from the rising-tide-lifts-all-ships dept.
Music piracy is on the increase worldwide, with 40 percent of users are accessing unlicensed music, up from 35 percent last year, the global recorded music industry group IFPI said.
Internet search engines are making piracy easier, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said in a report on Tuesday, calling for government action.
The increase in piracy follows a slump in recent years when policing of the digital music landscape appeared to be clamping down on the practice.
"Copyright infringement is still growing and evolving, with stream ripping the dominant method," said IPPI chief, Frances Moore.
"With the wealth of licensed music available to fans, these types of illegal sites have no justifiable place in the music world," she said, calling for greater regulation of the digital music sector.
If they defeat stream ripping, there's always the analog hole...
[Ed Note - OTOH "The report also revealed the continuing rise in audio streaming. It found that 45 percent of respondents were now listening to music through a licensed audio streaming service—up from 37 percent in 2016." ]
Related Stories
Two weeks after various outlets reported that Jay-Z's music streaming service Tidal was having money problems, Tidal will offer a 12-day free trial (Dec. 25 to Jan. 5):
Tidal is getting into the holiday spirit. The streaming service is opening up its platform to anyone and everyone for 12 days beginning on Christmas, with no credit card required (a usual requirement for free streaming trials). The free trial will cover Tidal's Hi-Fi tier as well, so if you've been wanting to try out high-fidelity music, now is your chance.
Meanwhile, YouTube has done some work behind the scenes to launch a new attempt at getting people to pay for music:
After years of bickering over rights, YouTube has finally signed all three of the major music record labels into long-term deals. This week, Universal and Sony both reached rights agreements with the Alphabet platform, joining Warner Music Group. Though YouTube still needs to make deals with companies like the Merlin consortium of smaller labels to be fully comprehensive, the way is now paved for it to launch its hotly-tipped streaming service next year. [...] YouTube's anticipated streaming service, dubbed YouTube Remix by Bloomberg, could seem a little late to the party. With Spotify readying for an IPO and swapping stakes with Tencent, Apple music firmly established and Tidal, well, just being Tidal, streaming is already a crowded space.
Alphabet has tried to crack the streaming market before, launching its own premium Google play music service in 2011, but it's not exactly been a smash hit with a market share even smaller than Amazon, Deezer and Tidal's. It launched YouTube Music Key in 2014 to offer ad-free music videos, and this morphed into YouTube Red in 2016. Hopes that this would change the music scene were dashed, however, as YouTube Red gravitated towards entertainment videos instead. The chances are, Alphabet will look to combine its Google Play service with a premium YouTube service for music fans.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:11AM
The Interwebs cheapify ALL bytes. You cannot buck the trend, only delay it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:18AM (7 children)
In the old days people would tape song off the radio.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:34AM (1 child)
And share them with friends. I mean, how many of us were in our rooms as teens with a stack of tapes, pack of blanks, and those fancy new CD's cranking tunes while the deck was running making mix tapes and bootlegs for our friends? How many of us copied tapes and CD's from friends?
This Internet piracy is nothing new. Just more visible.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:15AM
'tape trees' were a thing. someone would tape a show, then 'seed' the show. top levels were people who could turn around the tape copies fast. usually 3 children for 1 parent; parent asks 3 children for their tape lists; the children receive a copy of the seed and the parent gets 3 new shows he didn't have. no money changes hands; its blanks for blanks or 'b+p' (blanks plus postage, if you have nothing to trade and are starting out). children have children, so its a classic tree. the tapes go out via mail and this started in the cassette days then became really big with digital audio (DAT tapes and a whole set of boxes that would strip scms and let you do bit perfect digital copies).
ah, the memories (lol).
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:18AM (4 children)
While true, you didn't have to be an audiophile to appreciate the difference between radio recordings, and almost anything else. If you wanted a copy of something, you borrowed a buddy's tape or record, and figured out how to wire an output to an input.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:06AM (3 children)
If you were listening to AM radio or you had a crappy radio, yes. Otherwise, FM radio is actually very good quality.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday September 20 2017, @06:28AM (2 children)
Except for the annoying DJs talking over half the song.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:35AM (1 child)
Where I lived, they actually announced songs in advance and said "get your tape decks ready!" and then played the entire single.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Friday September 22 2017, @10:41PM
Those were the good old days, before they cut off both the beginning and end of the song, play an obnoxious bumper between every freaking song, and actually had DJ's.
