Music Doesn't Feature In the Pirate Bay's Top 100 Biggest Torrents 196
journovampire writes Good news for the industry's anti-piracy efforts? Or rather embarrassing for music's appeal in the big, wide world? No single music release features in the Top 100 most-torrented files. From the article: "MBW has analysed TPB’s Top 100 most-pirated files in the 48 hours since its re-emergence. And although you’ll find plenty of movies and a smattering of porn in there, you won’t see a single music release. The Top 4 most-pirated files over the weekend were all movies, led by new Jason Statham vehicle Wild Card. It was followed by three more Hollywood releases – The Interview, American Sniper and Nightcrawler."
Other sources for music (Score:4, Insightful)
You can find it on YouTube or Spotify, to name but two sources. Full-length movies are harder to come by in this fashion.
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Right. I've never torrented music. There are easier ways to get it, where you're going to find a much better selection.
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last music I torrented was the JS Bach discography. That was a good few years ago. That bitch owns the ballroom.
I hear repeated often that most if not all Western music is at least in part directly influenced by his music.
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I'd say Netflix since it's only $8, but I don't know where TPB's traffic is coming from. There are a lot of countries that have poor Netflix availability(they have Netflix, but certain movies don't show up).
Even still, I can't blame people for not wanting to buy movies. You spend $9.50 per ticket($19 with your date)($11 for 3D, $22 with date) to see it in theatres, and then they want you to spend $20-25 more to get the DVD or BD. It was one thing that back in the day you'd spend $10 on tickets(or less), and the VHS/DVD would cost $20-30, and I could justify that. I only want to see the movie once, so I'll pay a fraction of the cost of buying it outright to see it in theatres. Now, watching it once in theatres is equivalent to buying the BD with extra features. Fuck everything about that. I stopped justifying doing both(going to theatres and buying the disc) a long time ago, and now I have a hard time justifying either. If I only want to watch it once, I shouldn't have to pay the full price of the discs in stores. And it's absurd to buy a BD, watch it once, and return it, using Wal-Mart as a pseudo-rental outlet.
Sorry for the rant, this got away from me. Point being: I think this is a sign that the movie industry needs to re-evaluate its pricing and how it reaches consumers.
Only a subset of movies show up on Netflix, and they typically take a while to get there.
I would be curious to see the relationship of torrent popularity and availability on Netflix. Do movies and TV shows see a big drop in torrenting when they become available on Netflix?
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The Interview is available to stream on Netflix, yet still made the top 4.
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I subscribe to and love Netflix here in the USA, but I've heard that in other countries it can have a rather anemic assortment of content...
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I could do the research, just the same as you could. I won't, though. However I will tell you, as I use the Chrome addon Hola to gain access to the US Netflix here in Ireland, that it is not available in Ireland without it.
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Eh, I found it good for what it was intended to be- another Seth Rogan rollicking stupidity flick. It did this very well.
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Especially for Netflix Canada. However, The Interview was added about a week ago. It took only a month for that movie to go from theatres to Netflix Canada. That tells you how bad that movie is.
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Only a subset of movies show up on Netflix, and they typically take a while to get there.
What killed my interest in Netflix here in Norway at least is that using the PC as my media platform very, very many of the movies were no longer in HD. The "Using a PC? Fuck you." message got through so I went somewhere I'm welcome.
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Netflix lacks the appeal of similar services for music, since it lags severely behind other venues for movies. I'm not going to pay for Netflix when I have to torrent half the seasons of a series regardless. The Netflix vs torrent comparison will only be valid once the studio mafia yanks their collective heads out of each other's asses. I know many here in Europe feel the same way, Netflix is money out the window for no gain at all. Rectify that, and movie piracy could go the way of music piracy.
Re: Other sources for music (Score:3)
Well you forgot about that whole Redbox thing on nearly every corner or every town big enough to have a McDonalds. A bit over a dollar and you can watch the movie once or copy it and watch it whenever.
