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Music Media

Digital Music's 2001 Winners and Losers 188

Posted by michael from the citizens-biggest-losers-of-all dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "MP3 Newswire is running two articles that contain their top 8 MP3 winners for 2001 as well as those who top the loser category. So who is this year's #1 winner? The legal industry for all the billable hours they got to roll up thanks to RIAA and MPAA lawsuits. It's a pretty interesting read and the two articles solicit reader opinions on other potential contenders. I can think of Dmitri Sklyarov right off the bat, but I admit I'm not sure if he won for getting the charges dropped or lost for getting arrested in the first place. Rolling Stone has also run their own digital music winners and losers list for 2001."
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Digital Music's 2001 Winners and Losers More

Digital Music's 2001 Winners and Losers

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  • jeez... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dzawitz ( 2120 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @06:53PM (#2765940)
    Dmitri Sklyarov had nothing to do with digital music--he was arrested for a DMCA violation in cracking Adobe's ebooks. Get it right.

    • Re:jeez... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AntiNorm ( 155641 )
      Dmitri Sklyarov had nothing to do with digital music--he was arrested for a DMCA violation in cracking Adobe's ebooks. Get it right.

      But the point is that the mess he got into was thanks to a law purchased by the RIAA/MPAA.

  • What about the consumers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brood ( 126904 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @07:02PM (#2765964) Homepage
    Shouldn't we have been on the loser's list somewhere?
    • i can think of one winner:
      P2P
      napster dies and P2P explodes, and since then its had huge corporate investment from the likes of IBM and Cisco
      you see P2P everything nowadays, and not least media-exchange clients
    • Not at all.

      The RIAA et al may be busy litigating, but with the rise of peer to peer networks, everyone with an Internet connection has instant access to almost any sort of music or other data he or she desires.

      That is a big win for consumers. And by their nature, peer to peer networks are difficult to target legally.

      They may not last forever, but for now, consumers have some incredibly powerful tools at their disposal.

      -John
  • From the article:
    "Fair or not, RIAA president Hillary Rosen and Osama Bin Laden are interchangeable in the eyes of many Net savvy consumers."

    Since when did Hillary Rosen kill 5,000 people? Or is she just a mass murderer in her spare time? She's definitely not a saint, and she definitely has greedy corporate interests in mind instead of consumers and artists, but she's nowhere near the scale of evil that Osama Bin Laden is!

    Please don't compare someone who has killed members of his own species to someone who is trying to run a profitable business (no matter what you think of that business.)

    --
    Turn on my friend Paul's lights and spy on his life! [raqfaq.net]
    • Karma be damned

      Ok, then a fairer comparison is to the United States. When attacked (Napter, WTO) the two respond harshly (courts, guns). Both appear to help ("artist's compensation", "international aide"), but are stabbing those who help ($2 royalties; stopping internation aide to afghanistan, sanctions). Next the countercurrents within their relms dislike the actions (/. and the anti-RIAA mantra; anarchists, anti-war people, Chomskyites, et al with their mantra). Lastly those institutionalized in those mindsets try and quiet those countercurrents (corporate media, businesspeople; the majority of America).
    • "Fair or not, RIAA president Hillary Rosen and Osama Bin Laden are interchangeable in the eyes of many Net savvy consumers."

      This type of comparison, especially when made in major news publications, is just stupidity. Drawing an analogy between people who do/have done entirely different "bad" things is just inane. I find it hard to believe that this kind of "reporting" can get past the people who look over the publications of Mp3.com and even harder to believe that some people actually agree with the assertion.
    • Can you mod that post up higher than 5?

      I'm just saying...
    • H. Rosen: "We aren't against online music; we're leading the way."



      They both fanatically believe what they say.

    • The only thing Osama bin laden and Hillary rosen agree on is that no one has a right to own music.
      Aside from that minor point their philosophy is as different as Day and Night. Osama beleives that america's capitalism and the way we 'spread' our philosophies to be evil. Hillary believes in Amercian capitolism.

      However, If Hillary was a patriotic american she would see that the constitution sides with the artists, composers, and the listeners of music. Not the distribution companies. Distribution companies came about from the power of technology to redistribute music in mass quantities. Now that anyhone with internet access and a computer can serve the same role as a distribution company they truly have become obsolete.
      The railroads in thier arrogance blocked airports from being built whenever they could. They even bought airlines to make sure they didn't compete with the rails. Now in america the passenger rails are in part funded by the government. The lesson of history is that you can't fight a technological change. Your only options are to embrace the change or evolve your business model.
      • Aside from that minor point their philosophy is as different as Day and Night. Osama beleives that america's capitalism and the way we 'spread' our philosophies to be evil. Hillary believes in Amercian capitolism.


        No, she doesn't. She believes in "state capitalism" in which government, not the market, picks the winners and losers.

    • Not murder, but not business either... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @08:30PM (#2766133)

      Please don't compare someone who has killed members of his own species to someone who is trying to run a profitable business (no matter what you think of that business.)

      I agree that you cannot really compare Rosen, Valenti & Co. to the likes of Bin Laden, certainly the urgency of stopping the latter is much greater do to the immediate threat his evil poses to peoples lives - but we still need to be aware that they to represent a deep evil, and a long term threat to the our freedom as a people that is in many ways more scary then that of religious fundamentalists for the simple reason that is is not as certain to fail.

