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Music Media

Upside downsides MP3.COM. 55

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
eshefer writes "With the upcomming IPO of mp3.com Upside has this article that warns Mp3.com is still far away from competing with traditional record companies since the quality of most of the music is low and sales of D.A.M CD's isn't so hot. "
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Upside downsides MP3.COM. More

Upside downsides MP3.COM.

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  • MP3.com issues (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (I'm a regular /. reader and poster and an mp3.com artist, but figure that I'd better post anonymously lest the hand that feeds me react to being bit.)

    This article misses a huge chunk of the boat. The author seems to think that most DAM artists are into it to get recognized my major labels and get big bucks. I know that my CDs will sell only to friends and acquaintances, and mostly by word of mouth, but that's not a problem: what's wonderful is that it's getting onto CD at *all*. The kind of music that I make is a massive money-loser for any kind of commercial outfit, and there's zippo chance of a major label being interested anyway. And, while I have put out CDs on my own labels, I'd be looking at an investment of $1-2K a pop
    to put these out. I'm quite happy that they're doing it...

    OTOH, mp3.com has some things to answer for. The most egregious is their META keywords spamming. After word drifting around on a mailing list, I did a check on the source of my and others' artist pages and found the following among the header keywords (deep breath):

    The Beatles,Metallica,Bob Dylan,Bruce Springsteen,Eric Clapton,Jimi Hendrix,Yes,Queen,Neil Young,John Lennon,The Who,Kiss,Aerosmith,Pearl Jam,Phish,Doors,The Grateful Dead,U2, Nirvana,Beck,Korn,The Cure,David Bowie,Stone Temple Pilots,Offspring,Primus,Marilyn Manson,Cher,Madonna,Monica,Jewel,Prince,Hanson,Bac kstreet Boys,N'Sync,Mariah Carey, Beethoven,Mozart,Haydn,Bach,Handel,Chopin,Debussy, Rachmaninoff,Strauss,Tchaikovsky,2Pac,DM X,Ice Cube,Wu-Tang Clan,The Notorious B.I.G.,Will Smith,Master P,Beastie Boys,Puff Daddy,Dr. Dre,Muddy Waters,Roy Buchanan,John Lee Hooker,B.B. King, Emmylou Harris,Merle Haggard,Shania Twain, Steve Earle,George Jones,Alabama,Hank Williams,Garth Brooks,Johnny Cash,Miles Davis,John Coltrane,Thelonious Monk,Louis Armstrong,Herbie Hancock,Duke Ellington"

    This kind of behaviour I *might* expect from the most egregious porn sites, but not here. I am. frankly, a bit embarrassed to be associated with a site that does this.

    If anyone from mp3.com reads /. (and I'd be amazed if they didn't), can you tell us how you rationalize this? It's pissing off more people by the moment, and the site's credibility is plummetting. Not the kind of thing a company would want to have happen right before its IPO, even one which otherwise is doing good things.

  • MP3.com will change the music industry (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The record industry is an oligopoly consiting of five companies who want to extract every last dollar from an artist. MP3.com is just the opposite, the artist is their primary customer. They want to tear down the walls between you and your favorite musician. They want to provide a direct connection between you and the music you want to hear. It's just simply cool.

    It reminds me of what the personal computer (apple, ibm pc) did to the world of mainframes. Perhaps some of you are too young to remember having to give your programs to the guy behind the window and have him run your job at his convenience. As soon as I could afford a personal computer I bought one. Then I was in control of my destiny on my computer.

    At MP3.com I can now be in control of my music and make my choices as to what I want to hear. I don't have to simply listen to what Jaycor (radio station monopoly) thinks is good music.

    You know what else is cool? If there's a new music scene popping up in Seattle I can go to MP3.com and listen to musicians from Seattle and get a head start on cool new tunes. That's cool.
  • Upside is right about one thing--most music on MP3.COM is horrible. If you look carefully, however, you'll find some great bands--and some aren't not even popular yet!

