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HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

gethiphop.net

81–90 of 163 posts

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#81
post #58

I know that there's a kick to be got out of circumventing the draconian rules big music/film industry lobby into law, but what do the writers think about independents that they effectively take down in the same blow? This is a genuine question, not an attack. I've spent a lot of time studying/writing/playing music and through that have got to personally know many of the most talented and versatile musicians I've ever…

Not many musicians expect to make money from selling records. It used to be "do free shows to sell records". Now it's completely reversed to "do free records to sell shows".

Sorry you're completely wrong.

Shows have always been the main income, the only people getting rich off records were record labels.

Although artists SHOULD be able to make money off record sales, there is no real reason to have a record label anymore now that your work is infinitely duplicatable and no one has to foot the bill for the print run you can just sell it yourself.

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#82
post #69

> We believe that listening to music should always be free and available to everyone, and that only owning it should bare a cost. I hate this entitlement. As if it was their decision. As if they were running a social movement. I am all for open access to arts, but this is the artists decision and not some programmers, just because they can.

Completely right! They have to build a spotify / popcorn clone for open, not for commercial music.

I took a short look into their source code and I discovered that they are using youtube (google video) for playback, the iTunes API to get the top list, LastFM to get the covers. One song is round about 20MB because they play the entire video. Nothing more then a youtube fronted stitched together from 3 API's and inspired by Popcorn Time. I think google will block it as soon as they can.

And after a short try I mentioned that some songs are only bad covers from private people. Well ... yeah

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#83

I am still consistently frustrated by lack of video content at reasonable prices, and while I never used it, Popcorn Time seemed like a good thing to me. But, music is a solved problem for me, via Spotify, and I find then that my gut feeling on this is instead that it's parasitic.

For me, video is solved by Amazon Instant Video. They have everything, and it's usually $2-3 a video.

Maybe I should look more in to that. I'm using Netflix, which I pay for, and Amazon's ondemand video stuff I get from Prime. I paid for the most recent Sherlock, but I think I'm still a bit cheap for anything that isn't All You Can Eat.

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#84

I am still consistently frustrated by lack of video content at reasonable prices, and while I never used it, Popcorn Time seemed like a good thing to me. But, music is a solved problem for me, via Spotify, and I find then that my gut feeling on this is instead that it's parasitic.

Spotify doesn't have everything and it has ads.

I happily pay for Spotify, so no ads. I want to pay, I just want to pay a price that's affordable, and consume it in a way that's convenient.

And anything it doesn't have, and I want (Beatles, previously Led Zep), I tend to have already bought, and have available via iTunes Match.

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#85
post #79
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with music. The sharing of music is only a side-effect of free and private sharing of digital information in general. There are a number of drawbacks with enabling private digital communications: It makes the sharing of copyrighted works possible without the possibility for law enforcement to intervene, it enables the spread of child pornography or other criminal and morally unjustifiable informa…

I totally agree that we do not know if it has effect on musicians. But I do not think we should ignore it and just move. We need to find solutions if it is bad for them before breaking the whole system down.

I don't agree. I think it is more important to ensure free and private communications for people in oppressive regimes today than it is to ensure steady incomes for full-time musicians. Something that has, frankly, never been the case in history, before or after digital sharing.

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#86
post #77
post #69

> We believe that listening to music should always be free and available to everyone, and that only owning it should bare a cost. I hate this entitlement. As if it was their decision. As if they were running a social movement. I am all for open access to arts, but this is the artists decision and not some programmers, just because they can.

I absolutely agree. Plus how is 'owning music' different from being able to always listen to it for free?

I'm on the way of building an open source spotify-alike app. For now it already has a server and a osx web-based client app. https://github.com/knoopx/headbang.app

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#87
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musicians have only recently been able to make money from recorded media. I see this as a temporary anomaly allowed by the state of technology in the 20th century (i.e. existence of mass media as a physical product). Musicians (and other artists) can still make money from e.g. performing live - which I'm assuming was their dominant form of income before the 20th century. I don't believe that a monetary incentive is n…

It's a little-known fact that before the 20th century there was no artistic production of any kind. ;) In more seriousness, I'd guess that the traditional dominant sources of income for musicians were (a) patronage and (b) being independently wealthy; I doubt giving performances mattered all that much.

That's a very good point. I had an image in my head of traveling musicians playing lutes but that's a bit unrepresentative! Especially of music that has endured through time (e.g. classical composition).

Instead of patronage / wealth, I suppose that a market mechanism could be used to support music creation in a wider section of society. However, I would actually argue for income redistribution to support that.

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#88
post #69

> We believe that listening to music should always be free and available to everyone, and that only owning it should bare a cost. I hate this entitlement. As if it was their decision. As if they were running a social movement. I am all for open access to arts, but this is the artists decision and not some programmers, just because they can.

They are collating youtube content... So... everything you said is a bit ridiculous.

Re: HipHop: A "Popcorn Time" for music

#89
post #25
post #5

The main selling point of Popcorn Time is that it allows to watch movies more easily than solutions that asks money for that. I don't think music industry has this problem — there are services like Spotify, Rdio and many more that offers painless listening. That aside, the app looks really polished and I'm glad it has Linux support backed in.

Only in the few first world countries that these services operate in.

>> "Only in the few first world countries that these services operate in."

False. Spotify is available in 45 countries. Deezer is available in over 180!

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