Forums > Social Chat > The future of the music business

Posted: 25th Nov 2003
The music industry buried its head in the sand and failed to give us any option on the net. Had it had the foresight to find a way of selling us music downloads a few years back, they wouldnt be in this mess now. Personally, i dont want to buy a pretty plastic case and a CD, i want to by the music.

As for CD encryption, i bought the a cd a few months back and tried to play it on the computer. It wouldnt work, so i took it back to the shop, got my cash back and downloaded it on the net....

Posted: 25th Nov 2003
If it's the one I'm thinking of you can get around that by holding down shift when you first put it in so it doesn't auto-read the encryption. The guy who figured that out nearly got taken to court because of the money that encryption cost them...

I live in a world of infinite possibilities.

Posted: 25th Nov 2003
I heard about that guy. It wouldnt work with the cd i bought, though..

Posted: 25th Nov 2003
i bought an emi cd that has copy protection - and the protection actually works

well, sort of.



you can't play it in a computer without installing files, you can't copy it to another cd using a program such as 'nero' and you can't copy it using an optically connected minidisc deck (was most impressed and pissed off at the same time about that one).



however, you can use a $10 shareware program to rip all the tracks whereby you can then publish them on the internet or burn a cd from the compiled mp3's.



this astounded me.



the copy protection prevents the consumer from making legal personal copies via the normal methods but allows the one thing the record companies are most scared of - ripping the cd to mp3



taking myself as an example, normally i would make a cd copy for carrying round/playing in the car and a minidisc copy for my walkman.

instead i have been forced to rip the whole cd onto my pc (something i generally don't do) where it now available to file sharers with all the rest of my mp3 music.

its a backwards situation that is counter-intuitive to their objectives.



as for the death of physical music media, i think the bbc are a little premature on this one. electronically distributed music is in its infancy and will take a long time to replace the current forms of distribution.

and besides, i personally quite like album inlays - imho they give the artists another outlet to express what the feel of the album is and to showcase their work. ditto for music videos too.

pefect example of this is tool's 'lateralus'.

it has an album inlay designed by alex grey who i would have never discovered as early had i not bought the album and the videos are works of art in themselves.



anyway, i'm just about to buy a new hifi and i already have shedloads of cd's so i'm always going to use them.

not to mention the fact that the sound quality from a good hifi setup is incomparable to the sound you can get from a pc or portable mp3 player.



i think we have a long while before we see the death of cd's...



[i do really want an i-pod though. and a powermac obviously ]
EDITED_BY: coleman (1069775953)

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i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
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Posted: 25th Nov 2003
I`ve almost completely stopped using CD`s over the last 2 years. I do still buy cd`s from new/smaller artists, but the thing is i just take the cd home and rip it so it`ll play on my mp3 player..



I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for a music download service, but none of the current crop seem to have much stuff worth downloading.. Its all chart rubbish..

Posted: 25th Nov 2003
i guess the issue then is to look at how people listen to music nowdays.

my primary use is at home and on hifi systems at friend's houses, hence i still like cd's.

pavement here obviuosly listens to music most on the move via an mp3 player.

when the trend has shifted to the majority listening to music on the move via mp3's then the industry will be forced to make a change in the primary distribution method.
until then, the only reason electronic distribution might improve is the fact that the record companies are losing so much money.

cd's being physical are also a bonus.
lets say your harddrive crashes and you lose your music collection - if you have the music on cd, you can simply rip it again.
if you have bought the music electronically, with today's purchase formats you'd have a pretty hard time recompiling your music collection.

i'd like to see a hifi separates, dedicated mp3 player, or at least a hifi company that has the balls to produce a soundcard as a 'separates' option.
i use my pc for music a lot but would use it a whole lot more if the connection to my hifi was better quality.

incidentally, does anyone know what the sound reproduction of an mp3 is compared to that of a cd?

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood

Posted: 25th Nov 2003

Quote:

---

incidentally, does anyone know what the sound reproduction of an mp3 is compared to that of a cd?

---

128 kb is supposed to be cd quality, but you can rip it to any level you want, the better the quality the bigger the file. I do my mp3s at 190 kb or variable biterate..

Coleman, I dont listen to much music on the move, i bought a 20gig mp3 player so i can plug it into my stereo mainly..

Posted: 25th Nov 2003
I take copies of most of my fav CD's to use in the car - it saves the originals getting nicked if the car gets broken into (again). I've never had any real difficulty in getting around encrypted discs either!

My state of mind is not yours to define!

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

Posted: 4th Mar 2004
I've still been wondering about the future of the music industry.



