4 students sued by RIAA over music sites

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Gnarf: The laws are made in a way so that it's the circumstances that decide whether or not you're breaking rules, and not what you're actually doing... I can for free listen to an album over and over if I borrow it from a friend, not even considering. But I can't download one song from an album that I consider buying, even if I delete it after listening to it once. It doesn't make sense. ...and btw Quote: Bands like Led Zepplin never released singles, they only released albums

Led Zeppelin did release singles...[/QUOTE]No singles were released in their homeland of the United Kingdom.

In North America they released a whopping TEN singles out of nine albums. Wow. Looks like the single was important to Zepplin right?

Which was my very point.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Gnarf: [QB]The laws are made in a way so that it's the circumstances that decide whether or not you're breaking rules, and not what you're actually doing... I can for free listen to an album over and over if I borrow it from a friend, not even considering. But I can't download one song from an album that I consider buying, even if I delete it after listening to it once. It doesn't make sense.

Mate, compare your philosphy to the guy that admitted to having 80,000 mp3s. You may not go and rob a bank, but does that mean we should make robbing banks legal just because you're honest?

[Gnarf]

Mate, compare your philosphy to the guy that admitted to having 80,000 mp3s. You may not go and rob a bank, but does that mean we should make robbing banks legal just because you're honest?

I don't think /)K is a thief. No one wants to sell the music to him anyway, why should they care if he downloads it instead? How can you be supporting your favorite bands by not listening to their music?

Oh and...

The album, is the artists primary expressive vehical at the moment, alongside the instantaneous expression of live performance. A 'single' has historically been lifted to promote an album. Like a few scenes of a film made into a trailer.

False. Singles are being made and sold to make some extra money. What you get to hear in the commercials for an album and in free clips on various band's sites have been taken from songs to promote the album, sorta like scenes of a film made into a trailer.

[Sir Kenyth]

Yorick, you and I just have a different perspective is all. You (rightly) have passion for your art and see it much more deeply. I'm just a lowly consumer, but as a group, we support your art. You have to take into account our needs and wishes whether or not you like them. Just as we have to accept the music that's available to us. I don't meant to insinuate that full albums won't be made or sold. I just mean that the market for singles is going to increase dramatically with the internet and flash memory. File transfer of data is going to be the way of the future. There's no physical resources to cause overhead per sale. Do you know how much software isn't even distributed on CD anymore? A word on music quality. MP3 compression is controlled by the bitrate as is the quality. You can make the music quality match the available storage space. Flash memory is alive, kicking, and becoming cheaper by the day. It's compact, it doesn't skip, it doesn't get scratched, and it's totally reusable. You can archive your old music for later and tote around your new music. A chip the size of a postage stamp will hold a dozen songs or more. The CD as a medium of storage is on it's way out period. Perhaps even mini-DVD's will find a niche, but I think flash memory has them beat out for primary portable music mediums. So go ahead and make albums, just don't disregard the market for singles. Can you imagine a music store where you put your flash meory chip in a docking unit and purchase your favorite selection of different songs? The ability to do the same thing from home? I know the piracy issue is the main fear with this sort of thing, but the technology is already here and pretending it isn't doesn't help a thing.

[Rataxes]

I don't see how inmaterial loss can be compared to material loss. If 80 000 people download a single that they wouldn't have spent money on regardless of whether it had been available for free or not, then the record company and artist has lost jack shit and that is an undisputable fact. As undisputable, is the fact that if you rob a bank of 2 million dollars, then they have made an actual loss of 2 million dollars. It is therefore a bloody poor comparison.

There's a very common misconception that people that used to regularely buy CD's and games, have stopped buying these things in favour of downloading them for free. This simply is not the case since, at least in my homeland, it is estimated that approximately 50% of all software is pirated, yet PC game and software sales are going UP. Not only that, but it was a long time since the PC game market was as big in comparison to the console game market, as it is now. Sure, games in general have become much more popular, but the interest has still not grown anywhere near as fast as the proportion of pirated games have, so the latter simply doesn't have as great impact on software sales as some people want us to believe.