      It is easy to paint these people as simply being the ugly side of capitalism - after all it is at the nature of our system that people, and corporations, act in their own best interest, even when they are everything but utilitarian - but it is not that simple. They are not just ruthless capitalists trying to squeeze some money out of us - and what they are attacking is not just our wallets, but our fundamental freedom and self determination in the digital age.

      The future that the corporate overlords from whoom our friends Rosen, Valenti and Co. are lackeys have dreamed up a is one where all the information that people access and process is completely controlled by machines loyal not to their users - but to those very corporations. They are working toward establishing a world where the machines which will continue to grow more and more intimately integrated into our very identity and existance are not tools for freedom but chains of bondage - where the promise of unlimited communication becomes instead a reality where our lives have been invaded by machines that control every word we say and hear. And in the name of "security" and "anti-piracy" they are hijacking the governments that are supposed to guard our freedom to force this world down our throats whether we want it or not.

      The threat of an information age where the machines we use to access information are not controlled by ourselves, but rather control us, is a distopia beyond the imaginations of the most paranoid technophobes. The road they are trying to lead us down, and for which the resistance is small, is one of the most profoundly dangerous threats to the very meaning of being human that we have every faced - in very real terms, these are people who are selling out humanity to an unholy union of corporations and machines.

      Let us not forget that evil wears many faces.
      • where the promise of unlimited communication becomes instead a reality where our lives have been invaded by machines that control every word we say and hear
        Great... where's Neo when you need him?

        The Matrix has you, consumers.
      • It seems to me that half of us may end up living in a Brave New World, and the other half in 1984. i.e., The Sheeple will no doubt be quite happy with their "secure" PC/entertainment devices, software subscriptions, Crippled-Consumer-Only-ISP's, etc., but The Free Thinkers will be writhing in fascist hell... screaming in vain for reform/revolution.

        Hmm. 50/50 might be a little optimistic. 95/5 is more like it (judging by the number of people who don't give a shit about civil liberties anymore; just mention 'terrorism' to get quick kneejerk agreement).

        Oh well... there's always assimilation. I wonder what blissful ignorance feels like -- It's been a while since I've been a kid.

        --

    • Let's do a smug little comparison here:

      bin Laden: Thinks he knows better than the rest of the civilized world.
      Rosen: Thinks she knows better than the rest of the civilized world.

      bin Laden: Refuses to acknowledge legitimacy of modern social mores.
      Rosen: Refuses to acknowledge legitimacy of modern technology.

      bin Laden: Believes his moral values are more important than your freedoms.
      Rosen: Believes corporate profits are more important than your freedoms.

      bin Laden: Poses an enormous threat to the freedoms and values we have built for ourselves.
      Rosen: Poses an enormous threat to the freedoms and values we have built for ourselves.

      bin Laden: Responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and four commercial aircraft.
      Rosen: Responsible for the destruction of the most comprehensive music archive ever assembled by man.

      bin Laden: Responsible for ~4000 deaths.
      Rosen: Responsible for 0 deaths.

      bin Laden: Unmitigated asshole
      Rosen: Unmitigated asshole.

      Okay, so Rosen wins on the bodycount. That doesn't she and her cronies shouldn't be watched very closely.

      Schwab

      • > bin Laden: Believes his moral values are more important than your freedoms.
        > Rosen: Believes corporate profits are more important than your freedoms.

        Nitpick: Both are evil, merely use moral values (one uses a religion, the other uses the value of "don't steal") as a cloak of respectability in promulgating their evil worldview. Neither bin Laden's values, nor Rosen's, are moral.

        And both target children - one by owning "religious" schools, the other through "Copyright is cool!" classes in government-run schools.

        And you forgot one more important similarity, which is this:

        Evil makes you ugly. I wouldn't fuck either of 'em with a stolen dick.

    • Since when did Hillary Rosen kill 5,000 people?

      I think that was about the same time when Napster users engaged in burning ships and murdering sailors.

  • Buy Independent (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chairmanKAGA ( 515972 )
    Do not but albums from corperate record lables. For one, the music is dry and usually tasteless (with some exceptions) but mainly because you just support them. Buy from indie lables such as dischord, kill rockstars or who ever. go to the ultimate band list (www.ubl.com) and find YOUR own music. We don't have to buy their stuff....the indie music fight has been going on longer then the open source movement, get into it!
    • Heck yeah. I'll recommend Deep Elm Records [deepelm.com]. They've got a lot of great bands in the emo/indie rock vein. Some good ones to check out: The White Octave, Brandtson, Seven Storey, and The Appleseed Cast. Check them out, they rock and their prices are low.

  • Biased articles (Score:5, Interesting)

    by browser_war_pow ( 100778 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @07:19PM (#2765996) Homepage
    Personally I consider MP3 itself to be a loser. It is owned and controlled by a cartel (Fraunhaugher and Thomson Multimedia) and people have to pay out their asses to use it. That is what prompted me to take a moral stance and rerip my entire ~160 cd collection into Ogg Vorbis (350k!). And yes, I know about the threats made against the Ogg project by Thomson......

    Seriously folks.... why are so many people still using MP3? It can't hold a candle to Ogg Vorbis or even Windows Media. It isn't open, it doesn't sound nearly as good as it has been hyped to, it produces files that are much bigger than an equivalent Ogg or WMA and well..... it's just lame now.

    Here's an example of what I mean if you don't believe me:
    I have a 350k Ogg of Prisoner of Society by The Living End that takes up 9.07mb on my hdd and the same song as a 320k MP3 takes up 10.5mb!
    • ... it's just lame now.

