Its seems that the music industry are blaming on-line music sharing sites as killing off the cd sales. I personally think that this is utter baloney. Not only is it actually not simple, its also of dubious quality and takes an age unless that you are one of the limited few with broadband. Let me throw a couple of practical experiences that I have had (had to try it of course):
1) You tend not to get full CD's / albums - just the odd track from the artist that you want. Kind of defeats the objective of it - alternatively they are in the wrong order. If the album is only good for one or two tracks then you would feel ripped off anyway!
2) The time taken for a download is variable - this can be anything from 30 minutes to a week. If you are prepared to wait that long for one track then good on you - but for £10 you can have the instant hit and not have your PC busy for ages (and its impossible on a dial-up connection).
3) The quality is so variable that it is not worth bothering - some MP3's are good quality, but others are at low bit rates and sound crap. You then spend ages looking for the good quality ones and you were probably better of buying it in the first place!!!
4) Burning onto a CD - latest CD burners are good, but if you try and do it on the cheap then it can be very unreliable. So you dont end up saving that much money anyway.
5) Labels - you dont get any. You need to design your own and print them out - kinda relies on you having a printer, design package and time - might as well buy it....
So practically speaking it is just not worth bothering with. And the BBC item above said that there are only 14Million people using "file sharing" systems in the USA. I thought that the USA consisted of 260Million people so we are only talking a small number anyway.....
So why could the music industry be doing this? I think that I know - its because they have completely run out of imagination, rock stars and innovative music.... What do we get? Gareth Gates? Popstars and S club 7 (not forgetting that cash-in S Club juniors who are actually 9 in number!!!).... its all crap, no one wants it or if they do its in small numbers. No one buys the charts anymore and the overall volumes are just a fraction of what they were 5 - 10 years ago..... Dance music potentially held the key, but they have all sold out now, the worst being the cover of a Bryan Adams song for fcuk's sake.....
No wonder no one is buying - so an open invitation to the music industry:
Stop blaming the internet and start giving us decent music to buy. We dont want crap and dullards, give us decent music and we will buy.....
Just my point of view but it really p's me off....
Cheers,
Paul
Just noticed this on the BBC website - what pure conjecture!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2396283.stm
Its seems that the music industry are blaming on-line music sharing sites as killing off the cd sales. I personally think that this is utter baloney. Not only is it actually not simple, its also of dubious quality and takes an age unless that you are one of the limited few with broadband. Let me throw a couple of practical experiences that I have had (had to try it of course):
1) You tend not to get full CD's / albums - just the odd track from the artist that you want. Kind of defeats the objective of it - alternatively they are in the wrong order. If the album is only good for one or two tracks then you would feel ripped off anyway!
2) The time taken for a download is variable - this can be anything from 30 minutes to a week. If you are prepared to wait that long for one track then good on you - but for £10 you can have the instant hit and not have your PC busy for ages (and its impossible on a dial-up connection).
3) The quality is so variable that it is not worth bothering - some MP3's are good quality, but others are at low bit rates and sound crap. You then spend ages looking for the good quality ones and you were probably better of buying it in the first place!!!
4) Burning onto a CD - latest CD burners are good, but if you try and do it on the cheap then it can be very unreliable. So you dont end up saving that much money anyway.
5) Labels - you dont get any. You need to design your own and print them out - kinda relies on you having a printer, design package and time - might as well buy it....
So practically speaking it is just not worth bothering with. And the BBC item above said that there are only 14Million people using "file sharing" systems in the USA. I thought that the USA consisted of 260Million people so we are only talking a small number anyway.....
So why could the music industry be doing this? I think that I know - its because they have completely run out of imagination, rock stars and innovative music.... What do we get? Gareth Gates? Popstars and S club 7 (not forgetting that cash-in S Club juniors who are actually 9 in number!!!).... its all crap, no one wants it or if they do its in small numbers. No one buys the charts anymore and the overall volumes are just a fraction of what they were 5 - 10 years ago..... Dance music potentially held the key, but they have all sold out now, the worst being the cover of a Bryan Adams song for fcuk's sake.....
No wonder no one is buying - so an open invitation to the music industry:
Stop blaming the internet and start giving us decent music to buy. We dont want crap and dullards, give us decent music and we will buy.....
Just my point of view but it really p's me off....
Cheers,
Paul
Most shops are now stocking the new format of cd's from Sony. They have a small label in the bottom corner indicating "copy protection - will not play on pc / mac". They are not legally allowed to call this format compact disc, so they don't carry the official compact disc logo. The quality is lower than usual cd's due to the embedded codes and are designed not to play on any computer, to eliminate home recording and making copies etc. Apple has issued warnings that if inserted into a Mac the hard drive will be corrupted and the disc tray will remain closed. The disc's will not play on many in-car cd players, x-box, playstation or various cheaper hifi's either.
If you don't buy it, they won't sell it!
If you don't buy it, they won't sell it!
