[SunburnedCactus]

Fight the power etc. etc.

The fact is that downloading has had an effect on CD sales, however it is as you rightly say the sheer incompetence of the industry that they have been unable to keep up with the progression of technology and the shift towards digital music.

And in fact the number of legal downloaders has surpassed the number of file sharers in Europe in 2005, so they are getting there (slowly).

(Like the picture in the first BBC link of James Blunt, doesn't look like he's been making much )

[bobbob]

(Original post by Happy Cycling)
The fact is that downloading has had an effect on CD sales

But how do you know that downloading has an effect on CD sales either way? Is this just a blind assumption, or are you believing the record industry's propoganda? It's not really so much as fact, it's more "In my (and the RIAA and BPI's) opinion, downloading has had an effect on CD sales" which isn't quite so convincing.

And in fact the number of legal downloaders has surpassed the number of file sharers in Europe in 2005, so they are getting there (slowly).

Except there's no way of measuring the filesharers in Europe, particularly on protocols such as BitTorrent which consist of several thousand private trackers.

[heliotrope]

(Original post by bobbob)
It's not theft of income, because the person who pirates probably would not have bought the original CD in the first place! I've bought plenty of CDs I wouldn't have otherwise due to downloading, but I'll be the first to admit I download more than I buy (since because I can't afford to buy as much as I download).

actually, you cant say that, as the fact that you know the music is available to download may have affected your decision not to buy it; its actually impossible to say whether or not you would have bought the CD had it not been available to download.

and i think people should be prosecuted. ultimately, by making your files available on a p2p network, you are doing no different to a person setting up a web page and putting mp3s on it for people to download; you have no right to decide how an artists music is distributed.

in all honesty, i think the biggest mistake people make with the downloading issue is to say that since you wouldnt have bought the CD otherwise you arent harming the artist financially; that is an irrelevance. the fact is that you are violating that artists right to control how their music is distributed. if they choose for a record label to be the sole distributor of their music, no-one has any right to go against that.

[bobbob]

Okay, well, put it this way: Most of the bands I've bought I hadn't have heard of unless I pirated the music, and I never used to buy music before I downloaded. I honestly believe my love in music is down to, in part at least, piracy. For example, I own 5 Less Than Jake albums - a band which hardly gets lots of mainstream radio play. I know for sure that if I had not have downloaded their songs after recommendation, I would not know about them, I would not have bought their albums and I would not be seeing them live in 2 months.

I would not be the biggest Brand New fan in the world if I hadn't been able to pirate Deja Entendu to discover them, then buy both albums and all 3 singles (on both vinyl and CD). And this story repeats itself over and over. There are dozens of bands I would not have even heard of if it hadn't have been for my piracy tendencies.

And I cannot _afford_, being an unemployed student, to buy anymore music than I do so nobody can say "if you hadn't have downloaded, you would buy more radera" because that's simply not true

And bands have to go to record labels because they have no other choice, and record labels control the music how they want whether it's in the artist's best interest or not. I'm sure not many artists, given the choice, would want their music sold at 79p each at 128kbps AAC (eww, bad quality and DRM) rather than 256kbps-average APX MP3, but their record labels won't allow them to put their music on anything but the things they allow (of course, Warp are the exception to the rule).

[heliotrope]

^artists do have the choice. they can sign to an indie that behaves in an ethical manner.

[SunburnedCactus]

Well hopefully more labels will follow the examples of bleep.com (Warp and a lot of other electronica) and Nuclear Blast (metal etc.) and sell high quality mp3s for low prices over the web.

[half face]

I used to use Napster a lot when it first became popular, and before people really appreciated the legal implications of it. I must have downloaded about 2gb of songs (which is quite a lot, considering that we didn't have broadband back then). But I stopped doing it a couple of years ago through fear of being busted, and now all of my music comes from CDs that I buy. I do much prefer to have the music in physical form, but if it hadn't been for Napster I wouldn't have discovered half of my favourite bands

[=nuke=]

(Original post by bobbob)
Okay, well, put it this way: Most of the bands I've bought I hadn't have heard of unless I pirated the music, and I never used to buy music before I downloaded. I honestly believe my love in music is down to, in part at least, piracy. For example, I own 5 Less Than Jake albums - a band which hardly gets lots of mainstream radio play. I know for sure that if I had not have downloaded their songs after recommendation, I would not know about them, I would not have bought their albums and I would not be seeing them live in 2 months.

I would not be the biggest Brand New fan in the world if I hadn't been able to pirate Deja Entendu to discover them, then buy both albums and all 3 singles (on both vinyl and CD). And this story repeats itself over and over. There are dozens of bands I would not have even heard of if it hadn't have been for my piracy tendencies.

If you don't have music TV, fair enough. But for somebody WITH music TV to say that they wouldn't have heard of these bands in particular would be a little suspicious, since they're all over MTV2 and Scuzz and the like.

