Who's doing this to my internet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#241

Post by eggie » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:37 PM UTC

kogepathic wrote: post #189

icebraining wrote: post #7

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

1. Open SoundCloud 2. Open your browser's Developer Tools 3. Navigate to song page 4. Click on network tab in Developer Tools 5. Press the big play logo on the song 6. Look for the request for the MP3 file 7. Save link to computer Honestly, for a rant that detailed about how corporations are ruining the internet, I kinda expected OP to know how to save songs off SoundCloud. The worst part about this "modern web" for…

She actually convinced me to save my likes using https://github.com/013/Soundcloud-Downloader, whose author used exactly this process to determine how to download the mp3s.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#242

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #162

eevilspock wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair You're putting all the responsibility on the consumer, and none on us, the technologists, the so-called innovators. Where are our innovative powers to come up with alternate busniness models? Where are our backbones to stand up against selling out the internet so that we can get rich quick? B…

I find comments like this to be sorta akin to putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "lalalalala I can't hear you!". Whenever people say "free" in the context of information exchange, my belief is that they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of information. Information is a proxy for power, and the power comes from asymmetry. If everyone has a level playing field from an information access perspective, y…

>everyone remembers the first half of that quote: "information wants to be free..." //

You appear to have the quote wrong and the intent of the quote wrong too?

Wikipedia has it as from Stewart Brand, supporting the freeing of information:

>"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." (Brand 1984, via Wikipedia) //

It's saying that information is valuable and so in a way it should be expensive but as we now have ways of distributing that information for little cost we can make the information free-libre and virtually free-gratis. Some people want to make the information expensive, so they alone can profit; others want to make the information free so that all of mankind can benefit.

>That is to say, it's hard for me to tell people to give up the information which is, in effect, their livelihood. //

To me all of this, and the way industrialisation is heading, leads to a need to re-evaluate the structure of society and the way we process and share resources (physical and otherwise). But that's not a reason not to go there, unless you wish to retain the current system where - as you note - it benefits a small minority to keep useful information from others.

Stallman apparently puts it this way:

>"I believe that all generally useful information should be free. By 'free' I am not referring to price, but rather to the freedom to copy the information and to adapt it to one's own uses... When information is generally useful, redistributing it makes humanity wealthier no matter who is distributing and no matter who is receiving." (Stallman, Comp. Sec. Conf 1990) //

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#243

Post by krick » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #3

This timeline is a little skewed. Google+ started in 2011, way before Project Loom was announced. SOPA was introduced to the house in 2011 as well. And none of this is new. Before SOPA and PIPA, the DMCA raised similar discussions. Ads have been degrading the experience at least since Tripod introduced popups. And the Tumblr arguments are almost the same as back when Geocities was bought - in fact, by the same compan…

Probably 2012 is the year when OP got the Internet connection or something…

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#244

Post by mcphage » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #112

icebraining wrote: post #7

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

How much money does one song really makes through ads per person? I don't think it's anywhere close to $1.50.

I saw a figure recently that the value of a single user, over the course of a month, to all of the people advertising to them, is just over $6.00. I know that's not what you're asking for, but that's the most related actual figure I've seen.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#245

Post by yebyen » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #216

yebyen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% more? iTunes is a premium service. Buy songs a-la-carte at $0.99 and pay more than you would for the whole physical album. Or am I out of touch? Back when I was buying music you could get CDs for $10 or a little more, and they usually had at least 10 songs on them... It is a lot. Record companies don't want you to buy online, they want you to prop up their traditional multi-middleman distribution schemes, so they…

How is "iTunes is a premium service"? Its claim to fame is what you said, being able to buy songs at $0.99. Its more a bargain basement service.

I don't really think I need to explain any more, but go ahead and look for cheap CDs online and tell me $0.99 per track is a bargain basement price. Half.com has CDs for $2.99 or less section, with many whole CDs coming in under $1. Even Best Buy has a CDs: $5.99 or less section on their website. Those are more like "bargain prices," in my opinion, and those are physical media that had to be shipped in and no doubt you pay extra to get them shipped back out, but (unless you really just wanted to have the one song) it's still cheaper.

I just went on the iTunes store and picked random albums from the front page, a few to be extra thorough, and you know what I found? Most albums are $9.99 or $12.99 with single tracks for $1.29. Maybe it's because I'm browsing "chart toppers" but after clicking through a couple of albums, I honestly don't see any songs for $0.99.

Where can you actually buy music online that is any more expensive than iTunes, if it's such a bargain?