Personally I think it is due to the net, most people don't actually download them themselves anyway, or they do it at work on the T1. I think this covered the US too where over 16 million people regularly use kazza etc.
Still at the heart of it is a total lack of investment in musical talent - just marketing good looking singers for short 2 year careers of covers / tours / merchandising. With no eye on the future and no new sustaining back catalogue being added sales are obviously going to fall...
>> Edited by mr_tony on Monday 4th November 20:17
Still at the heart of it is a total lack of investment in musical talent - just marketing good looking singers for short 2 year careers of covers / tours / merchandising. With no eye on the future and no new sustaining back catalogue being added sales are obviously going to fall...
>> Edited by mr_tony on Monday 4th November 20:17
I know a person who has downloaded at least a thousand MP3s using the various P2P programs, and on a dial-up modem. True, it takes a while, maybe 20-30mins for say a 3.5Mb MP3 encoded at 128. The most important thing, this guy says, is to have a program like Steingberg's 'Get it on CD' to process the files e.g. fade in/out very useful for trimming excessive audience noise before and after live tracks, compression, very useful to stop classical music dropping below the ambient noise level in cars etc, eq, boost the bass etc before burning the cd and adjust level, to stop some tracks coming out louder than others. If you're going to have to do all this stuff anyway on bought CDs, why not download it for free.
Speaking about problems burning cds why bother? Creative do an MP3 player which uses a 6gb or bigger hard drive designed for laptops, holds an awful lot of MP3s, connect it by USB to computer and 3.5jack to your hifi or cassette adaptor to your car hifi
John
Speaking about problems burning cds why bother? Creative do an MP3 player which uses a 6gb or bigger hard drive designed for laptops, holds an awful lot of MP3s, connect it by USB to computer and 3.5jack to your hifi or cassette adaptor to your car hifi
John
Hmm, when we did not live in the sticks and had a cable conneciton we used to download quite a lot of stuff. This was in the main old rare tracks that we would not be able to find to buy. The other thing we used to do was to get hold of CDs before they were released. What this has stopped me doing is buying a CD on the strength of one or two of the tracks then gettig it home to find the rest of it is a pile of old pants. As a result of downloading music I ended up buying a lot of CDs, I also ended up not buying a lot of CDs that I might have otherwise gone out and bought (make sense?).
The other way to look at it is that many of us will have a large music, DVD, video collection which I bet we never use, in our case that is around 500 cd's. Some of these have only been listened too once or twice (bought on a whim), I think I'm only paying the music industry back for duping me into buying rubbish in the first place.
Has anyone else noticed there are lots of good CDs out at the moment (Christmas coming I suppose) Play must be doing a roaring trade.
D.
The other way to look at it is that many of us will have a large music, DVD, video collection which I bet we never use, in our case that is around 500 cd's. Some of these have only been listened too once or twice (bought on a whim), I think I'm only paying the music industry back for duping me into buying rubbish in the first place.
Has anyone else noticed there are lots of good CDs out at the moment (Christmas coming I suppose) Play must be doing a roaring trade.
D.
Perhaps the music industry should also look at their pricing policies, the price paid for a 'real' CD takes the 
. Chop the price to, say, £5 and more people would be willing to pay for them, the production costs are minimal, cut the excessive royalties and profit mark-ups and there you have cheaper CDs.
. Chop the price to, say, £5 and more people would be willing to pay for them, the production costs are minimal, cut the excessive royalties and profit mark-ups and there you have cheaper CDs.I'm in total agreement with DavidD on this..
I've spent thousands upon thousands of pounds on CDs/DVDs/records..
Downloading MP3s allows me to get rare unavailable & bootleg material which I'd not be able to pay for even if I wanted to. It also allows me to make up my mind whether or not I want to actually buy a CD or not - as has been said there are endless CDs out there with only one or two really worthwhile tracks costing £13+.
I've made every CD buying decision in the last couple of years based on already having heard the material on MP3. Without that opportunity I wouldn't have bought half of the CDs that I have.
The RIAA are short-sighted avaricious soulless freaks and they can kiss my ass.
I've spent thousands upon thousands of pounds on CDs/DVDs/records..
Downloading MP3s allows me to get rare unavailable & bootleg material which I'd not be able to pay for even if I wanted to. It also allows me to make up my mind whether or not I want to actually buy a CD or not - as has been said there are endless CDs out there with only one or two really worthwhile tracks costing £13+.
I've made every CD buying decision in the last couple of years based on already having heard the material on MP3. Without that opportunity I wouldn't have bought half of the CDs that I have.
