(Boo hoo)
Like every breathing 20-year old in America I have used P2P and I fully advocate a recreation of the music industry and I am against DRM, so I am not declaring any moral high ground here, but I am pretty glad that Oink, a super-duper illegal and private file sharing network for indie rock and hipsters got raided by anti-piracy agencies.
Oink web site
Oink Wikipedia page
Peep the story here.
- Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said in a response to the news: “OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”
I hate the RIAA and the music industry's approach to the internet, it's suicidal and short-sighted, however exchanging money for leaked pre-release albums is stealing no matter what hipsters tell themselves.
Besides being illegal, Oink was the most annoyingly pretentious site ever.
When I first checked out the site, I saw a request for an essay as to why rock is the greatest musical genre in order to get an invite.
Are you fucking serious?
I used to buy CD's often and I lived in the used CD stores around Ann Arbor, but the size of my wallet could never watch my curiosity. And then when the CDs I paid for and burnt to my PC got wiped out it P2P came to the rescue.
I've been using a music subscription service which I sold my remaining CDs to pay for, for over a year and it's pretty great.
It's like Netflix for music.
Unlimited music for a fee, recommendations, radio stations and all that.
The upcoming revision of the Microsoft Zune music store looks pretty good as well.
If people are willing to buy DVD's, go the movies and/or pay for Netflix, then what is the objection to a subscription service?
Do people not love music enough to pay for it?
Or do they just not like the purchasing options?
Posts
With the plethora of upload sites and the various ways that people supply the links to them on the wev there is no reason anymore to use a p2p service if you know your way around google.
ReplyDeleteIt mostly has to do with the history of downloading. Even when the majority of people had dial-up a single song takes roughly 20 minutes and movies were a pipe dream.
ReplyDeleteNow, with broadband being more available, you can get songs in no time, albums in 20-30 minutes. Why would someone want to pay for a song they only have to wait a couple minutes for?
The movies are a different beast, a DVD quality movie would can take hours, you feel like saying to hell with it and taking that trip to Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/Wal-Mart.
The problem with subscription services is the DRM. Just the turm pisses most people off even when it is emplemented well(Yahoo music etc.). If they rolled out a pay sevice that then let you do what you want with those files as you please then we would have a winner on our hands.
ReplyDeleteIf less music was crappy sales would be up. I still purchase CDs cause I tunes is only good for singles...unless you want to buy an external harddrive to store it all and then go through converting it and what not. Plus, beyond supporting an artist I actually like. Sometimes the liner notes can be worth it, and if all else abandons me...I do have the CD. Plus, in those Ikea CD towers it's like art.
ReplyDeleteNO ONE had to pay for oink. You could make donations, just like any other tracker. RIP oink, you will be missed.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about access, like ramo said. People (the 20% of the population that has internet access) don't pay for music simply because they don't have to. Access is the be-all end-all to our economy. Thus the proliferation and success of big box stores like Meijer and other "Super" stores. DVD quality movies are just not accessible via the internet at this point. And by accessible I mean quick downloads. The second some pimple-faced high school hacker figures that isht out, you, me and everyone we know (pun intended) will never buy another DVD.
ReplyDeleteAs far as why you subscribe, I think you answered that yourself, accessibility. For a small fee, music is much more accessible to you than those who troll torrents and p2ps for music. iTunes's success is based solely on it's interface and one-click purchasing feature.