downloading music

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Some interesting recent developments:

Lambcast: http://www.cds.lambcast.com

- An archived file that has a built-in payment system. No need for 3rd party retail or any kind of online shop. You just need server space to offer up the files for download. The customer downloads the file, then makes the payment to "unlock" it.

Looks interesting, high set-up charge tho and they can hacked.
 

cs2cd

New member
Looks interesting, high set-up charge tho and they can hacked.

What high set up charge? The server or the format?

The format is free to start using it, and they interface with Amazon S3 for hosting.

The format use dual layer AES 256 security, this is double the security of the Zip files of the U.S goverment.
 
Last edited:

hint

party record with a siren
Looks interesting, high set-up charge tho and they can hacked.

Not sure what you mean by set-up charge. Theoretically, you could upload bundles of MP3s to yousendit etc, couldn't you? Or even just send the files out as email attachments.

As far as hacking goes... I think filesharing is past the stage where anyone's going to find a "solution", so I think efforts are better focused on making transactions easier - for those customers who are happy to pay, and for those artists or labels without the funds (or necessary skills) to set up a webshop, who want to sell direct.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Hmm- but what about the question of scale involved here-- if we ignore the idea of the market as supreme arbiter of moral worth, does anyone actually believe that Steinberg aren't raking it in even accounting for losses thru piracy?
Ironically, I think Steinberg actually do quite well out of piracy - it shuts down competition. Relatively few bedroom producers even bother to seriously try the competition, they just buy Cubase if they can afford it and crack it if they can't, and noone challenges the party line that you need Cubase to sound 'professional'. Meanwhile cheaper (often more innovative) sequencers that might start challenging Cubase get starved of money and publicity.

So yeah, piracy is shafting the music software market, but not neccessarily in the most direct way...
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
What high set up charge? The server or the format?

The format is free to start using it, and they interface with Amazon S3 for hosting.

The format use dual layer AES 256 security, this is double the security of the Zip files of the U.S goverment.

The Server and It would be cracked with a key finder within a couple of days.
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
As far as hacking goes... I think filesharing is past the stage where anyone's going to find a "solution", so I think efforts are better focused on making transactions easier - for those customers who are happy to pay, and for those artists or labels without the funds (or necessary skills) to set up a webshop, who want to sell direct.

Snocap looks like it could be OK for artists and your right about hacking but it's just funny when people actually believe it can keep more that the "school kids" away, I worked with a guy who could ice just about anything.
 

Trevor Lunch

Active member
I love to download music.What is miles better than that though is having the money to buy the vinyl.There are a lot of things I would not have bought if it had have not been for being able to listen to it first via P2P.I do not buy CD's because they are lame,I would rather d/l it if it is CD only most times...although there can be exceptions.I guess this attitude would be threatening to CD sales,but given the choice between free mp3 or rubbish CD with lame artwork that cost about 2 quid tops to produce and is then sold on for about 10 to 14 quid I would choose free d/l everytime.
Some people just don't have the urge to go out and buy music so I guess they are the kind of people who would have been bandying about seventh generation copy tapes 10 years ago.There are a lot of people in this day and age who are much more educated about music because of p2p and the internet.I think personally this practice is healthy.The music industry is lame.The only reason it has started digital downloads is because it has to if it wants to claw a little bit of the "market share" back.
If independent artists are worried about revenue loss they are probably in the wrong game and should start to sell conservatories,mobile phones,or insurance.The kind of people who just download music and don't buy it are just "gimboids" who are not worthy of consideration.
To me getting mp3's on soulseek is just a way of devouring the music when you dont have the coin to buy it.
Remember in the eigthies when all the heavy metal records bore a skull and crossbones cassette with a message saying home taping is killing music?Did it kill music?

Answers on the back of a postcard to....
 

Trevor Lunch

Active member
I'm sure you're right, but I am more concerned about the artists than the industry.

It is indecent - downloading music by people like Prince Alla, for example, when he is living in a wooden shack.