The RIAA are short-sighted avaricious soulless freaks and they can kiss my ass.
you can hardly say music co.s are loosing money, when every artist outthere thats made no.1 is a millionare for just one song, pay them more realistically, and stop overpaying yourself at the same time, you might get to charge less for the CD's
bloomin ripoff.
ever wondered why good bands come and go so quick? its cos there so rich so quick they never bother working again.
buy everything off play.com and dont bother going to the shops.
another point : I user to tape stuff as a kid, now I burn CD's I still buy stuff occasionaly, but whats changed? there no more bootlegging going on now than there was in the days of tapes? and it aint cuz of quality.
bloomin ripoff.
ever wondered why good bands come and go so quick? its cos there so rich so quick they never bother working again.
buy everything off play.com and dont bother going to the shops.
another point : I user to tape stuff as a kid, now I burn CD's I still buy stuff occasionaly, but whats changed? there no more bootlegging going on now than there was in the days of tapes? and it aint cuz of quality.
tailslider said:Apple has issued warnings that if inserted into a Mac the hard drive will be corrupted and the disc tray will remain closed.
The thing about CD drives refusing to eject the disc seems true, but I'm distinctly unsure about "hard disc corruption". That smacks somewhat of Internet-roumour-mill to me.
And...
Give me a month or two, and my band should have some real music to sell to you all
None of that plastic sh*te that's in the charts. Real instruments, real lyrics, all written and played by real people. Odd concept, huh?
Give me a month or two, and my band should have some real music to sell to you all
If you need any extra guitar noise give me a shout
If you need lots of noise I'll do a Cerbera fly past
D.
Most shops are now stocking the new format of cd's from Sony. They have a small label in the bottom corner indicating "copy protection - will not play on pc / mac". They are not legally allowed to call this format compact disc, so they don't carry the official compact disc logo. The quality is lower than usual cd's due to the embedded codes and are designed not to play on any computer, to eliminate home recording and making copies etc. Apple has issued warnings that if inserted into a Mac the hard drive will be corrupted and the disc tray will remain closed. The disc's will not play on many in-car cd players, x-box, playstation or various cheaper hifi's either.
Quite a lot of CD burners will read them though - my mates CDR reads & rips them fine. Personally I'll start buying CD's again when the record industry stops pissing me off with their pop-shite.
3) The quality is so variable that it is not worth bothering - some MP3's are good quality, but others are at low bit rates and sound crap. You then spend ages looking for the good quality ones and you were probably better of buying it in the first place!!!
The chap I know who does all the downloading, lots and lots, says he has never had a single bad-audio-quality download. Maybe this is because the digital format is incorruptible, if all the bits don't come through then the download fails, unlike analogue where each transfer involves a loss of quality
I used to scour the cd racks at record shops (while having my ears reamed by machine-made dross) looking for the tracks I listened to as a teenager but most compilations feature a couple of gems and a bunch of carp.
John
>> Edited by johnelliott on Tuesday 5th November 15:03
The quality issue depends on the encoding level. If something is encoded for space rather than quality then there is a noticable difference in quality between a CD track and the MP3. However, most of the shared MP3's on the internet are encoded at CD level or sometimes at mastering level.
The latter is very rare though as the initial rip would have needed to be taken off a mastering desk. Though it does happen...
Matt.
The latter is very rare though as the initial rip would have needed to be taken off a mastering desk. Though it does happen...
Matt.
Actually slightly off topic here, a gadget freak friend of mine has just bought a network MP3 player. Its actually quite cool. Plumb in some cat5 around the house, have a stonking great server with the MP3's on it and it will connect to the network share (for those techies out there it will even work with a Windows file share) and then simply play the MP3's via your stereo by pulling the files across the network....
The device is actually a standard separates size and in black to fit the other stereo kit. So much so that he has encoded his entire collection of CD's on his server (he works from home on Oracle applications so actually has 2 Windows servers at home!). Hasnt changed a CD in months!!!! Plus he can download the files to the directory on the server and never worry about burning, labels or anything like that!!! Really quite cool...
Quality is good too... this could be the way forward on these things... oh, and cant remember the name of the thing, but is quite cheap if I remember though.
Cheers,
Paul
The device is actually a standard separates size and in black to fit the other stereo kit. So much so that he has encoded his entire collection of CD's on his server (he works from home on Oracle applications so actually has 2 Windows servers at home!). Hasnt changed a CD in months!!!! Plus he can download the files to the directory on the server and never worry about burning, labels or anything like that!!! Really quite cool...
Quality is good too... this could be the way forward on these things... oh, and cant remember the name of the thing, but is quite cheap if I remember though.
Cheers,
Paul
And if you're surrounded by bits of high-tech gear... ram a small laptop behind the hi fi stack, and equip it with a wireless network card.
Somewhere else is your wireless file server, replete with MP3s and noisy hard discs, fans, etc.
To control it all, use that neglected PDA you bought in a fit of gadget-freakery, equip it with a wireless card, and have some web front end thing running off the laptop.
Voila.
No, I haven't actually got around to this yet. But I keep thinking about doing it.
Somewhere else is your wireless file server, replete with MP3s and noisy hard discs, fans, etc.
To control it all, use that neglected PDA you bought in a fit of gadget-freakery, equip it with a wireless card, and have some web front end thing running off the laptop.
Voila.
No, I haven't actually got around to this yet. But I keep thinking about doing it.
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