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there's that word: "consumers". We stopped being a viewing audience to an artistic performance of drama a long time ago and became comsumers of whatever dreck the cartels could think to throw together. Proof being in the endless reboots we're seeing now (Robocop, Total Recall, Spiderman, The Crow, Annie, Escape From New York, Batman, Ghostbusters, Hitman, All Quiet On The Western Front, Mad Max, Pet Sematary, Point Break, An American Werewolf~, Barbarella, Dirty Dancing, Starship Troopers, The Neverending S
More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Current music sucks so bad Pirates don't even want it.
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Some albums are so bad I rate them as "waste of bandwidth".
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Current music sucks so bad Pirates don't even want it.
Rather odd we're even worried about piracy anyway when likely every single one of the top 100 songs is also posted on YouTube, in full streaming HD audio and video.
Not to mention free streaming services that usually cater to top 100 lists that you simply build personal playlists with.
Seems the contracted and accepted delivery of content these days will soon force this piracy conversation into a non-starter.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Informative)
Rather odd we're even worried about piracy anyway when likely every single one of the top 100 songs is also posted on YouTube, in full streaming HD audio and video.
You clearly do not know what HD audio is, YouTube doesn't even qualify as decent audio. Very good explanation from an audio engineer (ironically, found on youtube) is right here [youtube.com]
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That guy worked on some really "decent" stuff in his life: Death Magnetic (Metallica), 13 (Black Sabbath), Stadium Arcadium (Red Hot Chili Peppers). I think the loudness on those 3 albums is much worse than a low bitrate from a Youtube stream.
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That guy worked on some really "decent" stuff in his life: Death Magnetic (Metallica), 13 (Black Sabbath), Stadium Arcadium (Red Hot Chili Peppers). I think the loudness on those 3 albums is much worse than a low bitrate from a Youtube stream.
I have a friend who is an audio engineer. Sound engineers perform a service for a fee. That service often includes advice, but at the end of the day, they take their instructions from the person paying the fee. My friend has done a lot of editing that he didn't agree with, but if he put up too much of a fuss, he would be seen as "disagreeable", gain a reputation as someone difficult to work with, and he wouldn't be able to buy groceries. His views on audio change dramatically depending on who is the aud
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Youtube sound might not be audiophile-quality, but we're talking about top 100 songs, which are 100% garbage. Means no audiophile's touching any of those songs with a 10-foot pole. :)
therefore your point is moot
Re:More proof (Score:5, Funny)
Youtube sound might not be audiophile-quality, but we're talking about top 100 songs, which are 100% garbage. Means no audiophile's touching any of those songs with a 10-foot pole. therefore your point is moot :)
Ah, but only if the point could be mute...it would make top 100 listening so much more tolerable :)
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Rather odd we're even worried about piracy anyway when likely every single one of the top 100 songs is also posted on YouTube, in full streaming HD audio and video.
You clearly do not know what HD audio is, YouTube doesn't even qualify as decent audio. Very good explanation from an audio engineer (ironically, found on youtube) is right here [youtube.com]
Being a bit of an audiophile myself, yes I'm well aware of what true HD audio is.
That said, let me remind you that 99.999% of YouTube viewers don't, and more importantly could care less, hence the reason they don't mind listening to streaming music online via YouTube or anywhere else. If it says 720 or 1080, it's "HD" to pretty much everyone, including the audio. I was merely making the point about HD to show that the artists themselves certainly aren't looking to limit or restrict the quality of music th
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This is actually quite important, because YouTube itself can play the audio wrong. Depending on how it plays, you can get sample rate issues - i.e., the audio is 44.1kHz, but YouTube plays it back at 48khz. Not that much of a difference, other than music gets pitched up.
For most people, you won't actually notice, but if you have a better ear (musician, for example) you can hear that the pitch of the note
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Being an audio engineer, it pains me that this is considered good enough. That being said, my response was spurred because, in the post I replied to, you referred to it as HD audio. If what you get off YouTube (even in HD video) is considered HD audio, then iTunes has been selling people the equivalent of 4k ever since they did iTunes Plus.
