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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

#121
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…

>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,

It sounds like you want new music all the time. If you don't listen to "old" music often and only listen to new music from time to time, what do you listen to? So technically, 25+ years is considered classic. What is the definition of "new"? 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? What is newer than classic, but not new, modern? Is a song 15 years old modern? To me, good music is timeless. I enjoy stuff from the 1920s, 50s, 60s, 70s, the good stuff from the 80s, all the way through today.

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

#122
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…

I pay for streaming music because I've pirated all my other music, and it's convenient. Quality is subjective, I'm no audiophile and unless I'm using it on the go with low data mode on, I can't hear the difference... except the one time with a more obscure song, but I reported that and they fixed it. Maybe that was an accidental low data mode though.

Buy music directly from the artist. Streaming services are a cancer.

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

#123
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…

Have you tried bandcamp? It's a great way to pay artists directly while having the convenience and discoverability of streaming services.

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

#124

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…

>No more rewinding/forwarding

You did get adept at looking at a record to figure out where the songs were based on the record track "texture". (our high school had a radio station, and records being the music mode at the time). To cue up the next song, we'd play the record into the song, take the payer "out of gear" and manually spin the record backwards while listening till we hit blank. We did this part off the air (most of the time..)

We had this wierd cassette player boombox. It had 2 ff and rewinds, one of which would disable the pinch rollers, pull the tape head back a bit and fast forward the tape listening for blank areas, where upon it would stop. It worked but I'm guessing the wear and tear on the tapes must have been bad. Though we didn't notice.

CDs were much better.

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

#125
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napster launched in 1999, The Pirate Bay launched in 2003, Spotify only launched internationally in 2010 / 2011. There's been a decade without proper legal options to get music. Buying CDs wasn't a reasonable choice anymore in the digital age, CDs were outdated and not fit in the age where people could buy portable mp3 players. The music industry was beyond late, they were a full decade late to the party and paid the…

> Napster launched in 1999, The Pirate Bay launched in 2003, Spotify only launched internationally in 2010 / 2011. There's been a decade without proper legal options to get music. That's simply false, iTunes launched in 2001.

iTunes only launched in 2011/2012 in Eastern Europe and many other countries. Before that the only way to get music digitally was to download it from P2P networks.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but the music market is special in some ways. * Artificial scarcity. Recorded music is a scarce good only because the law says so. You wouldn't download a car and so on. * Non-fungibility. Music isn't all the same. Customers want a record with their favourite artist and not just any record of similar "quality". There was a very limited time in human history where musicians could get rich by only selling…

> * Artificial scarcity. Recorded music is a scarce good only because the law says so. You wouldn't download a car and so on But this scarcity is good. It enables, or would enable, production of music which wouldn't otherwise be produced. If music piracy weren't so much an issue today, the music industry size would probably be several times its current size (it would have simply grown with the rest of the economy, as…

There are more than 100M tracks on Spotify. More that one person can listen to over several lifetimes. Even if 99% of them are crap - that still leaves 1M of good tracks. The amount of available music is simply staggering nowadays.

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

#127
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…

I pay for streaming music because I've pirated all my other music, and it's convenient. Quality is subjective, I'm no audiophile and unless I'm using it on the go with low data mode on, I can't hear the difference... except the one time with a more obscure song, but I reported that and they fixed it. Maybe that was an accidental low data mode though.

I buy stuff with bandcamp, then import directly onto my navidrome server in ALAC.

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

#128
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What is not on streaming services? From my experience - if it's not on spotify then it's on youtube.

Streaming services can be compelled to remove your access to content at any point. I don’t like giving that power to anyone when it comes to something I love so deeply.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for streaming music because I've pirated all my other music, and it's convenient. Quality is subjective, I'm no audiophile and unless I'm using it on the go with low data mode on, I can't hear the difference... except the one time with a more obscure song, but I reported that and they fixed it. Maybe that was an accidental low data mode though.

Buy music directly from the artist. Streaming services are a cancer.

Streaming services can be an excellent music discovery platform.

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

#130
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…

I pay for streaming music because I've pirated all my other music, and it's convenient. Quality is subjective, I'm no audiophile and unless I'm using it on the go with low data mode on, I can't hear the difference... except the one time with a more obscure song, but I reported that and they fixed it. Maybe that was an accidental low data mode though.

I stream my own music, because you can do that now. It's $0/month, and I never have to worry about some cranky millionaire getting pissed at Spotify and yanking their music off of it.

Nothing is so convenient that I'd ever pay an ongoing subscription. Those always feel like scams or ripoffs, and life in 2023 is so overfilled with subscriptions that they can't possibly be affordable to even you guys who make x3 what I do. Can they?

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