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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

torrentfreak.com

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

#251
post #22
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.

Which Quake? Are we talking Q1 E1M1 and the rocket launcher, Q2 Base1 + Quad damage + double-shotty, or Q2CTF and grapple hook-fishing, Action quake or what?? :)

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

#252
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last study I've seen, that stopped being... I won't say true, but I'd say that it stopped being a valid counterargument to that particular complaint. Now that young people can access music from any time in YouTube, their choices are more atemporal and certain remote decades keep getting much love. If you combine that fact with current music being more marketed and aired, there's seem to be something at play here. I d…

There has always been a lot of marketing an airing to make music catchy. The entire “Motown machine” wasn’t about the artists, it was about the writers, producers, choreographers etc and making sure music was “acceptable” to a wider audience.

I meant that the music that's publicized today is the music that's made today. So if even with this handicap, older music is as popular as the new, one explanation could be that it was intrinsically catchier.

The graphic that I saw:

https://x.com/antonello/status/1781197022910947492

To be clear: I'm not arguing that it was better, just more memorable, uplifting or touching. Actually, in ye olden times, "commercial music" was a synonym of bad and "quality music" was expected to be minoritary.

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

#253
post #113

Paramount+ coming out with a two part documentary June 11 based on a book with the same name, How Music Got Free: https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/paramount-plus/shows/h...

1) What kind of domain is that? Looks like a domain for a tabloid or something 2) It redirects me to https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/location-not-allowed which says "Your geographic location is not allowed access". Here is a mirror for others who happen to not live in the US (or whatever country it's restricted to): https://archive.is/AYgwj

Paramount is very keen on region restrictions. I have a hobby of watching/sharing TV/Movie Trailers and 90% of the time the Paramount ones on youtube will be region locked to the USA.

Hence many don't get shared to a forum that is 80% US residents..

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify is a prime example of an amazing service (yet still no FLAC equivalent) offering with a highly developed customer base ruined by the love of money.

Spotify loves money so much it has yet to show a profit in almost 20 years.

And yet it's tech bro founder is a multibillionaire

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

#255
post #245

Before Napster I remember the AOL warez scene where you could get a bot to send you 35 emails with the content broken up to download off AOLs servers.

    --÷^±/ Ràmϸàgè †øølz /\/\àss /\/\àilèr
    --÷^±/ Mass Mail in 5 minutes
    --÷^±/ Type [/AddMe] to get on or [/RemoveMe] to get off!

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

#256
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one "stole" anything. The original publisher wasn't deprived of anything. Don't use inflammatory language to push a narrative. Someone downloading a single off Napster no more "stole" that same single when they listened to it on the radio. The person downloading a song was as much of a non-customer as the radio listener. In fact Napster's rise was coincident with increased CD sales. Napster et al were not causing…

Yes, I'm familiar with decades of self-serving philosophy rationalizing piracy.

0 arguments made

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

#257
so it's the year 2000, right. you got home from school, you're at 6th grade. saw your sweetheart and got fired up all day. summer's around the corner, it's been a pretty good day. a friend at school told you about napster, you download it and install it. you are amazed. you login to icq and wait for her to come online. in the meanwhile you search for some metallica and limp bizkit. it's insane! everything you search is there. you just have to be patient. you download nothing else matters, start playing it. she logs in and says hi, already missed you. and nothing else matters..

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

#258
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make the argument that the nature of tools drives much of mass/low-cost art (that is, the majority). Very few people have the training and complete skill set to fully customize everything. Consequently, the further you get away from "doing the thing" (e.g. playing an instrument) to "operating the tool that does the thing" (e.g. writing music for a player piano), the stronger impression the tool leaves on your wor…

The electronic music point is good, but I wouldn't label electronic music as inferior or not art. It's about choosing which parts of your stack are artisanal vs which parts are implemented for you. These choices impact the form factor, but I wouldn't say that they diminish the work itself.

Not making a point on superiority-inferiority, but rather novelty-homogeneity.

Early electronic music (e.g. musique concrete) was nuts, because they were literally building sound. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=919RleFXcNM

Once the presets were packaged and productized... you ended up with 808 music.

Which wasn't worse, but was objectively less unique.

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

#259
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yeah, nah. WhatCD’s full catalogue has never been recovered.

>> some person with every album available in high quality lossless FLAC > nah. WhatCD’s full catalogue has never been recovered. The loss of WhatCD's torrent database didn't wipe out anyone's library.

The value of a library is that it's all in one place.

Burning the Library of Alexandria also didn't burn the other copies, and yet many books were lost.

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

#260
A guy I know used to get music from me because he knew I had quite a large collection. I asked him why he was going through me when he could just download it himself, and he said, "I can't turn it up on my stereo without it getting all staticky." He had a car stereo worth more than some people's homes. The key difference between my collection and the collections he was referring to that sounded so staticky was that mine was archival, constantly maintained quality, and his was Napster 56kbps-128. And that is why torrents inflicted a lot of damage to a previously somewhat high-quality only scene. From that point on, it was like wading through a Goodwill bargain bin. Thankfully, it has rebounded in the time since.
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