The campaign also coincided with the rise of cassette-based portastudios for musicians. There was concern that any record industry levy on cassettes would unfairly hit (unsigned) musicians recording their own music for demos. I think it was Sound-on-Sound magazine which came up with the "Home taping is skill in music" slogan as a counter.
Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
41–50 of 397 posts
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#42"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…
> The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves It wasn't the record companies which ruined the music industry. It was us, the consumers. We ruined it with piracy. https://i.insider.com/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000 We always like to imagine big organizations as the "baddies", and us as the "goodies". But the reality doesn't always follow this convenient narrative. Sometimes it turns out we w…
The number of consumers that pirated music increased mostly because the record companies missed the boat in the third round of being able to sell us the same music. They quite literally sat on their hands for years while there was huge demand for online music. iTunes finally served that demand and Apple made a bundle of money on that.
Before that CDs sold for twice the amount that the original records cost when they came out ('they will last forever, and they're as good as the original masters').
You seem to have a strong conviction that piracy killed the music industry but they didn't need our help to do so, the quality on offer went down, the back catalog is large enough to sustain you for a lifetime (or even longer) and given the choice between something modern and something old I find myself picking 'something old' more and more frequently. There are some exceptions, but these are happening with lower frequency every year. It's probably a function of getting older but I'd just as soon listen to an old record by Kate Bush, 10CC, or a classical recording from the 1950's or 60's than that I will listen to something new that doesn't register with me. I can't remember when I last had the radio on, the only one I have is in the car and I probably didn't even bother plugging in the antenna.
Piracy had absolutely nothing to do with it - for me. I spent a small fortune on music and would have been happy to continue to do so. But the innovators dilemma is harsh and the music industry was too caught up in combating piracy to see that installing root kits on people's computers (Sony) or suing your artists (everybody else) is bad policy for a middle man. And so they faded. A bit late, perhaps, but I think it was inevitable. The ones (labels, not artists) that survive into the streaming era are doing well enough financially, but the music they put out just isn't compelling to me.
To this day there is a levy on any storage medium that goes to the local equivalent of the RIAA.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#43The 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…
CDs used to be crazy expensive. They cost much more than what was reasonable. Today I have access to untold thousands of records for €10 per month. That money (non inflation adjusted) would have bought me only a single record back in the day. One could argue that the current price of music is too low. But the price they tried to extract back then was completely unreasonable and I think those excesses contributed heav…
Yeah, it really was way too expensive. A single with one or two remixes or other songs did cost 5€. Linkin Parks Meteora did cost me 19€ and Reanimation 16.50€. Double CD samplers were around 25€ to 30€.
I'm happy with streaming but I'm also happy to buy a vinyl to additionally support my favourite artists, even when it costs 30-40€.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life? My own music tastes change over time. I don't listen to the same things I listened to 25 years ago - at least, not often. I want new music from time to time, especially if I'm walking places often. That's the thing with streaming. I'm OK with paying an amount that is less than a CD was 25 years ago just to have a bunch of music at my dispos…
> Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life? Probably not, but given that I spent until the end of the CD age to collect music I do have enough to last me for several lifetimes. I'm a bit strange in that I will listen to music over and over again until I have it internalized, and even after that. I don't need something new every day.
I don't need something new every day
Neither do I, but I'm also not going to spend decades - or even years - listening to the same thing week after week. Not to mention that my music tastes are much more varied than they were years ago.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#45"Home taping is killing music" The record companies did a fantastic job of killing music all by themselves, the quality has absolutely cratered and the occasional great artist that has made it through the long slog to recognition has done so despite the music industry, not because of. I spent a fortune on various formats and when streaming came along I simply refused to participate. I'm simply not going to pay a thir…
Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life? My own music tastes change over time. I don't listen to the same things I listened to 25 years ago - at least, not often. I want new music from time to time, especially if I'm walking places often. That's the thing with streaming. I'm OK with paying an amount that is less than a CD was 25 years ago just to have a bunch of music at my dispos…
I can see the value in the streaming services for this because it's easy and convenient. However, it's also fun to discover new music on your own ("pull" versus "push" for content discovery) by researching genres or musical influences/history (Wikipedia has really well organized tags for this) and then just downloading a few GB via your friendly torrent network. Sure, "piracy", but if the music is over a few decades old then it should be public domain anyways.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#46People laugh at all of this but Napster really did kill the music industry. No really. It did. And whatever it didn’t kill, YouTube did. So. Haha. Stupid musicians and their stupid stuffed suit execs. Lol.
Funnily enough there still seems to be a music industry.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
CDs used to be crazy expensive. They cost much more than what was reasonable. Today I have access to untold thousands of records for €10 per month. That money (non inflation adjusted) would have bought me only a single record back in the day. One could argue that the current price of music is too low. But the price they tried to extract back then was completely unreasonable and I think those excesses contributed heav…
> But the price they tried to extract back then was completely unreasonable and I think those excesses contributed heavily to the current situation. Yes that left incurable trauma. During late 90s to early 00s CD costed the same in Germany and in any post-communist country whose economies were in shambles. Something around 12 EUR which would be 18 EUR inflation adjusted now. I was wandering between shelves like a par…
Everyone pirated in the Eastern Europe back then. You bought a CD only if you were a big fan of the band. The rest was downloaded off the net. I've never bought a single CD in my life. Transitioned straight from pirating to Spotify.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you already own all of the music you are going to listen to for your life? Probably not, but given that I spent until the end of the CD age to collect music I do have enough to last me for several lifetimes. I'm a bit strange in that I will listen to music over and over again until I have it internalized, and even after that. I don't need something new every day.
I don't need something new every day Neither do I, but I'm also not going to spend decades - or even years - listening to the same thing week after week. Not to mention that my music tastes are much more varied than they were years ago.
That's fine, not everybody is the same in this respect. I can drive people absolutely nuts by listening to the same piece a few hundred times in a row.
Recently: Miriam Stockley, Perfect day (1999, sorry).
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#49The 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…
CDs used to be crazy expensive. They cost much more than what was reasonable. Today I have access to untold thousands of records for €10 per month. That money (non inflation adjusted) would have bought me only a single record back in the day. One could argue that the current price of music is too low. But the price they tried to extract back then was completely unreasonable and I think those excesses contributed heav…
> CDs used to be crazy expensive. They cost much more than what was reasonable.
A market economy determines the value of goods by what people are willing to pay for it. Apparently, halfing the record price would not have doubled the sales, so the vinyl/CD price reflected the value of the music pretty well. But nowadays, legal music streaming has to compete against illegal piracy, which is free and only a little inconvenient, so the streaming price is forced to a very low level. Musicians can hardly make money from music sales anymore. If you make a type of music that isn't well suited for concerts, and you aren't massively popular, you are screwed.
Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the music industry waged war on the cassette
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you store MP3 as FLAC?
I would re-encode from the original or get flac. What I have digitally is compressed because of history, more than anything else. It was a figure of speech. The point is a single DLT is huge. Well .. LTO.
It’s just a pity they’re so expensive.
By rights I should be using tape for my backups, but even a single tape drive is…