    Check out these bands: Ghost in the Machine [mp3.com], Trance Control [mp3.com], Beat Symphony [mp3.com] (my favourite), Jumalatar [mp3.com], Universal Groove [mp3.com], Master Zap [mp3.com], DJ Wild [mp3.com], and Joeb the Man [mp3.com].

    Of course, you'll like these bands if you like the music genres that I like. I believe these are most talented of the dance-trance-goa-club bunch, though.
  • I just listened to your tracks, and they're really good! I especially liked the second one, "Return (Dinomix)." Are you planning to release any more songs in the near future?
  • I disagree. Some of my favorite artists sell and give away music on mp3.com. Many are, IMHO, much better than what you'll find on radio stations and MTV. Sure, there are a lot of really bad songs on mp3.com, but that's because mp3.com has more artists than all the major record labels combined (it has several thousand artists). If you look through the listings in the category of music you like, and listen to the realaudio streams before downloading the mp3s, you'll most likely find something you like. I personally like a lot of the stuff in the Industrial section, especially Burn, Fist of the Idealist, The Chain Reactive, Level, and Painted Blue.
  • Posted by Tempt:

    There has been so much wibble about mp3 sales ... Seems to be such a popular thing for rants, but I still think that lack of convenience will never allow this market to really dominate.

    Maybe some enterprising programmers will hack together a nifty easy-for-the-clueless to use frontend that will snarf the MP3s, and burn them to a CD as red book without any additional steps. And possibly even do it for a mass-consumer platform.

    That might give this technologies some of the push they need, especially if it was open-source and the online mp3 vendors could happily serve it up.

    Well, come on people - lets get organised and get it rolling :)
  • Posted by Shub-Niggurauth:

    First, the people that say vinyl is superior to CD are mostly nostalgists who like the "warm" analog distortion, which usually is not intended by the artist.

    MP3 is does not usually have the highest fidelity as you said, but it is extremely convenient. I know people that encode mp3s from their own CDs so that they can play them in a big shuffle off of their desktop. It's also easier to mail or FTP mp3s than it is to mail CDs.

    It certainly beats tapes, and they are of great value to tape traders. I know someone said that that's "for kids," but in actuality, there are a lot of serious music fans that like to trade MP3s.

    I don't think that MP3 is going to revolutionize the record industry by replacing CDs, but it will co-opt radio and MTV, thereby causing some trouble for the big five. Having another source of free music around will shake things up, especially when there is no restriction on the kind of music offered by this new source. That's the real danger to the big five.

    Also, another way big record companies will be hit is that one-hit wonders won't do so well. There are millions of idiots that'll buy a whole album for one catchy song. Now, someone is bound to encode it and post it somewhere.


    --end of Completely Relevant stuff---

    Here's some MP3's of my stuff, if you're interested (yeah! Take that record corporations! heh, heh):

    "Important Metal": Carpal MP3s [corrupt.net]

    Wacky Cult Music: Cult .45 [corrupt.net]

    A more serious project:
    Inverted Silence [corrupt.net]

    -Jim
  • Posted by Perkolater:

    David Futrelle lost me the moment he wrote, "Britney Spears has nothing to worry about." Not only is he assuming that popularity equals quality, but he thinks that MP3.com is supposed to operate like a traditional record label and produce exactly the same sort of music. This is so misguided as to be laughable.

    MP3.com is GeoCities for Musicians. When GeoCities started, they had this crazy idea that they could give one megabyte of web space to anyone who wanted it. Most people laughed at them and said they could never pull it off. They eventually grew into something that Yahoo thought was worth...

    *Dr. Evil mode ON*
    Five BIL-L-L-L-ION Dollars!!!
    *Dr. Evil mode OFF*

    MP3.com is the same way. Some GeoCities pages are great, and some stink. The same goes for bands at MP3.com. Just because Big Poo Generator sucks -- and let's not lie, they suck -- doesn't mean they're indicative of every band at the site. Would Futrelle judge all of GeoCities by one guy's tribute to his dead goldfish?