Ha, good point, and thanks for the laugh with that comparison. You're absolutely right.
As far as loudness wars are concerned, we've passed the peak of the wars imho. Albums are getting released with consideration for dynamics these days. I still look for an album mastered for vinyl because the lathe just can't handle the loudness that a lot of modern albums come out at.
Yes, I was about to add the popularity of vinyl coming back will hopefully bring back some fidelity and quality with music. Let's hope vinyl or increased quality isn't just a passing fad.
Vinyl sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's hope vinyl or increased quality isn't just a passing fad.
I'm old enough to remember when there was no such thing as a CD and vinyl or tape were your only options to get a full album. I do not miss for a moment vinyl records and all the hassles involved with them. If you think vinyl is great you either A) did not grow up with vinyl records or B) you have a fetish for obsolete technology which interferes with your ability to remember why we don't use it anymore.
Let me remind of just some of the reasons rational people gave up on vinyl records years ago:
1) Vinyl only sounds good when operating perfectly and most of the time it does not, particularly if the record has seen meaningful play.
2) Vinyl is absurdly easy to damage and virtually impossible to keep intact with meaningful use. They are flimsy and scratch easily. See point 1 above.
3) Vinyl is bulky increasing it's propensity to get damaged (see point 2 above) and takes up unnecessary space.
4) Vinyl record players rely on needles which wear out and regularly damage the very media they are intended to play.
5) Vinyl stores a relatively small amount of music and does so in a very bulky and non-portable media
6) Vinyl cannot easily or conveniently be copied to any portable player
7) Vinyl does not come with digital track data that can be copied conveniently to other players
8) Vinyl cannot easily be utilized in conjunction with other media such as putting a song into a video.
9) Vinyl cannot easily be used for other purposes. I can use a CD or flash memory to store other types of data. Not practical with vinyl.
10) There are non-lossy digital formats which are indistinguishable from even the best vinyl in double blind tests. (If you claim otherwise I'm going to call you a liar)
Increased quality? I'm on board unless it requires vinyl. If it does then screw increased quality because it is not worth the hassle of vinyl.
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I'm pretty sure some of my vinyl has fewer than five plays on it. It was so fragile and useless anywhere that I almost always made a cassette to actually listen to it.
This worked sort of to my advantage during a bargain hunting phase when CDs became the norm. It became trivial to buy "older" music on vinyl for pennies that had been treated just as lovingly as my vinyl.
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Increased quality? I'm on board unless it requires vinyl. If it does then screw increased quality because it is not worth the hassle of vinyl.
I think his point was that Vinyl albums can not have the same level of audio compression (not to be confused with data compression) and thus "loudness" as CDs and/or other digital formats. Due to the nature of the medium in which the audio is recorded, there has to be a greater dynamic range, rather than everything just going between +/-$maxshort.
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Increased quality? I'm on board unless it requires vinyl. If it does then screw increased quality because it is not worth the hassle of vinyl.
I think his point was that Vinyl albums can not have the same level of audio compression (not to be confused with data compression) and thus "loudness" as CDs and/or other digital formats. Due to the nature of the medium in which the audio is recorded, there has to be a greater dynamic range, rather than everything just going between +/-$maxshort.
Yes, since we were speaking about the loudness wars earlier, this was exactly my point, thank you.
Vinyl may be a bit more fragile, but chances are people are lending too much credit towards the cheap dyes used in the blank media that's rotting away without even being played. Sadly in that sense, vinyl looks like concrete by comparison.
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Vinyl may be a bit more fragile, but chances are people are lending too much credit towards the cheap dyes used in the blank media that's rotting away without even being played. Sadly in that sense, vinyl looks like concrete by comparison.
It's not just fragile. It's fragile, bulky, inflexible, low capacity, non-portable, difficult to copy, and doesn't even usually sound particularly good without an expensive setup and undamaged media. Vinyl is NOT a viable solution and never will be. It's like saying we should go back to using horses because they have a few advantages over cars.
