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The Man Who Broke the Music Business

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Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#31

Post by bluedino »

justinpaulson wrote: post #24

This reminds me of using oth.net to browse ftps for tracks in late 1990s. I used to burn custom mixes for friends in high school back then before napster exploded and everyone had a burner. On a 28.8 or even 56k connection it was an amazingly tedious process to download tracks from ftps. It is pretty insane how you can download an entire discography today in the amount of time it took to download some single tracks b…

It's all relative. I moved out of my parents house and left behind my old computer and 56k modem. I came back a few months later and found my brother had BearShare or something running with all these downloads trickling it at .5 kbps, and found that he had amassed hundreds of megabytes of MP3's.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#33

Post by joshstrange »

If The Scene interests you then you may want to check out http://www.welcometothescene.com/

It's an internet-TV show the follows a group (not a documentary, it's all staged) that releases movies. The first "season" was very good and I highly recommend it. The second has yet to really interest me. I watched a few episodes but it's different from the first.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#34

Post by bsder »

yason wrote: post #7
tempodox wrote: post #2

...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.

For the majority of people, mp3s seem to be "just as good" enough. I remember some low-bitrate songs encoded with some very early encoder where you could hear a difference. Not necessarily "the" difference but "a" difference. After a couple of years the worst encoder anyone could find was better already and since 192kbps bitrates mp3s were 99.999% there. I'm sure that a trained ear can hear differences between 256kbp…

The issue isn't that you can hear the difference.

The issue is that you can't reencode. I can't take a 256kbps MP3 (or even 320) and then reencode it at 128kbps for my portable media player without significant lossage.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#35

Post by joshstrange »

[deleted] wrote: post #28

[deleted]

I have no personal experience but from my observations I see it like this:

Number one you are a part of something big, even small groups can have massive impacts from their leaks/releases. It's no fluke that the demographics for scene members often favors younger people, I know that for the internet in general, when I was younger, it was a magic place where age didn't matter, only merits. I would assume the scene is no different. It doesn't matter how much you make, and your race, religion, age are not important. You are judged by what you can DO not who you ARE. That alone is a VERY powerful motivator.

Secondly I think the scene is very appealing to people who have a tech inclination plus a love/hobby for something else (Software, movies. music, etc). The scene allows them to interact with people who share the same interests and gives them access (through top sites or similar) to more content that they love.

Lastly sharing. When I like/love something there is a part of me that wants to share it with everyone else. When that something is funny story then all is well and good but when it's a TV show/movie/album/etc it's a little harder to share. Sure you can share a link to Amazon/Netflix/etc but unless your friend already pays for access then you share isn't "free". It's free to you but not to the person you are sharing. Piracy makes it easier to share because you don't let those pesky laws get in the way. Even so sharing is not 100% free, you can tell someone about a piece of content but they still have to go find it, download it, and then they can watch it. Topsites are like your friends opening up all of their content so that you can sample it on your own or go grab something on their recommendation. There is still a little friction to the sharing (a direct link to watch would be ideal) but it's about as close as you can get.

That's just my 2 cents.

To answer directly to: What motivates someone to risk so much and invest so much time and money into participating in the scene today?

I, for example, love messing around with web dev. Because of this I have tried out (and continue to pay for) a number of online hosting platforms (both dedicated, shared, and your AWS/DO/RS/Google clouds) either to try them out or because I am long-term hosting things on them. This ends up being a fair amount of money when all is said and done but it's my hobby, it's what I love and it benefits me at work. Now other than the "benefits me at work" bit I don't see how my hobby is any different from file sharers (legality aside). Even then I'm sure you can learn skills participating in a release group that can benefit you in your professional life (server management, release planning, etc).

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#36

Post by Kapow »

intopieces wrote: post #19
tempodox wrote: post #2

...if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD... The thing is, MP3 _isn't_ “just as good”. A rendering in lossless compression from a CD still sounds different than a 320 kBPS MP3. Which is why I just can't get over the iTunesStore selling sound in 256 kBPS. Much too bad. Amazon does 320 kBPS, but it's still not good enough.

When given the "Pepsi Challenge," most college students prefered the sound of 128 MP3 to Lossless. It's all about what you cut your teeth on. [0] [0] Jonathan Sterne, "MP3: The Meaning of a Format", pg 166

CBR 128 still gets that weird underwater warbling distortion on cymbals and other high-end sounds. You need to go at least 192 to make that inaudible.

With today's bandwidth and storage capacity, there's no reason to use anything worse than -V2.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#37

Post by jakejake »

bluedino wrote: post #18

I remember seeing people at flea markets selling bootleg compact discs. They'd rent a booth and have boxes and boxes of them in those fluorescent colored plastic holders, the ones you could buy in 500 packs at Sam's Club or Egghead. Some of them even printed out fake covers and labels on inkjet printers, heck they would be doing it in between customers. I couldn't figure out why the cops never came and shut them down…

A group of my distant family were all into selling knock-off purses at flea markets. They all did it for years without any problems from the law. Suddenly about two years ago the police cracked down on everybody and they all had to stop due to being arrested & getting in trouble. I had heard it was due to some type of political pressure that had originated from the designers. I.e the correct local politicians palms had been greased.

I'd imagine the bootleg movie selling would be similar. The police don't really care until someone above them puts out the order to deal with it.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#38

Post by Nursie »

bluedino wrote: post #18

I remember seeing people at flea markets selling bootleg compact discs. They'd rent a booth and have boxes and boxes of them in those fluorescent colored plastic holders, the ones you could buy in 500 packs at Sam's Club or Egghead. Some of them even printed out fake covers and labels on inkjet printers, heck they would be doing it in between customers. I couldn't figure out why the cops never came and shut them down…

In some parts of the world (Singapore, Malaysia are places I have seen) there are shops in malls that openly sell copies of stuff. In fact when I first bought a PS3 and went looking for games for it in Singapore I was frequently turned away with "Oh, you want originals? We don't do that here".

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#39

Post by nsxwolf »

teh_klev wrote: post #27
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conventional wisdom is just that - MP3s don't sound any different than their CD counterpart, but we all know that they don't have the same degree of fidelity to the original mastered audio files. While it is true that most cannot detect the differences between MP3 (and other lossy formats) and PCM (lossless) audio, this is beginning to change as consumers become used to a higher quality of sound delivery than bef…

>The popularity of Beats headphones, for instance, meant that hip hop producers could no longer just push the limiter until the sub bass begins to sound farty - their fans were all equipped to hear the differences now. I think you're being overly charitable about how well Beats perform.

They're better than earbuds. The iPod brought forth a decade where virtually everyone's only headphone experience was earbuds.

Re: The Man Who Broke the Music Business

#40

Post by microtonal »

bluedino wrote: post #18

I remember seeing people at flea markets selling bootleg compact discs. They'd rent a booth and have boxes and boxes of them in those fluorescent colored plastic holders, the ones you could buy in 500 packs at Sam's Club or Egghead. Some of them even printed out fake covers and labels on inkjet printers, heck they would be doing it in between customers. I couldn't figure out why the cops never came and shut them down…

I couldn't figure out why the cops never came and shut them down.

At one Dutch internet marketplace, you still see people selling Garmin maps (topos) which are clearly copies. They even have the gut to say 'one topo for 25 Euro, two topos for 40 Euro'. Nobody seems to care.

As someone who buys them legally, I am quite appalled these businesses (since the people who purchase them legally are paying higher prices to compensate the profits of these crooks).

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