Let's accept as an axiom that music piracy is wrong. However you like it, economically, morally, it's wrong. It hurts people that make the music you love. Hurting people= wrong.
Now, as another axiom, many people, including kids, steal music because they place no value in it. Perhaps no one has helped them to understand the value in music and that there are moral implications in stealing it.
One more axiom:let's say that there is no real practical way to stop it on a large scale and it's going to continue into the foreseeable future.
If you can't accept these as axioms, feel free to leave this thread now...........
WHAT is going to teach people that there is value in music and art? And I'm not talking about the pirate guys that know it's wrong but do it anyway, or those who don't care. You can't help them, they're just idiots.
I'm talking about kids and adults who may have not had an influence in their lives that placed any kind of value on music or art. Many of them probably don't even realize the damage they are potentially doing. There are folks who are stealing music because they may genuinely not know any better, or at least that it is very harmful to artists.
Just a question of naivety........
So, besides Sony suing some limewire nerd and pissing everyone off, and all the mudslinging on forums like this........
How do we raise awareness, on a BIG scale?
Am I just being optimistic? Throughout history, great changes have been made to the status quo, based on moral considerations, I don't see why a new "pro-artist" movement couldn't be equally successful.
People need to understand that the artist has a direct line to the voice of the universe, and most people don't possess that, so if they want to hear it, they need to support those who can deliver.
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Essentially they'll figure it out once great bands and great songwriters stop emerging - which is kind of a period we're entering now.
(Sadly)
I think the task is too big to persuade ordinary people on the kind of scale required.
The best chance is to persuade the enablers, largely tech companies, isp's, search engines, software companies etc, that they need quality content, and quality needs to be supported by funding.
At the moment these organisations are getting away with allowing content rape. In addition, they're doing ok from free content, goofy videos on YouTube for example.
Once that novelty wears off they're all going to be searching for quality.
There is no hope now - no traditional copy protection will work, as the crack will leak out soon after implementation.
People are basicly dishonest, or let's just say rules are meant to be broken.
I think one solution would be for all music to contain hidden embedded digital signitures that would remain when ripped. Then, all internet providers would have to be required by law to sniff for those signitures when the data stream is passing through. Sniffing is already done with regards terrorist threats on the internet and cell phones, text messages, etc in most parts of the world, even in many asian nations.
Obviously all internet providers would have to comply, and a mechanism would have to exist to allow paid-for content to pass through to the buyer, with the digital signiture reset to "not transmittable" at the last junction before the buyer recieves the content.
Digital signitures can be very cleverly embedded and scattered throughout the content - does not have to be just at the beginning. Of course some cracking might still take place and to deal with that the record companies would have to stay on top of the matter by searching out pirates and busting them. Programs now exist that can listen to a song (digitally) and identify it, so a lot of the vigilance can be automated.
We should all be talking about such solutions because it all begins with talking.
We should all talk also about music piracy as being immoral - it is stealing, and when people do immoral things they will usually do more immoral things and the wasteland will grow, however gradual it may be.
I think one solution would be for all music to contain hidden embedded digital signitures that would remain when ripped. Then, all internet providers would have to be required by law to sniff for those signitures when the data stream is passing through.
Well, I'm not the authority on this technology, but I think you rule out that solution when it comes to Bit Torrent. As I understand it anyway.
Besides, the point of this thread is not for technical solutions, that is being covered elsewhere.
When all the pop tracks are blasted at them through every form of advertising known to man every day of course they are not going to want to pay for it, even if they like it.
Also, when some of these artists are on Cribs when they flick on MTV, they really don't seem to care.
The state of the music industry is not the way it is just because of piracy. Music's free, that's it, no ifs no buts, it's times like these that require someone with a brain that can think, we've found that pretty much everyone in the ''industry'' or claim to work in it, clearly can't, as whinging on a forum never did anything, I doubt it freed Madella and I doubt it brought the Berlin wall down.
It was never polices because your tax was spent on Iraq/Afghanistan and a lot of other stuff you wouldn't want to know about.
Essentially they'll figure it out once great bands and great songwriters stop emerging - which is kind of a period we're entering now.
(Sadly)
I think the task is too big to persuade ordinary people on the kind of scale required.
The best chance is to persuade the enablers, largely tech companies, isp's, search engines, software companies etc, that they need quality content, and quality needs to be supported by funding.
