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Music piracy is down but still very much in play

latimes.com

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Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#41

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

anigbrowl wrote: post #3
yuhong wrote: post #2

Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now compared to the MPAA?

I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics. FTA: But t…

It's disingenuous to suggest the difference in revenue is because of piracy.

1970s and 1980s era record labels would sign an artist, throw development money at him or her, give them a fair try in the market with at least a couple of albums, and only drop them if they were going nowhere.

Then the emphasis shifted to the show-me-the-money insta-hit act, and manufactured waxwork acts like Justin Bieber. Music got a lot less interesting, and people found other things to do with their time. So sales crashed.

There's actually more good music being made than ever, but most of it lives on microlabels only hipsters know about, and the people making it all have day jobs. Even some of the better known names in dance/trance have day jobs.

This is bad, because some of them are very talented and would easily have made a career out of it 30 years ago.

Pop literally ate itself. The pirates just picked over the bones.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#42

Post by pessimizer »

My guess would be that music downloaders are slowing down/dropping out because they already have more music than they could ever listen to.

From what I hear, a lot of music sharing has moved to sneakernet amongst friends. A palm-sized 2TB hard drive carries around 4 years worth of 192K mp3 audio.

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#44

Post by lentil_soup »

iamben wrote: post #8
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly different industry dynamics. FTA: But t…

Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' - but you could say the same about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle when they could have been adaptin…

Honest question, anyone knows how easy is it for a band to put their stuff on something like Spotify? Or do they still need to go through a label?

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#45

Post by lentil_soup »

lentil_soup wrote: post #44
iamben wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' - but you could say the same about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle when they could have been adaptin…

Honest question, anyone knows how easy is it for a band to put their stuff on something like Spotify? Or do they still need to go through a label?

Should have googled that before:

https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-ar...

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#46

Post by iamben »

lentil_soup wrote: post #44
iamben wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' - but you could say the same about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle when they could have been adaptin…

Honest question, anyone knows how easy is it for a band to put their stuff on something like Spotify? Or do they still need to go through a label?

Try https://distrokid.com/ :-)

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#47

Post by maccard »

RansomTime wrote: post #39
maccard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. I find it the same with BBC IPlayer - I live in the UK but travel home regularly, and have a 3 hour train journey. Despite having an active Sky subscription in the UK, and paying a TV licence in the UK, if I want to watch a show hosted on iPlayer there isn't any way to do it from Ireland. I normally end up having to download them before I go from other sources, which I hate doing..

You can download it directly from the BBC using get_iplayer http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html

Wasn't aware of that, thanks!

Re: Music piracy is down but still very much in play

#48

Post by EnderMB »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #35
EnderMB wrote: post #28

I wonder how many people will pirate Taylor Swift's music since she's exclusively linked to Apple Music? I'm willing to bet a lot of Spotify users will dust off uTorrent (or whatever people are using for torrents nowadays) and just download the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. It's all about ease of access, surely? The introduction of Apple Music is good for music, but if it means that Spo…

> ...the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally. Well, she is still making her music available online against a fair price. If you mean restriction in the sense of any restriction, then, yes, it's restricted. But so is Spotify, because for every service there is another one you don't publish on. Miss Swift was not happy with Spotify's negotiating terms. Her not playing ball with Spotify should no…

While she's entitled to share her music with whoever she pleases, fans aren't going to see it that way. They'll see a greedy artist that wants more money, and is happy to restrict what is essentially uploading a bunch of music files to a server as a ransom for not getting that money. Given the way she immediately backtracked, I think most people see her move as nothing more than a publicity stunt between her and Apple to promote both her new album and Apple's new service.

Spotify works because you're safe in the knowledge that you can listen to pretty much anything you want. With Apple Music in the picture, piracy will almost definitely rise, should artists decide to lock themselves onto specific platforms like Swift has chosen to.

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