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Thanks for sharing. I have a feeling there are quite a few people like yourself out there who are discovering the music the best way you can...and then going the legit route and purchasing it when it becomes available.

That may or may not be true - how would you ever prove that more people do this than just simply download and never purchase anything legitimately?

It's anecdotal, and my suspicion is it's not the norm at all.

That's why I didn't venture a guess at the amount but stated "quite a few" which in my mind would be slightly more than a "tad". :lol:

And again I ask - how many people will download something just because they can & would never (or hardly ever) buy anything (or next to nothing)?

A download is not really a "lost sale" if it's a download by somebody who is simply grabbing all they can. Just as if you gave me one of those old-fashioned "all you can pick up in 10 minute" shopping sprees at one of those old-fashioned record stores, I'd pick up a helluva lot of stuff that I'd not spend money on. I might even avoid picking up stuff that I'd spend money on, just to get maximum benefit out of the "free" experience.

A lost sale is only a lost sale if somebody downloads something that they would, under regular, real-life circumstances, likely buy and then don't just because they get lazy and/or punk out on their ethics. And yes, I've no doubt whatsoever that there is some of that going on, it would be damn near impossible for there not to be. I'm just not sure what the statistical correlation between "numbers of people downloading" and "numbers of lost sales" is. There's a lot of reasons why CD sales overall are down, including what I've heard god knows how may times from the "young people", that you pay $15-$20 for a CD and it's only got one or two good songs on it, and hey, fuck that, I'm making $7 an hour and gas is $4 a gallon and the 99-cent value meal shit gets old after a while, and blahblahblah.

Well hey. Yeah, we all gotta pay dues and no you can't have everything you want right now and SOMEBODY'S gotta pay for all of it, goddamit, but still, PAY ATTENTION BIZNESS - your prime customer base is expressing supreme dissatisfaction with your basic product and your business model and all you can do is what? The fucking tobacco business, the freakin' KNOWN merchants of KNOWN death have figured out a way to work these same motherfuckers to the point where they'll pay $5 and up for a pack of cigarettes. Even more for the fancy stuff, They've figured out how to work the market, get in their, come to the potential consumer on the consumer's terms, build product loyalty, hook them, and then keep them hooked. This in a generation that knows better than damn near any other going into it how deadly this shit truly is.

This 1009 cat tells a tale that rings true. As for how "typical" he is, I suspect that he is neither peculiarly "typical" nor "atypical". What he is is a damn good example of how the "new paradigm" could work, should work. All the kings horses & all the king's men ain't never gonna put Humpty back together again, we're too far gone for that, but Humpty ain't gonna be the only egg to ever sit try to on a wall, if you know what I mean. Too many people trying to put humpty back together again, even trying to make something new out of the old pieces, instead of grooming the next badass egg to be ready to sit up on that wall - and cushioning the ground underneath him.

As far as how that affects "our" music, which is waaaay out of the mainstream, hey, Chuck's right. The "big guys" set up up "the river" into which all the tributaries flow in to (and out of). So telling Metallica to fuck off, as satisfying as it might be on a personal level, is not good business, not "big picture" good business. At some point there will probably need to be "big guys" again. Maybe this time around it'll be the little guys that put the big guys back on top eventually, or maybe there ain't gonna be no more big guys again, ever, and the juice will come from a well-organized/coordinated consortium of little guys. A "collective big guys". I don't know, I'm an old-ish guy myself trying to make sense out of it from the outside looking in. All I do know is that time spent decrying what has already happened and what will never be again (excepting those who took deep, personal wounds as a result of collateral damage) is time not spent figuring out how things can be made to work today.

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Here is one scenario (of hundreds possible "industry wide") which will never happen again:

...

This sort of thing is impossible now.

Yes, it is. As CD sales slump lower and lower, we are forced to find other ways. Fortunately, the same technology that is robbing us of CD sales also allows us to have our own recording studio with results that rival or sometimes surpass the recordings of the past.

The new organissimo CD was recorded in my basement. I don't even really have a great room (which is more important than all the technology in the world for this kind of music) and I think the recording sounds excellent. By tracking the album myself, I cut our production costs in half. That's pretty significant.

Of course, the downside is that I'll probably never have the chance to record at RVG's.