      No, no. Lame is just the encoder...

    • You have some valid points.... however I'll sacrifice one MB just so I'm able to listen to my music on my portable. I do believe however that it's simply a matter of time until Ogg Vorbis is supported by some upgraded firmware for some portable MP3 players (cough...nomad...cough....excuse me...). Until then however MP3 will continue to be dominant despite licensing issues... Hopefully when the day comes they'll be an easy way to convert my file server of MP3's to Ogg... please...

      Chow!
    • yuo are correct ofcourse in saying that ogg vorbis is a better system. however, i don't think that discussion of ogg vorbis is quite relavent in terms of "winners" and "losers". ogg is great stuff, no doubt, it beats mp3, yes...but if i want some music, and i don't want to buy it, then all i have for the moment is mp3! unfortunate but true.

      and it is obviously useless to encode mp3 files into ogg. and if BOUGHT the music? well then...why would i be using a lower quality sound format anyway? i use the original CDs. many ppl rip their music just to boast a 10 GB mp3 (or ogg) collection, but CDs are of better quality than both mp3 and ogg. plus, when i use a cd, there is less CPU usage then decoding ogg or mp3. the only mp3z i have are those that I download...why would i waste space on mp3z that I ripped from higher quality music?

      QED

      • Re:Biased articles (Score:2, Informative)

        by kesuki ( 321456 )
        The bitrate the parent was talking about are Equal to or exceed CD-quality sound. CD quality sound uses around 10MB/minute. 350k ogg uses 2.6MB/minute that is Well within mathamatically perfect compression of sound waves. Technically those DVDs many people love so much are actually using AC3 which incorperates 4:1 ratio mathamatically lossless compression.

        While a 128kbit stream is a 'lossy' compression 350k is not. Oh and CD isn't high quality either. Try litening to some professionally sampled streams at bitrates that make CDDA look small by comparison.
        • 1) AC3 *is* lossy
          2) 350kpbs *is* lossy from a CD input.

          If you want lossless compression of audio, you'll generally be able to get down no further than about 60% of the original file size (approx 850kpbs for a standard stereo CD input). Anything less than that *has* to be lossy.

          Lossy isn't a bad thing -- the whole point of audio compression is to remove the parts of the sound which the human ear can't hear. What is debatable is at what point this 'transparency' happens with different encoders (some would argue that no MP3 is ever transparent. These tend to be people that will only listen to vinyl via valve amps).
          • I tend to have a very good ear, not quite perfect pitch but I can always tell when something is off key, I just couldn't tell you what key it was or was supposed to be. It was my understanding that AC3 and higher bitrate mp3 are mathematically lossless, since only canaries, dogs, and elephants, and perhaps a few other animals can actually hear the removed segments. As for the Vinal issue, there are some nice plugins that use the data within the mp3 itself to generate acoustic distortion akin to the style caused by vinyl. Perhaps these plugins aren't good enough for some, but they are an interesting toy for parties. It's always fun to have people ask where your record collection is at anyways, and point at a PC.

            I will have to add however that some codecs are far worse than others at producing an MP3. Some source CDs also seem to cause distortion. I have yet to see a Garth Brooks CD that was capable of being turned into a decent sounding 128kbit mp3, yet most albums work generally fine at that bitrate, the lossyness hardly noticable.

    • Charging through the nose?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thumbtack ( 445103 ) <thumbtack@[ ]o.com ['jun' in gap]> on Sunday December 30, 2001 @08:57PM (#2766190)
      To people developing products based on their technology, maybe. To the average musician who wants to put their own music on their website? NO. The implications were at one point that could happen, in Jan 2001, but Thomson and Fraunhaugher decided not to persue it. Had they done so, a musician would have had to pay approx. $2000 to license the technology to play or stream MP3s from their own website. Regardless of their motives, they are assisting the independent musicians and consumers. While expanding the customer base due to the recognition factor.

      The reason that so many people are still using MP3 over Ogg is the same one as why 33 Million subscribe to AOL. It works for them. Besides, Ogg hasn't gotten the kind of publicity that MP3 has. Ogg.com is Olson's GreenHouse Gardens website. I know musicians who use whatever it takes to get their music heard Real, MP3, WMA, even wav files. Seriously though until someone comes along with a player/ripper that operates as part of the users current media player, doesn't take a quasi-genius to set up, then it's going to remain so. Make it as easy as AOL to set up, and the world will beat a path to your door. (at least that's the hope)

      There is at least one thing that I can think of that blows away even Ogg and that's called a CD. or a 16 bit 44.1K Wav file. ANY filetype using compression will not sound as good as the original, not that what you get isn't acceptable, just as FM radio is "acceptable". But if you want to talk sound quality, talk wav or CD.
      • What are YOU smoking? CD isn't the best quality audio out there, DAT is better, hell, 16bit isn't even the highest quality CD, I own about 5 22bit CDs.

        Your comment misses many points. There are lossless forms of compression, and they pertain to audio as well.
      • But if you want to talk sound quality, talk wav or CD

        I bring this up not to insult you, but rather because this topic seems to be seldom discussed on the internet and it's likely no one has told you about it. There is such a thing in computer audio as lossless compression, which you are undoubtedly familiar with in other forms of data (zip files, tarballs, etc.). Of course, the space you save is no where near what one can achieve with Mp3, Ogg, TwinVQ, or WMA; audio compressed losslessly tends to average 1/3 to 2/3rds the size of the input WAV file. For this sacrifice you do get a gain in encoding speed (at least, that was my impression).

