If music companies really want to stop people from downloading songs from places like napster, why don’t they do the following:
There would be a place where you can search for individual songs .
there, you can add what
individual songs you want on a cart, just like you do with books on amazon.
the companies can charge around 2 or 3 bucks per song.
See, this way, people would not be obligated to be entire albums, but can buy individual songs instead. The music companies would still make money cause the song buying site would have to pay for the songs. (hopefully, they would get a bulk rate). Or maybe, for the big music companies, they, can have their own song buying site.
Umm, I think the napster subject has been pretty much beaten to death Here and Here among many other threads. The question for the companies, I think, would be how they control the mp3s after somebody bought one off the site. But I’m not a record exec, so I don’t know what their thinking on that is.
Myrr I saw someone else ask you this but never checked back to see if you replied. What does your sig “In fact, I think I will eat your tape recorder” mean? We had a poster a few months back named concrete but he got banned before you were even a member. But he would have said something like that. Is that where you got that?
Oh, sorry I forgot to answer that (talking about nipples was more fun). My sig is from Paul Chadwick’s * Concrete, * which is an amazing comic about a guy who gets put into a stone body by aliens, and has to deal with the social problems that follow. It’s certainly worth reading, if you have ever enjoyed a comic. The thing is, he can eat pretty much anything he wants. At a press conference, he says something along the lines of “and if I’m lying, I’ll eat your tape recorder. Actually, I think I will eat your tape recorder” and proceeds to swallow it.
Didn’t realize that there was a person w/ that SN…
D. Lerious – your suggestion is a good one, and the record companies would probably go along. They just haven’t quite worked out how to handle things, since MP3s are so new.
Not to be overly cynical here, but I think one problem they’d have with this is that suddenly, we’d be able to purchase only the songs we actually like! I know - it’s hard to imagine them providing a service that actually pleases the customers. Seriously, though, this would cut into their profits. Look at any recent CD. There are typically 1 or 2 songs people know and actually like, usually because they’ve been on the radio or somesuch. The rest of the CD is just crap to fill up the time. It’s all or nothing. I suppose they could charge more for good songs, but then they’d be admitting that they actually sell a lot of crap, which I don’t think they’d go for. Personally, I think it’s a good idea, so it’ll never happen.
I went looking for a list of seven songs - two current hits and five hits from 2-5 years back - using the links posted above. The songs were:
Santana, “Smooth”
Nine Days, “Story of a Girl”
Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get”
Harvey Danger, “Flagpole Sitta”
O.M.C., “How Bizarre”
The Refreshments, “Banditos”
“Macarena” (Bayside Boys Mix - the one that got all the airplay in the US)
[no comments about my taste, please!]
0 for 7 on both musicmaker and emusic (one of the sites listed on Bill H.'s link); I couldn’t navigate liquidaudio (another site on Bill H.'s link) to search for specific artists or tracks. emusic claimed that an affiliate site had “Smooth”, but it didn’t. That was the closest I came. The price ($1 per track) was reasonable if I could’ve found what I was loking for, but no dice.
So the idea’s in place, but the execution still leaves something to be desired. Maybe by the next time this issue is revisited here, things will have improved. I’ve got to admit they’re moving in the right direction.