How Music Got Free --> my book review

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DrBeatle, Jul 10, 2015.

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  1. rockledge

    rockledge Forum Resident

    Location:
    right here
    That is exactly right. If new CD prices were more reasonable chances are I would start buying new CDs again.
    As it is now if I want to hear something new I borrow it from the library.
    I am not about to shell out 20 bucks for a CD that I might not even like. It is worth perhaps 10 bucks for me to do that. The listening experience of seeing whether I like something or not is worth 10 bucks.

    It isn't worth 20.

    Especially with so much old music out there on CDs at yard sales and flea markets that I have yet to check out..........

    Buying music isn't just about owning it, it is very much about that first experience of hearing it. That experience has a value.
     
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  2. BryanA-HTX

    BryanA-HTX Crazy Doctor

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Was I the only one that read this as "how to get music free"?
     
  3. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    I'm sort of similar...unless it's a band I already like, I use streaming to "test drive" music. If I REALLY dig it, I buy the CD. If I like it, but not enough to buy the CD, I just keep streaming it.
     
  4. ytserush

    ytserush Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northeast US
    Good read, but I completely disagree with Witt about there not being an apparent difference between CDs and the MP3.

    There are people that can tell the difference. It's just not an issue because most people either are willing to trade it for convenience or they just don't care at all. The people that do care (such as myself) are in the minority.
     
  5. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    If they're crappy mp3s, then yes I agree. But some of the really high quality ones, I even have a hard time really hearing a significant enough difference that would make me choose one over the other.
     
  6. aoxomoxoa

    aoxomoxoa I'm an ear sitting in the sky

    Location:
    USA
    Book looks interesting. I think I will see if I can find it on a torrent site. :)
     
  7. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Yeah, I think a lot of the disdain for MP3s is by people who haven't actually done A/B comparisons. There were a lot of bad MP3s...back in the days of Napster. But if you take a good audio file and make a 256k MP3 using LAME, then A/B that, you're very unlikely to be able to consistently tell which is which. I do this when I'm testing a new MP3 compression scheme, using tracks that I know have both very good audio quality and material that will reveal flaws in the perceptual coding.
     
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  8. Noise Annoys

    Noise Annoys Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ireland
    I read it a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. However, I must say some of the technical details went over my head a bit. Particularly early on when the book detailed the creation of mp1, mp2, mp3, mp4 files etc.

    I think I just missed the illegal downloading heyday, having left college in 1994 (no internet) and being of the generation who preferred physical product over digital files. Having said that, I did have scores of CDRs of various hard-to-find albums in the early 2000s that a friend, who was way more tech-savvy than I was, sourced from torrent sites.

    One thing that I was surprised the author didn't mention was that year or two when Sony BMG tried to copy protect their CDs. Remember that? There were lots of problems with discs not playing on certain machines, on PCs or in car stereos.

    [​IMG]
     
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  9. JasonA

    JasonA Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cereal City
    [​IMG]
     
  10. Jgirar01

    Jgirar01 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas
    I think the music industry is still ripping people off. I recently went digital with a Naim Superuniti for the convenience and then started looking at download prices- are you kidding me- same price as physical media? I can get the Dicks Picks series I already have on cd for 249 bucks? Single albums for 12-20 in high resolution. I like the convenience but will not pay for the same music again. Seems they could make a killing if prices were reasonable!
     
  11. Hokeyboy

    Hokeyboy Nudnik of Dinobots

    ^They'll never learn. Ever.
     
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  12. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Totally agree. They do the same thing with e-books, and it's ridiculous. Physical and digital costs should not be =.
     
  13. ubertrout

    ubertrout Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Not quite accurate (well, it's accurate, but it's not what the case was about). The case it's talking about is Diamond v. RIAA, where the RIAA sued Diamond arguing that the Rio MP3 player (remember that) violated the American Home Recording Act (AHRA - 17 USC 1001 et seq.). The AHRA requires (1) serial copy protection technology and (2) payment of royalties by makers of home recording devices. The problem was that the AHRA had been drafted with the minidisc in mind, and the Court (1) held that the AHRA did not apply to computers, and (2) that a MP3 player was a computer. Accordingly, it was essentially a free-for-all for makers of MP3 players. It didn't help the Diamond Rio, just like the Sony case ended up not really helping Betamax, but that's a different story.