At the moment these organisations are getting away with allowing content rape. In addition, they're doing ok from free content, goofy videos on YouTube for example.
Once that novelty wears off they're all going to be searching for quality.
I see your point.
The problem though is that I think MANY people need to be told what is quality, or what is cool. It's not as much a given as we would like to think.
I take great pride in picking out what is really cool, or well done in particular music, but sometimes (not often) I also need friends to point out cool things that I may have overlooked, or had some sort of internalized block on. And I'm a trained musician.
Multiply that condition by a factor of (?) in someone who literally doesn't understand music this way at all, and what you get is someone who could be persuaded that just about any old piece of shit is worth listening to.
Take Hollywood for example: "Meet the Fockers" beat "True Grit" at the box office this weekend. But not because it was a better film, but the TV ads were more persuasive and unrelenting for it.
I saw "True Grit" at a midnight showing the day it was released and I would have paid double, it was amazing.
I wouldn't watch "Meet the Fockers" if dinner with DeNiro was included afterwards, but I'm sure it's a piece of shit.
I guess my point in consideration of your point is that the marketers are bold enough and persuasive enough to make average folk like whatever they tell them to. What could possibly be the incentive for getting them to peddle GOOD art??
I'm not really making a comment on quality based on my own opinion.
I'm just looking at the music scene as a whole.
You need good songwriters to compose the music that people will still play at their weddings and funerals ten years later.
No income, no great songwriters.
Let's accept as an axiom that music piracy is wrong. However you like it, economically, morally, it's wrong. It hurts people that make the music you love. Hurting people= wrong.
Now, as another axiom, many people, including kids, steal music because they place no value in it. Perhaps no one has helped them to understand the value in music and that there are moral implications in stealing it.
One more axiom:let's say that there is no real practical way to stop it on a large scale and it's going to continue into the foreseeable future.
If you can't accept these as axioms, feel free to leave this thread now...........
No. I'm not leaving this thread now because axioms 2 and 3 are utter bullshyte.
People do not steal what they don't value. People ignore what they don't value.
There are, in fact, practical ways to stop the widespread looting of the music industry. It's true that piracy can't ever be totally stopped, but piracy as a mass phenomenon certainly can be. If we can reduce piracy to 1990 levels things will be fine. This is doable. All that need be done is make piracy more inconvenient for the average nontechnical internet user than downloading legally. This can be done by cutting access to the big public sites that cater to the great unwashed masses of freeloading yobbos. The US government is already taking steps to do this. The next year or two should see some pretty drastic changes in the climate surrounding piracy in the US and Europe. The handwriting is on the wall. Ignore it at your own peril.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Ohlsson
The appropriate role for science is the study of observed phenomena to gain an understanding. It is not dictating what people ought or ought not to be observing.
Also, when some of these artists are on Cribs when they flick on MTV, they really don't seem to care.
I think this has a lot to do with it.
Look at the top artists and there videos that are being played and you'll see them in the newest cars that are rented for the shoot, wearing the most expensive designer clothes, sometimes even singing about how rich they are. Especially since hip hop culture is still a major player in the charts. The general public is being told that there is millions to be made in music. And if a struggling artist complains then they simply say, 'well your just not good enough.'
your living probably also doesn't depend on it, easy for you to say.
how about you come over to my house, and paint it for me, for free, and we can talk about your views on free labor? Ok?
Or how about I paint my house and you download an image or approximation of what it looks like. Bad example, I know. But that's the problem. It's really hard to put a price tag on something that can be so easily acquired at the push of a button. Someone made a good point earlier that the purchase of music should be made easier than the theft of music. My point isn't that theft of music is good, it is that free information is good. Piracy is an unfortunate side affect of that and a reality. Some will adapt and some will wait for someone else to fix the problem. I'm very curious to see how this all pans out, but I think it's still too early to come to any conclusions.
We're entering an age where information is free, accept it and adapt.
Funny.
You obviously haven't seen what a huge crisis it's causing in journalism, photography, television and music.
Yes, some information has been allowed to run free. I believe it's an unsustainable scenario that will be closed off once it suits the tech companies to do so.
Socal engineering. Persuade people that it's uncool to infringe copyright. (And it's illegal too, though that's often more of an inducement than a deterrent.)