Furthermore just because companies cheap out on some other media doesn't make the problems with vinyl go away or mitigate them meaningfully. Vinyl is dead and we
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If we're comparing vinyl to CDs, it's worth noting that mass produced CDs don't use dyes. They use a metal film with the pits physically pressed into it.
I know you said "blank media", but apples to apples. There are plenty of other places to cheap out in the production of a CD (or vinyl album), though.
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...I fully agree that better sounds is a goal worth pursuing but vinyl is not and never will be the way to get there.
You're likely right, but it says a lot about what we're leaving on the table with regards to current technology when people start reaching for their vinyl again. And yeah, it's odd I refer to the CD as "current" tech. One would think we would get a handle on dynamic range capability after thirty years of recording on them.
All comes down to consumer demand. The loudness wars occurred for a reason.
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I think his point was that Vinyl albums can not have the same level of audio compression (not to be confused with data compression) and thus "loudness" as CDs and/or other digital formats.
He said "Let's hope vinyl or increased quality isn't just a passing fad". While there are some minor upsides to vinyl as a format for storing any playing music, there are huge and numerous downsides to it. The problems you mention simply aren't significant enough to justify using vinyl records again in any meaningful amount. If someone wants to get all anachronistic and listen to some old-timey records in pursuit of better sound then that is cool. It's kind of like enjoying classic cars. It does have
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oh, wow.
1. No media is "perfect".
2. Compact discs are as easily damaged as vinyl, cassette tape wraps around capstans and flash-based mp3 players are subject to bitflip/bitrot, DRM fuckery and the ability or lack thereof of the player to actually decode the media.
3. Ditto for tapes and CDs, even hard drives take up space and tend to suck power even when apparently idle.
4. Depends on the needle. Ruby needles tend to be very hard wearing, ceramics offer better fidelity and diamond is the go-to for budget gear
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Yes, I was about to add the popularity of vinyl coming back will hopefully bring back some fidelity and quality with music. Let's hope vinyl or increased quality isn't just a passing fad.
It definitely has. There's a lot of effort to master from original tape, and a lot of new releases are being recorded to tape. Shelby Lynn's "Just a Little Lovin" is a good example, recorded on, mastered from the original 2" tape. A lot of recent releases sound incredible. "Digitally Remastered" is now a label people avoid like the plague.
Still, few people today own a hi-fi. Most do their listening on computer speakers, earbuds, or boom boxes. Of the people buying vinyl, a large percentage think that record
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99% of the crap released is NOT HD AUDIO. In fact 100% of the top 100 are mastered by no talent hacks crushing the soul out of the music if it ever had one to begin with.
Yes I am calling the Experts that mastered the top 100 songs out right now NO TALENT HACKS. if they mastered it that compressed, then they dont deserve any respect at all from anyone.
Stand your ground and tell the executives that they are stupid and mix it right.
Do you pay the bills. (Score:2)
Yes I am calling the Experts that mastered the top 100 songs out right now NO TALENT HACKS. if they mastered it that compressed, then they dont deserve any respect at all from anyone.
You do what the people paying the bills tell you to do. The people who pay the bills care about sales. If quality gets sales (it doesn't) then they'll demand quality. Otherwise they'll do what moves more product. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the competence or lack thereof of audio engineers.
Stand your ground and tell the executives that they are stupid and mix it right.
Big talk from someone posting semi-anonymously on the internet. Do you make a habit of being insubordinate to the people that sign your paychecks? If so then you are going to get fired a lot I'm afraid.
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Clearly HD means that the audio is 1080 pees wide.
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Re:More proof (Score:4, Insightful)
You clearly do not know what HD audio is
My primary listening environments:
1. Earbuds (CX 150) plugged into Moto G.
2. Car
3. Speakers connected by some asshole to about 70 ft of phone wire. ("Hey, 4 conductors! This will work great!")
4. Laptop speakers.
5. $100 Boston Acoustics computer speakers w/ sub.