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#246

Post by citizens » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #172

bryondowd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that made CDs for independent artists, and started selling Vinyl (didn't manufacture those in house, though). Vinyl is expensive to make, and heavy and expensive to ship. So I'd guess the vast majority of that cost would be eaten up in raw manufacturing and shipping costs, without even talking about middleman costs. And if I recall, our margin was pretty small.

Just last weekend, I saw the episode of "How It's Made" on Science Channel that covered vinyl pressed records. Here's a comparison of the processes. Vinyl: - Manufacture lacquered master discs (50% QC rejection rate!) - Ship lacquered discs to recording studio - Put master in recording machine - Cut test groove - Inspect with built-in microscope - Cut lead-in - Cut audio tracks, in 2-channel stereo - Cut lead-out, la…

Don't forget printing, labels, test presses, and pre-mastering. I started a vinyl record label a year ago and it's wild how man people/businesses are involved in the manufacturing process.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#247

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #218

icebraining wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except I want to read, say, 6 blogs, and they'll be on four different federations, so I'd have to pay $40-80/month, which I definitively won't. We're seeing the same problems with all the streaming platforms.

We can all handle 3 or 4 subscriptions. The dollar amount I came up with was an example. A small federation might charge $1. The invisible hand of the free market decides. The federation would fail if it charged more than the amount of good content it produced. An author could also syndicate her/his content to more than one federation. If we're not willing to pay for good content, i.e. the writer's livelihood, then w…

I'm willing to pay for good content. But I also live in a place where a good software developer (net) salary is €14k/year, and that's still much higher than the average national salary, so I'm wary of these subscription services. They usually end up with a single price (since geo restrictions work poorly on the web), which the invisible hand pushes up to accommodate the disposable income of wealthier places.

As bad as advertisement is, it still helped subsidize my reading when I couldn't afford to pay for it, while the subscription model would create a tiered Internet for the more and less well-off.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#248

Post by jameshart » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #172

bryondowd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that made CDs for independent artists, and started selling Vinyl (didn't manufacture those in house, though). Vinyl is expensive to make, and heavy and expensive to ship. So I'd guess the vast majority of that cost would be eaten up in raw manufacturing and shipping costs, without even talking about middleman costs. And if I recall, our margin was pretty small.

Just last weekend, I saw the episode of "How It's Made" on Science Channel that covered vinyl pressed records. Here's a comparison of the processes. Vinyl: - Manufacture lacquered master discs (50% QC rejection rate!) - Ship lacquered discs to recording studio - Put master in recording machine - Cut test groove - Inspect with built-in microscope - Cut lead-in - Cut audio tracks, in 2-channel stereo - Cut lead-out, la…

Multi take, multitrack recording was a thing "in the vinyl era". You make it sound like the recording was done directly to master disc.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#249

Post by Roodgorf » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #237

eevilspock wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about an idea that would solve this for bloggers and other small-time publishers: Readers subscribe to a federation of publishers for, say, 10 or 20 dollars a month. They now get to consume as much as they want on those sites. After they read an article, they can click either a "worth it", "meh" or "garbage" button. At the end of the month, all subscription fees are distributed to each publisher pr…

> Readers subscribe to a federation of publishers for, say, 10 or 20 dollars a month. They now get to consume as much as they want on those sites. Federation isn't a very catchy name. Maybe you can think of it as a bunch of strings, all wound together. Like a cord, or... or like a Cable! Yeah, call it "Cable".

Exactly. Except that this supposed ratings system could potentially have a bigger impact on quality than the cable model, though I'm not entirely convinced.

I assume most channels make their income almost entirely off of advertisers, and channels which are not watched as frequently are presumably not paid as much. In the proposed system I would assume the idea is to decrease/remove advertising and content providers would be given a share of the revenue based on user ratings? Seems interesting, but probably not terribly practical. It seems this could devolve into clickbait hell pretty quickly.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#250

Post by whyaduck » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

CHY872 wrote: post #187

72deluxe wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if people give thought to the length of time it takes to learn an instrument, play it well, learn the recording process, record it well, learn the mixing process, mix it well, learn the mastering process, master it well etc. if they are willing to dismiss $1.50 as expensive for a song. In comparison, how much is a cup of coffee or a portion of chips (for us UK types)? How much is a trip to the cinema? It sho…

I don't think you can honestly rationalise it like that. You could similarly rationalise selling an iPad for $2,000 by 'We have a bajillion engineers, who all went to top schools after decades of non-stop education, who worked 80 hour weeks to refine every single component of this, who tested 100 different chamfers for this edge, who polished it, who ...' The price of something should absolutely be dictated by how mu…

I think the fact that music is so easy to get for free makes it difficult to assess what value people would place on it if that outlet wasn't there. Surely some portion of the pirates would pay for the music they're torrenting if it wasn't available for free.