Metallica B.S.

Incidentally, I dug up that survey referred in another post below:

http://smh.com.au/news/0105/31/entertainment/entertain002.html

Although, my instinct is that it’s a rather pointless survey. My God, music fans buy music?!! ASTOUNDING! :smiley:

DS – and what’s more volatile than digital media? CD’s don’t have that great a lifespan either. Let’s not get started on zip disks and hard drives. And just try to find a web site older than 5 years or so. Hell, I have copied tapes I still play that are MUCH older than that. And anyone who knows anything about mp3 encoding knows it’s not a perfect conversion. Anything that compresses will always be lossy to a certain extent. I can definitely tell the different between my mp3’s and a store-bought cd.

I guess what burns me about Napster is that the record companies are going about the whole thing backwards. The issue isn’t and shouldn’t be the technology. Banning the technology would be like saying that EVERYONE who uses it is a criminal–much like saying that everyone who owns a car runs over people because they have the ability. Idiocy.

If they really cared about stopping evil Napster piracy, why not just embed a tracking number in the background sonics of the cd? It wouldn’t be detectable. All they’d have to do is keep scanning the napster lists. If they see a common pattern, just report the tracking numbers to their lawyers and move on. Simple.

CD’s don’t have much of a lifespan? Care to elaborate?
Mine are working fine, and show no sign of wear. Am I doing something wrong?

They’re more susceptible to damage than tapes, if you’re the sloppy sort. They can be scratched, dirtied, befouled. They’re better than anything else we’ve got, but they’re just as susceptible to human error as anything else.

True, at 50 years, they have a longer shelf life than any other media out there that I know of, short of chiseling into granite, but still. Like any other storage device it’s inherently volatile.

Hunhh? I must be doing something wrong. I’ve spilled a lot of stuff on both tapes and CD’s, and have yet to lose a CD. Granted I could see where spilling molten lead might damage a CD, but Pepsi and Kool-Aid wipe right off. True you can wipe off a tape also, but they are difficult to open, it is rather time consuming, and I usually get all tangled up in the process. Also I’ve yet to lose a CD because a refrigerator magnet was sitting on it on it (I did lose a tape this way).

None of this mentioned invalidates what I said. mp3 file sharing does not have a noticeable loss of quality through the generations. As my dad said once, “it’s hard to mistake a 1 for a 0.” Digital information tends to be copied very well.

What I meant by no one’s copy being gone is that they have 2 or 3 copies, what with the files on their computer and the 2 CDs they burned from them.

As the wild success of VHS tapes shows, the general public has a low threshold of quality tolerance. Sony thought it would succeed by having a high quality recording system. When it wouldn’t liscence the system, other companies got together and capitalized on the fact that Joe Six-pack’s real complaint was that his basketball game wouldn’t fit on the Betamax 2-hour tapes.

All that to say that most people are perfectly content with mp3 encoded songs. I bet most of them would love it if their favorite band came out with an mp3 album that had 40 songs on it. They wouldn’t be complaining about the lossy format.

As others have stated, it’s not hypocritical for Metallica to want people to bootleg their recordings when they need the publicity, but sue them for it now.

I’m working at a educational web company, and right now I’d love it if 1,000 people would take free subscriptions and tell others how much they loved it.

And when it gets good and popular, I’d charge every last one of them to continue on. It’s my intellectual property, and by God, I’ll do with it what I want.

This attitude that seems to float through certain parts of society that people don’t have a right to make money off their work to create things, intellectual property especially, just burns me up. Just on principal, I won’t use GATs to get in a theater and then go see the just-released movie. It’s the movie theater’s and distributor’s right to market their intellectual property however they see fit, and it’s not my place to decide that I don’t feel like paying what they’re charging, so I’ll just take it for what I feel like.

Is this still a GQ thread?

YOU CAN’T STOP MY DREAMS! :smiley:

Why are you comparing magnetic media with non-magnetic media? You do understand the difference, right?

BTW - I have CDs that are approaching 18 years old, with no sign of damage after hundreds of plays. If I had played my LPs or tapes that many times over that many years, they would be destroyed by now.