        The most notable piece of software for Linux is FLAC [sourceforge.net]: Free Lossless Audio Codec. From the webpage:

        "Goals
        • FLAC should be and stay an open format. The source code is all either LGPL'd or GPL'd.
        • FLAC should be lossless. This seems obvious but lossy compression seems to creep into every audio codec. This goal also means that flac should stay archival quality and be truly lossless for all input. Testing of releases should be thorough.
        • FLAC should yield respectable compression, on par or better than other lossless codecs.
        • FLAC should allow at least realtime decoding on even modest hardware.
        • FLAC should support fast sample-accurate seeking.
        • FLAC should allow gapless playback of consecutive streams. This follows from the lossless goal.
        • The FLAC project owes a lot to the many people who have advanced the audio compression field so freely, and aims also to contribute through the open-source development of new ideas."


        Elsewhere on the website, the author mentions that FLAC is intended to fill all the same roles as WAV, only take up less space on the hard drive. What I would like to see is a program which, in combination with CDRDAO possibly, would archive the CD including the table of contents, so that all of the information on the disc could be archived and live CDs could be reconstituted with proper stopgaps and not 3-second ones.

        Oh, and if you are curious, I tested FLAC myself a bit last week, just encoding a few WAVs and getting the checksums, then decoding back. The MD5 sums matched, which was startling to me, but that's kind of the point of this technology. :)

        Daniel
      • Very simple. It tried Ogg Vorbis and found that it required more computing power both to encode and play back and yet the sound quality was WORSE than the equivalent size MP3 file. I listened to both and found MP3 to sound better. Given all that, why in the world would I choose to use Ogg Vorbis?

    • Re:Biased articles (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fougasse ( 79656 )
      I have a 350k Ogg of Prisoner of Society by The Living End that takes up 9.07mb on my hdd and the same song as a 320k MP3 takes up 10.5mb!

      Huh? That makes no sense. Presumably the k numbers you quote are bitrates (kbps). What those numbers signify is how much space a second (or any given amount of time) of audio takes up. That is, a 320kbps file takes up the same amount of space whether it's MP3 or Ogg or AVI.

      Of course, the quality isn't necessarily the same. But these compression formats (MP3 and Ogg, at least) are psychoacoustic -- compression is based on what whoever created the format thinks humans will and won't notice. So there's no way of mathematically comparing quality between formats.

      It's true that (if I remember correctly) listening tests have generally shown Ogg to have better quality than MP3 at the same bitrate. But I encoded all my CDs to ~150kbps MP3s, and I can't tell the difference between the MP3 and the CD. So, yeah, if I reencoded all my CDs to Ogg, I could probably encode them at ~120kbps and get the same quality. But with hard drives as big and cheap as they are, really, who cares? Ogg is better than MP3, but just isn't superior enough.

    • Seriously folks.... why are so many people still using MP3? It can't hold a candle to Ogg Vorbis or even Windows Media.

      I'll tell you why I am still ripping my CD collection to MP3s. It's because I don't have any portable electronics that can play Ogg Vorbis. I would drop MP3 in a second if Rio would release a firmware upgrade for my Rio Volt CD player that allowed it to play Oggs. And yes - I've emailed Rio (even though I knew it wouldn't do any good).

  • Is the internet music industry really the loser (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adamy ( 78406 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @07:20PM (#2765998) Homepage Journal
    It seems to me that Internet Music hasn't really taken off yet. As I see it, here its the state of things.

    1. Some guy has musical talent (we'll ignore the talentless one's for now)
    2. If he want's to be heard, he needs to get signed by a major music label.
    3. The Label spends money to promote the artist, with the hopes of raking in future profits from successful music sales.
    4. Radio stations play the music pushed by the Labels.


    Now we have some new technologies:

    1. Streaming Audio
    2. MP3
    3. all the hardware to support it
    4. Popular web sites


    If I want to hear great new music, what should I do. Right now, even with the second list, I am stuck with the set up of the first list. If I am an artist (I am not...) And I want to get paid for my work, I also am stuck with the first list.

    As I see it the week link in the chain is promotion. Slashdot is a wonderful community. We have a list of quickies for the day. How about a weekly feature which posts Free(libre) music. Set it up like the Interviews where each person posts a link to an MP3/Ogg/tar.gz/bz2 file and then the top five/ten rated posts get listed and sent out to the sites that promote music.

    Yes It will democratize music, with all that it implies. I don't think there is any way to get around it. Niche music like free jazz will probably not be very popular...but we may be surprized with some of the crossovers.
    • The one thing you're missing is this.
      some mp3.com 'artists' were making as much as $50,000 A Month through the 'pay per play' program.
      These were people who didn't have record contracts. people who didn't 'sell thier soul' the the labels. The sad part is that even a gold-record artist gets paid less then the average McDonald's employee. Now that mp3.com is 'part' of the labels you can bet things are already changing. now a visitor to the website sees not the most popular songs but rather the 'strategically placed' singles of label signed artists. You can bet that all the revenue is going to pay off the labels from all the lawsuits mp3.com lost too.
      • The problem with mp3.com was the artists had to sign over the rights to any songs mp3.com sold under the pay per play program. The same ass fucking took place just with a different entity behind the intense reaming. Maybe mp3.com acted better and didn't dick the artist around as much as one of the big four but the artist still had to fork over his or her rights to the work. For some I bet it was awesome to sell at least something without some uber-tough record contract squeezing out your creative spirit.