Look at other social engineering campaigns.
Smoking.
Domestic violence.
DUI / Drink Driving.
Any thoughts on how such a campaign would be structured for making piracy socially undesirable (uncool)?
My point isn't that theft of music is good, it is that free information is good.
It's currently good because a smaller portion of society is still paying for that information to be produced.
As in purchasers of music and music software.
If ALL information was free, how would musicians and creators of plug-ins earn enough to feed their families? I have a strong suspicion they wouldn't, so would find other jobs, leaving much LESS music and music software available in the 'free' system.
Is much less, and much less quality good for the future? IMO no.
The free information scenario is purely riding on the back of paid information. It's just amazing the free sharers can't see that.
Obviously and self-evidently piracy is horribly wrong and theft and all the rest of it, but to spin a scenario that "quality music will end" because of it is really sort of preposterous-- and it sounds like wishful dreaming (a return to a world where the distribution of music was controllable and therefore could be charged a going rate for.)
Because that's not the logical result-- the logical result is that music becomes much more hobby than occupation. And the quality of it, as ever, is in the eyes of the beholder-- and the digital revolution has made technical quality perfectly achievable to anyone, anywhere. That, in this observer's eyes, is the real root of the problem-- the fact that it doesn't take a huge complex and an army of engineers and techs to make a "great" record anymore. I.e., the "cost" of creating great music is very, very minimal in this world in which we live in.
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And where do we drop this nugget of insight: in 1987, this conversation would be conducted in the letters section of Mix magazine, and would be drawn out over months and months, and we would in all likelihood have to maintain a paid subscription to participate... nobody needs to pay dues to Gearslutz to be a part of it now.
The modern world has been cruelly abusive to some people and things, and has conferred unimaginable benefits on others. That's the thing I can't help noticing.
Obviously and self-evidently piracy is horribly wrong and theft and all the rest of it, but to spin a scenario that "quality music will end" because of it is really sort of preposterous--
Funny. I didn't say the above at all. Maybe you are projecting?
Quote:
If ALL information was free, how would musicians and creators of plug-ins earn enough to feed their families? I have a strong suspicion they wouldn't, so would find other jobs, leaving much LESS music and music software available in the 'free' system.
Is much less, and much less quality good for the future? IMO no.
I would humbly suggest 'much less' are the important words in what I wrote 'end' - not so much, in fact it never appears. tutt
It's absolute common sense that people who are rewarded for their hardwork and talent will seek formats that do reward them, while eschewing formats that don't.
I mean do superior basketball players from the Ukraine and Croatia seek a contract in the NBA? Is there a cue of thousands of music graduates waiting to enter the classical scene, or the jazz scene compared to popular music?
Have we seen a veritable explosion in reality tv since 'Big Brother ' proved such a massively cheap but profitable format.
Less quality?
Well tv stations could produce expensive epics like 'Roots' and 'Pride and Prejudice' on a yearly basis, employing skilled actors and technicians, or they can churn out dozens of reality tv shows made on camcorders with amateurs who are just happy to have their moment in the spotlight (not thinking of a living wage).
So, in my humble opinion the evidence is out there.
But if you're saying that 'quality' is so subjective that 'Survivor 5 - The Outer Hebrides' is as rewarding for creative talent as 'Dr Who' or 'House', then I think you are singing from a different hymn sheet than most serious commentators.
There is no hope now - no traditional copy protection will work, as the crack will leak out soon after implementation.
People are basicly dishonest, or let's just say rules are meant to be broken.
I think one solution would be for all music to contain hidden embedded digital signitures that would remain when ripped. Then, all internet providers would have to be required by law to sniff for those signitures when the data stream is passing through. Sniffing is already done with regards terrorist threats on the internet and cell phones, text messages, etc in most parts of the world, even in many asian nations.
Obviously all internet providers would have to comply, and a mechanism would have to exist to allow paid-for content to pass through to the buyer, with the digital signiture reset to "not transmittable" at the last junction before the buyer recieves the content.
Digital signitures can be very cleverly embedded and scattered throughout the content - does not have to be just at the beginning. Of course some cracking might still take place and to deal with that the record companies would have to stay on top of the matter by searching out pirates and busting them. Programs now exist that can listen to a song (digitally) and identify it, so a lot of the vigilance can be automated.
