# Music downloads and p2p



## Guest (Jul 18, 2009)

What are your thoughts on music downloads ?? Also Torrents, for or against. And is it time for the Artist and/or the recording houses to change the way they market?


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## andruini (Apr 14, 2009)

I dare not touch on this topic because it gets me too worked up about the general state of the music industry and the greedy ******** the people who run it really are.. 
But I'm all for downloading, that's for sure..


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## periodinstrumentfan (Sep 11, 2008)

andruini said:


> I dare not touch on this topic because it gets me too worked up about the general state of the music industry and the greedy ******** the people who run it really are..
> But I'm all for downloading, that's for sure..


i once had a debate with a friend. Her stand was that piracy is essential. After a year or two i was converted. I believe her. It is !

Her point : we don't have to buy pirated stuff, but it has to exist for balance/to counterbalance things. Now this may not apply to the US and other places where (anti-piracy) laws are strictly enforced but to illustrate further back in 2003 Regular DVD prices fall between 750 Philippine Peso to 999 PHP. Now by-cause, and thanks to piracy everything's dropped to 299 PHP. If this is possible then it proves that some people really are greedy.

I don't download primarily because i find the quality poor. I prefer the surround sound of SACD or DVD Audio. There's always something lost when a cd is ripped. And legally down loadable mp3s are not surround sound - well not yet.

There's a site called magnatune.com and they claim not to be "evil." I believe the owner is the husband of an indie artist. The wife barely earned anything from royalties etc. and when her music no longer sold, she was trapped with the recording company who had her music bound by contract for 7 years or so. The site offers both downloads and CDs and proudly claims that it shares 50/50 of the profit with the artists (for every track / CD sold). Sounds great to me... Now, of course, i'm not affiliated with them but i just find their ideas and practices unique and honest.


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## Guest (Jul 18, 2009)

I understand that some purchased d/l are now in FLAC format. I agree that some thing is always lost during ripping but you can get pretty close to the original and on my system I can't pick the difference.


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## andruini (Apr 14, 2009)

Only super humans can really tell the difference between a good 320 rip and a FLAC, imo, I know I can't..


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## cburkins (Jul 4, 2009)

Well, I live an hour away from any city, and 4 hours away from any large city (except Montreal, which I now need a passport to visit, and mine's expired). Basically, the kind of music I like and am looking for would be unavailable in CD form: I already own copies I like of most of the standard repertoire, and indie pop and jazz are tougher to find in your local mall chain stores.

So I download 4 - 8 albums worth / month. All legal and paid for (leaving ethical considerations aside, I don't want to get sued.) I can definitely tell the difference in sound between some of the downloads I get (emusic's tend to be lower bitrate) and a good CD on a good sound system, but the vast majority of the listening I do is on a mediocre sounds system, so it works for me.

I'm also a big fan of lala.com, which isn't downloading per se. An album there is generally $0.80 for the "web version". You don't get to download mp3's but I work at a desk where music is encouraged by management. I'm also a subscriber to Naxos radio. I find this to be pretty good - it fills a need for different music without radio announcers, though I wish it weren't effectively a Windows only service.

All in all, since on-line music became practical, I went from being someone who bought 6 albums/year on a good year, and mostly just listened to the radio, to someone who buys 70 albums / year and sees live music maybe 6 times / year. So for me, downloading has been very very good.


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