Interesting blog post on the effect of the digital distribution revolution on the music industry and musicians: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/
TLDR: musicians are getting screwed worse than they were by the record companies.
I'm stunned that the pirates are not swamping this thread with posts. :hmm:
Apple is evil, news at 11.
Also, why bother with illegal downloading when you can legally listen to songs for free on youtube?
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on May 25, 2012, 06:49:00 PM
Apple is evil, news at 11.
Also, why bother with illegal downloading when you can legally listen to songs for free on youtube?
I'm not sure that the ability to listen to songs on youtube has any bearing. After all, you can legally listen to songs free on the radio, too.
Quote from: dps on May 25, 2012, 07:04:40 PM
I'm not sure that the ability to listen to songs on youtube has any bearing. After all, you can legally listen to songs free on the radio, too.
Sure you can, but the process of calling and requesting the one you want to hear is time-consuming, you're not guaranteed to have them accept, and if they do you may have to wait an hour or more to hear it.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on May 25, 2012, 06:49:00 PM
Also, why bother with illegal downloading when you can legally listen to songs for free on youtube?
Because -
1. I don't have access to youtube everywhere. When I am driving or exercising, I can't type.
2. The quality of the Youtube songs is often not good enough.
3. The video may be gone any minute. Especially for obscure stuff.
The video disappears, then a new one takes its place.
Sure, the illegal downloads still have uses, but it's just not worth the loss of peace of mind IMO, since I can listen to any song I want whenever I've got internet access.
Quote from: dps on May 25, 2012, 07:04:40 PM
I'm not sure that the ability to listen to songs on youtube has any bearing. After all, you can legally listen to songs free on the radio, too.
The difference there is that the radio station's paying each time the song is played on the radio.
Also, for every "legal" YouTube listen, there are HUNDREDS of illegal listens, where, if you're lucky, the poster will just leave something like "song is not mine, no infringement intended." Even if they're properly citing the original artist, they're not paying to use it.
Quote from: DontSayBanana on May 25, 2012, 11:10:41 PM
Also, for every "legal" YouTube listen, there are HUNDREDS of illegal listens, where, if you're lucky, the poster will just leave something like "song is not mine, no infringement intended." Even if they're properly citing the original artist, they're not paying to use it.
But is it illegal to watch those or just to post them? Cause in the first case, I don't see how the site would have survived so long.
Interesting link. Thanks. :)
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on May 25, 2012, 11:28:58 PM
But is it illegal to watch those or just to post them? Cause in the first case, I don't see how the site would have survived so long.
YouTube's overly reliant on tech- most of the takedowns are automated, via a content-matching algorithm. There have even been "false positive" takedowns where a band member personally posted content which tripped the algorithm. :lol:
YouTube's (so far successful) argument has been that the takedown implementation is sufficient, because with the volume of videos on the site, expecting human review of each uploaded video is unrealistic.
The views are as legit as listening to a burned CD or a recorded tape- I haven't heard of any large-scale action against them, but it's more of an "enforcement would be more effort than its worth and vilify us even further" deal than any legitimacy.
Youtube could easily enforce the copyrights for all those songs. In fact, it does so for German users. Just about any non-live music video will only show a message about copyrights here.
I'm an old fart. I still buy music. :Embarrass:
I didn't think most Musicians made much money to begin with. It's never been a profession that produced much in the way of steady income. For every chart topper there are lots of guys who live hand to mouth playing in clubs or just busking on the street. If someone expected the internet to change that, they are in for a shock.
This is going to hit the publishing industry soon enough as e-reader ownership takes off. Why pay £5 for an e-book when you can download it for free?
Old news, Hungarians have not paid for music, videos, or computer games for years. Everybody wants to do it.
Quote from: Jacob on May 25, 2012, 05:30:51 PM
Interesting blog post on the effect of the digital distribution revolution on the music industry and musicians: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/
TLDR: musicians are getting screwed worse than they were by the record companies.
So waht?
There was a time when musicionas were nothing. About a 100 years ago or so.
Now, technology is correction the mistake.
Or rather life is always in change and their time is pass, like the actors from hollywood time will pass when we develop the technology to make movies entirely on a computer. Think of the creativety. There will be no limits, no more need for special effects because everything will be created out of nothing , in a computer.
This would be deeply unpleasant. And Siege, people made good money being musicians 100 years ago. In fact many of the composers of yesteryear are still remembered. Irving Berlin, Scott Joplin, and George Gershwin did fairly well and are still remembered. One of the things is, unlike films or video games it really doesn't take a great deal of money to make music. And many people would make music (and do!) even if nobody paid them. Lots of people do it as a hobby. Making a film is a bit more difficult as it typically requires the skills of over a hundred people. Stage plays are a bit easier, but you still need quite a few people. One guy with an instrument (or just a singing voice) can make music.
Huh. Way belated, but after another glance, I have to say, the author was erring on the generous side when he estimated our (bigger retailers') profit margin on pressed CDs. Which actually sheds iTunes in a WORSE light.
Except for the super-biggies (Walmart, Best Buy, Target), even the bigger stores' procurement chains look like this:
Disc publisher > purchasing agent/wholesaler > corporate inventory > retail inventory
The profit margins might be 20% at the wholesaler level, but speaking as someone who occasionally has to do ordering and cut straight to the wholesaler, there's no way in hell we average 20% profit on a pressed disc. The profit margin gets successively smaller the newer the disc is, and automatically plummets to near-zero if the wholesaler's had to import it. The last DVD I ordered retailed for $14.99, because the wholesaler charged us $14.98 per copy. That profit margin would be 1/1499, somewhere in the ballpark of 0.007%. Considering it also had to be shipped to our store, that title was probably actually a net loss.