Given that the Web has only been “popular” for about 6 years, this example is meaningless. And how do you compare something that is for a large part intended to be dynamic content with a CD???

Recording from LP to tape, and recording in the studio, and mixing in the studio are not lossless either.

Your second statement, as put, is false. Lossless compression is done all the time - like, uh, ZIP for example? I can rip directly my CD tracks and compress them about 4:1 with no loss of data. And you can have lossless JPG and MPEG; people just don’t use it very often.

So rip at a higher bitrate. I guarantee at 192 kbit or higher you will not hear a difference in a blind test.

Overall, I’m really just reading this waiting for manhattan to come in and start the mass bannings for the blatant Napster hijacks that occured here…

What research, exactly? I saw this just yesterday, which is the only actual survey I’ve ever seen that touches the matter at hand.

So then if I download a copy of, say, Master of Puppets, Metallica no longer has the song? They are prevented from performing or recording it, by my act of a download? Bullshit.

The fact is that I have bought several dozen cd’s precisely because I got an mp3 or several, liked what I heard, and wanted the cd. The idea that you can stop files from being copied is ridiculous. That is what computers do: They copy data from storage media to RAM. Then they copy the data from RAM to the sound device. Then they copy the data from the sound device to the speakers, which convert the data to mechanical energy, or sound. It won’t be stopped by technology simply because of that.

Legally, well, just because something is the law doesn’t make it right. Nobody is hurt by a song download any more than they’re hurt by giving away promo cd’s at somebody else’s concert or hurt by getting free radio airplay. This whole idea that the little bands are hurting is bullshit. Exposure is what you WANT when you’re a little band. And this sob story about metallica losing money when they’ve sold 50 million albums just breaks my heart (sarcasm alert).

Where is your cite for falling sales, when the various record companies posted all-time record high sales in the last year? I’d like to see this.

Oh, let’s see what a music industry insider has to say on Napster:

(That was Dave Grohl, formerly of Nirvana and currently from Foo Fighters)

And jarbaby, Metallica’s concerts may sell out every show, every night, but Metallica sold out once, and I think it was about the time they “forgot” that they said they would never, ever do an MTV video. Once you sell your integrity for commercial success, it’s gone. You can’t sell it every night.

Why does making $50 kajillion mean you have no integrity? In my opinion Whiskey in a Jar is a much better song than Master of Puppets…and it was made much later in their ‘sucky, sold out careers’. It’s not like they just sat back, did nothing, and did covers of Kellogg’s Cereal Jingles.

And why does a band not have the right to change it’s mind regarding bootlegs, publicity, concerts or whathaveyou?

I would also like to make this clear. I have nothing against file sharing FOR BANDS WHO WANT TO PARTICIPATE. But if Metallica says “no, we’d rather keep our stuff off Napster” who are you to say that they can’t?

And the obvious difference between Napster and making a tape for your friend is one that everyone overlooks:

I’m not making 50 million copies for my friends. I’m not making tapes at the rate of 3000 a day, like people who set their computers to download whole albums and leave for four hours.

It’s very nice to say that you buy albums because of one song you got off of Napster. But I’ll be honest. I’ve downloaded JUST THE SONGS I LIKE off of albums from Napster and never thought about the band again. If you think i’m going out to buy the whole freaking Nena album instead of just 99 Luftballoons, baby you’re crazy. And my sister in law, who is nineteen proudly claims that because of her new computer and cable modem she ‘hasn’t spent a dime on CD’s in two years’.

When my favorite band took a stand and said they hated Napster…I deleted everything I had of theirs on my harddrive. BECAUSE I RESPECT THEIR DECISION AS ARTISTS.

jarbaby

I’m not even going to wast time reading the 900000000 I love Napster / I hate Napster posts. Kirk tells about it in either the Metallica Boxes Set or A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. I don’t actually remember what the exact deal was but they were arguing over bunks in the tour bus and one of them had a sore throat and was blaming it on the air conditioner blowing on them while they slept so they drew to choose bunks. In the interview Kirk was crying saying ‘that was my bunk - it should have been me’.

Sorry I can’t remember which video it was in bit I know 100% for sure it was in one of the two.