    Interestingly, everyone assumed that the AHRA was essentially a dead letter after that case, until recently GM and other car makers were sued under the AHRA for failure to pay royalties over in-dash units that could rip and play back tracks.

    I read the book and enjoyed it, but I could have done without the snarky asides. I found the part about the creation of the MP3 especially interesting, but that's perhaps partially because I'd already read a number of excerpts from the other plotlines online ahead of time.
     
  14. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Which snarky asides are you referring to? Curious as to what you thought was the author's snark as I didn't pick up on too much of that myself.
     
  15. ubertrout

    ubertrout Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    There were a fair number of political asides, but the ones that comes to mind are the shots at Limp Bizkit when they weren't being discussed. I didn't mind because I care for that band, but it was extraneous and easy.
     
  16. Technocentral

    Technocentral Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    Got it as a Audio book, excellent book, feels like a Thriller.
     
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  17. Thomas Casagranda

    Thomas Casagranda Forum Resident

    Great book. I read it some months ago, after a Guardian profile.
     
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  18. mmars982

    mmars982 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    I just read this during a recent trip. Excellent book, and extremely interesting story about several completely unrelated people who unkowlingly worked together to make this all happen.

    I do agree that the statements near the beginning that say mp3 & CD are the same sound quality as if it were a fact should have been written differently, as that they seem the same to most people. But I found the story behind the development of the mp3 very interested - I was one of the many who thought it was a progression from mp1 & mp2 and therefore, better.
     
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  19. kanno1ae

    kanno1ae Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas, USA
    I disagree. As many others have said above, the price you pay has very little to do with the manufacturing costs. It has much more to do with the other things like artist development, marketing/promotion, recording costs, etc. With digital downloads, you also have to take into account the costs to develop the software to purchase, server costs, bandwidth costs, etc.

    The book also briefly touched on a point that I think is very relevant but often not considered by consumers. The money made from successful album sales has to cover the costs and money lost from all the unsuccessful projects they work on. For every million seller they have, there are probably hundreds of albums that are flops or don't break even.
     
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  20. kanno1ae

    kanno1ae Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas, USA
    I don't think digital downloads were intended as a convenience for consumers who already own it on CD. (It's far easier to pop in your Dick's Picks CDs and rip them to your hard drive.) The digital download format is for people who prefer to have their music this way and don't want or care about owning a physical product. It also offers the added benefit of being able to cherry pick tracks and not have to purchase an entire album.
     
  21. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Very true, but I don't see how the lack of any physical outlay or manufacture for a digital album or book, without packaging, paper, plastic, glue, ink, etc renders it the same value in absolute terms. I'm not saying a CD should be $12 and a digital album should be $1, but surely the digital album could be sold for $4-5 and still net a reasonable profit? Paying $300 for a Grateful Dead box set as mp3s, as someone mentioned earlier upthread, when the same $$ buys you the physical, is insane. Especially because you don't actually own a physical THING when you buy digital.
     
  22. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Ah I can see that. I never considered LB anything more than a joke myself, so perhaps that's why it didn't really pop up on my radar as readily as it do for you.
     
  23. kanno1ae

    kanno1ae Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas, USA
    As someone mentioned upthread, the CD costs about a dollar to manufacture. Why, then, would they sell a digital copy for $7-8 LESS? At most, they would sell it for a dollar less, but that's assuming digital costs are $0, which we know is not true.

    If you are a person who likes a physical copy, then yes, it seems insane to pay $300 for an mp3 Greatful Dead box set. My guess, though, is that people who are buying the digital version of the box set are selecting their favorite tracks, probably buying only a fraction of the album.
     
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  24. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist Thread Starter

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Perhaps. But perhaps not. I heard a lot of the same complaints when the Beatles stereo box was released on the Apple-shaped USB, and for the same reasons.
     
  25. kanno1ae

    kanno1ae Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas, USA
    Ok, but why complain? Just buy the physical box set instead of the USB.
     
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