hi to all i have been a musicaholic for the past eight years. and from new kids on the block to the cradle of filth, i have listen to many pop, rock, heavy metal, death metal and country music. but the problem with me is that i don't encourge mp3s. where as my friends they spread the mp3s like viruses and any new album for which i may be spending hell lot of money they will copy it for free or download it from interne. but i feel somehow these mp3s are not good cause most of times they are spurious and not decoded well from cds soemtimes they are not of full length also we don't know which band they belong to and info like this so i just want to know general opinion of all grexers regards mukesh27 responses total.
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Unfortuantely (?) with the obsolescence of the vinyl disk ("record"), there
is no equivalent of the "45", which had a popular tune, and a "throw-away"
on the flip side - the 45 was as way to buy just the hit song you wanted.
If you liked the artist(s) well enough, you would spring for the LP.
(For those of you who do not know either 45 or LP, ask your parents! :-)
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Why do you think 3-4 dollars for a single is too much?
If you want a band to survive, support them, buy their CDs. But if you only like 1 song, or if the band puts out mostly junk, then sure, download the MP3. I think the whole piracy thing is going to trim a lot of fat out of the big record companies. It's also gonna make concert tickets go up in price. Bands will have to jack up prices elsewhere to survive.
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I'm not sure you understand how the music business works or its history. In the old days a "single" (45 rpm record) also cost more than the pro rata share of its contribution to the album (although you actually got two songs, including the "b" side). So there is a historical basis for the pricing you dislike. You would buy a single CD for the same reason people *paid* for 45s in the past: because they liked a single song enough to want a separate copy and/or because they didn't like the entire album. Gee, the more things change, the more they say the same. I also wonder how many "lifestyles" of musicians you have truly witnessed. Just because a band is on a record label, it doesn't mean they are all living like Madonna. A band considered to have potential may get $150,000-$500,000 for their first record. This money is divided among however many members are in the band, less a cut for management, and usually it is the ONLY money the band will ever see from a given record. Five figure deals are more common for bands with narrower appeal, and for some genres the payment is under $10,000. So your comment about "survival" is flat out WRONG. Many bands on record labels spend their time on the road living out of a van and eating whatever they can find when they pull over for gas or a gig. I seriously doubt you would enjoy such a lifestyle and almost certainly you would consider yours superior by comparison. The only way most bands make money is by touring or selling *lots* of records (it also helps to be the songwriter, who often makes more than his/her non-writing bandmates). Since the music industry tends to screw musicians on single royalties I'm not going to argue too strongly that you are directly stealing money from the artist. However, the only way artists gain some degree of financial or creative control is to show good sales. When you steal a single you are denying a musician a "mark" that should be reflected as a sale. There may be a lot of good arguments to be made against record companies; your post makes none of them. And to somehow delude yourself into thinking the average signed band leads an enviable lifestyle is to utterly ignore reality.
Yeah, True Cyklone. thanx anyway i should realise it before.. still i am not anti mp3s... regards
Somewhat humorously, I would ask cyclone what the law of supply and demand says about the living standards of musicians he describes in resp:7. More seriously, if the current music downloading situation is not desirable, what would you suggest doing about it?
Obviously, I'd like the record industry to be more responsive to consumer demands. What I was trying to point out is that responses like mynxcat's show that even when there is a belated attempt by the record industry to be more responsive, at least some consumers may not respond favorably even then. Which is to say, I'm not sure that some music fans would pay even if they could download music for a reasonable fee and the download was not copy-protected or otherwise restricted. I'm not sure I understand your point about supply and demand except to point out that people who go to bars and clubs will only pay so much for a ticket. Of course, how much of that goes to the bands is another question entirely.
My half-humorous suggestions is that the pay of musicians is low because there are more musicians than society demands.
I can agree with at least part of that!
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Actually, the songs I've gotten online (via the artist sending them to me, or buying them from the artist) have been of perfectly fine quality. In fact, I find that they are pretty neat (I have gotten two d/ls of concert recordings used as promo material and one that was offered by the artist on his website, and a couple of songs sent to me by the artist that are not on any recording). Since those are all done digitally (I assume) they have an immediacy that a studio recording would lack. I don't know that I would buy something online that was very studio-tweaked, though.
Re #13: So you are saying you would by a "reasonably priced" CD if most of the songs met your quality standards, but you would not purchase a "reasonably priced" (historically speaking) single CD even if the song on it was high quality?
As for myself, unless they were much, much cheaper than the corresponding CD, I don't think I'd be particularly tempted to buy digital downloads of songs. Download-only music seems much more ephemeral than having a concrete physical object like a CD. It's already hard enough to keep track of my computer files whenever I move to a new machine or upgrade my hard drive. I'm not wild about the computer copy being the only one I have, and am especially concerned about the push towards "secure" media files that are locked to a single device. I can't imagine ever paying money for those. On the other hand, I've spent a *lot* of time converting my CDs to MP3 so I can play them on my iPod. A CD that came with a data segment which included high-quality music files in a non-proprietary format with proper tags and cover art would be a really welcome improvement over a regular CD. I don't expect to see anything like that come from a major label anytime soon, though (if ever!)
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In case you haven't noticed, my main points are about whether your views are similar to those of a substantial number of people who currently download music for free. The fact that you've shown a basic misunderstanding of the music business is not a point of disagreement from my perspective. I do disagree with the conclusions you draw from your distorted views. I don't disagree with someone who says Product X is too expensive. I'm simply trying to understand the basis for such views (entirely separate from your misunderstanding of the music biz). As best I can tell, you are saying a couple of things: (1) You won't buy a CD if there are only a few songs you want on the CD. This presumes (2) which is that at some point in your life you apparently felt that CDs contained more quality content than the do now, and you purchased more CDs accordingly. (3) you justify downloading single songs for free since you do not want to buy a CD with only one or two good songs, and either (4a) you dislike the idea of buying a single so you refuse to pay for those one or two songs you want or (4b) you don't feel singles are priced properly, and therefore refuse to pay on that basis. How am I doing so far?
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For some reason, I view the idea of filling my hard drive with downloaded music files with undisguised horror. It's not a desirable prospect for a classical-music lover anyway. However many hundreds or even thousands of MP3 files of 3-minute pop songs you can fit, it won't make that many 50-minute symphonies, nor would the sound quality be desirable. I'll stick with the CDs. If music goes all download, I'll just stop acquiring music. The same way, if books go all electronic, I'll stop reading new books. Posts are one thing, but I've read an entire book on a computer screen and I don't ever want to have to do that again.
one thing i would like to ask you all... are those cheap mp3 players which in India we can purchase for rs 2500 or plus can play mp3 well i think they don't have that much buffer memory and also most of times people will convert cd to mp3 at high speed like 48x or plus to save time...and also they will write them to sell at the max writable speed... i think some times some times the song while playing will skip the tracks........ and i think thats why most of us like cd than mp3s but playing same mp3s on computer should not have any problem.. i guess.. cya feedback ? regards mukesh :)
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hi mynxcat......... what is that for...#22 (huh) ????????? regards mukesh :)
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Hey then you gotta upgrade up hard disk ..... cya regards mukesh :)
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No need for sorry... "We all agree on the necessity to compromise but we just can't agree on when to compromise !" see yeah regards mukesh :)
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