So, all you MP3 junkies…yeah I know you’re out there…what do you guys intend to do now that Napster has been scheduled to lock down at Midnight Friday?
http://cnews.tribune.com/news/tribune/story/0,1235,tribune-nation-65986,00.html
I know I intend to share everything I’ve got tonite and d/l like its going out of style, but what about after? I used to shop around the ftp sites before I discovered Napster, that was very tedious, and the sites were usually down or had too many users logged in. You also had no control over the quality of file. It basically was more trouble than its worth. Where does everyone intend to get their MP3 fix once Napster shuts down, and Scour already being gone?
I’ll toss out my take on Napster since I’m sure someone is going to beat the piracy drum before this gets underway. Is Napster stealing? Well in the narrow sense, yes it is. But I think the Industry is very short sighted. I personally, and many agree, think that Napster probably sold more records than anything. Napster is like quality control for the music indusrty. It allows users to sample the music and the non-singles tracks a artist produces on a CD. If the CD has more good tracks than the typical 2-3 that get any radio play the customer is 100x’s more likely to buy it. Most people with any sense don’t buy a CD after hearing one decent song on the radio. Basically it lets the artists who produce several good songs stand out over the one hit wonders, this is good for the record industry, musicians and customers. It simply rewards the better artists. I think less good bands are overlooked because of Napster too, some of us don’t get much radio time at home and Napster puts tunes into buyers heads where radio can’t reach. These factors are big pluses to any artist with a glimmer of foresight, and confidence in their ability. It hurts the big bands like Metallica becuase their records are going to sell before anyone hears the first single off the album. This isn’t a good thing, I don’t think musicians should ride on the success of a earlier album. If a big band puts out a shitty record, and people actually hear it before buying they’re less likely to buy on name recognition alone. Its the American Way to force these bands to stay sharp and good to compete with the up and comers. Napster levels the playing field. Now the industry probably sees this, but I think in the long run parity sells alot more records than a handful of superbands churning out a record every other year which is bought on name recognition alone. The record industry has basically chose to risk selling bad records to customers, and let some good unknown bands slip through the cracks, instead of giving the small bands a shot at winning fans, and risking the big names having a bad album not bought because the fans heard it first.
Of course people argue that Napster makes bootlegging easy and prevalent. I say this is bullshit. Any person looking to make a living bootlegging and the ones who really cut into profits don’t use MP3. They get a legit copy of the album, or at very least a .wav file of it and burn large quantities. Its very unlikely it’ll ever be cost effective for a typical person to d/l all their music, burn it onto disc, and create the liner notes. A a rock bottom CD-RW drive price of $100, and $1 per CD-R, usually and hour or more to completely d/l, convert, rip, burn and print labels for a CD, in addition the the degraded quality of even the best MP3 its not a smart investment to burn all of your CDs. If prices on CD-Rs and Burners get so low that it is a huge savings making the effort worth while to do in bulk, that tells us the Music industry is ripping us off.
Now that I’ve set myself up for a hijack, and rehashed alot of already beaten points, what does everyone plan to do for quick MP3s?