    This isn't even delving into the musical fallacy of comparing Big Poo Generator with anything that gets regular airplay on eMpTyV or "hit radio." You might as well compare Miles Davis and Weird Al. Let's talk about Red Delicious, Ron Sunshine, Bio Ritmo, Electrostatic, Jen Cass, Lotusland, Alien Fashion Show, Blue by Nature, Li'l Ronnie & the Grand Dukes -- quality acts making quality music that the industry can't be bothered to promote. Artists of this caliber can now go out and get heard on a planetary scale. I wouldn't have heard of these people if not for MP3.com.

    That's why MP3.com is important -- it gives a voice to the unsigned, whether they want to get signed or not. I'd venture to say a good chunk of those 11,000 artists are just hobbyists who don't really care about fame and fortune, just like a lot of those people making web sites on GeoCities aren't looking to get rich from their sites. Comparing MP3.com to the music industry as we know it is foolish, because MP3.com is NOT the music industry as we know it. It's a completely different (if not particularly original) paradigm that exists outside the music industry box, and it should be judged as such.

    And it definitely shouldn't be judged on the merits of one horrid band with a song somewhere in the middle of the Alternative Top 40 -- not when Red Delicious has 3 songs in the Alternative Top 3, anyway.

    -David, who plans to put his own music on MP3.com one day.
  • We'll see how things "play" out but I expect a revoloution coming on in the music industry.

    The Net's a work-in-progress; there's a revolution of sorts coming, but it's not MP3s specifically and it's surely not MP3.com, which is little more than a humongous vanity press (I think that's the point -- well taken -- of the Upside piece). Digital, downloadable music will be revolutionary, but no-one knows how it will be revolutionary; that's why there's all the jockeying and IPO mania and Big Pronouncements. Something's going on, but it may all just be hot air; I suspect the usual suspects -- the RIAA, the big media corporations, and MS -- will end up being the custodians of any successful "revolution" here. Which is not to say that Michael won't make a ton of money from the IPO.

    --

  • "If people aren't buying the music on MP3.com, is it really that big of a deal? There is a thing called advertising revenue, and I'm sure they're not lacking it."

    The artists need to amke money. Maybe MP3.COM could pay them out of their advertising revenue. Then maybe they would only have good artists. Then maybe bands would need an agent to get listed on MP3.com. Eventually, you might even be forced to sign a contract handing over the rights to your music to them.

    This is not what we need. The idea is to reduce the middleman. MP3.com is a good idea, but it's still just a start.
  • I agree with him that it is going to be hard to sell mp3's on cd that you can get free off there site, but I dont about some other things. A way to get the sales up is to spiff up the cd's(are they already fancy loooking? Like something you would by at tower records?) and get them into music stores. There are alot of people out there that dont want to get music online, dont know how, or just havent heard of it before. When MP3.com startss introducing its artist to the general public, they will get more sales.

    About MP3.com not havent very good artist, I dont think thats true. Sure, they have a bunch of really bad artist (although I havent found any yet in the Genre's I like), but becuase of the mass of artist (11,000) they have, they have alot more good artist then any other record label. Also, whether a band is good or bad is a matter of opinion. All I know is that there are bands on MP3.com that are much better then some of the stuff I hear on the radio. And dont forgot the big names with Mp3.com, Alanis Morisette, Tori Amos, Ice T, Master P, Snoop Doggy Dog, and whoever else with No Limit Records.
  • ACtually, Most if not all DAM cd's from artist on MP3.com do include tracks not on the website. Quite a few bands only have a 2-4 songs on there page, but the damn cd has like 12 or something. Then again there are also a small selection of bands ( primarirly techno artist, becuase its so easy to make) that have like 30-40 songs on the download page.
  • Umm, Thats refering to the quality of the music. Not the file compression of mp3. He is saying most of the music sucks.
  • Well even if they are talking about the quality of MP3 encoded music...

    I don't understand why you call it FUD.

