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Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

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Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#301

Post by randomdata »

realusername wrote: post #25
cubefox wrote: post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

The hole in revenue in the early 2000 was because pirating was the only real option to get music online, you had no other choice. The music industry was too stubborn to consider selling online and preferred to keep selling CDs, they were very very late to adapt and lost some revenue because of that.

> The hole in revenue in the early 2000 was because pirating was the only real option to get music online

The Telecommunications Act of 1996, allowing the likes of Clear Channel/iHeartRadio to take over all the stations, shows to be the real culprit.

At the time we joked, due to the steep decline in radio variety, that CD sales would crater because people would only get to know a small handful of artists, leaving few CDs to buy, and the numbers here confirm it was more than just a joke.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#302

Post by croes »

cubefox wrote: post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

How could the CD save the market from piracy?

With a simple cassette recorder with microphone or other audio input you could copy any CD.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#303

Post by mindslight »

uhmyeh wrote: post #275
zirgs wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kinda explains the anti-piracy hysteria of the 2000s.

And their resurgence with AI and Google’s web integrity thing The web is just TV3.0, reserved for acceptable political and commercial content now. Eh I’m done with that; switching off to all of it. Will stick to internet for job and not use it on my personal desktop, just phone. Copyright rent seekers can do something useful for humanity or stick to making it about “the art” and perform local theatre

> not use [Internet] on my personal desktop, just phone.

Then you'll be headed in the exact wrong direction! Phones are generally locked down corporate platforms, where Google's current attempt to lock down the web got its inspiration and start (see: SafetyNet). Even if you do repave and install an OS that represents your interests, the input/output capabilities are by default limited and the available apps still generally revolve around accessing centralized services hosted elsewhere. Whereas with your personal desktop, you can keep it personal and install libre software that lets you escape the copyright cartel and big tech walled gardens.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#304

Post by ftrobro »

jesprenj wrote: post #296

> Attempts to levy a tax on blank cassettes didn’t get traction in the UK. In Slovenia, we pay a tax for blank media and audiovisual recorders. The law was put in place in 2020. Source: https://www.uradni-list.si/glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/20...

Several countries have that tax. Here in Sweden we pay about $10 for every new computer, mobile phone, SSD etc just because we might store music on them. Quite absurd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#305

Post by fluoridation »

cubefox wrote: post #239
zirgs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more than 100M tracks on Spotify. More that one person can listen to over several lifetimes. Even if 99% of them are crap - that still leaves 1M of good tracks. The amount of available music is simply staggering nowadays.

Yeah, but it would be even better if there was no piracy and thus significantly more money to be made in the music business.

It's not obvious that a larger market translates to higher quality supply. Certainly greater supply, but someone who's profit-motivated and is trying to capture more of the market would probably do better producing easy and diverse content in large quantities.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#306

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #291
carlosjobim wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the free uplink?

Given that you already pay for an Internet connection, it's $0 marginal cost.

I'll be (justifiably) downvoted for this, but he may be a millennial that "doesn't have internet at home".

Which, if it were true, is to my way of thinking like telling me that you don't have indoor plumbing.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#307

Post by belthesar »

mschuster91 wrote: post #256
filoleg wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venues and their increasing costs have nothing to do with production costs. Production costs refer to what it costs to actually produce a track and release it out there to the public. Not even talking about insane amounts of good educational material available online for free these days, the capable equipment required to produce a studio-quality track fell down in price significantly, and most older equipment is stil…

> These days? Thanks to affordability of what it takes to produce a track and the ease of getting your material released to the public, you can go from a nobody to someone with a hit track overnight. All for the price of a laptop, some decent speakers/headphones, and a midi-controller. And even that list is optional, as there are people who produce great stuff with less than this or even something entirely different.…

Skrillex, Billie Eilish and Soulja Boy immediately come to mind, and they're not even on the list of these artists on this ad-riddled collection compiled 3 years ago - https://www.technowize.com/12-musicians-who-were-discovered-...

Are they everywhere? Nah, music is a capitalist endeavor, and the market wouldn't support that. But there are a surprising number of artists that have gained success with their first endeavors produced out of their homes.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#308

Post by jacquesm »

techdragon wrote: post #105
gumballindie wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. As a side note i wasnt praising corporations, quite the contrary. Some of the things provided are good but overall corporations are detrimental to the society, environment, public health, security and the economy. Both in the music industry and outside.

I didn’t even for a moment think you were praising them, it’s just so easy for people to forget the percentage breakdowns behind the PR pieces these companies put out. I’m sure I’ve done it myself too often enough. Corporations aren’t inherently an evil concept… the rubicon was corporate personhood. The idea that corporations have equivalent rights to people unless we legislate that they don’t… that’s the mind poison…

> the rubicon was corporate personhood.

Agreed, big mistake there. And next to impossible to fix now.

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#309

Post by ben7799 »

croes wrote: post #302
cubefox wrote: post #17

The reality is that yes, cassettes really were responsible for a substantial downturn in music revenue in the late 70s and early 80s: https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 Then cassettes got replaced with CDs which (initially) were read only, which again saved the market from piracy ... until online piracy with Napster and MP3 players completely crushed the music market, but far worse than cassettes. Even 20…

How could the CD save the market from piracy? With a simple cassette recorder with microphone or other audio input you could copy any CD.

You could copy the CD but the copy wasn't as good as the CD.

Everyone bought CDs when they got popular because:

- They sounded better

- They didn't wear out from playing them

- Small/Portable/Durable

- Easy to move between tracks

- No need to flip them to go to the other side (some cassette players eventually figured out how to do this without a flip)

Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette

#310

Post by amalcon »

LanceH wrote: post #236
bazoom42 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the quality has absolutely cratered You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap. People were whining about how Beatles destroyed music, how rock’n’roll was just monkey noise, how crooners like Sinatra wasn’t real singing.

Where are the ugly singers? Music is represented my a disproportionately high number of hot women (and less so men) with no room for others. There is obviously a standard other than musical quality in play. Today, it's mostly true that everything is available. The music that reaches the masses, though, is defined by production over musical quality. Would we even see or hear from Cass Elliot, Janis Joplin, or Patsy Cl…

Milli Vanilli was 30 years ago now. That act literally replaced the singers with better looking people for marketing reasons.

A baby born the day The Monkees formed would be retiring now. That wildly popular band was literally created for a TV show.

This problem has been going on for a long time.

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