As for the format itself, FM is a lot like CD's. The format is capable of pretty high quality, but the radio stations nowadays compress the shit out of what they play, and keep in mind that most music in the last 20 years or so already has the shit compressed out of it. So the end result sounds awful. except maybe in your car with the windows down in a construction zone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by slap on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:23AM (10 children)
"the global recorded music industry group IFPI said".
Not exactly coming from an unbiased source. If they said piracy is going down, the music industry would have a harder time getting new laws passed.
The real crime is that the musicians are being ripped off by their labels and royalty collection organizations.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:31AM
Well, they need those very high royalties to fight the evil very high-tech pirates who would prevent artists from getting all the money the customers would otherwise pay.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:14AM (8 children)
... and streaming services, and their direct managers, and venue owners, and just about everybody else. When it comes to the business of making music, the musicians are almost all at or near the bottom of the food chain. Even famous musicians can be screwed over pretty easily, as Ke$ha or the Dixie Chicks can tell you all about.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @03:00AM (7 children)
musicians are almost all at or near the bottom of the food chain
...but they can do something that all the other folks can't.
If you are a musician and want to make money, PERFORM LIVE.
One day's work; one day's pay.
Same as with a carpenter or electrician or plumber.
If you consider recordings to be anything other than PROMOTIONS for your appearances, you're only fooling yourself.
As Fristy noted, technology has outstipped the business model of selling recordings.
Any 7 year old with a $20 computer can make perfect copies of an audio file.
...and businessmen suing/threatening to sue the consumers of their stuff is a really shitty business model.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @03:21AM (6 children)
I am a musician. I make a bit of money performing live. But it's definitely not much: A good gig pulls in about $100 plus a couple of free beers at the bar. And remember, that involves owning a bunch of equipment, training to use it, travel time, rehearsals with the band to master the songs, etc.
Better musicians than me get closer to $500 per performance. Still not a great living, and that involves being on tour constantly. The bigger-name bands also have more expenses, e.g. a pricier manager, roadies, hotels rather than crashing at somebody's house or in the van, etc.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday September 20 2017, @06:15AM (2 children)
I don't know what genre of music you play or how popular you are, so I'll speak in generalities instead.
The percentage of musicians that should expect to make a living wage from their craft should probably be roughly proportional to the percentage of painters, tennis players, dancers, writers, comedians, magicians or actors that do. Anyone that gets into any of these professions for the money is there for the wrong reasons.
Thexalon - my guess is that you're not in it for the money, but that you genuinely enjoy playing? If so, good on you.
This in no way excuses the behaviour of the music labels, who are generally no better than parasites sucking the blood out of the host that they need to survive.
I agree with GP - musicians should really view recordings as marketing rather than a source of income. I believe that's true even for 'A grade' artists/groups.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
Genre: My bread and butter is performing for contra dances (if you've never tried it, it's vaguely similar to square dances, but a lot less formal and more common north of the Mason-Dixon line). It's so not-profitable that my teacher, who was the recipient of national awards, had about 15 albums, and 17 published books of the music he composed, kept his day job as a teacher his entire life. I play others styles as well: singer-songwriter, Celtic rock, filk, and classical, but again not a ton of money in that.
As for popularity: I'd generally put my fan base at somewhere around 250-500, of which about 100-150 is local. Not terrible, especially considering the size of my venues so far, but certainly not filling Wembly anytime soon.
I'm not in it for the money, but if I got more pay for doing what I do it would enable me to:
- Buy better equipment than what I've got.
- Travel more to perform in places I haven't been to.
- Consider quitting my day job (software development) and do more performing and recording.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nnet on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:07PM
this is why you want a universal basic income, so you can pursue dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:24PM (1 child)
At this point in history it is unreasonable to expect to make your money off recordings. Especially if you are only good enough to pull in a couple hundred a performance. You should realize what you are doing is out of passion, not profit.
As the saying goes, don't quit your day job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @05:44PM
You're way off base.
