Somewhat related, what's the status nowadays of un-DRM'ing music you've purchased, say from iTunes Store, to play on other players, particularly on Linux? Is it possible? What if you don't have access to Windows or OSX (to burn an non-DRM cd)? Legal?
The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
81–90 of 158 posts
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#82I came to this conclusion myself about 6 months ago, after Dalton Caldwell spoke at a YC dinner. I realized it was basically hopeless to start startups that touch label music, because even the ones that seem to be succeeding (in the sense of not being sued out of existence) are only allowed to live so the labels can suck investors' money through them. But by creating a startup-free zone around themselves, all the lab…
I think if the startup has to do with helping bands survive independent of record labels, there's plenty of room. Once the secret formula to finding success as a musician without a major record label is discovered, all bets are off for the suits.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate? I think the store is frustrating, but I've found the player itself has been pretty stable and usable for the last 6-7 years on OSX (I have 40GB of music btw). It's a big ol' spreadsheet with instant search and drag+drop playlists.
I find the spreadsheet-style interface pretty uninspired for something as personal as music. The linear list of albums/tracks breaks down very quickly once your library starts growing, and iTunes becomes a confusing, disorientating mess. To Apple's credit, they've been taking baby steps towards more interesting ways of browsing your library with Genius playlists and mixes, but they could and should do so much more.
What are the alternatives, though?
I quite like the three column browser for quickly finding music even if I only have a very fuzzy idea of what I would like right now. It scales quite well, even if you have a library with several thousand songs and a few hundred artists. Together with the hybrid cover view it doesn’t even look very much like a spreadsheet.
Then there’s the grid view which also has its uses. I especially like to display albums by year which gives me a nice chronological overview. Coverflow is pretty worthless, though.
I think that while iTunes gets the big picture somewhat right (at least as far as its audio library functionality is concerned) it gets many details spectacularly wrong. The UI for tagging feels ancient. Oh, and it’s modal. iTunes forces me to play column jockey. I don‘t want to change column widths just so I don’t get vertical scrollbars. iTunes should keep it all nice and tidy for me, kind of like Mail. That, and many other small details.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#84I don't know if it was just me growing up, but music changed dramatically right after Napster was forced to kill itself.
Perhaps someone else can support this: "Music" has never been the same since then. It seemed so much more available, so much more pervasive, more frequently invasive to my life; better than it is now.
Like I said, I've grown. But it seems that as the generation behind me moved online in a major way, the music didn't quite follow. Its not that you can't find great music these days, it's that - ironically - it is so much more difficult to do so.
I don't see this ever changing really. The blip that was the 20 century music industry is dead and gone, replaced with essentially a long tail market of grains of sand of that - occasionally if you look hard enough - has a couple of diamonds hidden away in obscurity.
But then again, maybe I'm just getting old.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#85> Nobody’s going to pay Google $25 a year to store their music in a cloud. I'd pay that to be rid of iTunes.
Me too. iTunes is just horrible. I'd love a non-iTunes way of getting my music onto an iPod.
If you have an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry, Rdio is awesome for getting music on there. Way easier than iTunes, if you ask me.
Disclaimer: I totally work for them.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's lasted this long it will probably keep going for some time yet. They have a pretty clear song takedown policy, so any music being shared on grooveshark is likely being done so with the full consent of the label. Grooveshark is also paying the music owners royalty from a share of their ad revenue.
IIRC, Grooveshark only pays EMI royalties, and UMG is taking them to court. Sony and Warner have no deals. I'd be curious to see what Sony and Warner choose to do.
It doesn't matter. UMG is the elephant in the room, they'll do whatever UMG does.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#87I would absolutely pay google $25 to store my music in the cloud. I have 150GB of the stuff and keeping it on my laptop has become impossible.
I would absolutely not. What if they decide that the music branch of their business is expendable? "We're shutting down our servers in a month, gl;dd". Remember Microsoft.
If it was my music to begin with I hopefully have it backed up somewhere, so no harm done. I'll just go back to doing whatever I did before.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#88The old guard is losing power, their business models are failing, their control is going away.
A new dream is starting. A different dream than the fantasy of being "discovered" by a major record label and becoming rich and famous overnight (which translated into a reality that often didn't quite match up to the dream, for the bands or for their fans). A new dream where increasingly many artists are bootstrapping themselves into making a living from their music without big record labels interfering with their creative process, sucking the bulk of the profits away with little in exchange, and adding layers of corporate bullshit between artists and fans. Instead, bands are connecting directly with fans, selling music directly to fans, producing their own albums on their own schedules and releasing them however they like for whatever prices they wish to charge, and making the lion's share of the profits for themselves.
This is happening right now. Spreading right now. Becoming the new way that music is produced and distributed. It's something to look forward to.
The music industry is dead! Long live the music industry!
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
only allowed to live so the labels can suck investors' money through them That's true, but not as true as you might suspect. Pandora is profitable. Yes, they are certainly pumping a large amount of money to the record labels, but they're able to exist without driving their users away with over-advertising. I wouldn't do a (label) music-based startup today, though. Sad.
Pandora has been close to shutting down a number of times: * http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2007/03/riaas-new-r... * http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08... they are at the mercy of the labels.
Absolutely true. I was making the point that they've survived and are apparently thriving. However: Pandora and similar services have had to work far too hard to do such a straightforward thing.
Re: The Dream Is Over: Music Labels Have Killed Their Digital Future
#90I came to this conclusion myself about 6 months ago, after Dalton Caldwell spoke at a YC dinner. I realized it was basically hopeless to start startups that touch label music, because even the ones that seem to be succeeding (in the sense of not being sued out of existence) are only allowed to live so the labels can suck investors' money through them. But by creating a startup-free zone around themselves, all the lab…
The situation isn't entirely hopeless. Even within the most aggressive labels (and by that I mean their legal departments) there are parties who do encourage innovation. These are the people that go to bat for artists and are trying everything imaginable to promote them. They try new advertising campaigns, are experimenting with alternate branding, and moving to the sports business model (ie endorsements). Its unfort…
This sounds naive. The people running the labels are very cynical, and the way they're compensated makes them even more so. They don't have equity. They're motivated by bonuses that come out of this year's revenue. So they're not interested in building stuff. They just want to extract large amounts of money, this year, from whoever they can.