We should all be talking about such solutions because it all begins with talking.
We should all talk also about music piracy as being immoral - it is stealing, and when people do immoral things they will usually do more immoral things and the wasteland will grow, however gradual it may be.
This is utterly pointless.
All music already contains a "signature" - the music. That's what digital fingerprinting is all about. It's already possible to identify any piece of music, and all commercial releases already contain metadata that is used for commercial registration, etc.
The problem with any scheme like this is doing it in real time, which is not possible at current levels of technology. It is not possible to do ANY type of identification or analysis fast enough to block transmission. It's fine for logging and traffic analysis, but that's about it.
We've already discussed this at length elsewhere in the forum.
Start with post #28 by Matt Allison. Pay particular attention to the answers to Matt by Don Hills (an internet IT specialist) and myself.
When all the pop tracks are blasted at them through every form of advertising known to man every day of course they are not going to want to pay for it, even if they like it.
It's questionable as to whether anybody actually likes the bulk of modern pop. What is true is that a lot of girls like to dance to it and boys like to dance with the girls. But there's a BIG difference between liking to dance to a rhythmic noise and actually liking the noise itself. Will anybody actually be listening to any of this stuff in 5 or 10 years? Probably not, because it's all faceless, interchangeable dance noise with little artistic content. It's not memorable. People are willing to pay for memorable music, but not cookie-cutter crap.
Quote:
The state of the music industry is not the way it is just because of piracy. Music's free, that's it, no ifs no buts, it's times like these that require someone with a brain that can think, we've found that pretty much everyone in the ''industry'' or claim to work in it, clearly can't, as whinging on a forum never did anything, I doubt it freed Madella and I doubt it brought the Berlin wall down.
You could not be more wrong. Great music is expensive. It is expensive to create, it is expensive to record properly, and it is expensive to perform at a high level of professionalism.
Amateur music is free because it's not worth buying. Very few amateurs put in the work to become professional, because it's intense and you don't get paid for a long time. Because of this, and the leeching of the financial lifeblood of the music business by piracy, fewer and fewer people are willing to put out the effort required.
What's the result? Kids are turning to music of earlier generations. That's still popular and people actually listen to it, of all ages. That music has value.
As to new music, there are some great artists out there, but if they don't get the support they need they'd most likely give up and become lawyers or go work in IT.
Great music costs money. Get with the program.
Quote:
It was never polices because your tax was spent on Iraq/Afghanistan and a lot of other stuff you wouldn't want to know about.
Point taken. Bad use of words.
It's likely there would never be 'NO' income and therefore 'NO' great songwriters. It's one of things you say in a hurry.
My main point (which you seem to have ignored), was this:
Quote:
leaving much LESS music and music software available in the 'free' system.
I see your point.
The problem though is that I think MANY people need to be told what is quality, or what is cool. It's not as much a given as we would like to think.
I take great pride in picking out what is really cool, or well done in particular music, but sometimes (not often) I also need friends to point out cool things that I may have overlooked, or had some sort of internalized block on. And I'm a trained musician.
Multiply that condition by a factor of (?) in someone who literally doesn't understand music this way at all, and what you get is someone who could be persuaded that just about any old piece of shit is worth listening to.
Take Hollywood for example: "Meet the Fockers" beat "True Grit" at the box office this weekend. But not because it was a better film, but the TV ads were more persuasive and unrelenting for it.
I saw "True Grit" at a midnight showing the day it was released and I would have paid double, it was amazing.
I wouldn't watch "Meet the Fockers" if dinner with DeNiro was included afterwards, but I'm sure it's a piece of shit.
I guess my point in consideration of your point is that the marketers are bold enough and persuasive enough to make average folk like whatever they tell them to. What could possibly be the incentive for getting them to peddle GOOD art??
This is a good point. A large part of the problem is that the Federal Government cracked down of indie music promoters a few years ago and effectively put them out of business, under the guise of "cleaning up payola". This has had HORRIBLE effects on the industry.
You could not be more wrong. Great music is expensive. It is expensive to create, it is expensive to record properly, and it is expensive to perform at a high level of professionalism.
Amateur music is free because it's not worth buying. Very few amateurs put in the work to become professional, because it's intense and you don't get paid for a long time. Because of this, and the leeching of the financial lifeblood of the music business by piracy, fewer and fewer people are willing to put out the effort required.