Big names get a fair chunk of change.
I have seen very, very skilled people play their gigs for pittances - and then go back to their day jobs. Luckiest guy I know in context is a professor of music. Chops? Has them for days. Plays music that leaves other professionals amazed. Picked up a few hundred and got back in his car.
Katy Perry, on the other hand ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @07:10PM
yes, that's because the music market is severely restricted/almost bled dry from the years of vampires drinking it's blood. when people talk about "musicians can play live and make money" they are saying over time, with a reversal of the whole system. you would have more independent venues, more demand for live shows, etc. healthy competition of minstrels/groups in every town around the world. not this "go to the ticketmaster facility in big cities and everyone gets ripped off" bullshit we have now. why should musicians pack all their own gear? that's fucking stupid. the venues should be providing that shit. musicians should be packing their instruments and maybe their stomp boxes, if they choose to. chords and amps and shit could stay locked up at the venues. you could check out what you need like a library. this would be apart of the healthy competition between venues.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:39AM (9 children)
Back in the 70's I used to trade cassettes with friends. I often wished I could send a buck directly to the band, cutting out the middle man, the label, all the parasites that fed off the band.
That never became an option.
Now, in 2017, I wish when I find a good album I could send a buck to the band, cutting out the middle man, the label, and all the parasites that feed off the band.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:12AM (4 children)
My younger boy is 17 and listens to all sorts of music, I mean his tastes are really wide, and he will give anything a go.
He doesn't bother pirating music because Spotify gives him all the music he wants at a reasonable price. Isn't that the lesson the music business has failed to learn over the last 20 years?
Give your customers what they want, or they'll become someone else's customers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:17AM (2 children)
I want local copies. fuck the 'stream'. the net is not always up and I'm less and less happy about being 'tracked' each time I click or do something.
the only thing I like about streams is that they are usually rippable.
even for youtube, I download via 'youtube-dl' and watch the local copy.
local copies are where its at. fuck the cloud. clouds suck.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:17PM (1 child)
I think the point still stands, though. Give the customers what they want, or they'll find someone else who will. Not everyone wants the same thing. I also like Spotify; I don't miss having to manually manage my entire library. But I know audiophiles for whom that is still important to them.
Possibly in your case it is "pirates" that give you what you want, because the labels won't.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 20 2017, @08:36PM
That's the point I was making.
The major labels have resisted any new delivery methods for so long their customers have found new methods of getting what they want, Spotify, YouTube or pirates. (I'm sure there are others).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @08:28AM
There's your problem right there.
Considering the entertainment lobbies ultimately want to control all access and usage of music, anywhere, anytime, they want to set what a reasonable price is. Namely, through the roof.
Copyright is a train wreck as-is, and it's an extremely dangerous one since it's going to be used to control more and more people economically and politically. The DMCA is already being abused to silence people. But even with that all aside, they want to make sure they extract every last cent possible out of you. Frankly I'm surprised Spotify has lasted this long.
(Score: 5, Informative) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:34AM (2 children)
The majority of the music I purchase comes from Bandcamp.
Of course Bandcamp takes a reasonable cut, but the rest goes straight to the artists. And it's a flexible payment model -- the last album I bought was a $1 minimum but I chose to pay $25. Although in that case it was also a charity deal -- one of the artists recently passed away so one of the guys he used to work with put up some of their old unreleased songs to put together a college fund for his kid.
The other great thing about Bandcamp is that I pay whatever, and I directly get a link to a zip file of FLAC or Vorbis or any of several bitrates of MP3 or AAC or whatever format I want. And they send the same link to my email. I don't have to get an app or register an account or worry about DRM or anything; I can still re-download the tracks as much as I want if I lose or delete them as long as I have that email. I *could* register an account and download an app and keep a cloud library too, but I don't have to. And they'll usually let you stream the entire album before you pay for it so you know what it's worth to you. It's so much more convenient than piracy that it's worth the price on that alone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:02PM
For the love of all that's holy, could you please suggest to Bandcamp that they pay artists with some other technology than Paypal?