    The quality of MP3, even recorded at say 128kbit/sec is considerably substandard compared to the original CD. It doesn't take a purist to hear the compressed dynamic range and lack of high end when heard using a double blind test.

    And CD is widely regarded as being considerably substandard to the original live music, or even that recorded on vinyl.

    Where it is at is DVD-audio, as this offers considerably higher quality music than CD. However this is just starting to come to market.

    Now granted, most people listening to bubble gum rock are probably not going to hear the difference, but it is there.

    MP3 is solely about kids being able to trade music for free(as in free lollipops). It's not about revolutionizing the record industry.

  • I'm certainly an audiophile (I'd rather have my MP3's at 192 or 256kbps, since I agree that the typical 128kbps bitrate that MP3.com and everyone else uses suppresses a lot of the high frequencies), but I think it's GOOD ENOUGH.

    Unfortunately, I was under the impression that if you ordered the CD, you'd get the music at full CD quality, which you could then MP3 encode at whatever bitrate you want. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this is simply not the case. MP3.com seems to burn their DAM CD's from the exact same MP3 files that you can download, which is really unfortunate, because it means that you aren't getting any additional audio quality from buying the CD (although in same cases you'll get songs that you can't download online, as some artists put some of their songs only on the CD).

    As soon as MP3.com starts burning DAM CD's from original sources, I'll be a lot happier. In the meantime, I'll still buy DAM CD's of artists that I like (e.g. Squishy [mp3.com], Red Delicious [mp3.com]) to encourage them to keep making music!

  • I agree. Even 192kbps is good enough for ripping most of the songs I have on CD (the exception being techno songs that purposefully contain a lot of noisy samples, like some EBN or Fat Boy Slim tracks).

    As I pointed out in another post, it's too bad that MP3.com seems to press their DAM CD's from the exact same 128kbps MP3 files that you can already download from their site. I'll still buy CD's of the bands I really like so I can listen to the music in the car (of course I could just as easily burn CD-R's of my favorites..) but mostly to encourage the artists. I would be much more willing to buy CD's, of course, if MP3.com allowed artists to upload their original WAV files (or MP3's at higher bitrates) for the DAM CD's.

  • I like your list! Here are some other great bands I've found through mp3.com:

    It's no surprise that electronic music is the most popular genre on MP3.com, simply because I think it's a lot easier to make good electronic music than to make good guitar rock or pop. In particular, my biggest turn-off is hearing an otherwise good song marred by off-key vocals, which is far too easy to do. There are some exceptions to the rule, for example Red Delicious [mp3.com].

    There are even some amusing (both tasteless and geek) humor tracks listed. Here are some you might enjoy if you aren't easily offended:

    • Fresh Drippin' [mp3.com] Okay, these guys are a little obsessed with semen, but who isn't? :) Check out "Cum Commercial" and "Anti-Drug Commercial" for a representative sample..
    • Test of Time [mp3.com] How could you not like a band who writes songs like "I Crashed Windows NT" and "The AOL Song"?

    So, not all music on mp3.com sucks, just most of it..

  • Go for it! There are lots of classical artists on MP3.com right now...
  • Maybe it's just because it's the weekend, but I didn't feel like kicking everyone's teeth in. Things I wanna say:

    I think the article has valid points (at least what I've read so far) in that a lot of the music on MP3.com is substandard, the place is something like a dumping ground.

    That's not to say it's all bad, I've run across a few bands that I knew locally who host some MP3s on mp3.com. Good examples are Euphorius and Centromatic, whose pages can be found by mp3.com/bandname, of course.

    I found these pages by hearing about them either by the bands themselves or fans telling me about them. I've never actually casually browsed around on MP3.com looking for new music (I don't have the time, and I still buy plenty of CDs - Moby's newest is great).

    I dunno, people who make art want to have people exposed to their art, but they also wouldn't mind making money off what they do. So DAM is good inthat you get a big chunk up front, but it's also bad because they do nothing for you, you have to do all the legwork and they aren't exactly trying to make you stand out from the other 10,999 bands.