What's the result? Kids are turning to music of earlier generations. That's still popular and people actually listen to it, of all ages. That music has value.
As to new music, there are some great artists out there, but if they don't get the support they need they'd most likely give up and become lawyers or go work in IT.
Or how about I paint my house and you download an image or approximation of what it looks like. Bad example, I know. But that's the problem. It's really hard to put a price tag on something that can be so easily acquired at the push of a button. Someone made a good point earlier that the purchase of music should be made easier than the theft of music. My point isn't that theft of music is good, it is that free information is good. Piracy is an unfortunate side affect of that and a reality. Some will adapt and some will wait for someone else to fix the problem. I'm very curious to see how this all pans out, but I think it's still too early to come to any conclusions.
Just as long as the goal posts can remain planted where they are...
I do enjoy this volley quite a bit... so many forums are deadly dull with arguments over trivia, it's disheartening-- whereas here, the issues are vital and the implications very significant for all our futures.
I see an ever-expanding universe of music online, in the "free" system, because the access is completely unhindered. We can probably agree that the internet is flooded with it, good, bad and indifferent, but the trendline is like the spiking of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere-- relentless and skyrocketing. I saw John Eppstein say in another thread that "great music is expensive," and it was declared, like he was reading from a stone tablet. To which I say... What? Phenomenally exquisite gear is dirt cheap! In the Old World of 1977, great music was expensive, because it required a whole behemoth-hood of customized buildings and monstrously complicated electronics-- that just isn't true anymore, not even slightly. Some kind of DAW, an ART interface, a few Avant mics... and you're in Peter Frampton territory. There really is no debating this point, it's just true.
So: no matter what any of us do or say, there will assuredly be much MORE music from here on out-- the quality being determined, for the first time in history, by the innate talents of the composers, because there is no longer a bottleneck due to the former prohibitively expensive costs of production.
Less music software? Geez, I dunno... I sort of wished someone had strangled the inventors of Auto-tune in their cribs, myself.
Socal engineering. Persuade people that it's uncool to infringe copyright. (And it's illegal too, though that's often more of an inducement than a deterrent.)
Look at other social engineering campaigns.
Smoking.
Domestic violence.
DUI / Drink Driving.
Any thoughts on how such a campaign would be structured for making piracy socially undesirable (uncool)?
Social engineering combined with legal sanctions. Every one of the areas you cite has a legal component.
Smoking - the banning of smoking in public places, especially restaurants and bars, in conjunction with punitive taxation.
Domestic violence - Increased enforcement (due to heightened police awareness) and stiffer penalties.
DUI/Drunk Driving - see above.
That gives the social engineering some muscle to back it up.
Because that's not the logical result-- the logical result is that music becomes much more hobby than occupation. And the quality of it, as ever, is in the eyes of the beholder-- and the digital revolution has made technical quality perfectly achievable to anyone, anywhere. That, in this observer's eyes, is the real root of the problem-- the fact that it doesn't take a huge complex and an army of engineers and techs to make a "great" record anymore. I.e., the "cost" of creating great music is very, very minimal in this world in which we live in.
Joel, as a professional recordist who gets paid for his expertise you know as well as I do that that's simply not true.
Granted, in your specialized niche the technology involved is a great deal simpler than it is for making records in the popular genres, but still you must realize that proper recording methodology is not something that Joe Schmoe can pick up by buying an M-Box and a couple of 57s at Banjo Center and subscribing to SOS magazine. That's good enough for hobby stuff (hobbyist audio has never been better) and adequate for making demos and non-commercial YouTube vids but it simply isn't commercial quality and never will be.
The cost of creating "OK" music is minimal, and that's fine. The cost of creating GREAT music is not minimal and never will be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by psalad
I agree Joel.
On topic... I tell my kids (and people who ask me to rip my CDs) that people pay for music they want to own. If you don't want to own it, then there are plenty of places to listen to it for free, radio, pandora/last.fm/whatever, online radio, youtube, the artist's own site, etc.
You do understand that Joel makes his living by doing location recordings of school musical ensembles, which are then pressed and sold to the proud parents, relatives, and friends of the student musicians, not by doing any sort of commercial music, right?
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