The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income Why? That ship has sailed. In 2022, as in 1922, 1822, 1722 etc musicians will have to earn their income by playing live.
Covid has shown that is now always possible for those artists.
There Is No CD Revival
101–110 of 201 posts
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#102> And streaming is not returning enough to musicians for them to survive; it is only serving to increase income inequality in our industry. The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income - and that revival is not coming from silver discs.
The fundamental problem is that streaming income is distributed as a percentage of total (worldwide) plays, instead of being normalized as a percentage of plays per listener.
Let's say that Olivia Rodrigo accounts for 2% of all plays on Spotify this month. Even though I have never heard one of her songs, she's going to get 2% of whatever percentage of my subscription goes to royalties (75% I think, or $7.50). So even though I have never heard her music, she's getting my money. By the same logic, even if I spent 100% of my time play Obscure Band, they are getting basically nothing.
Instead, Spotify should pay artists as a percent of plays per listener. So if 10 indie artists this month account for most of my streams, they would each get ~0.75 each. Which is starting to look reasonable.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ripping CDs for your own personal use is not illegal, as CDs have no copy protection mechanism that you would be circumventing.
Unfortunately here in the UK that isn't true. It's technically illegal. See my other comment in the thread about it.
Ah, I didn’t know, that’s really mental.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#104Many times, buying the CD and ripping it to FLAC* is the only way to legally acquire* music for use with your computer. * It must be lossless and high quality. * It must work offline.
Making a COPY from the CD to your computer is not legal us unless you have a license that allows you to do so.
My country has a law that says I have the right to make backups for personal use.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#105I moved house with 3000 CDs once. I bought an iPod the month after and sold them all. Eventually this turned into Apple Music. I hope there isn’t a CD revival because the cost, logistics, transport and storage for the things was abhorrent. There are literally only 5 tracks from my entire collection that weren’t on Apple Music in the end and more than one member of my family can listen to the same CD at the same time.…
My strategy against this is listening to music on Spotify first, but if I really like an album or an artist and keep returning to them, I'll buy the CD.
That's a reasonable strategy. I do the same thing with movies. I collect 4k UHD discs for my favorite movies, rent movies I want to see in the highest quality, and stream the rest.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing with CDs today is that they are merchandise, as with cassettes or vinyl or whatever. You don't buy them to listen to them, but to have them. I think this understanding is crucially necessary for musicians hopping on this "trend". Like they could make action figures or mood rings or whatever. What the fans want are buying is a tangible thing , a keepsake. So first they need an actual fan-base that may be int…
Agreed. I think this is why vinyl has taken off. It is much more physical then a CD. The artwork is larger and it just feels more personable. You have to be much more careful with it, and listening to it is a bigger investment. And a collection of vinyl looks great. I think a similar trend has happened with books. Certainly, e-readers are awesome. But for some things, you really want to have a physical copy. And in t…
The technical merits of vinyl are dubious.
But it is undeniably the coolest way to listen to music. It takes effort, it is an event, a ritual executed with great care.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ripping CDs for your own personal use is not illegal, as CDs have no copy protection mechanism that you would be circumventing.
In the United States there are a number of exceptions to the ban on circumventing DRM: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-libraria...
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Re: There Is No CD Revival
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> iTunes [is] lossless Is it? As far as I know, lossless is only offered for the Apple Music streaming service, but not for downloads from the iTunes store, which remain as 256K AAC files.
This may be semantics, and I am not sure what counts as Apple Music versus iTunes these days, but you can download all files for offline listening in Apple Music. I assume if you can download a lossless file from Apple Music that you can also buy that same file in the iTunes store and then download it. They both use the same app for playback, so this is a tad confusing.
Yes, but AFAIK things you download via your Apple Music subscription are still DRM-protected and can only be listened to as long as your subscription remains active.
Whereas the iTunes store downloads are a one time-purchase and have no DRM, so they're yours to keep.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
My strategy against this is listening to music on Spotify first, but if I really like an album or an artist and keep returning to them, I'll buy the CD.
That's a reasonable strategy. I do the same thing with movies. I collect 4k UHD discs for my favorite movies, rent movies I want to see in the highest quality, and stream the rest.
I do that with books. I read mostly on my phone, but I'll search for a hardcover 1st edition of favorites and try to get them signed by the author. That's worked pretty well with Stephenson, less so with Dostoevsky.
Re: There Is No CD Revival
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the one hand, you seem to (understandably) take great pride in the legal ownership of your CDs, but on the other hand, you're almost certainly breaking the law by ripping them. How do you feel about that? I have the same conflict with DVDs/BluRay. I want to play by the rules and pay for the media I enjoy, but it's absurd that it's illegal for me to rip the content that I've lawfully purchased for my own consumptio…
Obviously, laws differ in different countries, but in the US, making a backup copy for personal use is considered fair use, and is legal. With DVDs and Blu-Rays, the situation is less clear because there is a specific law against breaking DRM. However, to my knowledge, there has never been a lawsuit against a _user_ of software that lets you rip a DVD or BD, that law has only been used against companies that make or…
Even if it wouldn't fall under fair use because it broke DRM, I don't think the big labels want to risk a case against someone ripping for personal use only. There is too much risk that the story of the big giant trampling on the honest little guy making a backup will go viral (or anything else that would be fair use except for DRM laws). They know there are a lot of us who don't like DRM, but we don't quite have the power to change things, a few viral stories and the laws will change. (the treaties that require DRM can be renegotiated fast if there is political reason to do so)