  • In a few years... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Publicus ( 415536 )

    It will be interesting to see whether the consumer will be the final winner or loser. I think it's our right to benefit from the more efficient distribution medium that is the internet. We shall see...

    • It will be interesting to see whether the consumer will be the final winner or loser. I think it's our right to benefit from the more efficient distribution medium that is the internet. We shall see...

      Against the deep-pockets RIAA, I doubt the consumer will ever actually win. The RIAA will never rest, and they have lots of money. It doesn't matter how many battles they lose, they can fight on tirelessly to ensure that they ultimately stay on top. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose if they give up the quest to maximize profits, so they won't. As Aragorn said in the LOTR movie, "there is evil there that does not sleep." :)

      In any legal situation of this complexity, there is never any clearcut winner or loser anyway.

  • Law (Score:5, Funny)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @07:57PM (#2766078) Journal
    So who is this year's #1 winner? The legal industry for all the billable hours they got to roll up thanks to RIAA and MPAA lawsuits.

    If the law is so complex that you need a degree to understand it, and so full of holes that you can hire someone to win for you just by finding them.. then isn't something wrong? if an OS had similar problems - loopholes/bugs then no-one would take it ser...... oh, yeah, now i get it...

    • Re:Law (Score:3, Informative)

      by cthugha ( 185672 )

      If the law is...then isn't something wrong?

      Please remember that the "legal system" (as opposed to individual pieces of legislation) isn't entirely at fault here. The lawyers acting for the RIAA, MPAA, etc are only able to do what they do because a certain supposedly democratic institution that sits in the Capitol building in Washington DC has passed suitably bletcherous legislation that allows them to do it. Like it or not, courts follow Congress, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

      I see a lot of posts on /. when a 'bad' decision comes down to the effect that the judge was evil. Well, the judge (who is usually unelected) is constrained to follow the law (which is usually formulated by democratically elected representatives), even if it's a bad law. Reform will only start in the legislature, not in the courtroom. Some people here may wish to abandon their democracy in favour of the benevolent dictatorship of the judiciary, but (barring violation of constitutional provisions) I don't. Not yet.

      • The lawyers acting for the RIAA, MPAA, etc are only able to do what they do because a certain supposedly democratic institution that sits in the Capitol building in Washington DC has passed suitably bletcherous legislation that allows them to do it.

        You're certainly right, but I've got to point out that most Congresscritters are lawyers ... Which explains a lot, doesn't it?
        • Most politicians are lawyers because law is a qualification that is 'recognized' for entrance into politics, i.e. you need to be a lawyer for your peers to treat you seriously. For these people, law is usually just a means to an end, that end being a career in politics. If, for example, male prostitution were similarly recognized, we'd see a lot of sleazy ex-male prostitutes in the halls of our democratic fora, bending over to accommodate corporate lobb--, oh wait...

  • Loser #6: Xolox (Score:4, Informative)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Sunday December 30, 2001 @08:08PM (#2766103) Homepage Journal
    You can still find Xolox out there, you need a small "patch" to allow it to continue working. Being that it uses the gnutella-net, it's steady as she goes, Cap'n! :)
  • of slashdotting:
    Winners [dyndns.org]
    Losers [dyndns.org]

    Don't kill me tho, I'm on crappy cable.
  • 3. Apple iPod

    Less than half the size and weight of the Nomad Jukebox plus a firewire connection that can fill the player's 6GB hard drive in only 10 minutes.

    This quote is from the article and yet, a quick search of Apple's website yields the following:
    "iPod:
    High capacity: The 5GB hard disk drive can store up to 1,000 songs.

    This "article" on mp3.com is really lacking in the accuracy department.
    And probably the worst quote from the article:
    "Fair or not, RIAA president Hillary Rosen and Osama Bin Laden are interchangeable in the eyes of many Net savvy consumers."

    This stuff is just dismal.
    • For some reason, from the beginning there was confusion about the iPod's capacity... you may remember in the initial article on /. and then even the slashback, a lot of people were mistakenly saying that the iPod had a 5gb hd.

      So, that error may be more common than you think.

  • pay for play? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by WickedClean ( 230550 )
    Musicnet.com and Pressplay.com were such jokes. They wanted people to pay monthly fees for less-than-cd-quality songs, and then one wouldn't allow them to even burn the downloads, while the other limited you as to what you can burn and can't. How stupid can you get?

  • The part I like the most... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tcc ( 140386 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @08:39PM (#2766152) Homepage Journal
    The aggressive actions by the RIAA spurred press stories on the music business that exposed the more dubious practices of an industry the Department of Justice has labeled a cartel. This has created a PR debacle for the industry as now aware - and even angry - consumers view the industry as nothing more than a ripoff, overcharging for the music while stealing from the artists they love. What did the industry do? They raised prices again and began removing the ability of CDs to play on PCs. Sinking public opinion and a growing consumer attitude that CDs are overpriced will hurt sales more than the trading of free MP3 files, a big loss.