Yeah, YouTube SD is pretty terrible - but the YouTube HD (which is what the GP was talking about) is just fine for those use cases.
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The amp is a wimpy little 30W/channel RMS. I'd be surprised if the 30 gauge or whatever wire in the speaker winding didn't burn up first. I'm pretty sure the phone wire is 22 gauge.
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I'm watching this now and I've been following digital music for almost 20 years so I'm fairly certain where he's going with this. But given engineers like him gave us the loudness wars and ruined music for most of a generation (and screwed up music from past generations), his opinions on what is 'HD quality' is a bit suspect.
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It is a shame that the audio industry went to the lowest common denominator of youtube while the movie industry made the latest greatest advances in audio in recent years. Does any of the following ring a bell? Too bad this is not from the audio experts.
THX
5.1
7.1
Movies are where the good sound is. Uncompressed, high fideliety, etc. The good sound system in the home is the home theater.
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my good sound system is connected through my laptop. Don't laugh, it's good enough for me when I can listen to an orchestral piece and hear the C8 triangle as well as the deepest rumbling C1 on a pipe organ. I said hear, not feel it vibrating through my arse. Sounds even better through my headphones (dunno what make they are, they're badged "Angle & Curve" and were a freebie with a mobile phone about 5 years ago).
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Picking an arbitrary list of 10 "top of the pop" songs,
youtube-dl reports that one is "only" 128kbps @ 44,100 Hz, and the other nine are available at 256kbps @ 44,100 Hz.
You may not accept that as "HD", but it takes a truly warped view of the world to claim it isn't "decent".
More to the point, the difference in quality between what you get from Youtube and the Pirate Bay is almost nil.
I.e. it may well be crap, but it isn't youtube's fault that it's crap.
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fucker nearly had me pitching my speakers out with the trash before I found that out... I really did think the popping and clipping was a blown stack until I had a flash of inspiration and played through the Quad Maximus test tones...
Re:More proof (Score:5, Interesting)
Pfft (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Has your lawn been horribly trampled by kids lately? There's so much good stuff out there I don't even know where to begin. We're in a golden era of music choice and availability. Not only do we have a plethora of different types and combinations of sounds and rhythms that are available for the mixing (mostly due to electronic music and computers), but this generation has the ability to find any music from anywhere now - thanks to the internet you can find all kinds of obscure stuff from another corner of the world. You have millions of artists to choose from anywhere now - maybe it's your perception bias making you think it's off (because when you walked into a CD / record store 20-30 years ago, they tend to carry only the best material, and you don't have to wade through crap).
Maybe you meant to say "I don't like the top 40 stuff they constantly repeat on the radio or at sporting events or at the bars". Newsflash: every generation thinks their parents' music was lame, but my generation's music was the greatest ever, but my kids listen to complete shit. Talk to a 30-something and they'll think Pearl Jam or Nirvana were the greatest. Talk to a 60-something and they'll think Zeppelin and Queen were the greatest. Talk to a teenager now and they'll think Katy Perry or Taylor Swift are the best evar! Maybe this has to do more with the music you listed to as a teenager shaping your musical tastes (and associating good times with that music).
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A sixty-something is probably gonna go with the Beatles and the Stones. But you're right, for most people, the music they were into as teenagers is what they listen to for the rest of their lives. That's because most people aren't really interested in music per se, but rather obtain a group identity by adopting whatever their peers were listening to. Later, it becomes nostalgia.
But the truth is, most commercial music is schlock, and always has been. There have been exceptions, of course, (hmm...the Beatles
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Talk to a teenager now and they'll think Katy Perry or Taylor Swift are the best evar!
Pleasantly, I think this may be the generation to break that pattern. Oh, there's a lot of what you say, but I also know a lot of teenagers who listen to a wide variety of music. I think the difference is what you pointed out at the beginning of your post: We live in a golden age of music availability. Not only is basically everything recorded in the last 80 years or so easily available, but its trivial for kids today to carry huge amounts of music around with them, all the time.
