p2p didn't kill the music industry, the internet brought music costs to a fair level

I'm sick and tired of these music industry insiders ragging on about how piracy killed the music industry.

It is simply not true, music piracy is going down more and more. SImply because services like iTunes make it easy for anyone to just download any song they like at ANY time. iTunes also synchronises your music collection so you can play that bought song on your computer, on your your high quality home theatre speakers and of course on the iPod.

There was a time when you had to go out and buy music from HMV (UK store), when you went there you would be inundated with glossy cd covers of other artists. You were enticed into buying more than you bargained for at each and every visit. The place was impulse purchase galore.

There was also limited choice. Of course there were plenty of singles for chart toppers. But for the most part if you wanted that rare track you had to buy the album or compilation to get it. £15 for one song.

Things have changed a lot now. Now if you want to buy a song, you can preview it at home, by yourself, no peer pressure or social pressure to buy music. You can take as much time or as little time as you like. There was no radio playing which would hype the song that they were playing getting you to buy. Music sales are almost exclusively singles now. Hardly anyone buys an album from itunes.

If you want you can even just play the song on Youtube (not pirated, officially released) and keep playing it, and then if you like it buy it. If you get sick of the song after just 10 plays, best leave it alone and not buy it.

I feel that p2p is getting blamed for this, truth is there is no kazaa or napster any more. If you want to pirate music, you better spend several hours digging through various websites and using tools like mp3 rippers to get music off Youtube or whatever.

So why is p2p getting the blame?? Well p2p killed one thing, that is really crap manufactured music that nobody likes. p2p allowed users to divorce themselves from the cocksucking DJ that will whore his opinions out to the highest bidder and hype the lastest "chart busting song".. Which will inevitably mean that YOu the consumer buys the crap song. That's really why the music industry hates p2p right now. P2p unshackled the music industry's grip over music sales.

The end result? People are more experimental, people are discovering their own niche tastes, and discovering independant bands that play music that strikes a chord with them. No more britney spears or christina aguilara wailing on autotune over some guy which isn't even based on a true story, and possibly written entirely by a third party.

The internet has allowed independant artists to find a way to get exposure and even be the masters of their own fate. Side stepping the record labels, taking all the profit and being in charge of their art.

services like pandora and itunes genius recommendations go a step further and help you discover music that you will REALLY like. regardless of the artist.

Now imagine the possibilities for an independant artist. Just produce your music and upload onto itunes, you dont need a promoter or a business expert, you simply produce music and then anyone who might be interested in ur music gets the heads up from pandora or itunes.

If they like it they buy it. The record labels aren't even in the picture.

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I feel that p2p is getting blamed for this, truth is there is no kazaa or napster any more. If you want to pirate music, you better spend several hours digging through various websites and using tools like mp3 rippers to get music off Youtube or whatever.

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There's a few items I'd disagree with in that, but this one was too big to ignore. Have you not heard of Soulseek? Bittorrent? Usenet? Etc...? Who spends "hours digging through various websites" for a song/album? :unsure:

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Originally Posted by MikeB

Well p2p killed one thing, that is really crap manufactured music that nobody likes.

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And yet the charts are awash with little else but "really crap manufactured music". Unless p2p comes up with a way to keep money out of the hands of tweens I think that is pretty much always going to be the case.:mellow:

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Originally Posted by Skiz

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I feel that p2p is getting blamed for this, truth is there is no kazaa or napster any more. If you want to pirate music, you better spend several hours digging through various websites and using tools like mp3 rippers to get music off Youtube or whatever.

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There's a few items I'd disagree with in that, but this one was too big to ignore. Have you not heard of Soulseek? Bittorrent? Usenet? Etc...? Who spends "hours digging through various websites" for a song/album? :unsure:

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i've never heard of soul seek before.

Bittorrent is not a suitable platform for music.. becaue it's just labourous, you have remixes, album only downloads, and music videos all mixed in. It a lot harder to get music using bittorrent than it was with kazaa for instance. Plus bittorrent is only useful for new stuff, anything older than a couple of years is difficult to get hold of using bittorrent.

usenet is similar to the above, but it's really good for hardcore geeks. Even most "internet savvy" computer users don't bother with usenet.

You will find someone who has a job and is short of time will find it more preferable to just just buy the song from itunes and get it on their ipod within seconds. Much easier process.

In addition to all this, iTunes also makes it easier to sort out your music collection, all ther album artwork and attributions are there by default. No more editing id3 tags to fix them and remove scene release tags from the songs and another other "website plugs" which is so common in illegally downloaded music.

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Originally Posted by MikeB

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Originally Posted by Skiz

There's a few items I'd disagree with in that, but this one was too big to ignore. Have you not heard of Soulseek? Bittorrent? Usenet? Etc...? Who spends "hours digging through various websites" for a song/album? :unsure:

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i've never heard of soul seek before.

Bittorrent is not a suitable platform for music.. becaue it's just labourous, you have remixes, album only downloads, and music videos all mixed in. It a lot harder to get music using bittorrent than it was with kazaa for instance. Plus bittorrent is only useful for new stuff, anything older than a couple of years is difficult to get hold of using bittorrent.

usenet is similar to the above, but it's really good for hardcore geeks. Even most "internet savvy" computer users don't bother with usenet.