And of course, you got cats now who think nothing of assembling a full-scale demo at a workstation, and then assembling the performance of the composition over phone lines and shit, somtimes in real time, sometimes not.

And no, it's not the same thing, obviously. And/but (and which one of those you choose is really the point) that is the point.

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Shawn - Every major media company ( print, film and music) have been buying up small companies, consolidating product and digitizing libraries.

So, what happens to the small local/regional/indie labels that the majors don't buy up? The ones that documented so much regional R&B & jazz? If no major company buys them up, then what becomes of them? What about all the European & Japanese labels?

What I'm trying to figure out is if "all" meaning all is a corporate all or a reality-based all.

It means all that they can get their hands on.

As a example, one of the compaies in my area has the Microsoft contract to digitize everything in the Yale library. Every book, perodical and thesis that they have.

So I would assume that as they become avilable, every recording will be done also, by some company someday.

The Japanese label are a no brainer. They are way ahead of the curve in this respect. I've had business relations with Yasohachi Itoh who not only owns Eastwind and Eighty Eights, but was the head of the department at Sony that developed the SACD.

Itoh-san: 01.jpg

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Call me a cynic, Tom, but I gotta think, based on pst performance, that either plenty of stuff will still fall between the cracks (if only becoause of ignorance of its existance by the people doing the collating) or else that "owned and digitized" will not always translate into "ready and available".

However, I could be wrong, and will be quite glad to be!

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I just don't see how it is going to be possible to "digitize" *everything*. People are doing all they can, and this includes the people publicly and blindly sharing on the sites in this discussion. The cracks will always be too big, and the grass will always grow...

Is everything going to be treated like a subscription service? Suddenly, the entire recorded world is available to me, but I have the same amount of time to dedicate to listening to recorded sound. Buffets are disgusting, but I digress.

I am aware of the blogs, but it just isn't my thing. I much prefer to discover music on my own terms. If I have to wait for Chuck to release it properly, so be it. Naivety is bliss. I have my entire life. Which may end tomorrow.

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I do confess, though, that a friend sent me a mega-upload link to some freddie mccoy about a month ago. He also sent me an advance copy of the latest Gnarls Barkley album. I downloaded both. I've since bought two freddie mccoy leader dates, one sideman date, and both Gnarls Barkley albums.

Still looking for Funk Drops...

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Call me a cynic, Tom, but I gotta think, based on pst performance, that either plenty of stuff will still fall between the cracks (if only becoause of ignorance of its existance by the people doing the collating) or else that "owned and digitized" will not always translate into "ready and available".

However, I could be wrong, and will be quite glad to be!

Hey, they eventually found the Dean Benedetti tapes!

438px-Dean_Benedetti_a_Torre_del_Lago.jpg

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And again I ask - how many people will download something just because they can & would never (or hardly ever) buy anything (or next to nothing)?

A download is not really a "lost sale" if it's a download by somebody who is simply grabbing all they can. Just as if you gave me one of those old-fashioned "all you can pick up in 10 minute" shopping sprees at one of those old-fashioned record stores, I'd pick up a helluva lot of stuff that I'd not spend money on. I might even avoid picking up stuff that I'd spend money on, just to get maximum benefit out of the "free" experience.

It may not be a lost sale in your example, but it does result in somebody possessing something they have no legal right to possess. From that standpoint it's still theft.

However, if the person that's doing all that downloading suddenly were no longer capable of doing so, he or she might suddenly resume purchasing recordings again. Maybe not on a 1 for 1 basis, but it seems clear they listened to some amount of music. So there may be some correlation with lost sales, even if it's 1 (lost sale) for 5 (illegal downloads) or something.

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I doubt it. What people really want, they almost always buy. What they kind of want, that's where things get grey.

$15.00 for a CD I sorta want, or $15.00 for me and LTB a salad and a sandwich? Wildly variable results.

$15.00 for a CD I really want, or $15.00 for me and LTB a salad and a sandwich? We still eat, but something else gets set aside.

Always.