    In full disclosure, I run a record label, Sonic Therapy, at http://www.sonictherapy.com, with an MP3 page at http://www.sonictherapy.com/mp3 and other MP3s scattered around (One Piece took his down, but I've been nagging him to put them back up.) - I haven't seen much out of the MP3 bonanza so far. Perhaps because the released works are only featured as MP3 snippits. Then again, it could just be like what another Slashdot poster said last time, "Your music sucks."

    Anyway, go download, and let us know if you like, I guess.
  • I do not make a living from my music making. I have played weddings and messed around at parties but nothing that really paid bills. Primarily I have made dinner/travel money mixing others music at small live shows. My real life paying job is working at a wholesale ISP shop... it has nothing to do with music and with the hours I tend to pull it can keep me from my real hobbies/passions (music and home computing) at times.

    So, it took me a while before I made WAV files from my 4 track demo tapes and opted to make MP3 files to put up my music on MP3.com [mp3.com]. Before this I had made Real Audio versions only and put them on my personal web site [fudge.org].

    The reasons for this are that I thought, by keeping my music files in Real Audio format, I could reach a larger listening base (like 4 more people ;) ). But, I broke down and got the Blade encoder and went to work putting things up on my MP3.Com sight. I noticed when I looked back at my web logs that there was way more interest in the downloading of my MP3's than the listening and browsing of my Real Audio files.

    This is because the sound is quite a bit different going from a RA encoder set to 28.8 stereo to 128 bit rate 44.1KHz samples. It is also because I had never let people have MP3's to download on my own site.

    What MP3.com meant to me was a chance to have a little rack of music store space out there that someone might be able to browse past one day. And I know my stuff is not something cranked out of a studio with million dollar gear... so the price (free) is for real. I made a DAM cd but I wish there was an option just to make them free vs. a bottom line price of $5.99.

    I like their site and I like the idea. I could spend my whole day there listening to people's new songs.

    If you remember one of the concepts in the old Max Headroom TV show: in the future everyone has a TV channel and although some/most of it sucks... everyone has a chance to broadcast it. MP3.com and my own web site brought a variant on that premise to life for me.

    "You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman

  • Quality of the music is low
    Sales of DAM CD's isn't so hot
    HO: Sale of DAM CD's are what mp3.com relies on..
    ------------------------------
    MP3.com is still far away from competing...

    Inductivly speaking this argument seem to be
    commiting a fallacy of confusing common cause.
    Also the first premise, 'Quality of music is low' might be a fallacy, since this was not based on a popular concencious or on a randomly gathered stastics of indivudals who listen to mp3. Also this the hidden premise concering DAM cd's might
    be fallicous. Thus making the whole argument one
    big fat fallacy.

    Yours logically..
    --
  • We'll see how things "play" out but I expect a revoloution coming on in the music industry.
    -----------
    Resume [iren.net]
  • Does anyone know a way for a couple of Aussies to get in on this IPO - a "local" company, or an internet trader would be cool.

    Mail Me [mailto]

    Kris.

    Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
  • I agree. I think the author of the article really missed the point of the site. When I posted my songs on MP3.com, it wasn't because I want to be a world famous rock star. Rather, I wanted to contribute to a revolution not unlike that of OSS. There is a larger variety of music at MP3.com that you could ever find on some big-name record label. It's an uncensored, do-what-you-feel atmosphere that remains untainted by the generic nature of the corporate world.
    I love the fact that people can download my music (and, hopefully enjoy it) for free. I don't even care where my songs "rank" on the MP3.com charts. I just think it's a great little community of musicians, no more and no less. It makes sense on its own merits, merits which the author is obviously missing the point of.

    - Cybergrrrrrl

    www.siobahn.com [siobahn.com]
  • I, and Upside, ment the quality of the actual music. Read the article. It's a good read.