I mean, the model's great, the people are fantastic, the good feels are amazing but paypal actually makes the Chase banking group look like the good guys.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday September 20 2017, @10:20PM
Well, you do realize of course that if Bandcamp isn't paying IFPI their stippend, they're *clearly* contributing to global piracy. The spi^H^H^H music must flow (through IFPI). There can be no music without IFPI.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:41AM
but you're going to have to find independent stuff you like. Even then a bit will go to the label (and/or distributor) usually, but it's less awful. Like I'd rather bandcamp got their take than have to deal with random donations and paypal and all that stuff myself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:02AM (13 children)
Every dumbfuck (this means you) gets music from YouTube.
Smarter-than-average dumbfucks use youtube-dl.
Dumber-than-average dumbfucks use shitty webapp youtube downloaders.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:15AM (12 children)
I'm in a 3 day a week aerobics class. Last year Halloween fell on a class day. I grabbed a bunch of youtube videos relating to halloween, converted them to MP3, burned a CD, and gave it to our fearless leader.
A couple weeks ago was another event I wanted to have a custom soundtrack for. Turned out, the youtube to mp3 converter I'd used last October now wanted to install a Chrome toolbar. Um, no. How about no.
Searching for other Youtube to MP3 converters resulted in a big fail.
Me? I peruse a couple music sites once or twice a week, when something comes down the pike I might like I grab it from pirate bay. Not found? I have a text file of stuff I want to listen to, every once in a while I pop those into Pirate Bay.
Now that I'm retired I listen to music maybe 20 minutes a day, and find I have more stuff to listen to than have time to listen to it. Most of my listening was while cranking out code. Now that I crank out cat luvins, which requires no music, I have more music than time.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:31AM
So you're a dumber-than-average dumbfuck. Got it.
Here's one.
http://www.convertfiles.com/ [convertfiles.com]
And that's just one example.
Go hardcore dumbfuck! Your choice of python or perl.
https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/ [github.com] (python)
https://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown [jwz.org] (one giant perl script)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:08AM (10 children)
My experience has been that I have stopped pirating anything because it all bores the crap out of me. There's scarcely a song out there that I haven't heard 10,000 times, and I can pretty much do without hearing it a 10,001st time. Same thing with movies or TV. If somebody happens to hand me a thumb drive with pirated shows or movies on it, I might watch them if there's absolutely nothing else to do, but even then I find myself skipping ahead or dropping out 10 minutes in to go do something more interesting.
Now if I want music, I play it myself. I never took lessons, never learned as a kid, but I've managed to get to a proficiency that suits me. It scratches the itch. If I want something more interactive, I do an RPG with my kids or go out and do something civic-minded.
When I return to the commercial media I was immersed in as a kid, it repels me. The volume (in both senses of the word) of commercials is crazy. The messages corporate-produced content peddles are anathema. Why does anybody subject himself to it? Go outside, go for a run or a hike. Go to your work bench and fix something broken in your house or create something you've always wanted but which has never shown up in the shelves at Walmart. Read a book. Write a book. Start a love affair. Something. Something other than whiling away your time on earth listening to corporations telling you what to think and what to do.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:15AM (9 children)
My experience has been that I have stopped pirating anything because it all bores the crap out of me. There's scarcely a song out there that I haven't heard 10,000 times, and I can pretty much do without hearing it a 10,001st time.
WTF? Maybe you've run out of music in your narrow preferred niche genre, but if you don't limit yourself that way, but you do limit yourself to music made before, say, 1990, there's so much music that's been recorded that there should be no way you could run out of new things to listen to. You'll have to venture beyond the Top 40 though. These days, there's a ridiculous amount of music available that's been recorded in just the past 10-15 years; you can find tons of it on YouTube, plus various other sites that cater to indie artists. Now that anyone with a laptop can record and mix decent-sounding music, there's just scads of music out there. Don't forget all the foreign music too. So I'm sorry, I don't buy this idea that you've run out of music to listen to.
Same thing with movies or TV.
