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The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

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Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#171

Post by xgkickt »

francescovv wrote: post #65
ssl-3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to miss being able to hand a floppy disk to someone to give them some data, but then I got used to using email instead (once disk quotas, transfer rates, and attachment sizes caught up). The disks were cheap enough (eventually) to not care much about. And for a while, I enjoyed handing people CD-Rs or DVD-Rs full of data, and the disks were also cheap enough (eventually) to not care much about. (And disk quota…

> What (...) happened to easily sending data, over the Internet And for mobile phones - without internet is similar, unnecessarily hard. The other day I was hiking with friends, and wanted to share a .gpx file with the route, at some spot with no cell coverage. I thought: "I 'member, bluetooth can send files". Well, we spent good 15 minutes trying and miserably failed, that's no longer possible in the name of "securi…

Phones are able to capture MiBs per frame via their cameras, so I wonder if you could make an app that has both playback and recording of data, like displaying an animated QR-like code on one phone and recording it on another.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#172

Post by phendrenad2 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #31
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? On a regular disk? I thought the upper limit was ~2.7M

Yes, their LS-120 drives could store ~120MB on a special disk, or allegedly 32MB on a regular 3.5" high-density disk[1]. It used SMR recording just like the modern spinny-rust hard drives of late that none of us particularly like to accomplish the latter trick. (I owned an ATAPI variant of this drive for time, but I sadly only ever used it for reading and writing normal disks of normal formatting.) 1: https://en.wiki…

Ah SuperDisk, I only know about it because there was a drive for the PowerBook G3.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#174

Post by samatman »

dockd wrote: post #145
Rinzler89 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bluetooth can work, but it is slow as hell, and Apple doesn't support it. Wait, seriously? iPhones still don't support Bluetooth file transfers? I knew this was the case with the first iPhone but I just accepted that's a limitation from the OS being still an early release of a brand new product with limited functionality, I wouldn't have expect this to be the case after 15 years. Anyway, I'm still baffled we never g…

You first have to get a file from your iOS app. Good luck with that.

Hit the share button and select "Save to Files". Dead easy.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#175

Post by iamacyborg »

afavour wrote: post #165
yxwvut wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth distinguishing that 'most creators get paid a pittance' is only true on a per-view basis. The total outflows to creators is higher, but the total viewership is massively increased due to the leftward shift in where we live on the demand curve. There's no 'money for nothing' solution where everyone just accepts higher prices and continues consuming at the current rate.

> The total outflows to creators is higher Is that actually true, though? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that bands only really make money from touring these days and that streaming money is basically a rounding error.

I suspect it’s true, but that also a bigger share of that pie is going to fewer labels and artists. It works out to a net gain for a minority and a net loss for everyone one.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#176

Post by TheGRS »

afavour wrote: post #165
yxwvut wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worth distinguishing that 'most creators get paid a pittance' is only true on a per-view basis. The total outflows to creators is higher, but the total viewership is massively increased due to the leftward shift in where we live on the demand curve. There's no 'money for nothing' solution where everyone just accepts higher prices and continues consuming at the current rate.

> The total outflows to creators is higher Is that actually true, though? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that bands only really make money from touring these days and that streaming money is basically a rounding error.

The industry has shifted greatly for creatives. Musicians especially. In the 90s which was peak old industry music, the labels would take chances on various artists and those artists would have a shot at something big for little while. The label paid for the studio time.

These days with creative tools so accessible and widespread, and the ability to publish so cheap, artists need to produce their own music and find their own following before the label takes them on. Instead of the label paying for studio time the artist does. I think that's why these discussions concentrate on the whole "fewer artists making more of the share" part. It IS different, but its not the whole story.

And I'd probably argue in favor of making creative endeavors more widespread instead of being in the lap of a few label executive taste-makers, but you definitely have fewer artists who can just concentrate on making great music and getting nice royalties. Now you have to do everything for a smaller pay day.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#177

Post by alt227 »

TheGRS wrote: post #176
afavour wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The total outflows to creators is higher Is that actually true, though? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that bands only really make money from touring these days and that streaming money is basically a rounding error.

The industry has shifted greatly for creatives. Musicians especially. In the 90s which was peak old industry music, the labels would take chances on various artists and those artists would have a shot at something big for little while. The label paid for the studio time. These days with creative tools so accessible and widespread, and the ability to publish so cheap, artists need to produce their own music and find t…

>The label paid for the studio time.

I am sorry but this is completely false. All artist contracts in the 90s stated the label would pay upfront, but all costs would be recouped from future album sales and touring profits before the artist saw a dime. The labels didnt take a chance on anything, they heavily covered their asses by monumental contracts which were very famously difficult to get out of once signed.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#178

Post by digging »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #106
prmoustache wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As teenagers used to record mixtapes of music we likes to people we liked/love. Nowadays people just tag other on social medias or send links in private messages. I wonder if some still take the time to curate / prepare special things the same way we did.

For some recent holiday I had my girlfriend burn me a CD of an album I liked. (Legally bought DRM-free) I'd make her a mix CD, but there isn't much music we've listened to together. In fact, when I talk to anyone about music, the result is often a mutual "Hm, never heard of them" followed by non-interest. Music discovery is done independently and I don't usually want to get into other people's bands. I guess it used…

This reflects a lot of my experience. Music has become more and more personal over the years.

I have one friend whom I introduced to a lot of music and we used to share often (links to songs etc). Over time, that friend began having their own vast personal world of music and we rarely share anymore.

One of my favorite things to do with music is to create a curated playlist and imagine sharing it. Sometimes I actually will share it with that friend or my partner, and that's been well received at times, as a rule it usually feels like asking anyone else to listen to something I like is just burdening/boring them.

Possibly worse, when you actually do connect with someone new about shared music taste... suddenly you open the floodgates and actually there's way too much music out there in your individual spheres so that sharing becomes exhausting.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#179

Post by mock-possum »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #3

I remember being super hyped for the successor of the floppy disk back as a kid in the 90s... Iomega Zip Drives. And then getting super hyped for the successor to the CD... the BluRay, and wondering what sort of holographic multi terabyte wizardry would be the nextgen of optical disks. Now we are in 2024 and what actually happened is no one owns their movie or music libraries anymore... they are all streamed from som…

Y-yeah streaming sure has killed ownership of media…

* glances nervously at the Ethernet leading into the NAS in the closet, overflowing with music and videos and books and games

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#180

Post by da_chicken »

yxwvut wrote: post #169
afavour wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The total outflows to creators is higher Is that actually true, though? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that bands only really make money from touring these days and that streaming money is basically a rounding error.

The total pie has absolutely grown. There were a little under 1 billion US album sales in 2000 (the peak of CDs). Spotify alone paid around $3.5B in royalties in the US last year (with similar #s for apple music and a bit less for YT music). I suspect the disconnect comes from a) a big increase in the # of artists b) artists trying to compare apples to oranges #s as though every stream would've been an album/MP3 sale…

Well, we just saw Hollywood unions have a 4-month long strike over the portion of residuals they were receiving under streaming. I'm willing to bet that their complaints about not getting what they used to under prior contracts and models are entirely accurate.

We're also in a situation now where the media owners are building silos for their own content instead of licensing it and letting independent platforms compete on platform services and quality. That's not good for the people buying those services, either.

The pie might be bigger, but the same old middlemen are claiming the difference.

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