You will find someone who has a job and is short of time will find it more preferable to just just buy the song from itunes and get it on their ipod within seconds. Much easier process.

In addition to all this, iTunes also makes it easier to sort out your music collection, all ther album artwork and attributions are there by default. No more editing id3 tags to fix them and remove scene release tags from the songs and another other "website plugs" which is so common in illegally downloaded music.

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^:blink:

You don't have any idea what you're talking about do you? I knew that as soon as I read the first sentence.

Soulseek is still probably the best p2p resource out there and has been well known for many years.

Bittorrent is the most suitable platform for music and if you find it laborious, you should use a different site. There are great sites that separate everything and make finding the exact album you want take about 5 seconds to locate and start downloading, whether it's a full album or individual song, both new and old. They also separate the studio releases, remixes, compilations, discographies, etc. There is nothing hard about it. (example)

Usenet is awesome as well, and over the past few years with the appearance of several free to use indexing sites, it's become easy for kids to use, senior citizens, and yes, even those who aren't "internet savvy".

I also don't find buying from iTunes to be any more difficult or easier - I download an album, I drag and drop a copy of it into my preset iTunes folder and sync it. Done.

Have you open your iTunes on PC MikeB?

As Skiz said, you must not have even the slightest clue as to what you are talking about. First off, there are MANY artists/songs/albums that you can't find on itunes. Second, you have to accept the format/quality that they set. And then...you have to pay .69 to $1.29 per song.

I'm not even going to go into the many things that are wrong with the "Bittorrent not being a suitable platform for music" statement. Bittorrent was practically made for music. Saying Kazaa was easier is ludicrous...I guess it was if you enjoyed mis-tagged songs, fake files & spyware. And I don't know what torrent sites you have been using, but I can find damn near any song made in the last 100 years on torrent sites or news groups. In about 10 seconds. Your statements lead me to wonder if you've actually ever even used any music torrent sites. If you have, you sure haven't used the right ones. Hell, even Demonoid has a assload of music.

you've never heard of SoulSeek? Unbelievable. Are you some kind of Apple rep trying to promote itunes or something?

Being an early fan of rap / hip hop, I was delighted when Napster was born as it provided a means of obtaining songs I simply couldn't buy in shops. I'd hear songs on Tim Westwoods show (in the early 90's) but couldn't buy them easily in shops like HMV...

Then the MP3 revolution hit full swing, Napster, WinMX, Audiogalaxy, Kazaa etc all came and went but all of them offered something that no record company was embracing...the ability to get your songs online in an easy to use format.

My thoughts are that record companies dropped the ball - they could have cashed in but they slept.....high street stores continued to sell overpriced limited stock music and it comes as no surprise that many have shut down. Finally Apple gave online consumers a taste of a legit way to get music....although there is still room for improvement. Spotify is also a good option for the casual listener.

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Originally Posted by teflon05

Saying Kazaa was easier is ludicrous...I guess it was if you enjoyed mis-tagged songs, fake files & spyware.

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Those screeching files used to drive me nuts. I'd wait like 30 minutes to download a song and then get that garbage. :fist:

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

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Originally Posted by MikeB

Well p2p killed one thing, that is really crap manufactured music that nobody likes.

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And yet the charts are awash with little else but "really crap manufactured music". Unless p2p comes up with a way to keep money out of the hands of tweens I think that is pretty much always going to be the case.:mellow:

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So that's to say that paying customers killed the music industry?

No-one else struck by the sheer irony of MikeB coming to a filesharing forum to extoll the virtues of iTunes?

Irony never stopped killing men killing each other in the name of peace or White people rapping.

iTunes is a pit of misery on windows, and before icloud you would have serious difficulties even getting shit you'd paid for back, if you lost your local copy.

It's really the worst thing about iphones, people I know installing iTunes, then asking me for help when things get screwy.


And why download much music today? I can understand the occasional song now and then for offline usage, and some indie stuff that's really only available as mp3s on the artist's site, but between spotify, pandora and grooveshark, I'm pretty much set. And if you gotta pay for one of those to get access, that's still better than buying off itunes.

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Originally Posted by Snee

And why download much music today? I can understand the occasional song now and then for offline usage, and some indie stuff that's really only available as mp3s on the artist's site, but between spotify, pandora and grooveshark, I'm pretty much set. And if you gotta pay for one of those to get access, that's still better than buying off itunes.

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Or even iheartradio. I also don't keep music in the iPod portion of my iPhone. All my music has been uploaded to Google Music's cloud storage and has a similar UI to iTunes. Any music I play is through the Melodies app which connects to my Google Music collection. With that, I have access to 20,000 of my own songs, on my iPhone. Way more than the iPod itself is capable of holding.

Don't forget that Ituunes is only a crappy 192 bit rate.
If they sold Flac files, then you could say that the internet has changed music.

So you (I) need Flac for you PC and Mp3 for your ipod or mp3 player.

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Originally Posted by digmen1

Don't forget that Ituunes is only a crappy 192 bit rate.
If they sold Flac files, then you could say that the internet has changed music.

So you (I) need Flac for you PC and Mp3 for your ipod or mp3 player.

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And yet you(I) don't.

Believe I know of these things since I spent several years trying to tell people that they "needed" a four thousand dollar bicycle as anything less was shite and they couldn't possibly enjoy riding it.