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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

#281

Post by squeaky-clean »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #120
mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

Gosh this is such a throwback... One of my first experiences with Napster was trying to download Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again and getting a shitty remix. The worst part was that I didn't check the song, so I ended up burning it to a CD only to find out after the fact that the song wasn't what I was looking for. And every song took so long to download because it was dial-up... It's crazy how much things have ch…

I had plenty of experiences like that, but also a happy one once. There was some Slipknot song I had downloaded that was edited to repeat the final chorus 2x. When I head the real song on CD I was disappointed, it was actually a lot better with that one more run through the chorus.

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

#282

Post by ShroudedNight »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #197
ugjka wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discover stuff on Spotify more than i would ever from pirating and only then i can go watch their live stuff and buy their merch. If I want a Flac i go to Bandcamp though

Makes me wonder if artists would see the same benefit then if piracy were legal and someone made a nice Spotify-like frontend for it. I think about how places like library genesis have to be so weirdly arranged because of how illegal they are.

Wasn't that essentially what Grooveshark was?

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

#283

Post by ogurechny »

Khaine wrote: post #175
steve1977 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they’re so good at it, that the pirated product is usually substantially better than the official version How so, when most of these products are digital to begin with? If you have the quality of the studio master, then there’s nothing to improve.

I am into Jazz, and would like to buy Ella Fitzgerald's discography. No website will easily let me do that. Pirates do.

I share that attitude, but you assume that “discography” is an existing product that should magically appear for you to choose. I don't even mean tangled distribution rights, and other legal problems, someone has to do significant about of work to compile such collection. And it's no different from other media. If I decide to collect all books from some author (and it's not a superstar money maker who gets fancy limited edition collected works printed each couple of years), I have to do some research, an understand that Book X has not been reprinted in 15 years, Book Y has a single really questionable translation (or some horrible cover, or a completely delusional editor's preface that the author would never accept), Story Z was only published in some journal, etc.

“P2P discography” is more like a personal collection, personal library shared with others. That person still has to do the similar amount of work to make sure it's not a smoking pile of data. Sometimes they do understand it, sometimes they don't.

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

#284

Post by ogurechny »

issafram wrote: post #106
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #85

torrent is really a great technology. subversive and evergreen. genuinely useful and hard to kill.

Only if you use a private tracker. Public ones always have seeders whose job it is to collect IP addresses. You'll still get that letter in the mail about pirating

…if you live under a regime controlled by big media business.

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

#285

Post by brevhtff »

mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

It’s the only place to find classic hardcore and punk.

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

#286

Post by defrost »

MrVandemar wrote: post #275
defrost wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, sitting here in a cow-paddock in rural Western Australia, I still have no legal way to watch the audio described version of an oscar-winning film over 40 years old. Put a note up in the nearest local store, invite someone from the foodbank around and swap a meal for them describing what happens as you watch the film together. FWiW I'm also currently living in wheatbelt W.Australia, my father (born 1935) makes a…

Hail and well-met! (Where I am the community is not so great. If you need a casserole, they're in your corner. If you supported gay marriage, and if prefer to do indigenous patch burning instead of let it turn into a wildfire so you can be a hero, then you're about as welcome as a blowfly). Anyway I'm not vision impaired, I just enjoy audio described films while I'm doing chores or commuting. Audio description is ver…

"But not too much" (rain) :-)

I did some digital | electronic support work for the WA Institute for the Blind(?) in Perth back in 1984 (ish) and understand the value of goo audio description (and piracy .. or file sharing in hobbyist communities as I might think of it) so I understand your position.

Just being that person on teh internet that likes to point out there are many ways to skin cats .. not that we do that in the country anymore.

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

#287

Post by ls612 »

issafram wrote: post #106
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #85

torrent is really a great technology. subversive and evergreen. genuinely useful and hard to kill.

Only if you use a private tracker. Public ones always have seeders whose job it is to collect IP addresses. You'll still get that letter in the mail about pirating

Which is why there are so many VPN services out there. Or seedboxes if you are serious about this stuff.

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

#288

Post by nicoco »

grimgrin wrote: post #93
romanhn wrote: post #80

Best part of Napster was searching for that one song you were interested in, and then looking through all of that user's shared files. It was an amazing discovery mechanism which I missed dearly with all the subsequent P2P apps. Spotify now fills this void, but it's not quite the same.

Definitely enjoy browsing a user's shares, and even occasionally checking what's been downloaded from me. Soulseek goes strong https://nicotine-plus.org/

https://github.com/slskd/slskd/ is another nice client that runs as a daemon, and hopefully one day it will integrate with lidarr https://github.com/Lidarr/Lidarr/issues/444> :fingerscrossed:

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

#289

Post by [deleted] »

radley wrote: post #112
nvarsj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I find most strange about the modern day piracy is quality. For a lot of pirates, it's a niche hobby to preserve the best quality version of some media / art. I see it as an underground librarian archivist movement. 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.

> Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes. Bitrates are tied to the subscription tier. If you do the 4K plan, it's visibly noticeable that 1080p video bitrates are higher. They don't have much 4K content, but the 1080p difference is worth it for my 4K projector.

[deleted]

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

#290

Post by bitwize »

giantrobot wrote: post #228
bitwize wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every musician I know says this. Back in the day, you could actually make money selling records, which led to a flourishing of music. New hopefuls would work their butts off, playing gigs and selling small-print-run CDs to make ends meet while they waited and hoped for a major label to give them their big break. And they really had a shot at a big break, too. Then file sharing happened, and if you were any good your…

This is so wrong it's fully in Poe's Law territory. Musicians at no point have made a majority of their money from album sales. To make any money off an album most bands need to sell tens of thousands of records. Most records never sell anywhere close to that number. Record labels are basically loan companies. They sign a band on a contract for X number of albums. The royalties of those albums is then divided up amon…

But before Napster, artists could sell more records and had a better chance of getting out of the hole with the record company.

After Napster, not so much. And again, record companies won't touch your work if it's already out there on the internet.

I used to work with people who tried to make it in the Boston music scene. They say it was great in the 90s because the scene was thriving. Then file sharing happened, killed the scene, and made it more difficult for musicians to make a living.

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