My teenage kids, for examp
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Most of the music I actually grew up with sucks. Confirmation bias though tells me the music I listen to back then, that was good back then, is still good today. The problem is, we don't remember the crappy music we were forced to listen to. And there is plenty of music I liked growing up, that is not played today, because it wasn't all that popular back then.
I don't mind Katy Perry (superbowl plug) doing halftime, and actually thought it was the second best halftime in recent years (Slash was better), but
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I'm always bemused by the bad quality of live performances and recordings, and that's mainly because I've heard plenty of really good ones as well. I went to a concert once where 3 acts were playing. For the first and last act the sound guys seemed to be right on point, but for the middle act it was borked all to hell. That act needed the vocals to be louder than the instruments but as it was you could barely hear the singer at all.
A few years ago my wife was pretty into America's Got Talent and I'd watch i
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Everyone knows you don't go see Katy Perry for her astounding vocal range or emotional nuance or, on some nights, even how well she dances. You go see something I think of as "The Katy Perry Concert and Entertainment Spectacular". Yeah, it's centered around someone named Katy Perry, but it's the show that's the star - sort of the Cirque du Soleil of music. But it has to be like that for an arena show, doesn't it?
As for the sound quality - you try getting even halfway decent sound in a fucking stadium. The f
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I do love that I can listen to what was my grand-parents' music on Youtube, including tracks I have not heard since primary school, and never knew the names of the artists.
The chances of getting fantastic quality recordings of 1930's artists, or even 1950's artists for that matter, from anywhere at all, are close to zero. 78 RPM disks were often recorded without the aid of any electronics at all!
As for Lonnie Donigan and the rest of the skiffle craze, well yeah, it was never very goo
"Well, that makes us feel better," said Sony (Score:4, Funny)
"Good news!" said Sony Music
"Oh shit" said Sony Motion Pictures.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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its to be expected. Sitting through 20 minutes of mandatory trailer before my bluray starts actually playing the movie i paid for is nothing short of a war crime.
That's in addition to the increasingly intrusive product placement scattered in every single frame of a blockbuster movie these days. It got so bad in the last shitty James Bond movie I watched that I spend the first twenty minutes just counting all the Sony and Ericsson logos. By the point where they started showing products that didn't even actually exist yet, I decided to send Bond back to England and my disc back to Netflix. Now I avoid blockbusters like the plague.
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plenty of movies
its to be expected. Sitting through 20 minutes of mandatory trailer before my bluray starts actually playing the movie i paid for is nothing short of a war crime.
Yup. I rip mine to mkv before watching. With a quick conversion it is also available on my AppleTV so I don't need to dig for the disk to watch it; plus all my disks and iTunes content is available in one spot and across multiple devices.
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It's gotten to the point where I buy the blu-ray, then download the movie off TPB and toss it on my media server. I initially ripped the blu-ray myself, but after the LotR series (where each movie is on two discs) I decided it wasn't worth wasting my time doing that when someone else already had.
Maybe it's because the music industry has adapted? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could it be the music industry has adapted enough that the average joe doesn't feel the need to pirate music as much as other media?
Yes, the adaptation certainly isn't ideal, but most of my friends now pay $9 a month (or so) and stream all their music and stream most new music. They are letting their personal music libraries slowly bit rot away as they increasingly rely on the cloud and streaming services.
Plus most digital albums can be bought without DRM these days.
But movies are a different story. You have to wait before you can even watch a movie in your own home, and movie media is always DRMed.
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I've even set up a few collaborative playlists wit
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Streaming would be useful if it had some breadth. If I wanted to listen to what's popular, I have four good local radio stations to choose from. Most of my music listening happens from records purchased at the shop, radio and live concerts.
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And ten years ago, I argued on TechDirt that people would pay $10 a month for an unlimited streaming service with everything and piracy would drop off the face of the earth. And an industry shill jumped on and told me I was full of crap, they wouldn't make any money that way and pirates would still pirate everything.