Interestingly enough, the price of PC games has remained quite steady over the years, while CD prices have sky-rocketed, and had been doing so for quite some time before mp3-sharing on the Internet became common. Now which market was doing the best out of these two? [img]smile.gif[/img]

What has the availability of all sorts of music on the Internet done for the global music community? Well for one thing, it's easier than ever before to grow an interest in music. Me, I hadn't spent a dime on music in my life and didn't own a single record I could call my own, that was before the mp3 format was created. I very much doubt that I would ever have grown an interest in music if it wasn't for Internet piracy. Now that I have, and actually been to a few concerts and bought 10-15 albums from artists and bands I've discovered on the net, how can one possibly say that me owning some 900 mp3's is BAD for the music industry, especially when at least 70% of those tracks are songs that would be near impossible for me to have gotten a hold of legally due to the extreme limitations of todays music market? Isn't it ironic that during the few years I've actively downloaded music from the Internet, I've invested far more money in music than I did in my entire life before that?

Free, fast and easy music sharing on the Internet has had a huge positive impact on the music communities of the world. Never has it been easier to share the joy of music with others, never has it been easier to spread the word about a good artist and get other people interested. I'm part of several music-orientated communities on the net. If one member discovers a great new artist and wants to share the discovery, the rest of us no longer have to take his word for it and several months later (if we didn't forget about it by then) spend a hefty sum of money based on nothing but what the guy told us to find out if we've found an artist worth spending our money on, or scour the independant rock radio stations 24/7 in hope that they just might (no matter how unlikely) play that particular artist. No, he can simply give us a link to a few of his personal recommendations and we can instantly hear for ourselves. That is how music interest is born! Artists have absolutely nothing to lose by gaining interest and popularity, regardless of whether it immediately pays off in dollars.

Like it or not, but piracy is not black and white. For every person who went from actually buying albums to neglecting them totally in favour of swiping them off the net, there's a person whose sole reason for growing enough interest in the music of a popular artist to spend his money on him, is the fact that he was able to grow that interest without risking or investing anything, and how could that possibly be achieved if not with Internet piracy?

It all evens out in the end, which is proved by the fact that neither the arrival of mp3 and peer-to-peer programs, nor the constantly growing popularity of these things, have had no distinguishable effect on record sales.

[ 04-12-2003, 06:49 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]

[Rataxes]

About the single vs album thing. It's true that quite a few artists and bands create albums meant as one entity, and indeed that many music fans listen to albums as such. But individual songs are also meant to be separate pieces of art. A better allegory than trailer-movie is episode-series. While some albums are simply built as a series of movies - an album full of good songs that stand on their own as artistic achievements, some are also built as series chopped up in episodes. The individual episodes are supposed to be at least watchable on their own, but the bigger picture can only be seen if you put all episodes together.

Most people don't care about the bigger picture though. Rarely do I hear people talk about more than great songs. It's becoming more and more common to grade albums on a song-by-song basis, and when people discuss the latest album, they usually do it song-by-song as well, instead of discussing the general album flow or feel. Now this is still music fantasts I'm talking about. Regular people care even less about the bigger picture and only buy albums in hope that they will find songs they like as much as the single they heard on the radio.

Artists ultimately don't care more about the bigger picture than the individual songs either, or how many live concerts have you experienced where whole albums were played in their entity? Individual songs gets picked out there and mixed, because in the end, what the fans care about are the songs, and not the albums.

The public interest on the whole is leaning a lot more towards the individual songs than the albums. People do download whole albums, but only because they can, and hope to find more of the same stuff they liked when they heard a song, not because they're looking for an album experience.