Edited by JSngry
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Besides, the very nature of digital is fluid. It is "counter-ownership" by its very nature. I download an MP3 file that I'm "not supposed to have". Ok, come and take it from me. Come and dismantle my hard drive (or my iPod's) hard drive and take away that portion of it where that file resides. Ha ha ha. Or delete the file. Go ahead, delete it. Have you "destroyed my ill-gotten property"? What have you "destroyed"? Not a damn thing. Of course, you can always arrest me. A downloaded nearly forgotten OOP jazz album = child pornography or stolen defense department secrets. Go there if you want to, but...

In the analog reality, we all knew where "there" was. What changed, evolved, was the different ways to get there. But with digital, where is "there"? What is "there"? If it's still the same thing, then the same rules should apply, the same laws should be enforced, and the same end results should greet us every time we wake up. It would just be one more way to get to the same "there" we've always gone to.

Is that happening? Will it ever happen? I doubt it. Digital is just a set of 0s & 1s, and that's about as malleable a base for construction as I can think of. Shit we've seen so far is bound to be just the very tip of the iceberg.

It's a whole new world, really. and if we think we're going to tame it (and by god, for the sake of protecting the very notion of intellectual property, we do need to tame it, at least some) by applying the old paradigms, hey... get a good look at those taillights while you can, because they;re gonna be gone in about 5 seconds.

Edited by JSngry
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Since we are talking about a shift in thinking, what is the thought on the subscription services? Rhapsody, for $12.99/mo, lets you listen to all of their cuts an unlimited amount of times.

They offer 25 free plays each month without a subscription. I could listen to Anthony Braxton's Composition 94 more than every other day and never pay Mr. Braxton a cent. Forever.

What about Last FM? Pandora?

Things are changing, like it or not. The illegal side, to a degree, drives the innovation for the legal. Legal always has to catch up.

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No moral impilications of buying a used cd/lp/78/ect. - the royalites were paid for that sucker. Format is not the question, content is. The content has intellectual and property values, the format is another question.

The term , "intellectual property" is used to deliberately obscure the fact that what is at issue here is the desirability of a particular form of monopoly . Opposition to the current copyright regime does not rest on a rejection of private property rights , or a rejection of the utility of limited monopoly protection , but rather , is grounded in the belief that the current system of monopoly rights has appreciable costs without the compensatory benefits that might justify the bearing of those costs . Monopolies are presumptively undesirable , hence the burden of proof must always rest with those who wish to defend them . I have never seen anything on this board remotely resembling an empirically-grounded defense of what is on its face , an absurd copyright law . The general level of discussion in this thread ( the question-begging ) gives me little reason to believe one is forthcoming .

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I can see a day coming when you'll be able to get a file that is every piece of music ever made.

But before that, how about a day when you can "shape-shift" a file from one piece to another just by rearranging the 1s & 0s?

"No, Officer (click), I don't have an illegally downloaded copy of the new Madonna album (click) on my hard drive, I have a perfectly legal copy of Kind Of Blue (click). See? Hear?"

Tell you what - to think that such a day could never come is a whole lot more naive than thinking that it could.

Edited by JSngry
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I can see a day coming when you'll be able to get a file that is every piece of music ever made.

But before that, how about a day when you can "shape-shift" a file from one piece to another just by rearranging the 1s & 0s?

"No, Officer (click), I don't have an illegally downloaded copy of the new Madonna album (click) on my hard drive, I have a perfectly legal copy of Kind Of Blue (click). See? Hear?"

Tell you what - to think that such a day could never come is a whole lot more naive than thinking that it could.

jim- i sent you a pm

BM

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Since we are talking about a shift in thinking, what is the thought on the subscription services? Rhapsody, for $12.99/mo, lets you listen to all of their cuts an unlimited amount of times.

They offer 25 free plays each month without a subscription. I could listen to Anthony Braxton's Composition 94 more than every other day and never pay Mr. Braxton a cent. Forever.

Here's the issue with subscription services (as I mentioned briefly earlier in this thread). Most of them have failed, Rhapsody is one of the few survivors (they bought out most of their failed competition, including the Yahoo music service just a couple weeks ago).

