It's also the reason behind ridiculous things like DRM.
The idea that there is a difference between broadcasting and copying, and that computers can emulate that difference is a pipe dream; nonetheless shared by most music labels.
The idea that there is a difference between broadcasting and copying, and that computers can emulate that difference is a pipe dream; nonetheless shared by most music labels.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
(TL;DR: 'colour' captures those path-dependent aspects of a thing, like where did it came from and why someone is doing something with it. A song legally bought and one illegally acquired may be bit-for-bit identical, but they have different colours.)
Let's get some new words then.
We need to be explicit.
> The former scenario could see you, for instance, buying a CD because you liked a song you heard on the radio; that is probably not as likely with Spotify.
That depends on whether you want to support the record label/artist, and find CDs as/more convenient as/than streaming.
The trouble is that CDs are really less convenient, and therefore less valuable.
Copyright holders should react to the declining value of physical media by creating better distribution platforms. Unfortunately, they have failed miserably, and now resort to disproportional copyright enforcement and DRM, which pushes the value of their product even farther down.
I think the music industry, in contrast to its Hollywood sibling, has very much succeeded in offering DRM-free content from a wide range of stores, shops and platforms. Physical media like CDs aren't relevant to this development.
Of course a subscription-based streaming service like Spotify can't operate without DRM. It's the whole point of the service: If you stop being a subscriber you lose access to the content.
I want to enjoy music without ever sacrificing my security or privacy to DRM.
Just because the music industry is in a significantly better position than others does not make it good enough.
Feel free to do so. Of course it will be an uphill battle and a very complicated process, but I guess that applies to competing with any kind of major service, regardless of its category.
> I want to enjoy music without ever sacrificing my security or privacy to DRM.
Again, you can. Buy music from the shop of your choice - it's yours. No DRM, no strings attached.
> Just because the music industry is in a significantly better position than others does not make it good enough.
I still don't understand what you're missing.
I don't. That is entirely my point.
Spotify started as a convenient P2P streaming service, then got the capital to pay rightsholders. If I were to do the exact same thing, I would almost definitely be stopped on the outset by litigation.
> Again, you can
Sometimes. A few specific services offer DRM-free tracks, but there isn't much competition in that space. Again, it is practically impossible to legally compete with incumbents.
> from the shop of your choice
CD's are still the gold standard for lossless DRM-free music distribution. That is not a good thing. That is not a reasonable thing. That is the status quo that we are all constrained to by a select few corporations. It's not as drastic a problem as in Movies/TV, but it is still a problem.
> I still don't understand what you're missing.
Maybe you can read my comments over again, and ask about specific points. I care an awful lot about the subject, and would be happy to clear things up.
They won't "hack" the online radio to download (rip) the stream. Even if it's just a click away via countless stream downloading services found via any web search engine.
DRM raises that technical bar by a few notches, but it doesn't really work for non-interactive content, because there are again countless sites that offer non-DRMed access. (So DRM works for games, because it takes a while to crack them.)
It really doesn't.
> For the vast majority of the internet users, it does.
The significant majority of internet users have been carefully conditioned with propaganda to be afraid of file sharing and other more convenient options.
The idea that it works just enough to be valuable is what these media corporations are constantly telling themselves, and each other. They have managed to cultivate a culture where that is almost true, so they continue to believe it.
What they are too afraid to believe is that DRM devalues their product more than it controls customers' spending. If that isn't true now (I am quite certain it is), it will be soon.
That's absurd.
Adding DRM is not likely to change a significant amount of that groups behavior. It does, however, significantly devalue the product.
Not being able to burn a mix-CD for friends is something that bothers almost anyone.
> you get buying the CD on iTunes or something
As far as iTunes goes, it does not provide lossless DRM-free content at a competitive price, and is especially worthless to me, since it does not even run in Linux, and is painful to use in Windows.
There aren't many competitors either, because media corporations are holding back innovation and competition by demanding fees and DRM.
There shouldn't be a law that anyone can break without affecting anyone else.
1. Clearly on-demand streaming implies broadcasting. 2. Presumably I could turn a broadcast into an on-demand radio stream by setting up a radio station which loops through all songs. Then I get into my rocket ship and travel away from Earth at near lightspeed and return, arriving exactly when the song I want to hear on-demand is being broadcasted. It's possible to approach zero latency for this method, depending on whether I stay in my rocket ship all the time and how fast I travel.
That's the trouble with words.
The words imply that one thing is the other, but that just doesn't work out in reality.
Having the option to distribute music for free has been good, for sure
Setting the expectation that music should be near enough free, less so
You could argue this is one of those public good situations universal income is designed to address, but it certainly hasn't yet.
I don’t see that an artificial value placed on music, rather than the previous real value set on its distribution, is necessarily a good thing.
At any rate, rich, world-famous artists are the least harmed by changes in the music industry.
I'd ask how much FOSS software is running on your machine right now, and how you intend to pay for it...
Most major open source software is not done as a labor of love.
I'm saying just the opposite, he seems to implying that the majority of well known, popular open source software is done by starving programmers as a labor of love. Their is usually a financial motive.
I don’t have a problem with that, and as I said, I don’t think anything other than a brief moment in the history of art does either.
It's only good for the middleman.
If you made a graph with the x axis being percentile and the y axis being the amount of money made, on the far right side of the x axis there would be a huge spike where a tiny fraction are making a fortune. (I think) I'd prefer the spike to be smoothed out.
What's interesting is that Apple/Google/Pandora/Spotify could test this. Adjust the distribution curve and then see how demand for music services changes over the years. With more artists able to live as pros, would music as a whole be more in demand? I'd venture that music as a whole would be more in demand due to increasing the number of (quality) trials in the musical search space. And if you flatten it out too much, you would reduce the motivation to continue to try to "hit it big", so you're looking to optimize the distribution curve.
A related point is the FOSS-style model of "give away music for free, make money on tours/advertising/movie soundtracks" biases the search towards music that works well in live performance/in advertising/in a film. So we are missing huge parts of the search space.
I hope in future we come up with something better than any of the three.
Sure has helped most of the artists I know, who would never be lucky enough/know the right people to be among the chosen elite that got to participate in the record system.
Streaming services and the internet means that 100000s of artists can have a following of maybe 1000 people each and still make ends meet doing what they love. They won't get filthy rich, but they'll make a living.