The RIAA Armageddon has begun

Still trusting my nntp USENET source of choice.

Would appreciate VPN service recommendations though.

seedbox is da bomb

Seedbox looks cool, but looks more appealing to people for whom downloading is a much more than casual endeavor. Like, competitive seeders, private server kings, etc.

I have been happy with Private Internet Access for VPN. I mostly use it to watch US Netflix and blackedout NHL games, but its pretty cheap and pretty reliable.

you guys could just stop stealing shit

I'm pretty hardassed about only dl'ing things that I either can't purchase (OOP etc.) or have already purchased in another format (cuz really why should I have to buy something twice. Prince Among Thieves is great, I spent $20 on the vinyl when it came out, now I have to buy it again in MP3 format? fuck you)

What Shakey said.

I should stop stealing shit, right after I stop buying music on eBay too, right? I'd feel a lot worse about stealing music if there wasn't a gigantic, state-sanctioned secondary market doing the same thing.

Music was pretty awesome before the RIAA started imho. Every house had a piano. People learned how to play songs their own way. You could get a job playing music along to a movie in a theater. Etc etc etc

...Beck's new album is going to be released as sheet music....

that already happened

yeah, a bunch NPR dorks recorded their own versions

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/recorded-music-industry-revenue-rises-424574

Music industry revenue rose last year for the first time since 1999.

too bad approximately zero of that growth went to actual musicians. looks like most of it came from subscription services, which don't pay shit.

but they're easier than P2P so who cares right

they pay more than p2p

sometimes

I'm at a point now where I don't care how much or little a subscription service pays out. It's finally the right platform in the post-Napster world and if the artists push back hard enough then they might get somewhere with their cut of the revenue. Lots of (not terribly old) artists are still of the old mindset, though, so it may be a few more years before anything substantial happens on that front.

spotify etc will never pay a ton of money per play because they don't produce very much money per play

^^^

they make all their money the same way most of the rest of the internet makes money - speculative investment, selling user data, etc. these sites aren't set up to generate revenue via content, content isn't worth anything anymore.

and it'll be outpaced by something else within a few years just like Rhapsody and eMusic were

http://i.imgur.com/PmuAUfB.gif

How are you going to outpace a huge music library that you, as a user, basically "rent" each month? Are they just going to download shit directly into our minds?

I'm sure someone will think of something. and some venture capitalist will give them a lot of money to launch it, and make a shit-ton of money overvaluing its stock, then it will go public, people will kinda like it, then they'll get tired of it - rinse and repeat

How are you going to outpace a huge music library that you, as a user, basically "rent" each month?

Not to belabor the point, but this is basically the platform I've been waiting to see realized since the first time I ever read about it hypothetically in some magazine articles nearly 20 years ago.

their library sucks imho

granted I am not the standard music consumer

They're missing some things, but they often have a lot of things I'd never have expected to be there (and new releases on labels of all sizes get added all the time). It's not all-encompassing, but neither is the torrent world or the used cd/vinyl market.

I'll stick with the illegal way where I can always find what I want

what do you guys think of a quasi-kickstarter scheme where bands release songs if x amount of contributory funds are reached, after which point anyone can have it for free, because it's pointless trying to police copying anyway?

the Lex argument of 'oh Spotify is worthless because it doesn't have every single fucking thing i could ever want to listen to' is so stupid. there's never been one-stop-shopping, there never will be, but as far as individual sources go it's about as good as it'll ever get. xp

I think ppl should just go back to buying music if they really like it. Not in mp3 format.

whatever, I have no use for it xp

People listen to music in different ways. It's an amazing world.

It doesn't have a rather large percentage of what I want and I prefer to have mp3s anyway.

In a perfect world, every artist would have a "Donate!" button on their website/Facebook/whatevs and I'd just download and listen to everything I wanted and whenever I was like, oh yeah this is great, I'd donate a couple bucks directly to the artist.

yes let's make that happen!

iatee roaringly otm. I'll take a tenth of a penny over zero

shakey mo otm. i honestly think the best solution is government money for all self-declared artists (with the caveat that you have to write a twenty pager at the end of the year), but i'm not totally convinced it's within the realm of possibility.

xp well there's the real-world answer i guess

i thought that's how canada worked?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/copyright-propaganda-machine-gets-new-agent-your-isp

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/music-sales-are-growing-for-the-first-time-this-century-heres-why/273512/

wow there is a lot interesting in that article

LISTENING IN OUR OWN LANGUAGE

The music market is global. But popular music is still local. Even though all of the top ten global albums and nine of the top ten global singles of 2012 were in English, Europeans still seem to prefer songs in their own languages. More than 60 percent of the top albums in key European countries were artists from that country.

I find this reassuring

we have to figure out a way to ensure that 100% of the top albums in key European countries are in English, so that our economy can win

I don't know the answer but I know Guy Fieri will be involved

Mmmm, that's money! Off the hook!

Would love to see a version of the gif with the circle growing and shrinking with total revenues.

I think I'm going to ask my bosses to revive the practice of talked-over promos - you know, "You're listening to (Name of Album), by (Name of Artist), available everywhere (Date)" - but I want Guy Fieri to do all the voice-overs.

a facebook informant tells me that on the day or so (maybe day after) that the anti-piracy rollout was announced, he downloaded something and his connection was shut down.

he called an 800 number to reactivate it and they knew the names of the files he had downloaded.

so i guess the RIAA is starting to get its shit working pretty well.

what had he downloaded?

Uncle Acid rare live photos