People I know have seriously considered giving up releasing music over the last few years...

Loads of people might not even ever here him at all though.I'm sure if p2p ended he would not suddenly be able to upgrade to a porcelain shack.I may be ignorant but I have never heard of Prince Alla but I have now and I am searching for him on soulseek.If I like it he will be one more artist who's records I am on the look out for.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Snocap looks like it could be OK for artists and your right about hacking but it's just funny when people actually believe it can keep more that the "school kids" away, I worked with a guy who could ice just about anything.

That service looks pretty good - I think that's the kind of thing that many artists will find useful. Are you saying that you think something like that will always be hackable? It hardly matters really does it because those that hack weren't going to purchase and those that purchase aren't interested in hacking - it's far too inconvenient.
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
Its a proprietary "zip like" format, you cant open them with winzip or anything.

Without being rude, I've heard it all before. After 20+ in the games industry I've watched people break every single system/format, some of them in minutes. It's like a red rag to a bull, once someone finds the key - bingo, game over. Big corps spend millions on protection only to have it wrecked within days, if Microsoft, EA and Adobe can't do it, I don't believe anyone can.
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
That service looks pretty good - I think that's the kind of thing that many artists will find useful. Are you saying that you think something like that will always be hackable? It hardly matters really does it because those that hack weren't going to purchase and those that purchase aren't interested in hacking - it's far too inconvenient.

I don't really know how the system works but someone will just break them open and make the images available, rendering the protection useless. So if you are downloading the full album in a wrapper I would probably suggest that you'll be able to download and break it open without paying anything, which will be a god send if you think about it.

For about five years I worked next to a guy who's job it was to work on protecting our games, we had a massive meeting with Macrovision who claimed their disks couldn't be copied or cracked, by the time the main guy left the building Matt had handed him a cracked and working version of his demo disk.
 

Don Rosco

Well-known member
Without being rude, I've heard it all before. After 20+ in the games industry I've watched people break every single system/format, some of them in minutes. It's like a red rag to a bull, once someone finds the key - bingo, game over. Big corps spend millions on protection only to have it wrecked within days, if Microsoft, EA and Adobe can't do it, I don't believe anyone can.

Of course people will be able to hack it, but most people won't bother. If it's easier for them, or if they actually want to pay for it, they will.
 

leamas

Well-known member
Of course people will be able to hack it, but most people won't bother. If it's easier for them, or if they actually want to pay for it, they will.

Think the ease of use factor is absolutely critical here. If it's easier to download the music legally, even for a fee, and it's use isn't restricted, people will get into it.

With this in mind, perhaps the most reliable form of copy protection at the moment is to release material only on vinyl. This makes the process of uploading laborious, the quality will be dubious, and therefore it is much less likely to end up on a the p2ps. Even if it does, the amount of time taken for it to spread will be far greater than if it were in digital format.

I buy from Bleep and Boomkat digitally because I get really good emails from them detailing the new releases. It's a bit like old school record shop service, advice, reccomendations etc, and this makes a huge difference. I think if the industry can embrace this personal aspect and stop thinking about the whole thing like a game of monopoly it has a chance to benefit. Unfortunately the larger players want to centralize everything and it's just not going to work.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
With respect to the latest furore over Mandelson's plans to cut the internet connections of persistent filesharers:

"Kaiser Chiefs' chief songwriter Nick Hodgson, when the last album was leaked onto the web a month before release, said it was like having his house burgled and someone was using the internet to sell all his belongings."

But Nick, your "house" is full of shit. You should be grateful someone's selling it off.
 
This issue seems to have gone through a period of relative quiet over the last couple of years, though i guess there's been much bigger things to be worrying about at the moment.

Post-2008, has the argument changed shape at all?

i was reading this blogpost, arguing that artists should be compensated for their effort, and that it was a form of moral failure to simply take their product for free.

