Police Raid College Dorm To Bust Up Another File-Sharing Network

It does sound like I am a Apple pusher, huh?

Actually, I don't own any Apple products. I had an iPod for a while, but returned it (Great toy.. just too expensive).

I am waiting for Apple to port it's iTunes music service to another platform. I just believe that Apple hit it 95% on the head with their new service. It's what people have been wanting and it shows with its excellent sales so far.

 

1st of all...for a lot of unsigned bands, programs like kazaa are very useful. also websites like mp3.com, soundclick.com, and iuma.com are very useful in digitally distributing music for bands who otherwise would never put anything out. i dont see how that is hurting the industry. i would imagine that the following a band can get just from their website and downloadable mp3s is an advantage when or if they are signed to a major label.

2ndly...i personally download random music. bands i have never heard of. if its good, i become a fan. if it sucks, i delete it. i cant tell you the number of cds i have purchased and the number of live shows i have gone to becasue of this. its doing alot of free marketing for these companies and they are still getting my dollar one way or another. no matter how many mp3s i have, i still always want to buy the album for the liner notes and so-forth. if you are actually a fan of a band, just having a crappy mp3 in some subfolder on your computer isnt enough. if you arent a fan of the band, and still have their mp3.... well, then companies need to filter who they sign.

3rdly...the bands that are at most "risk" for losing money on record sales it seems are mainstream crap bands who dont have a real fan following. their albums are 12 song long commercials with maybe one or two songs that you can listen to without making a list on your palm pilot of ways to injure yourself. in that light... is it now illegal to tape television commercials and trade them over the internet? these songs are just big commercials that they pay television and radio stations large sums of money to play for them. and they cant lie and say its to sell the album. its not. *its to sell merchandise, overpriced concert tickets etc... i would imagine that smaller, lesser known bands would be more upset about this but they dont seem to be. i think they are just more thankful that people are listening to them at all.

*unless these record companies drafted crappy contracts in which they gave up merchandising rights, which is their fault, not ours.

 

You sure that's not the other way around?

I have been able to find these songs on Kazaa, maybe not every time I tried, since the file selection in Kazaa is in a constant flux, but at one point in time or another. If you can find these four songs on iTunes, then I'm sold:

Lil' Elt - Get the Gat
Ruthless Juveniles - Where Dey At
FM - Gimme What You Got
Thuy Hang - Hoa Tham Dung Phai <-- D okay, okay, this one doesn't count)

Now get to work. I have a feeling you might wanna pack a lunch.

 

How do you expect to hear 75% of the songs on a CD without downloading it or hearing it from someone else?

 

Through Kazaa I have managed to find all 20 songs of the Bob Dylan concert in Seattle from two years ago. If not for that, I would never have been able to hear those brilliant tunes again. Kazaa is great for stuff like that, since I couldn't have purchased those songs anywhere.


Anyway, F*** the RIAA! I'll download as much as I please!

 

All I am saying is that the RIAA is missing the point. People want to be able to download music, to play them on their portable music players and computers and they want to be able to share it with friends. Digital music (mp3,ogg, acc etc..) is the new music medium and it's stupid to try and supress it. By attacking Kazaa(p2p), raiding dorms and trying to copy protect cd's isn't the way about it. Embrace what people want and give it to them in way that makes everyone happy.

iTunes and such is not the answer for people using P2P to dowload concert bootlegs and otherwise impossible to buy music. Also, as TheHorns pointed out, many P2P users never have any intentions of purchasing music, even if they couldn't download it. iTunes is not the answer for them either. But the music industry isn't losing money on any of these people.

People are willing to pay for music. iTunes is showing that by doing it right, people are willing to pay for downloading music. How much more convient can you get than to get new music straight from your player?

 

You're right. It's probably impossible to get any of the songs that you mentioned above on iTunes or any other music service. But it's still young and they've already added 20 new artists since launch about a week ago. I am willing to bet on current Kazaa, that you can't find the entire album for those specific artists. Or other albums by that artists, or any duets , soundtracks etc... But the way iTunes is set up, if they have your artist, all their albums and music is listed right there in front of you. You don't have search all day and night and when you finally do find asong, pray that it isn't mislabeled, or the user stays online or it is of decent bitrate.

Things also look good for smaller labels or independent musicians. Apple is willing to work with them directly. This means that they get the same distributions as the big players and don't have to pay the ludicrist RIAA fees.

Currently iTunes only works in the US, but as it gets bigger, who knows, maybe you will be able to get music from Vietnamese and other international artists.