Here's some interesting stuff on the future of the music industry, I found while smurfing around today....



in case anyones interested



Veerrryyy interesting stuff me thinks


EDITED_BY: DeepSoulSheep (1078419849)

I live in a world of infinite possibilities.

Posted: 4th Mar 2004
personally i'm not sure about the morals of it either way cos of all the money that the record companies make on one hand and all the effort the musicians put in on the other.

but i think that if it ever got to the situation where they lost so much money they went bust then noone would get to hear all that amazing music out there!

i don't know, but i don't think they're likely to go bust anytime soon anyhow.

there's a great band in bristol called five knuckle shufle and they;ve turned down four recording contracts cos they don't like the ethics, but maybe they're just shooting themselves in the foot, cos now only bristolians get to hear them.

i think i'd probably take the contract, even though i hate myself for thinking that.

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.

Posted: 4th Mar 2004
I've discovered Apple's iTunes Music Store and my wallet has never been lighter. :-)

The problem is that it doesn't carry many alternative genres. Their selection of classical music is pretty nice, though.

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura

Posted: 4th Mar 2004
There are many issues on this so I'll just spoke out my personal ones.



It's both good and bad for the artist. The labels can screw themselves tho as they've been screwing the public for years. But i don't want the artists to lose money if you know what I mean?!



I have a spare 80gig harddisk that is basically full of music and films and tv shows. Some of which I already have in my "legal" collection, some is live stuff never otherwise bound for release, some is new to me. Some is new artists I've downloaded to see if I like them (like using a listening post in a record shop) before I buy the cd.

I have an enourmous collection of music on my pc, far greater than my rather large colection on vinyl/cd/tape/minidisc. But I've never stopped buying cd's. infact I probably buy more now because a) more disposable income and b) I get to hear more thanks to file sharing.



I think one problem with copying lies with bootleggers who do it for profit, selling bootlegged cd's so other folks won't buy them in the shops. Stealing monies away from the artist worse than the labels do.



The record industries have shot themselves in the foot so many times too.....Robbie Williams *cough-music-&-lyrics-written-for-him-cough* is simply not worth 80million pounds. All that money strangles the economy for the smaller artists who can't guarantee chart position and quick turnover of sales.



Can anyone remember the day when songs used to fight their way to the top of the chats on their merits?! Now they just play them for three months before release, go to number 1 then disapear into obscurity forever.



I heard a radio dj announce that it was a shame that some toss pop record only got to No 4 in the charts in first week of release...ONLY NO 4 FOR F**KS SAKE!! Most artists would be happy that the general public love their music so much. It's sad that the radios have helped the music industry die so much....gimme internet radio anytime. The BBC has had a major part in this in recent years in the UK....their slogan is "Best in New Music"....TOSSRAG!! They only play what the labels tell them is A B or maybe C list, the real musicians who write and create for themselves are mostly ignored. Sad...very sad....but true. Apart from the God John Peel who generally gets to play what he wants within reason...from Techo to Trance to Blues to Death Thrash Metal to Jungle to Big Beat to Ska etc etc in one show. A true mentor of the best of new music but he oly gets away with it cuz he's been in the same job for about 40 years with the BBC as has a lot of respect in the corporation.



As for copying CD's, I wanted to copy Kings of Leon to take with me to Reading Festival last year but it's protected so I couldn't do it, afterwards tho I tried on my girlf's pc and it is sooo old it just ignored the protection and carried on regardless!! Why should the record companies deny me the right to back-up my cd collection?! I don't want to take originals camping with me, or have them in the car to get stolen.



Sony swallowed the majority of the little labels, ruining them and their soul forever...all in the name of corperate profit....bunch of a-holes!



And a little fact I heard the other week...in the UK 12 years ago there were 4 singles sold for every album....now there's 2 albums sold for every single yet the sales of albums has barely changed. ie total annual single sales are one eigth of what they used to be...thanks to the labels and their marketing strategies to gain short term quick profits without a care for the industry as a whole and certainly without a care for the artists.



Thanks for the rant...I'm sure there'll be more to follow soon



Tao Star, my girlf saw Five Knuckle Shuffle play in Bristol and said they were freakin excellent....I so want to see them sometime soon!

Let's relight this forum

Posted: 4th Mar 2004
in some ways it good that only rich bands get aired though -it means only those of us who can be bothered to search for good music and put some effort in get to hear the truly excellent stuff. But at the same time it's a shame.

Boo to big bad businesses.

maybe it's partly due to us consumers as well though. If people actually had some morals and DID delete stuff they downloaded after listnening to it to see if they liked it, then the record comapnies wouldn't be so worried about their precious money and we could all minidisk out CD's to listen to while running.

i'd probably run for longer and be fitter and everyone's lives would be perfect.

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.