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Does music cost $20 a song and come with a 5 minute unskippable warning against piracy, and 10 minutes of unskippable trailers for other songs? But for some products if you want quality you have to pirate it. I know some people who will buy a movie to be legit/support the industry, and then pirate it because it is less trouble than the CD.
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Not yet.... Sony is working on it.
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Does music cost $20 a song and come with a 5 minute unskippable warning against piracy, and 10 minutes of unskippable trailers for other songs?
People complained about previews on dvd's so with most blu-rays it's much easier to skip them Just hit the Top/Menu button your remote. I just did it right now on the Fury Blu-ray, hit the square button and it went right to the disc menu.
Why pirate? (Score:2)
Why would people bother to pirate music anymore? You can use Spotify for free, and get it ad-free and even with downloads allowed for a few dollars a month. There's no point.
Some might argue that this is a serious problem-- that the music industry is in a shambles and it's not clear this is all sustainable. Others might argue that this is evidence of where the problem was all along-- that piracy is the result of high prices and poor service, and when people are provided a cheap and convenient product, t
Re:Why pirate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some might argue that this is a serious problem-- that the music industry is in a shambles and it's not clear this is all sustainable. Others might argue that this is evidence of where the problem was all along-- that piracy is the result of high prices and poor service, and when people are provided a cheap and convenient product, they're often willing to pay for it in some way. Either way, I don't see much of a reason to pirate music anymore unless it's somehow unavailable through legal channels.
The music industry has oddly enough somewhat come full circle with Spotify becoming the new middleman. Here in Norway after a dip in revenue from 2009 when it was 15% digital it's now slightly higher (601 vs 592 million NOK) in 2014 with 86% digital, of which 11% is downloads and 75% streaming. During the same period the piracy rate among people under 30 dropped from 70% to 4% of the population.
Why do I say it's become full circle? Because once again either you accept the terms of Spotify or nobody going to hear about you. And because many people just use it as background noise for popular music creating superstars is still big business, the "long tail" doesn't get anything extra for writing music people care about so a lot of marginal artists are complaining that where they could make money selling CDs to a small but loyal following before Spotify pays them peanuts.
I guess Spotify lowered the bar on getting your music published, since they don't run out of shelf space or air time. But I don't think it has increased the number of artists who are able to play professionally, though I'm not sure that matters. It's a bit like comparing YouTube with cable TV, maybe a whole lot of well... something beats a couple hundred channels of "professional" TV. But when I've heard friends say "Either you're on Spotify or you don't exist" somebody's holding too much power.
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Holy false dichotomy batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or how about the following three factors:
1. I can buy the tracks I want for a sensible price with no DRM, so I can listen to it how and when I want.
2. Lots of streaming services if I don't want to buy.
3. An almost fanatical devotion to the pope.
Basically street years of getting brutalized by pirates, the music industry wised up and started selling people what they wanted to buy rather than treating people like criminals to be milked for as much cash as possible.
Oh that and YouTube.
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Bingo.
Listen up MPAA, here's the key: Make it easy for customers to give you money and receive the product they want in the time frame they want it.
Re:Holy false dichotomy batman! (Score:2)
Listen up MPAA, here's the key: Make it easy for customers to give you money and receive the product they want in the time frame they want it.
Their current strategy is:
Hey you paid money. Fuck you!
Have obnoxious unskippable trailers and ads and stupid menus, and a BR player that needs to be connected to the internet and let us shout at you not to be an evil pirate, even though you paid us money you scum.
Or there's TPB, which does none of that.
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Have obnoxious unskippable trailers and ads
In most cases the Blu-ray trailers/ads are EASIER to skip than those on DVD Perhaps you aren't hitting the right button. Usually hitting Menu (on a PS4 it is the [square button])will bypass everything and take you to the disc menu.
and a BR player that needs to be connected to the internet
For BD-Live and updates, yes.