 

I started a thread a while back when the judge ruled that peer to peer was legal etc. The music industry immediately said they would go after individual users and groups allowing large transfers of copyrighted music. I'm sure we'll see more of this for a while to scare off file/music swapping. A few months ago the music industry singled out a guy on a peer to peer network who had a small library (300 hundred songs I believe) of copyrighted music he had available on-line like anyone who uses p2p. These scare tactics will go on until the music and film industry feel pressure from the consumer or the internet providers allowing access to p2p networks. The way the music industry is handling this can be compared to the drug war. A few high profile busts, while the market gets larger. The next big step will be invisible p2p - the file swapper will remain completely anonymous while trading files - possible now, but not widely practiced.

 

I did a little research and CD Units Shipped to retailers declined in 2001 by 6.4% and 8.9% in 2002. Now, I will not argue that it all has to do with the file sharing, but 2001 is the first year of declining CD sales. Also, those singles that you are so proud of downloading, their sales declined over 38% in 2000, 49% in 2001, and 74% in 2002. Most people argue that they only download singles, well believe it or not, people used to make money off of these singles, and now the sales are virtually non existent. Single CD units shipped in 1999 were 55 million compared to only 4 million in 2002. In revenues, it is a decline from $220 million to $19 million. So I think a decline of over 91% in revenues has hurt someone. And to your first point of CD sales grouped in the last five years, of course CD sales in the last five years maybe more than anytime in history, because people have been only buying CD's for about 13 years. That's not much history to go on.

And lastly Percy Miller used to sale music out the trunk of his car, so he is the last person you want to consult on stealing music. And he and Jermaine Dupri own their own labels which has a lot to do with their wealth.

 

Hmmm... wonder what this means for the Direct Connect hubs that many of the students at A&M use.

 

first of all i don't know how old you are... but are you telling me you have never borrowed a CD or a cassette (back in the day) from a friend and made a copy for yourself? Never in your life have you taken an album and recorded it to cassette or dubbed a friends cassette? File sharing is the same thing, except with the internet you have A LOT more friends...

if a cd is good enough, i will definately buy it... for the artwork, liner notes, etc...

recent CD purchases:

Massive Attack
some old Talk Talk stuff
The White Stripes
Audioslave
Stephen Malkmus
Turin Brakes

and some of these tracks I downloaded first, but I still went out and bought them....

 

So you've just admitted to felony theft? You are entitled to steal software because Bill Gates is rich? You justify theft because you steal software you like but do not NEED?

Sure, if one person steals software or music, that does not hurt the industry, but when thousands of people do so, it does. If everyone thought like you then everyone would steal software.

I suppose I am entitled to a free Corvette, because I like it but do not NEED it and GM makes a lot of money.

 

I usually go listen to new music at Soundwaves before I buy it. It's not that complicated.

 

If file swapping is made so illegal that I can no longer do it, I will go back to dubbing CD's on to tapes. I'll still buy "must have" CD's but to waste 15 bucks to get a few good songs is insane. I've downloaded so much music that otherwise I probably would have never heard. Now when one of those bands comes to town on tour, i'm much more likely to go see them. Music file swapping makes everyone money, it is not stealing.

 

You can't look at it that way. You have to look at the fact that you are lowering the earning power of the tens of thousands of people that are everyday Joe's at Microsoft earning a salary, not one guy.

If MS made twice as much money they would be able to hire MANY more people, pay their workers more salary, and sell their products much cheaper.

This argument about taking away money from Bill Gates is stupid.

Stealing is stealing, whether you steal from somebody that's poor, or somebody that's rich. Robin Hood would be in jail in this country.

 

The revenue for cd's has been decreasing since 2000, but you forget to mention that the number of new releases is way down also. In 1999 there were 38900 new releases and in 2000 there were 27000. If the RIAA is releasing fewer titles, of course there is going to be less revenue and less cd shipments.

http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html

 

No matter how you try and justify it, file swapping IS stealing.

 

I disagree with you, but I understand your point. If I listened to Rice radio and recorded a bunch of indie rock I liked then ran it though Soundforge on my computer to clean up the sound then burned the music to disc would that be stealing? Is bootlegging a concert stealing in your opinion? (just curious)

 

According to the law it is perfectly legal for you to record music from the airwaves for your personal use. If you then try to sell it, it becomes illegal. This is akin to videotaping a TV program.

Bootlegging a concert is definitely illegal (I assume you mean sneaking in a recorder and taping it), unless the performer gives you permission.

 

Man, that paragraph says it all IMO. Most of todays "mainstream" music is just disposable crap that isn't even going to matter a few months from now. It's DESIGNED to make a lot of money real quick, them move out of the way for the next trendy single to come off the assembly line and start the process all over again.

Good bands that have a loyal fan base don't have anything to worry about. Up and coming bands don't either because if people are listening to your music (buying OR downloading), good things are going to happen to you one way or another. It's the crap bands and so-called artists that stand to lose the most. Why can't the "get rich quick" record exec's understand this? They need to sign and DEVELOP better bands/artists. Take some chances, don't always go for the sure thing. Most people aren't stupid and can see through the BS.