    My thoughts exactly [slashdot.org] and the thought of million of other people. This goes without saying that the consumer, given enough information and will, CAN have the last word and win, these people often forget the one BASIC rule of consuming... you're SUPPOSED TO DELIVER A GOOD to the customer, you're supposed to SELL something that a consumer WANTS. If something better comes out, people will naturally go to the better offering, which can be any or a mix of variable such as quality features and price. We don't see FORD trying to force us to use 1980 car technology, if they see competition doing something good that adds value, they copy it or try to better it, and they also INNOVATE, you know, that buzzword. What did the RIAA do since 20 years on the technology side, aside from sitting in their pile of money and INNOVATING RESTRICTIONS instead of giving the CONSUMER a better experience, by investing cash in better audio system, heck with all the money they've got, we could have had digital radio STANDARD in north american cars by now! but no, they had to act like old close-minded people that are affraid of change. As a consumer, I don't have to PAY for their incompetence nor their buisness mistakes. I have NOTHING against monopoly or big corporation, as long as they deliver and they make me, the consumer, feel satisfied with the merchandise and if they screw me, well they could at least be clever enough so that I don't notice and still be happy with the merchandise content/quality I've purchased.

    We're far from a victory, but it's going somewhere, we're still in the part of public awareness, people are starting to realize that, the napster case and subsequent stories about how the industry is ripping off artists were even stuff found in my local newspaper, which was surprising (usually that stuff stays on the net and doesn't cross media, like the dimitry case for example). Anyways, they won't be able to keep it up, they can stick a zillion protection scheme, raise the price as much as they want to, when they're gonna render the medium useless, people will simply switch medium... like it's the case right now. A lot of us, non-rich, non-marketting, non-ceo, non-buisness people saw decent audio compression comming, if they didn't, well too bad... that kind of retarded reaction usually KILL companies, they should be grateful that they are loaded enough to survive such a blattant mistake, and put their energy on a new buisness model that is a PLUS to the consumer, instead of putting fences everywhere to prefent their cash cow from jumping off their property.

    • As I read this message, I'm listening to Jennifer Terran's most excellent The Musician. I'm one of those millions tcc refers to when it comes to telling the RIAA to kiss my ass...I've started my own little boycott by buying from artists who bypass the RIAA and publish their own music. Someone here turned me on to CD Baby [cdbaby.com] (unsolicited plug). They have an enormous catalog of artists who have chosen to thumb their noses at the big recording studios.

      The point of this isn't to push CD Baby on anyone, but to point out there is a lot of excellent music out there if one simply takes the time to look beyond the drivel that passes for "popular music" on the radio.
      • Someone here turned me on to CD Baby(unsolicited plug). They have an enormous catalog of artists who have chosen to thumb their noses at the big recording studios.
        CD Baby looks pretty cool. Thanks for the link. The only gripe I have with it is their use of Real Audio for the music samples. Ugh. Of course, they could be using Windows Media, so maybe I should hold my tongue.
      • I'm sorry but if that site is representative of independent artists who choose to bypass the RIAA, then they are just as fucked as Hilary Rosen & Co. Why? With CD Baby "deals" of $13.99 (down from a list price of $18.95!!) these schmucks will suffer from the same problems as the RIAA. Until CD prices start approaching reasonable levels, independent or not, people won't buy them.


        If anything, I find these prices to be even more outrageous than the RIAA's - arguably, these musicians will see a larger cut of the revenues than they would with the RIAA. But few of them use this to their advantage by reducing the prices of their CDs and truly making their product more appealing. Instead, they take advantage of a buying public that is used to paying outrageous prices for CDs by charging their own outrageous prices.


        I'm sorry but if this is the alternative to the RIAA, I'll stick with used CD shops and P2P. Just because the artists are getting screwed by the RIAA doesn't mean they are on the side of the consumer.

        • Define reasonable price. I'm serious. We all have our own limits on what we will spend for music, movies, etc. I know someone who spent $80 getting a 4 song, promotional Kiss album. To him, that was entirely reasonable.

          Sure, CDs are overpriced. Most of the current artists, IMAO, suck. And no one is forcing you to buy music. You don't like the prices, don't pay them. Vote with your wallet. Problem is, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise, Slashdotters make up a remarkably small percentage of the population. If every last person who even occassionally checks the site stopped buying any CDs, it would barely make a mark, much less a dent, in the total sales of CDs. And let's face facts: even if a Slashdot boycott of RIAA produced music did cause a significant reduction in CD sales, the RIAA would just claim it as more proof of pirating. And because they get to make up their own statistics, the general public (i.e. the vast majority of people) will never know otherwise.

          You want to "help the consumer"? Educate them. We know all this already. Repeating the same anti-RIAA diatribes here doesn't get you anything save perhaps some more karma.

          Kierthos
          (Above comments are completely ironic considering how many CDs and movies I got for Christmas.)
    • Victory? what is victory? to be able to get all the "Free" music many want to steal. The industry is bad so I the consumer should just take what I want.. Gimmie a break. Napster Took from Artists and gave NOTHING back to them. Maybe a few bands got some publicity, but that don't pay the rent.
      The industry is failing because it doesn't give people what they want, we don't want more Boy bands or Britany. There is some good stuff coming out on major labels, although its hard to find. The homogonization of radio hasn't helped the music listening experience any.

      Someone/ somehow is gonna figure out how to give the consumer the music they want without it being stolen freely. Its hard to make people pay for things they've gotten used to getting for free though.

      Look the RIAA is looking out for its best interest.. Not artist's (Thus the RI is (R)ecording (I)ndustry...) .