This again is pretty silly. There's been literally thousands of movies made since the dawn of cinema, and countless hours of TV shows. Now if you're filtering them by some metric, like "good English-language sci-fi movies" or something very limiting like that, then sure, the supply is pretty limited and not growing very fast, but if you mean all movies and TV, then no way. You could spend months just watching old TV shows from the 70s-80s all day long.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Wednesday September 20 2017, @07:31AM (6 children)
I can actually relate to what Phoenix says. It is not so much that there is really no movie or music that I have not seen/hear before, but that I have perhaps aged enough to not significantly care about it. And a lot what is produced is actually similar enough to things I have listened to/seen that I do not really need it.
It is actually quite a wonderful experience. I no longer have a TV, do not need netflix or torrents, and spend my time in different ways.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:49PM (5 children)
I'm probably being a little too literalist, but again I feel that you and Phx are basically saying, "I've seen all the stuff that I liked when I was younger", and you haven't bothered branching out and look at stuff outside that bubble. Have you tried watching, for instance, Arabic- or Chinese-language movies? Or listening to traditional Indian music? Or even 80s rap? Now of course, I can understand trying some of these things out briefly and deciding that that entire genre is just not of interest (as is the case for me with rap), but I'm just pointing out there's a LOT of stuff out there that anyone with your attitude probably has not been exposed to. Personally, I've seen some really interesting movies when I've checked out foreign films, particularly European ones, but even some Arabic ones. Foreign films are totally different from Hollywood American ones (Michael Bay fans would not be impressed). Watch out for the French movies though; some of those are downright disturbing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
It's like you're deliberately missing the point. The patterns and stories are not terribly new. Once you've seen 2-5 TV coo shows you've seen them all. Super hero movies? Done. Action? Done. Not a while lot of REALLY original stuff out there. I'm only in my mid 30s and already have trouble with a lot of stuff being boring. By 50/60 I'm sure it will be near impossible. Though it will probably be all the blockbuster hits from the last 40 years remade for VR or something.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:25PM
I'm not deliberately missing the point. Sure, if you just watch Hollywood movies, and you're intellectual, you're going to get bored because they really are all formulaic, especially these days with everything being a remake, reboot, or sequel/prequel. But there's a lot more to the universe of cinema than Hollywood. Try watching some movies from Europe or Asia. You might eventually get bored of that stuff too (Bollywood movies tend to be rather formulaic as well in their own way), but it should take longer because now you have many different cultures' worth of movies to look through instead of just one. European movies specifically tend to be very unique in my experience. There's a reason the most famous film festival is in Cannes, France.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:35PM
No, what you're saying might be true for others, but not for me. I have branched out to other musical genres and cultures for novelty. I have listened to Tuvan throat singing and Bollywood hits. For a time I had the dial set to Afro-Pop. For video I watched series like, "El Internado de la Laguna Negra," "La Reina del Sur," or "Parineeta." There are good things there.
But I've mined it all out. Re-watching old series seems like a double waste of time. Sure, I enjoyed watching "Airwolf" when I was a kid, but as an adult its storylines are dated, to say the least.
Once in a while something new and novel comes along, and I'll enjoy that, but there simply isn't enough of it to compel me to pay for anything. So I've lost the habit of paying for content.
And as that has happened, I've noticed a general loss of interest in passive entertainment. It's much more entertaining to undertake active hobbies. Also with many of them the price is right, because they're free. I've taken up flint-knapping, and all I gotta do for that is pick up rocks and reduce them to tools. As I've done that, I've found myself buying less and less and making more and more of what I need or desire. And as I do that more, I find I prefer it because I know exactly what goes into it, unlike any given thing you might buy in a store made by companies you shouldn't trust in places that will divert what you give them to ends you abhor.
I dunno. I haven't formulated any grand philosophy about it, but as I've been doing all that there has been a growing sense of freedom and confidence, and with that a greater sense of calm. Taking back control of the material side of life has conferred freedom, and being able to do that began with taking back control of my own time and mindshare. It's not just that 80 minutes of my evenings are no longer spent watching commercials, but that the entire evening is my own again. It's not just that my head isn't trapped playing a loop of a song in radio playlists, but that I can noodle around tunes nobody else has ever heard, but which I can now play because I taught myself the tools of making music. And it's perfectly fine if nobody else ever hears them or likes them or any of that, because it makes me happier than listening to anybody else's compositions ever did.