    There is another interesting point.. Who is qualified to ditermain what is Hi-quality music anyway..
    --------------------------------
    ( my music [mp3.com])
  • Well.. My original post got edited somewhat (for good reason - it was much too long.) One thing got snipped that I'm kind of sorry about:

    Though I think the Upside article was a good read, and informative (aspecialy the weakness of D.A.M sales) I don't think that matters much.
    I'm happy with Mp3.com and, as you can see, I have some of my own music there, too

    the Upside article raises some interesting issues but most of them are not really that important anyway:

    The D.A.M program is only one revenue source for Mp3.com - for one (there are others like adds which probably generate more revenue for Mp3.com)

    The quality of (artists) music is also starting to get solved - by brinnging in major artists into the fray (for some pre-ipo shares.. and options) and that good artists get more coverage. Mp3.com recently broke the music into geners and there is coverage of artist on genere basis- the good artist will get noticed.

    I like to think what will happen after the IPO.. You are going to have MP3.com have a very high market cap and cash transfution which will allow them to sign up some very high quality artists (artists between contracts, for one). A lot of musicians will love to jump on the Mp3.com bandwagon becoase:

    a) they will get good pay.
    b) most hate the "normal" music industry, anyway.

    As for the accusation upside makes that most of the people that are visiting Mp3.com are the artists them selves.. I think thats a stretch. I don't buy it. the first thing newbees look for is Mp3's.. and it's logical the first place they go to will be Mp3.com (that URL is Mp3.com biggest assette..)


    --------------------------------
    ( my music [mp3.com])
  • I agree.

    Check out that master zap is one of the people who are mentuned in the upside article. He talks about the lacklaster sales of his D.A.Ms.

    totaly off topic though: I like MZ mostly for stomper, and less for his music (and even less for the very flashy and annoying web site he has..)
    --------------------------------
    ( my music [mp3.com])
  • interesting.

    I didn't notice the METAspamming before. This is annoying.
    --------------------------------
    ( my music [mp3.com])
  • Upside's article is valid, it's wrong, but it's valid.

    MP3.com is about to issue a 100million$ IPO riding on the mp3 hype. the upside article is sceptical if it's worthy of the hype from a buisness stand point. I think Upside got it wrong in more then one way. But you comment totaly misses the mark.

    Mp3.com isn't a no-for-profit organization, they do intend to make money and they are interested in raising investment money to do so. Upside is skeptical of whether the hype is warented. that's all. There fears are valid.

    I do think that the reasoning in the Upside article is wrong. But that's beside the point.
    --------------------------------
    ( my music [mp3.com])
  • Two comments: first--even if they're losing money on the advertising, it that really that big of a deal? It's a hot Internet stock with the additional keyword of "MP3". I'll be getting a broker or e-trade account just to buy THIS STOCK.

    Secondly, I don't even want free music distribution. I want reasonable prices on CDs. I'm all about happily giving artists $$. Hell, I live in Austin, half my friends are in bands or have been--I know how badly these folks need audience support. But 16-20 for a CD? Most of which doesn't go to the artist? That's BS. I'd gladly pay 5-10, even higher, if I knew the artist was getting the lion's share.

  • There is indeed a lot of chaff to sort through at MP3.COM.

    One thing that might make sense to have a front-end search engine or index to their stuff, tied to a review database of some kind. Make it third-party with strict guidelines to keep MP3.COM from having any influence on it's content, so that we don't get a repeat of the kind of media manipulation that happened in the conventional sphere. Just random thoughts...

  • That is where you are wrong. The mp3 format is extremely usefull. I have about 3 gigs of Mp3's, all legal, none of them downloaded. I turned half of my CD collection into mp3's for a couple of reasons. I don't have to swap CD's all the time, I can select a random mix, and most of all, I can stream them to work and listen to them here without dragging 50 CD's around all the time. I'm not likely to buy mp3's, as I would just as well buy the CD to support the artists, but the mp3 format is here to stay, no matter what anyone tries to do with it
  • Just out of curiosity, are there many different styles represented by MP3s, on mp3.com or elsewhere? While I don't MIND electronica and rock/pop (I don't even know what label to apply to anything anymore), my interests are really focused on classical and jazz.