      ASCAP [ascap.com] is supposed to look out for recording artists and writers.. I'm not a member so what/how they're doing remains to be seen. The site is good though, they explain how your supposed to make money in music [ascap.com] for younger members. They even have a searchable database with which you can look up who wrote and performed any song..but I digress.
      • Gimmie a break. Napster Took from Artists and gave NOTHING back to them. Maybe a few bands got some publicity, but that don't pay the rent.

        Sorry, my friend, Napster took from the RECORDING INDUSTRY, not the artists. The RIAA had already raped all they could from the artists, so there really wasn't much left that Napster could take...
    • Does anyone else see the resemblance between the RIAA companies and the telephone company in the days of old (or, if you'd rather, Verizon today)?

      "We don't care because we don't have to. We're RIAA." (with apologies to SNL...)

  • Digital Storage (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 )
    I believe a big winner should be digital media manufatures. I have spent more money storing MP3's than on playing them. I bought a bigger hard drive to store all the MP3's I ripped from my CD collection. I upgraded the flash memory card on my MP3 player, not to mention the huge stacks of blank CDR discs for making CD's from downloaded MP3's and to play in my Aiwa MP3 car stereo.

  • FCC is a loser/winner as well in 2001 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sphere ( 27305 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @10:14PM (#2766303) Homepage Journal
    Like the RIAA, the FCC is also a winner/loser in 2001. Why?

    Pre-2001: With some friendly advice from monster media companies like Clear Channel, the FCC ended ownership controls on radio stations.

    The Commission claimed that ending controls would be OK, because Internet radio and other fancy-pants technologies would be levellers that would allow anyone into broadcasting. So Clear Channel & the rest promptly gobbled up the radio stations and turned our airwaves into a cultural wasteland.

    End of 2001: The FCC remains strangely silent as the RIAA and their ilk work on chasing the amateur, non-profit (read college radio),and independent webcasters out of the market. Meanwhile, the rest of the digital broadcasting market is nowhere. So much for the FCC's BS about the diversity and the promise of the Internet & other technologies!

    End result: If the FCC is a sly and cunning pawn of corporate America, it's a definite winner. This cunning political squeeze play has given Clear Channel and the other big media companies control over digital and analog broadcasting for almost nothing! And the RIAA is pretty darn happy too.

    On the other hand, if the FCC is a guardian of the public interest, it's one hell of a loser. Talk about a patsy! They let the media giants take over the American airwaves and stand around with their thumbs in their mouths while the same megacorps usurp the digital realm as well!

    Whether the FCC full of frauds or fools, it certainly succeeeded at something in 2001.

    • Thank You! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by krmt ( 91422 ) <therefrmhere@yah o o . com> on Sunday December 30, 2001 @10:37PM (#2766343) Homepage
      Thanks so much for bringing this up! Both articles claim that Radio is a loser, and I couldn't agree more. You've pinpointed the exact reason why that is, but most people ignore it, and it's really sad. The radio waves were a hell of a lot more dynamic even three or four years ago, but they've become as dried up and dull as PressPlay or its ilk.

      This is a clear case of consumers losing, and I think it's the big reason why people have flocked online to get their music, rather than listen to the radio. It's strange though, because most everyone I know doesn't download as much new stuff as old stuff that they've enjoyed hearing for years.

      If you're going to be fed something that you didn't choose, it'd better damn well be great and exciting! If it's not, it's better to eat the stuff that you want to eat, even if it is the same old thing.

  • The #1 Loser Is Your Typical Consumer ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Freneticus ( 546178 ) on Sunday December 30, 2001 @10:32PM (#2766335)
    Who must continually suck at the bitter fountain of filth spewed by the RIAA, as it gently chokes the life from every alternative source of music in existence. Never mind the entities involved; when you pay more than ten dollars for a CD, you are being screwed. And not only are you being screwed, but the artists themselves are being screwed.

    Think of it this way. Imagine music as ... well, imagine music as a sort of cheddar cheese. And picture the average music listener as a ... a cheese afficianado. Now, say that this cheese costs about four dollars a pound to make, and that you could, if all cheese was supplied directly, pay about six dollars per pound of delicious cheese. Everyone's happy, the cheesemakers get paid a decent living, and the better their cheese is, the more they sell.

    But WAIT!

    Hold on!

    Now, all of a sudden, some middleman named Zagat the Great steps in and starts telling people which cheese is the best. And, to top it off, he starts packaging that cheese in special wrappers. Of course, to make sure everything's good for him, Mr. Zagat the Great then ups the price to about sixteen dollars per pound, taking eleven and a half dollars for himself and leaving only half a dollar for the cheese maker. Everyone who wants to sell lots of cheese must go to Mr. Zagat, but in exchange for being famous the cheesemakers get very little in return. Anyone who wants to sell the popular cheeses and thus become profitable, must also suck up to Mr. Zagat, even though Mr. Zagat isn't doing anything to make the cheese. He's just supplying wrapping paper.

    To make matters worse, the cheese eaters of the world now have to pay nearly three times the price they used to! And why? Because Mr. Zagat refuses to let anyone else sell the good cheeses! Of course, there are some special places, like Thailand and maybe Hong Kong, where you can by the very same cheese for about five dollars a pound, but Mr. Zagat dismisses that as inferior quality. Secretly, though, he starts funneling inferior cheeses into his own stocks, because now that he controls the entire cheese kingdom, he can decide what is paid for what, without giving a flip about competition or quality.

