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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

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Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#161

Post by sharkweek »

nvarsj wrote: post #29
mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

> What I find most strange about the modern day piracy is quality. For a lot of pirates, it's a niche hobby to preserve the best quality version of some media / art. I see it as an underground librarian archivist movement. In 100 years iTunes may be dead, but there will be some person with every album available in high quality lossless FLAC. Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes.

>every album available in high quality lossless FLAC.

In college I ate up an entire hard drive downloading the bootleg discography of Pearl Jam live shows in the hugest quality I could find.

Not sure why I needed 50+ live versions of the song Daughter or Yellow Ledbetter but… I had ‘em

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#162

Post by anal_reactor »

listenallyall wrote: post #143
pavlov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwise support the artists directly. In contrast companies like Spotify don’t care about the music at all. They would just as well sell you white noise if it would somehow give them the slightest improvement in growth or margins. Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, regular…

[flagged]

These two are not mutually exclusive

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#163

Post by lupusreal »

neilv wrote: post #78

Napster helped motivate and justify all sorts of nasty DRM and legislation, which has adverse implications for more than just piracy. And at the time of the MP3 frenzy, there were a relatively small number of people saying, "Wait, won't this mean a backlash of adversarial laws and technology that make things bad for everyone?" But that was ignored by the masses of newly-arrived Internet users wanting to take stuff fo…

You're being naive if you think we wouldn't have those laws if not for Napster. If not that pretext it would be another. Floppy disks and flash drives could have been it.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#164

Post by [deleted] »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #157
localfirst wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading parents comment with a bit of cynicism until I tried suno and I believe we are going to see significant garnishing of wages in creative field https://suno.com/song/dc950e10-6bbe-4649-8cdb-7a4d81762aae

I believe we are going to see significant garnishing of wages in creative field A wage garnishment is any legal or equitable procedure through which some portion of a person's earnings is required to be withheld for the payment of a debt. Most garnishments are made by court order. You think because of auto generated music there are going to be court orders to take money out of the paychecks of people in 'creative fie…

[deleted]

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#165

Post by cortesoft »

pavlov wrote: post #83
nvarsj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I find most strange about the modern day piracy is quality. For a lot of pirates, it's a niche hobby to preserve the best quality version of some media / art. I see it as an underground librarian archivist movement. In 100 years iTunes may be dead, but there will be some person with every album available in high quality lossless FLAC. Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes.

Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwise support the artists directly. In contrast companies like Spotify don’t care about the music at all. They would just as well sell you white noise if it would somehow give them the slightest improvement in growth or margins. Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, regular…

Spotify might not care as much about the music and the artists as pirates, but they sure pay the artists more.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#166

Post by nuancebydefault »

Buying music (singles or albums) was super expensive in 1999. It was unfair for listeners as well as artists.

Napster suddenly made it 'free'. I remember thinking, if CD's were not so ridiculously expensive and i could pick the songs on it, i would just buy them instead of spending money on data traffic time/bandwidth.

Today, we pay much less and the artists are still paid, while we can choose exactly what to listen to.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#167

Post by joemazerino »

sorenjan wrote: post #139

I rarely see it mentioned when discussing old file sharing programs, but I thought DC++ was the best. With the right hubs you could find anything you wanted, you could download parts of a file from multiple peers, you could browse a user's shared files to find new stuff, we had a server in our university network that RIAA/MPAA could find, there was a chat for each server, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC%2B%2B

DC++ was a superior file sharing app. I used it often. I liked how you could control ratios from individual downloaders or servers.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#168

Post by nuancebydefault »

mmh0000 wrote: post #22
im3w1l wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3+hours? I remember being able to download roughly 10 songs in an hour.

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 was more like 4 mins per song on a 56K modem. So you could listen a full song while downloading another. Hence pretty acceptable. The less acceptable part was that nobody could use the phone.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#169

Post by dasil003 »

listenallyall wrote: post #143
pavlov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwise support the artists directly. In contrast companies like Spotify don’t care about the music at all. They would just as well sell you white noise if it would somehow give them the slightest improvement in growth or margins. Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, regular…

[flagged]

Wait, what? There are so many assumptions packed into this statement.

Why should we view things through the lens of whether we are glorifying pirates or not? Is your assertion we should be condemning them? Why? Is it because they are taking bread out of the mouths of musicians? Is it equally bad if Spotify uses their leverage to commoditize and devalue music so musicians can no longer make meaningful money from recorded music? What about music labels who structure deals so they get the bulk of the money for a fraction of the work?

I'm curious to understand the principles you hold that give you such a black and white view on piracy.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#170

Post by anal_reactor »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #120
mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

Gosh this is such a throwback... One of my first experiences with Napster was trying to download Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again and getting a shitty remix. The worst part was that I didn't check the song, so I ended up burning it to a CD only to find out after the fact that the song wasn't what I was looking for. And every song took so long to download because it was dial-up... It's crazy how much things have ch…

A friend of mine downloaded a bunch of videos "funny hidden camera" and then burned them on a CD and one turned out to be porn. Like, even back then it boggled my mind why he wouldn't have checked.
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