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Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

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Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#21

People laugh at all of this but Napster really did kill the music industry. No really. It did. And whatever it didn’t kill, YouTube did. So. Haha. Stupid musicians and their stupid stuffed suit execs. Lol.

Maybe we do not need that industry to exist anymore. You have more than hundred years of backlog at your fingertips as well as new stuff going out constantly. Music is abundant.

Eventually to be automated too, by the likes of musicgen.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#22

Ha I do miss the whole "mix tapes" thing but my god the excitement and anticipation I had when CDs and CD players came along, to be able to play Track 6 by just... pressing the "6" button. Or a tap or two with the remote: "next"! No more rewinding/forwarding, remember counter numbers for tracks (0 -> 999). Just an amazing step up in UI but looking back "you had to be there" :-) Now though I just have about 600 CDs ga…

Why quite sad ? There's nothing like crawling a collection of physical records or books and remind "Oh, I remember when I used to listen to this like crazy" and being able to simply put the record in a player and listen it"

That kind of serendipity is just not possible with digital collections, especially when records get deletted from services without notices, or you have to browse deep in a .mp3 collection you afforded not to lose by not backing it up.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#23
post #7

"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…

Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life? My own music tastes change over time. I don't listen to the same things I listened to 25 years ago - at least, not often. I want new music from time to time, especially if I'm walking places often. That's the thing with streaming. I'm OK with paying an amount that is less than a CD was 25 years ago just to have a bunch of music at my dispos…

> Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life?

Probably not, but given that I spent until the end of the CD age to collect music I do have enough to last me for several lifetimes. I'm a bit strange in that I will listen to music over and over again until I have it internalized, and even after that. I don't need something new every day.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#24
post #7

"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…

Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life? My own music tastes change over time. I don't listen to the same things I listened to 25 years ago - at least, not often. I want new music from time to time, especially if I'm walking places often. That's the thing with streaming. I'm OK with paying an amount that is less than a CD was 25 years ago just to have a bunch of music at my dispos…

> Is the service forever? Nope, probably not, but that's an issue for later me.

I don’t want to fuck over later me, so I’m still buying music. Probably not saving money, but I also get some music not on streaming services.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#25
post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

The hole in revenue in the early 2000 was because pirating was the only real option to get music online, you had no other choice.

The music industry was too stubborn to consider selling online and preferred to keep selling CDs, they were very very late to adapt and lost some revenue because of that.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#26
post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

If anything cassettes served as a music discovery service before we had the ability to share links online. Pretty much everything I ever bought I discovered because someone borrowed me a tape or sent me one from abroad.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#27
post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

CDs used to be crazy expensive. They cost much more than what was reasonable. Today I have access to untold thousands of records for €10 per month. That money (non inflation adjusted) would have bought me only a single record back in the day.

One could argue that the current price of music is too low. But the price they tried to extract back then was completely unreasonable and I think those excesses contributed heavily to the current situation.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#28
post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

This kinda explains the anti-piracy hysteria of the 2000s.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#29
post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

If you need a legend for the second chart, here it is:

physical music videos (yellow); CD singles (light orange); CD albums (dark orange); cassette singles (light blue); cassette albums (Carolina blue); vinyl LP/EPs (darker blue); download singles (purple); ringtone/ringbacks (periwinkle); download albums (dark purple); SoundExchange distributions (lime green); synchronization (light gray); free streaming (green); paid streaming subscriptions (dark green)

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#30
post #7

"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…

> The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves

It wasn't the record companies which ruined the music industry. It was us, the consumers. We ruined it with piracy.

https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000

We always like to imagine big organizations as the "baddies", and us as the "goodies". But the reality doesn't always follow this convenient narrative. Sometimes it turns out we were the baddies all along.

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