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/

I liked how the guy didnt attack the filesharers from the usual property theft angle, but went after the slightly easier sell of; you're happy to support global mega corps like Apple who make the computers you download all your shit onto, but you're unwilling to chuck in a few dollars for someone who supposedly influences your life so much - where are your priorities? OR something of that sort...

But i fail to be convinced on a few points,

1) Firstly, that music should be conceptualised fundamentally as a commodity produced by artists with the expectation of remuneration, and that the mechanism for this remuneration is to trade the product itself.

It feels like a rigid reduction of an art form which affects society on levels way beyond purely financial ones.

2) That downloading music is equal to material theft. When you download a copy of a song, you arent affecting its supply to anyone else. If i had a fruit stall with a box of apples that magically regenerated each time someone took one, could i really say that they were being stolen if everyone took one as they passed by, but the pile stayed the same size?

The argument seems to rest on the assumption that i wont be buying the song once i have downloaded it illegally. Well, if i hadnt downloaded it in the first place, theres a chance that i might not have bought it at all either. It seems to be stretching it a bit far by pointing to digital downloading as an indication of purchasing intent, and hence loss of earnings.

3) That the current remuneration model is worth maintaining. Currently, artists continue to receive compensation for their work long after they've completed it, long after they've recouped their initial outlay, even in some cases, well after they've made a killing from their product. Is this particularly fair?

If i build a toll road, incur all the costs of construction and charge people for using it, why should i be able to charge people to infinity a "rental" for the use of my road. Wouldn't it be fairer if there was a limit to my potential profit calculated that was proportional to the amount of effort involved in producing the work?

4)That artists should earn their keep by selling the product of their labour. This may sound a little counter-intuitive, but i think the system of patronage that supported so many arts and artists through the last millennium is the model to follow here. Instead of rewarding artists per unit sold, i think we should return to the model of commissioning projects, and funding them. Patronage used to the preserve of the elite, but with the internet, fan-funding/crowdsourcing/kickstarter has the potential to empower us all to be patrons collectively. This is surely a more progressive approach than a simple market reward system, where music/art can be commissioned by a group of people who hold an interest in seeing the work completed.

When victorian business barons built schools and hospitals for their communities they didnt think about the lost income they would miss out on of future generations by not incorporating rent collection schemes into their donations. Their actions were motivated by a desire to bequeath a gift in the service of a wider culture. This is how we should view the commissioning of art. Everyone wins, + the projects get discussed in a much wider social context. If it takes 20,000 people to donate $5 to make an album happen, well, that's 20,000 people involved in the process of creation. Much more than happens right now with record companies placing bets with advances, individual tastemakers taking gambles etc...

5) That "freeloading" culture is killing music itself. This seems almost too silly to warrant a rebuttal. I will if anyone can be bothered to contest it.

--

Let me place a caveat here, obviously i want artists to be able to live, but i dont necessarily think they have the god given right to profit like kings even if their music touches millions. (profits from touring excluded)

Nor do i think that musicians have a right to expect that they will be able to make music full time. I think that the community model would work well here. If people are willing to fund somebody then so be it - but when people cry out "oh those poor musicians actually had to think about giving up" I can't help but note how hollow the cry sounds when it comes from a position of relative luxury. There's so many people who can't follow their dreams, this is not a valid argument with which to prop up a monopolistic business practice.

--

In regards to practice however, i wonder if people are downloading with the same frenzy that happened a few years ago. You remember, from 2005-2007, broadband had just been rolled out properly, it was the case of music bingeing - gluttony on a hd. People were leeching GB's of music, overkill.

But now with youtube, the fact that almost anything can be streamed nowadays, i wonder how this is affecting the practice of cultural sharing. Youtube has become my main reference point for music nowadays (probably the last 18months). I don't need to bother downloading anything, because its all there. Youtube gives me whatever i want , but i have to know what i'm looking for. And judging by the numbers (almost 1million views for Ratlin-Messiah alone) plenty of other people are exploring sound this way.
 
Top