Yeah, it sucks bigtime how we, the end user, are getting screwed so often just so a handful of greedy suits can suck our wallets dry by forcing us to stay with old, outdated or overpriced technology instead of giving us more modern, current content at a reasonable price. Of course, the fact that a large number of companies have completely chucked the concept of "customer first" out the window I believe explains a lot.
Yeah, it sucks bigtime how we, the end user, are getting screwed so often just so a handful of greedy suits can suck our wallets dry
not only the customers. the artists, too. the only thing the music industry ever does is establishing and marketing brands. brands, as we know, are voodooware: it's something you know doesn't exist but you still pay for.
whoever is in the top 10 now isn't there because they make better music than others, but because there's a giant marketing machine that promotes the act. this marketing machine is expensive, is paid for by these companies and is the reason why other artists never have a chance to get noticed.
so because the music industry doesn't create any value, neither for the customer nor for the artist, it's best they disappear from the earth immediately. people did well before these companies existed and will do even better once they're gone for good.
I guess I am one of the last people who doesn't download 'free music' from the internet. I am also very biased since I do some sound recording and mixing part time and so I see a lot of friends and acquaintances employed by the music industry losing their jobs and finding it more and more difficult to make a living from their formerly established careers.
I'm definitely not above the making my own questionable moves when it comes to downloading music (I capture my paid Rhapsody stream to play offline) but I truly believe that the free ride nature that is taking over music will really begin to hurt the art not just the top executives.
edit: I do realize that the argument in this thread is more about the "pipe" through which the data comes through, where there is definitely a grey area.
I've always taken the opposite view (though I do think some copyrights and patents are needed. Just not to the extent that they are today). But I don't produce music, I come from a science background which promotes sharing and remixing of ideas to produce new ones. If everyone in science acted like the music or movie industry, science would be nowhere near were it is today.
Plenty of people will buy commercial music even when unlimited copying becomes legal.
As long as there's added value. But encrypted DRM'ed lo-quality sound files don't justify buying. I prefer to have a standard-conform Audio-CD with booklet as long as the quality justifies the price.
Because bottled water tastes better (IMHO), is cleaner, and hopefully without chlorine. The qualitiy justifies buying, IMHO.
Precisely! If all laws against copying music were dropped, there would still be plenty of people who would pay for digital music. They would pay a trusted supplier to deliver properly-tagged virus-free files with good artwork at a reasonable price.
And those who want to get the same music informally for free, well that would be fine too just like those who drink water from the tap for free or collect their own rainwater.
But trying to perpetuate the current system of trying to force people to buy overpriced DRM-infested files, by trying to block off other options, well it's not going to work.
My daughter pays £1 per track to buy songs for her phone. I've warned her that her music won't play when she changes her phone. But she's young and that seems so far in the future, so she doesn't worry about it. After she gets a new phone and needs to buy all her music again, then I think she'll choose to avoid Digitally Restricted Media.
Hey, you guys remember me telling you about how the music industry is working it's butt off to prolong their own deaths, and will eventually capitulate to the demands of users? Well, I finally found the article:
Since our announcement last Tuesday about starting to charge users €3.00 per month for listening to the radio in countries other than the USA, UK and Germany, we’ve received a lot of feedback. It’s not a decision we’ve made lightly, and I want to explain why we came to this conclusion and answer some common questions.
Last.fm Radio has always been ad supported, which means we sell ads on the site to cover the cost of running the service and paying the music licensing fees. If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes on the site you’ll know that the Last.fm community is international to the extreme – we are made up of people from practically every country in the world. Last.fm is a better place for it.
However, we simply can’t be in every country where our radio service is available selling the ads we need to support the service. The Internet is global, and geographic restrictions seem unfair, but it’s a reality we are faced with every day when managing our music licensing partnerships.
We’re listening and we’ve postponed the date on which radio will become a subscription service outside the USA, UK and Germany. In the meantime we’ll be squeezing in some additional improvements based on your requests:
* Gift subscriptions: you’ll be able to buy a subscription for a friend
* Updating developers using our Radio API: third-party apps that stream Last.fm Radio will have full access to the Radio API, so streaming will work provided the user that logs in is a subscriber. (All other APIs remain free/unchanged)
* Investigating alternative payment options. If Paypal sucks in your country, or you don’t have a credit card, don’t despair. Based on feedback so far, we are looking at supporting pay-by-SMS, and possibly some other options. Can’t promise we’ll have support for everyone’s favourite payment system from day one, but we’ll do our best to make it easy for you.
As soon as we’ve completed the upgrades noted above, we’ll move ahead with the transition. Thereafter, radio in the USA, UK and Germany will remain ad-supported, and radio in other countries where it’s not feasible to have an ad-supported service will be moving to a subscription service.
So these services will still work if they upgrade their API.
I think the simple solution that they should go with is one used by other sites in the same situation. If someone comes in from outside the currently available advertising areas, ie, if they come from Italy, but Last.FM is only advertising in German, then simply swap in ads from Google's Adsense. Adsense is EVERYWHERE, and thus, if they can't earn money from previously purchased ads through their normal channels, they can just fall back on Adsense where and when necessary and the rest will take care of itself.