The customers pay their 12.99 a month or whatever, they are able to listen on their computers or load it onto a compatible portable music player (but not the iPod...at least last time I checked, different DRM). You have to sync the device a couple times a month or the tracks stop playing because the temporary license expires. It's an okay service for what it is...but here's the problem. The majority of the complaints around this type of service (customer complaints, I should know, I read thousands of them) is that once they want to burn a physical copy onto a CD they have to purchase the tracks...but they don't understand WHY they have to purchase the tracks since they've already paid their 12.99 a month. Yes, I know, they're stupid...but most consumers aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. At that point they feel like they are being ripped off.

The other problem with that service is people get tired of it fairly quickly, the average subscription only lasts about 3 months...many never go beyond the free trial. They think it's cool at first, but they quickly get burnt out on having TOO MUCH music to choose from and they invariably want to OWN the music...not rent it. So they cancel the subscription and either move onto iTunes or they hit the file sharing sites.

Emusic is the smartest thing out there IMHO. They work like a subscription service, but you actually OWN the shit once you've downloaded it. No DRM, no lost license keys when your hard drive crashes, just an .mp3 file that's yours. So far to me that's the way to go...if the majors catch on then maybe a workable system will come out of it. Ah...but what will the majors want to CHARGE for this service? That's the real sticking point. The days of people willing to pay $15.99 for a single album are just about completely over. Why bother to buy Metallica's Ride The Lighting on CD for $15.99 when you can buy the mp3 version on Amazon for $8.99? (yeah I know, couldn't resist using Metallica as an example). If the record companies are willing to part with their precious "holdings" for a similar price tag as eMusic it just might work...but I seriously doubt it.

Also, I'm becoming more and more interested in lossless formats for audio...but the record labels believe the prices for these formats should be identical to the physical CD (I've been on conference call arguments about that very subject). But why should it cost the same for a lossless copy when they don't have to physically create anything? It shouldn't. But then why are they still trying to sell CDs for many times what they cost to produce? Because they are greedy bastards who only care about the money and don't give a flying rats ass what the public wants or whats in the best interest of the music.

Edited by Shawn
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Dude...are you REALLY that hung up on Halle Berry? Just wondering...it takes up half my screen....

I'm TOTALLY fine with that. :wub:

Edit to add: Why the hell did you just change it?

Oh, and just to keep the thread going: illegal downloading is wrong, and the music industry is in a time of transition where major paradigm shifts are occurring which will require the various stakeholders to think outside the box to create a synergistic win-win....

Edited by DukeCity
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Also, I'm becoming more and more interested in lossless formats for audio...but the record labels believe the prices for these formats should be identical to the physical CD (I've been on conference call arguments about that very subject). But why should it cost the same for a lossless copy when they don't have to physically create anything? It shouldn't. But then why are they still trying to sell CDs for many times what they cost to produce? Because they are greedy bastards who only care about the money and don't give a flying rats ass what the public wants or whats in the best interest of the music.

I once raised this hypothetical here but got no clear answer: it's perfectly okay to buy a new CD for $15 and then resell it to someone else for, say, $5 as a "used" disc. The artist and record label are getting their money. So what's wrong with buying a download of the same material - let's even say for the same $15 as your lossless example - and burning it to a disc and selling the "used" CD-R for $5? Everyone's still making the same money, there's still the same number of copies out there (provided you delete your lossless files of course) - the only difference is in which entity is actually making the physical disc.

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for all the morally superior posters here: it's illegal for any US citizen to buy any LoneHill, Fresh Sound, Definitive, Groove Hut, JazzTrack etc etc release containing music that is pd in yurp but not yet in your country - just food for thought...

I'd be fine with some kind of subscription service, but I would want it to be lossless high quality files. Also yes, I'd prefer actually owning the files (i.e. storing them on HDs or burning to CD or whatever options there will be in future times) as opposed to having some kind of account where I can play file X for 10 times and then have to "rent" it again. That would definitely spoil much of the fun for me, as I often change my mind during listening, I play something, take it off, think of something else, then play that, which brings me to something else again etc. If I had to interrupt all the time to "rent" those else things, AND if I had to do all that constantly facing a stoopid computer monitor, that would suck - very much so!

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When all this is said and done, I still feel this is a "oh, poor me" record company bs. This really ain't affecting us musicians.... unless you're elvis' estate or boy george. Music blogs are spreading the message of music and that's the best thing that can be done FOR music....especially lesser known pieces. Just my opinion, feel free to call me a retard or adolescent.

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