Anyway, all of which is to say I have really enjoyed that I have gone off the reservation with respect to media. Don't even have a desire to pirate anything anymore. I sort of suspect that therein lies the true nightmare for the *AA's, that people might do somewhat likewise and un-learn the habits that have been so profitable for the content industries.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:56AM (1 child)
Good point.
Interesting you would mention that. I actually lived in China (and Japan) for several years.... So yes, I did watch Chinese, Japanese and Korean movies and series. And tried listening classical music. And while interesting for a while, I feel it still does not reach me anymore on the same emotional level as music or film could touch me when I was young, and I came to enjoy when it is quiet and I am reading or thinking, instead of being fed audio/visual content.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:30PM
And tried listening classical music. And while interesting for a while
Personally, I like baroque-era music better than the classical-era stuff (what people commonly call "classical" typically encompasses baroque, classical, and romantic), and I like the classical better than romantic.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @05:00PM (1 child)
Yeah, but Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are not interesting to me. I hear them and all I get are echoes of Tiffany or Debbie Gibson, which I didn't care about the first time around. R&B...it's an aesthetic that doesn't appeal to me, and its sensibility is callow. "Just like a tattoo, I'll always have you..." does not strike me as poetry. Okkervil River and indy bands like them my wife listens to, but it's dull to me. A couple years ago I was down at SXSW, one of the US's venues for cutting-edge music, and it was all a big meh.
And foreign music, that's not a real remedy. I appreciated Toumani Diabate and Boubacar Traore and Kodo, but it wears thin, too.
Everything is derivative unto tedium. Perhaps it's the access to the content that produced it, such that I grew sated more quickly in life than was ever possible for people before who had culture titrated toward maximum profit, dripped out in precious droplets. I've passed over the horizon of such things and can't find my way back, and my pocket money can't either.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @05:35PM
Yeah, but Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are not interesting to me.
I should hope not; that's corporate-manufactured crap.
I hear them and all I get are echoes of Tiffany or Debbie Gibson, which I didn't care about the first time around.
That stuff was crap too, but at least the mass-produced crap in the 80s was better than the mass-produced crap now: back then, they didn't have Autotune, so those pop singers actually had to have some talent.
I appreciated Toumani Diabate and Boubacar Traore and Kodo, but it wears thin, too.
Now that's more like what I'm talking about. If you've explored this far and wide, then I don't have any more advice for you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:48AM
I listen to Jango Radio for 24 hours each day, 25 hours when Daylight Time ends.
Jango doesn't care about DRM, all the MP3 files have permanent URLs, and download links are not made obvious, but anyone who can open Developer Tools in a web browser can find the URLs.
I'm guessing Jango is apathetic about piracy because the mainstream radio station is a subsidiary of a music promotion company which makes tons of money from fees paid by aspiring independent musicians who are still naive enough to have hopes and dreams.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:01AM (2 children)
They've got more people engaged in licensed music overall, but continue to complain that things are getting worse.
I wonder if RIAA counts music bought from independent labels as licensed or not. I stopped giving money to the associated labels years ago, and when soundcloud and bandcamp came along I realized that there's so much great accessible and independent music out there that fixating on the ultra-popular is a self-limiting move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:18AM (1 child)
Oh, I can almost guarantee they count it as "not". As in "not licensed by us".
Notice how they feel that more regulation is the solution. Pirating music is already illegal and you don't get rid of crime by outlawing doing illegal things.
So it's pretty obvious that what they are really talking about are all those pesky unlicensed bands producing music without a music production license and selling it without the IFPI getting a cut. It becomes even more obvious when you realize that music has gone moved from mostly pirating old-fashioned CDs to legal streams, and the only thing that has actually gone up is the number of "unlicensed musicians", who have figured out that rather than a record contract, all you need is a Soundcloud / Bandcamp account or someone with a bit of HTML knowledge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:56PM
They used to install rootkits on people's PCs, shake down people in the streets to see if they were listening to pirated music and sue people at random hoping or settlements. Who knows what they want to do now.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:42AM
yah that's all I have to say
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @06:14AM
... just after I stopped listening to any music 5 years go.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Wednesday September 20 2017, @08:26AM
I don't want Mickey-Mouse lossy MP3s. I want my CD quality 16-bit stereo PCM full dynamic range audio that I can archive and transcode myself as and when I see fit. I don't want to be subject to Digital Restrictions Management and I don't want the corporations compiling a database of all the music I listen to and how often and at what times of day and my GPS location.