    For the record though, if my sax quartet makes a recordning next school year, like we meant to this year, I'm going to look into putting it on mp3.com. I think that kind of music has potential to work very well, since so few people know it. It's VERY hard to get classical saxophone CDs anywhere, and most of them only have the same few pieces. Something like this might ket more people hear some of the music that's out there, without paying through the nose for imports that they've never heard.
  • MP3 at 128kbit/sec does introduce perceptible distortion, so it's something of a shame that 128kbit/sec has become the de facto standard for internet music downloads. But the analogy to JPEG compression holds: the perceived distortion falls off quite rapidly as the compression ratio decreases.

    At higher bitrates, MP3 becomes quite attractive for general use, even for audiophiles, and the compression ratio is still impressive.

    Try this experiment: Pick your favorite song from any CD. Rip it to a WAV file. Encode that WAV file to an MP3 at, say, 256 kbit/sec. Then decode that MP3 back to another WAV file. Now have a friend flip a coin, say, ten times, and burn a new CD with ten tracks; for each track, if the coin came up heads, write out the original WAV; tails, write the MP3 version. Have your friend write out the order, but don't let him show it to you.

    Then take that CD and play it on your best stereo system, and I defy you to duplicate your friend's sequence list.
  • May might expect that techno or electronica fans would embrace this technology whole-heartedly. This is certainly not the case as MP3 supresses the high and low tones that make some techno particularly "riot sounds" as Atari Teenage Riot puts it. I expect MP3s to remain an internet tool for piracy. The only people who would purchase the songs in MP3 format are those geek-wannabees who either want to show off their new image or are too lazy to go get the CD with much better quality.
  • "Then take that CD and play it on your best stereo system, and I defy you to duplicate your friend's sequence list."


    very true
    theres no way you're gonna be able to tell even on the best of systems.

    lets not let this become an mp3 quality war -- if you don't like it fine. dont use it.

    whip out your turntables, load em into the trunk of your car hook em up to your high quality car audio system -- maybe you can change records when you're stopped at a red light.

    in a few years (if some of these players catch on) everybody's gonna be carrying around standard cd's with 12 hours of music on 'em and you're gonna still juggling cd's in your disc changer cause you need your high freqs

  • screw the RIAA, they, like the us government are a bunch of usesless beauracrats (sp!)

    I may not be able to spell, but that's my opinion either way.
  • The thing about making money on an IPO is the visibility of the company. The word "mp3" has gotten a huge amount of free press, and is almost a household word now. Add on a ".com", and you have yourself a hit. I once counted the number of news stories coming out for "mp3" versus "linux" and somedays it surpassed linux! (btw, the number one tech-headline is usually Microsoft). Granted mp3.com may not be a good long term investment, but you can be certain that it will have a fast climb to start with. People buy stock for sites they use.. who cares if they can make money :)

    Jonathan

  • As an electronic musician myself, I can testify to being much more concerned with establishing an audience and having my work HEARD rather than making money out of it.

    Just as an OS hacker wants his code to be used by and be usefull to the community, so a musician wants his art to be heard.

    This Purtrell fellow (the guy who wrote the article) is a corporate. His interpretation of MP3.com's success is sadly pre-conceived. This is evidenced most by his trashing of "mr Poo's" songs. A great talent of contemporary music, Richard D James, (goes by the pseudonym of Aphex Twin) who actually won the Prix Ars prize for electronic music alongside Mr Torvald's victory has published a great number of tunes with rediculous names "Cow Cud is a twin", "come on you slags" to name but two mild examples. In fact, obscure non-sensical names which often intentionaly push the barrier between good and bad taste with bleeding edge humour is very much a part of the electronic music culture. It is actually (in part) a means of expressing and exploring the new found freedom. Sony would not allow "mr Poo" the luxury of choosing his own pseudonym i'm sure. Note that Purtrel's judgement of "Mr poo's" music does not go far beyond song titles.
    mr Purtrel's opinion smells of microsoft'isms to me.