[ 04-12-2003, 06:50 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Rataxes: About the single vs album thing. It's true that quite a few artists and bands create albums meant as one entity, and indeed that many music fans listen to albums as such. But individual songs are also meant to be separate pieces of art. A better allegory than trailer-movie is episode-series. While some albums are simply built as a series of movies - an album full of good songs that stand on their own as artistic achievements, some are also built as series chopped up in episodes. The individual episodes are supposed to be at least watchable on their own, but the bigger picture can only be seen if you put all episodes together. Most people don't care about the bigger picture though. Rarely do I hear people talk about more than great songs. It's becoming more and more common to grade albums on a song-by-song basis, and when people discuss the latest album, they usually do it song-by-song as well, instead of discussing the general album flow or feel. Now this is still music fantasts I'm talking about. Regular people care even less about the bigger picture and only buy albums in hope that they will find songs they like as much as the single they heard on the radio. Artists ultimately don't care more about the bigger picture than the individual songs either, or how many live concerts have you experienced where whole albums were played in their entity? Individual songs gets picked out there and mixed, because in the end, what the fans care about are the songs, and not the albums. The public interest on the whole is leaning a lot more towards the individual songs than the albums. People do download whole albums, but only because they can, and hope to find more of the same stuff they liked when they heard a song, not because they're looking for an album experience.

On what authority do you speak for Mr. Everyman? What studies are you presenting to justify your opinion? If you have none, then speak for yourself. YOU assess albums on a song-by-song basis. 'People' do many different things. I DO know many people who look at the album as a whole. More importantly, artists and producers do. Countless albums, from the Wall and Sgt Peppers (two of the most influential albums to date) to more recent albums such as Chicane and Radioheads offerings, are complete works.

You also persist in the trend from posters here, in ignoring every other genre outside pop music. Music is more than pop.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Sir Kenyth: Yorick, you and I just have a different perspective is all. You (rightly) have passion for your art and see it much more deeply. I'm just a lowly consumer, but as a group, we support your art. You have to take into account our needs and wishes whether or not you like them.

No I don't. Only if I want to enter the marketplace and sell product do I have to take consumer needs into account. Otherwise I can compose, write and record to please myself.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Gnarf: Quote: Mate, compare your philosphy to the guy that admitted to having 80,000 mp3s. You may not go and rob a bank, but does that mean we should make robbing banks legal just because you're honest?

I don't think /)K is a thief. No one wants to sell the music to him anyway, why should they care if he downloads it instead? How can you be supporting your favorite bands by not listening to their music?

Oh and...

The album, is the artists primary expressive vehical at the moment, alongside the instantaneous expression of live performance. A 'single' has historically been lifted to promote an album. Like a few scenes of a film made into a trailer.

False. Singles are being made and sold to make some extra money. What you get to hear in the commercials for an album and in free clips on various band's sites have been taken from songs to promote the album, sorta like scenes of a film made into a trailer.[/QUOTE]Mate, here we go... Go get a job in the recording industry and then come back and tell me that artists make money of singles. The songwriter does (through airplay/airtime etc), but the artist does NOT make money off a single unless they are the songwriter. Albums have always been where the money is. Singles have always been promotional tools.

I've been signed to two major labels in the past. BMG and Polygram (now Vivendi/Universal). I'm not talking out of my arse.

As far as Deathkiller goes, he's a thief. He's taken work from artists who cannot get a release in America, and contributes to ensuring there is NO DEMAND for a such a release, by stealing their songs. That effects the artists ability to make records, tour and do anything else that costs money. 80,000 mp3s? It's sickening.

As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to judge your actions by the question "what would happen if everyone did what I'm doing?"

This is the fact: RECORDING MUSIC COSTS MONEY.

Pure and simple.

Take the money away and music will go downhill. Professional musicians/producers will become a thing of the past, and the quality associated with such professionalism will go out the window. If that's the way society wants to go, so be it. DOn't call yourself a music fan if that's the reality you want though.

You are kidding yourself if you think you're a fan of a band and stealing their work.

[ 04-13-2003, 01:50 AM: Message edited by: Yorick ]

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Rataxes: It all evens out in the end, which is proved by the fact that neither the arrival of mp3 and peer-to-peer programs, nor the constantly growing popularity of these things, have had no distinguishable effect on record sales.

This is complete and utter faleshood. Total bollocks. Go check your information Rataxes.