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Every generation thinks that the next generations music is crap.
Studies show that people stop discovering new music when they are 30.
https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2023/03/study-shows-why-we-s...!
Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
31–40 of 350 posts
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look. It was 25 years ago. I’m an old man now. My memory of that time is a haze of multiplayer Quake strategy. How about I rephrase it: it FELT like 3+ hours.
It could still have been 3 hours as you would have been constrained not only by your own download speed, but also the peer’s upload speed, and they might have been on an even crappier dial-up line or sharing their bandwidth with other uploads.
IIRC Napster downloaded from multiple peers if possible. Each peer could restrict bandwidth so that they didn't get overwhelmed with outbound traffic. So speed would depend vastly on the popularity of content... if many people could provide a song, you could download it quickly (for the time: maybe a few minutes per song), but those where you had to rely on a single peer at a time could take hours.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#33I remember how out of control the lawsuits got by the mid-2000s. A friend had to drop out of college and move back home over some multi-million dollar claim on behalf of the RIAA that his family "settled" for $40K. It wasn't even clear he was responsible (the lawsuit was based on IP), but he was scared and admitted to using "file sharing services", and that was that. I'm still disappointed that laws against barratry…
What rights did you used to have?
We used to have the right to copy whatever we wanted and be accountable to no one.
That all went away in 1790 when the U.S. government passed the first Copyright Act. https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/timeline_18th_century.htm...
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could still have been 3 hours as you would have been constrained not only by your own download speed, but also the peer’s upload speed, and they might have been on an even crappier dial-up line or sharing their bandwidth with other uploads.
IIRC Napster downloaded from multiple peers if possible. Each peer could restrict bandwidth so that they didn't get overwhelmed with outbound traffic. So speed would depend vastly on the popularity of content... if many people could provide a song, you could download it quickly (for the time: maybe a few minutes per song), but those where you had to rely on a single peer at a time could take hours.
I'm not sure, but i think it was napster's succesors that introduced that. I dont think napster had that sort of thing.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the argument for file sharing ruining music? I would think more the opposite, that it improved distribution and discovery for lesser-known artists, and so helped diversify music.
There’s a theory that for a period of time in the 00s, all the “smart” people were getting their music for free online, while only “dumb” people were buying CDs, and so popular music charts began to reflect the tastes only of the “dumb” people. I don’t believe it because (a) crap music has always existed, and (b) Napster nerds were numerous but still weren’t a critical mass capable of moving the market like this.
I downloaded stuff from Napster (and its successors) but still bought CDs that I liked it in the store. Having a CD of vinyl collection used to be a matter of pride even if you had everything also on mp3s.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#36Yet we still don't have a safe & resilient alternative for using Kademlia tables. Shame on us.
What's wrong with current generation DHT? They work. They are secure (depending on how you define that). They are reliable. Why would we want to replace them?
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC Napster downloaded from multiple peers if possible. Each peer could restrict bandwidth so that they didn't get overwhelmed with outbound traffic. So speed would depend vastly on the popularity of content... if many people could provide a song, you could download it quickly (for the time: maybe a few minutes per song), but those where you had to rely on a single peer at a time could take hours.
I'm not sure, but i think it was napster's succesors that introduced that. I dont think napster had that sort of thing.
Too long ago, you could be right, maybe KaZaA?
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#38> According to the RIAA’s former CEO, Hilary Rosen, a few months after Napster’s release, the music industry shifted into full panic mode. In February 2000, all major label executives discussed the threat during an RIAA board meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. > “I will never forget this day. All of the heads of the labels, literally the titans of the music business, were in that room. I had somebody w…
Maybe, but don't discount media lobbying gov't, and trying to generate moral outrage about AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety, etc to make sure only big corps control AI.
>AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety
This isn't generated outage, it's genuine, and objectively justified. Trying to find clients was hard enough for artists to begin with.
We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction, but instead we're automating art and interaction so we can focus on slaving away even harder. This is somehow worse than any traditional dystopia story. Government propaganda posters were at least the work of a human hand.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look. It was 25 years ago. I’m an old man now. My memory of that time is a haze of multiplayer Quake strategy. How about I rephrase it: it FELT like 3+ hours.
It could still have been 3 hours as you would have been constrained not only by your own download speed, but also the peer’s upload speed, and they might have been on an even crappier dial-up line or sharing their bandwidth with other uploads.
25 years ago i had an engineer come out: everyone on the street was sharing a connection in the local box. We chatted about tech etc and he put me on a single connection.
Sod the neighbors (their connections didn't get slower, mine got faster).
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#40And now rock stars who were once as rich as, well, rock stars, are largely forced to get by on a pittance from either Spotify or YouTube. It used to be that there were hundreds of stars getting rich. Now there's Taylor Swift and... I can't name anyone else.
But, hey, the quasi-communists who thought they were somehow liberating the music from the evil rich people ended up dragging all of the music industry down into poverty.