In recent years I have been very disappointed with the post-production if almost all of the music I have bought. It has been ruined by the loudness wars. Music is very important to me and this is a huge detriment to my enjoyment.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:28AM (4 children)
Oh really?
*) Music (legally) only available on plastic/vinyl [1]
*) Music not (legally) available in my region ("licensing restrictions") [2]
*) Music not (legally) available ("out of print") [3]
*) Want an archival copy [4]
*) Want an offline archive [4]
*) Unavailable due to PC reasons [5]
*) Temporary variable availability [2,6]
*) Different editions available in different regions [7]
*) Music not published in legal form [8]
*) Music is violating licensing [9]
*) Risk of getting pwned [10]
*) Flexibility [11]
For instance:
[1] Devil Doll (yugoslavian/italian art-rock/progressive rock)
[2] Pietruszko - Anatony of nuclear war
[3] non-remastered instances of countless things (Queen Geatest Hits 2 is particularly jarring)
[4] Yello would be nice to keep around.
[5] "Vikingarock" is a non-political music with some roots born from white supremacy music - guess how common mislabelling is in this category, or for that matter how many bands latter albums are blacklisted due to the bands' earlier albums.
[6] Removing most of Oingo Boingo from Spotify Sweden? WTF!? Dr Octagon - Blue Flowers
[7] Falco Geatest Hits (the austrian/german version is better than the one I mistakenly bought in sweden)
[8] Lots of music exist in a legal grey zone
[9] Dub (not dubstep, dub), some non-parody rewrites
[10] Sony Rootkit et al as a concept.
[11] mp3 (and what can be converted to it) can be played almost everywhere.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:51PM (3 children)
Here's her likely response to your post:
"You don't need to listen to any of that old, obscure stuff. You need to listen to the stuff that we've made available for you on the licensed music services."
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 20 2017, @03:11PM (2 children)
Which still would run into the regional limits - quite little japanese, korean, russian(!), irish(!), east european, indian, pakistani, iranian, isreali, somali, brazilian and chilean music is available on swedish spotify (immensely annoying since lots of the stuff is available in closest region-appropriate spotify). Heck, I have troubles finding most canadian music I'm interested in when it comes to legal services.
For some reason British music is easiest to find online.
But yeah, since I'm one of those that wants my RnB to be Rythm'n'Blues, hate it when they increase amplitude in a song, want interesting lyrics, want bass to be muted and can hear a few craploads of artifacts from the mixing I guess I'm into obscure stuff these days.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:25PM (1 child)
Which still would run into the regional limits - quite little japanese, korean, russian(!), irish(!), east european, indian, pakistani, iranian, isreali, somali, brazilian and chilean music is available on swedish spotify (immensely annoying since lots of the stuff is available in closest region-appropriate spotify)
Surely all that stuff is available on YouTube these days. It may not be as convenient as Spotify (which personally I've never even used), but it's there. Find something you like there, then you can buy the CD (remember those?) on Ebay internationally. Screw "legal music services".
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 20 2017, @08:09PM
Nope, it isn't (at least not in acceptable quality). Well, at least not the stuff I can search for - language and characters are quite different.
For me music is either an very active process via a setup picked to work for classical music (which means it exposes pretty much any encoding flaws as well) or a background process which means the youtube UI _really_ sucks (as a pocket-player when out walking, I do not want to stop and interact with the phone four times an hour, when I'm out walking I want to enjoy the walk, otherwise I would have taken the tube)
And also - I have stopped ordering CD/DVD/VHS/MC(other than for crafts)/Vinyl/Floppy (never jumped on the BluRay et al. train), which excaberates the situation slightly (I know where to get slightly less than 10% of the stuff I'm looking for on CD/Vinyl - with a very real risk of running into an unwanted remaster), would have to think about it if offered on a sanely packaged SD-card however.
One of the last CDs I was looking for had a list price of about 180e (about 200usd at the time) in used condition :)