    All of a sudden, some people discover some form of "magic that allows them to exchange the cheese freely among themselves, without paying Mr. Zagat's outrageous prices and the like. Of course, everyone who consumes is happy with this. But Mr. Zagat is not, since it threatens his grip on the cheese industry. So he wipes out anyone who uses the "magic" and declares them to be unethical.

    Soon, though, some people suggest a compromise. People can pay a dollar and a half per quarter-pound of cheese, and thus pick what cheese they like, and how much of each cheese to receive via the "magic." But Mr. Zagat says that's entirely wrong too, unless he can tell you where to eat it and what things to eat along with it. That way, he'll at least still have cultural control over the things you do and use, and thus sustain his presence within the economy.

    Naturally, that's stupid. So people resort to ferrying cheese in secret, all as Mr. Zagat wails away at the "unfairness" of him not getting his 200%.

    Never mind the brazen and utterly ruthless manner in which he foists second-rate cheese onto the world with a wide grin, knowing that no one can oppose him so long as he controls the sources.

    Now, who in the seven names of Sega's failed game consoles could say that the world is a better place because of Mr. Zagat?

    Yeah, that's right. No one but him.

    And that's why the consumer is the real loser.

  • Time we Identified Some Corporate Allies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dh003i ( 203189 ) <dh003i@gmail. c o m> on Monday December 31, 2001 @12:31AM (#2766535) Homepage Journal
    Politics makes strange bedfellows, and your lover one day may be your killer the next. So its time we acknowledge our corporate and even political allies -- if only temporarily, and on this specific issue -- in the fight against the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA for our rights regarding fair use (and beyond) of intellectual property. This is simply about interests. Right and wrong are for the most part relative -- for some things, such as murder and rape, there is a clear right and wrong. For others, such as intellectual property, all is relative and a matter of your viewpoint. It is in our interests that we be able to trade any files we want freely.

    So, here's a listof our two allies and the reasons they're our allies. They consist of the audio-hardware industry (i.e., MP3-player makers), the computer hardware industry (i.e., computer OEMs such as Gateway, Dell, IBM, etc etc), and the Hard-drive industry (which is in kept very profitable largely due to people who want to store 80GB of mp3s or wmas).

    1. SonicBlue (RioVolt), Archos (Jukebox HD), Intel (Concert Audio), Apple (iPod), TDK (Mojo), and other makers of MP3-players. They are basically immune from any of the RIAA/MPAA's ridiculous attempts to pin responsibility on the makers of a product for the users actions with that product (as, I believe, if the constitution is upheld, so will software developers eventually be). It is not in their interest at all that music be solidly protected and not traded online -- in fact, this is against their interests. The MP3-player business depends on the trading of music files over the internet. Without the swapping of millions of mp3, wma, and ogg files over Morpheus and LimeWire, the companies that make MP3-players are out of business (if that's their only product) or out of one profitable market (if that's one of their products). These companies most likely will fight and fight hard on our side and against the MPAA/RIAA. Right now, most of them are keeping hands off, because business is fine for them, and we are fighting their indirect legal battle for them. But should the restriction of trading threaten their business, they'll step in.

    2. Gateway, Dell, IBM, Compaq, Apple, HP, and other OEMs. Part of what supplies their business is the online world of trading. People buy computers expecting to be able to use them to trade sound and video files, and to store enormous amounts of these files on them. Without that ability, their sales will drop, as their products will be less useful. If protections are build directly into the hardware, sales will really take a hit, as people will be more likely to stick with their current systems.

    3. Makers of hard drives. The fact that MP3s and WMAs are small for the amount of information they contain hasn't stopped people from obtaining huge amounts of them in GB.

    These are three relatively obvious allies that I thought of off the top of my head. There may be many more. Indeed, our allies in one cause -- i.e., MP3-makers in the cause against the RIAA -- may be our foes in another (i.e., the right to modify their firmware software and distribute the modifications). However, that is not relevant. You use and rally people and organizations where they help you; where they don't, you fight against them. It is up to us to figure out who should be our allies for for obvious profit-margin reasons and alert them to the reality of how their interest lies in supporting us.

    In response to this, please feel free to comment on any of the 3 allies I mentioned and add some of your own.

  • I hope consumers wil lwin, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mwillems ( 266506 ) on Monday December 31, 2001 @01:45AM (#2766651) Homepage
    ...but do not count out big business yet. Seems to me that consumers and their interests do NOT always win. For example:

    - I can only choose one cable company, so support phone wait times are up to 6 hours!

    - I can only choose one local phone carrier, so I pay rather a lot for that too

    - I buy a movie in Hong Kong (where I work often): and I cannot watch it at home. (Okay, I admit, thans to vlc on my Linux box, I can!)

    - Living as I do in Camada, I have essentially one option for most air travel (Air Canada), so it is very expensive and service is not good.

    - If I want medical care, I get into a political morass... where my patient interests are about last on the list of priorities.

    Meaning, while the current P2P sitiation gives rise to some hope, we could otoh very well go back to being controlled by corporate interests, with no freedom to copy music, play it where we want, etc. I would say it's 50-50 right now: will the current free model survive?

    Meanwhile I'd better start Morpheus and download what I can while I can. :)

  • IANAL (Score:2, Funny)

    by MicroBerto ( 91055 )
    ... but I sure wish I was!!
    The MP3 trial alone brought over $130 million for the major music labels.

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