Not surprised at TV (Score:2)
Most of us are done with the music... Burp! (Score:2)
I stopped pirating music when iTunes stopped DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that I can actually own my own music downloaded legally from iTunes and play it on all of my devices, I have no reason to pirate it. But I still pirate movies and will continue until the DRM issue is resolved.
Lies... Damned Lies... and Statistics... (Score:3)
This seems like a pretty bad manipulation of statistics to get the story you want... Considering the breadth of the music industry, it means there is more choice, so it stands to reason that different people with different tastes will torrent different stuff. The Movie industry on the other hand releases less than 100 blockbuster films per year... so it stands to reason that with less options to torrent, certain titles will rise to the top more quickly. This is of course based on the presumption that newer titles are more frequently torrented than older titles... but that also is a reasonable assumption given that new titles are widely advertised.
Anyways... I'm not defending RIAA or MPAA... I think they both suck and should be shut down, but I just feel like the premise of the article is suspect.
Re: (Score:2)
I can sympathize that there are fewer than 100 songs that YOU like released each year, but there are lots of people who like stuff that you don't... I would argue that there are in fact thousands of songs released each year that SOMEBODY really likes.
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There's lots of good music being made. But then I listen to indie artists so my experience may not be typical.
Re: (Score:2)
There's obviously a lack of sarcasm recognition around here...
Perhaps the metrics are screwed up... (Score:5, Insightful)
"With 1828 ‘seeders’ and just 76 ‘leechers’, True is a fair distance behind the 100th most popular torrent overall: PC game Far Cry 4, which has 1604 ‘seeders’ plus 1260 ‘leechers’."
Keep in mind that:
1) Once a "leecher" finishes downloading, they become a "seeder"
2) Nearly all clients will stop being a "seeder" once a predetermined share ratio is reached
Considering a typical music album is FAR smaller than a game (probably 100-200MB at most, depending on bitrate for encoding, vs. multiple gigabytes for a game - FC4 is over 10GB I'd guess, I can't view TPB to check from my current location), "leechers" become "seeders" far faster, and "seeders" disconnect from the torrent due to hitting the share ratio cap of the client (kTorrent defaults to 1.30 for example) far faster.
Diversity (Score:2)
I think it more speaks to the diversity of content and genres. There is A LOT of music being produced all the time, the amount of new tv or movies that comes out is minuscule in comparison
That's only fair (Score:2)
More interesting: did the FBI compromise TPB? (Score:2)
WARNING: Old ‘The Pirate Bay’ Back Online, BUT Seized by FBI – Real TPB Website Has New Domain [anonhq.com]
Why should it? (Score:2)
Music Streaming Movie Streaming (Score:2)
Pirating music is much quicker. (Score:2)
1 compressed movie is about the same space as 200 compressed songs.
If it takes you about 20 seconds to download a song, then it takes you about 1 hour to download a movie.
Movies could be an order of magnitude less "popular" than music and still appear an order of magnitude more "often".
Forget The Pirate Bay (Score:2)
Re:Younger people don't assign music a monetary va (Score:5, Insightful)
> A whole generation has grown up who believe that music is "free".
It's not just the current generation. This has been going on pretty much for as long as there has been broadcast media. This "it should be free" thing goes back to the genesis of radio.
There is nothing new about "payment avoidance" when it comes to Music.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
right around the same time movable type was developed for polyphonic sheet music. Gutenberg invented the metal movable type press a century earlier. The Sumerians had clay movable type three millennia before that.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. I grew up listening to a stack of Gospel music cassettes my Dad copied from friends around the country on his travels. I've downloaded some of the exact same albums on bittorrent.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:Younger people don't assign music a monetary va (Score:4, Interesting)
Whole Generation? Your information is horribly out of date.
I was raised to believe that from my father who said, "it is OK to record FM radio" which I did all the time. I also Ripped friends CD's as well as record copies of Records...
I then taught my daughter the same except she found you can just rip friends CD's
Hopefully she teaches her 4 year old daughter the same. So there is 3 generations that know the fact that Music IS free.