[speaking metaphorically]
I’m the person who spent $18 on a cd and packaging that cost less than 50 cents to produce. (that’s a markup of 3600%)

I’m the person who went without meals so I could pay $75 for a ticket to see them live.

I’m the person who bought T-shirts, Box-sets, CD’s, Vinyl, Posters, Anything that had their logo on it and supported them and made them who they are now. I’m the hardcore fan who helped put them in a position to say “well, fuck our real fans. we’re going to do what we like. And what we like is making money.”

The more subtle difference between buying a music cd and a piece of software or an object:
When I buy a program, I buy a license to use the software. That means within some limits, I agree that I can use the software however I like. That also means that, since I paid for the right to use the software, I am also entitled to replacement disks at little or no cost (usually cost of media & shipping) if mine become damaged.

No such right with music. So maybe it’s an object. Let’s see…

If I buy a chair, I can use it wherever I like. I can lend it. I can sit on it, stand on it, work in it, sleep in it, photograph it, modify it, or even duplicate it.

No such right with music. Maybe it’s something else, analogous to great literature, perhaps? Let’s find out…

When I buy a book, I’m not allowed to photocopy significant portions. So maybe we’re onto something. Let’s investigate further: I can lend it. I can borrow it from the library.

Ah, here we run into another snag. The “libraries” are getting sued and the publishers are trying to strong-arm them out of existence.

So apparently, recorded music is unique in all the world and all the published media. The goal is to have everybody listen to it, because otherwise they don’t make money on it. But you have to pay for it before you know what it sounds like, because obviously (if you listen to a top 40 station, you’ll know) quality control would shatter the industry.

I choose to download and listen to songs to see if the song grows on me. If I know I want it, I’ll buy it outright. Otherwise, I will listen to it first. As Dave Grohl said in the link I quoted above, file sharing (besides being the very nature of computing and the internet) is “the same as someone turning on the f****** radio, it’s the same as someone putting a cassette in a cassette deck when the BBC plays a special radio session. I don’t think it’s a crime, it’s been going on for years. It’s the same as people making tapes for each other.”

And I’m not claiming Metallica has no integrity because they make gajillions of dollars. They made shitloads of money before. I’m saying they have no integrity because they changed and dumbed down the quality and content of their music for the reason of making more money, once they were already far better than well-off; trading a loyal following of hardcore fans who were more than willing to part with their dollars (and in fact made the band members into millionaires), for mass-market appeal and alienating the fans who put them in a position to be able to make that decision.

Personally, I don’t like much of anything they’ve done in the last ten years, so I don’t buy OR download their songs. But the question is a philosophical one.

Joe C.:

Ex-f’n-actly.

I work at a library, and I’d hate to have the Intellectual Property Police hunting me down.

We need a new board-wide rule, similar to Gaudere’s rule: Any thread involving Metallica will denegrate into an mp3 debate.

Ohhh Metallica won’t give me free music, that’s so unfair!

Shut up and grow up.

How many great metal bands have not sold out in some way? Especially the ones YOU(the people reading this)listen to?
You start a band and sell millions of records and THEN you may
criticise Metallica if you don’t “sell out”.

Actually, TheRob, I do not, nor have I ever, liked Metallica. I wouldn’t waste 15 minutes downloading a Metallica mp3 if Lars himself personally came over to hand me a stack of $100 bills with a drumstick shoved up his rectum. I’ve downloaded at total of three mp3s in my entire life. Two were supplied to me directly by the band in question’s management. One was Cheap Trick’s “Surrender,” which was used to settle an argument about what key it was supposed to be in. I’m not exactly the most rabid Napster partisan.

I get enough free records writing for a 'zine. I also spend approximately two grand a year on records (mostly vinyl) by “indie” bands that distribute on Napster anyway.

Montfort:

Ditto. See y’all in GD.

The ghosts of one thousand Irish folk singers shall haunt your house tonight, lead by Phil Lynnot.

Moderator Notes:
Is there anything regarding the OP left to answer? Not really, is there?
The usual MP3 debate is becoming a bit of a kindergarten row. Again. So I’ll help you guys out, and close this thread. You can try to debate it in GD. With civility, of course.