[bobbob]

(Original post by nuclearbuddha)
If you don't have music TV, fair enough. But for somebody WITH music TV to say that they wouldn't have heard of these bands in particular would be a little suspicious, since they're all over MTV2 and Scuzz and the like.

I have music TV but don't usually watch music TV (various reasons that are more hassle to explain than it's worth). Are Less Than Jake and Brand New really on MTV2 and Scuzz? That suprises me a lot! Then again, if all they played was She's Gonna Break Soon I would have just cried...

Then again, I almost had a heart attack when I saw The Boy Least Likely To on E4 the other day, so maybe I'm just easily flabbergasted.

[000111]

it's about 50:50 legal:illegal - the only reason I don't buy more is because I can't afford it.

I thought this was going to be an exciting thread on audio file formats, and was preparing to champion ogg vorbis, and the aoTuV encoder... alas. :(

[SunburnedCactus]

(Original post by 000111)
it's about 50:50 legal:illegal - the only reason I don't buy more is because I can't afford it.

I thought this was going to be an exciting thread on audio file formats, and was preparing to champion ogg vorbis, and the aoTuV encoder... alas.

It's got to be FLAC lossless encoding of course!

[Zweig]

defo not wma thats for sure

[=nuke=]

(Original post by bobbob)
Are Less Than Jake and Brand New really on MTV2 and Scuzz? That suprises me a lot! Then again, if all they played was She's Gonna Break Soon I would have just cried...

Of course they are. Less Than Jake were on more often about 5 years ago when the channels were first starting, but yeah.

[000111]

(Original post by Happy Cycling)


It's got to be FLAC lossless encoding of course!

heh. If only I had a larger HD...

[akmd]

I do use fileshare programs to get most of my music. I mainly use this to preview a new album from a band I like and also to check out bands/artists I'm not familar with. I do usually buy the CD if I like the album. I rarely download a whole album. I usually only do that if it's a new album I've been really looking forward to. Even then, I will buy the CD. If I hadn't used that sort of software, my music collection would be a LOT smaller than it is now and there would be loads of bands I would never have taken a chance on. If I don't buy a band's CD but like some of their other stuff, I'll go see them live or buy a DVD if they have one so they get my money that way. Here's a recent example of an artist I've gotten into. I've been checking out Joe Satriani and I really like his stuff. He has a new album out next month called Super Colossal. Not only will I probably buy it but I will also see him live if I can. So Satch now has a new fan thanks to p2p software. There are tons of other examples I could give regarding this.

[I Hate Small Dogs]

FLAC is great for bootlegs. Other than that it's just another way of ripping off someone else.

[SunburnedCactus]

(Original post by akmd)
I do use fileshare programs to get most of my music. I mainly use this to preview a new album from a band I like and also to check out bands/artists I'm not familar with. I do usually buy the CD if I like the album. I rarely download a whole album. I usually only do that if it's a new album I've been really looking forward to. Even then, I will buy the CD. If I hadn't used that sort of software, my music collection would be a LOT smaller than it is now and there would be loads of bands I would never have taken a chance on. If I don't buy a band's CD but like some of their other stuff, I'll go see them live or buy a DVD if they have one so they get my money that way. Here's a recent example of an artist I've gotten into. I've been checking out Joe Satriani and I really like his stuff. He has a new album out next month called Super Colossal. Not only will I probably buy it but I will also see him live if I can. So Satch now has a new fan thanks to p2p software. There are tons of other examples I could give regarding this.

Make sure you check out some of his earlier stuff too!

[akmd]

Already taken care of. I've heard some tracks from Surfing With The Alien. Crushing Day rules! I'll look out for it next time I'm in a music store.

[J Darnley]

(Original post by 000111)
heh. If only I had a larger HD...

How small is your HDD anyway? Or, how large is your music collection? With my collection FLAC averages 670 kbps. I could understand your hesitation if you had a 20 GB HDD or if your collection was really huge. But disc space is cheap today. I can get 250 GB for less than €100. 250 GB is enough for ~34 days of FLAC encoded music (based on my collection).

[000111]

(Original post by J Darnley)
How small is your HDD anyway? Or, how large is your music collection? With my collection FLAC averages 670 kbps. I could understand your hesitation if you had a 20 GB HDD or if your collection was really huge. But disc space is cheap today. I can get 250 GB for less than €100. 250 GB is enough for ~34 days of FLAC encoded music (based on my collection).

Just ran a quick comparison:
2:38 track -
ogg, aoTuv, quality lvl 2 (~96kbps) - 1.83mb
FLAC, compression lvl 8 (1043kbps) - 19.7mb
.'. FLAC takes up about 10.8 times majority of music (I also dl music, and w/ most mp3s available at 128 or higher, this figure may be a bit lower)

45gbs of music, which - were it all flac - would take up something like 315-486gb. I don't have the space or money, and being a family computer, installing a new hdd is not for me to decide.