    A "wealthy" artist is an artist with an audience, not one with fat wallet. .... just as a wealthy hacker is a hacker respected, not one heavily renumerated.
  • mp3.com serves a purpose that the conventional music industry does not. Certainly, your average run of the mill artist might not be worth listening to, but at least this way they have the opportunity to attempt to disprove that notion. If they're not worthy, then they're not worthy.

    But your local artist that really DOES sound good now has a chance to get recognized globally. And they can do it without selling their souls or signing over the rights to everything they've created or will create.

    As for the IPO, going public does not mean that they're going to be the next microsoft/netscape/whatever. It doesn't even mean they'll be on a stock exchange you've heard of before. It simply means that their corporate stock will be available publically. If you want to make a risky investment, then feel free to buy it up. Otherwise, you may choose to avoid it. The world will be remarkably unaffected by the act of IPO'ing.

    However, going public and selling stock will provide mp3.com with something important. CAPITAL. Stock sales are the best way to raise cash. Its easy and you're not obligated to ever pay it back. However, at the same time, you surrender full control over the corporation (unless the current owner maintains 51% of the stock)

    Once they have this capital base, they have more opportunities for expansion. They can pursue other methods of distribution other than mailorder. Getting CD's in stores alongside the conventional artists will greatly increase the sales figures. More aggressive marketing of both the site and the artists will help too.

    But remember the bottom line. Its mp3.com that's going public. Its the business of providing a portal for musicians that is going public. They'r e the ones that are making the money and they're the ones that stockholders are looking at. Whether they sell 200 cd's a month or 2,000,000, it still boils down to mp3.com's bottom line. Debating the average revenue per artist is not really the issue.

    -Restil
    restil@alignment.net

  • It reminds me of what the personal computer (apple, ibm pc) did to the world of mainframes. Perhaps some of you are too young to remember having to give your programs to the guy behind the window and have him run your job at his convenience. As soon as I could afford a personal computer I bought one. Then I was in control of my destiny on my computer.

    Let's not be over the top here. Timesharing systems with one terminal per user definitely came between batch-only mainframes and home computers.

  • MP3.com seems to burn their DAM CD's from the exact same MP3 files that you can download, which is really unfortunate

    This has been my biggest disappointment with the DAM CDs. There is a lack of quality control from mp3.com, and a lack of technical knowledge on the part of the musicians. An mp3 can sound great, but not if it's encoded with a xing encoder at 128kbps.

    I ordered a CD a few months ago, and it was impossible to make out the lyrics on some of the songs because of the low encoding quality. When I sent email to the band, one of the band members wrote back and told me that they had converted to and from mp3 when they bounced the songs around between band members, and some of the songs had been decoded, manipulated, and encoded again half a dozen times. He didn't realize how much of an effect this had on the finished product.

    On the other hand, the cool thing about DAM is that the musicians take home 50% of the purchase price. If they hired audio technicians to handle stuff like this, they'd go back to getting the same tiny percentages that they get from the major labels.

  • I'm in a band, and though I consider us to be a fairly good one, I don't really have any aspirations of fame and fortune. I'd like to go to college in two years, and a world tour would dash my hopes of access to a campus T1 line. :)

    I like what MP3.com is doing... it's not buying into the backstreet boys/britney spears/make-money-quick scheme. It's becoming the meeting place for internet musicians. While the author of this particular article feels that this is a bad thing, I think it's great.

  • I think the author was referring to the quality of the music itself, rather than the audio quality of the MP3s.

  • RIAA (Score:1)

    by Leonel ( 52396 )
    This proably is pissing off RIAA and it will do anything within its reach to make mp3.com unsucesfull.

  • An undertone in the article that I noticed, and maybe I'm having one of my typical everyone-bashes-amateur-music-and-I-must-defend-it reactions, is that the vast majority of the musicians on MP3.com is devoid of talent and the music is worthless. How many in the established music industry thought that the burgeoning rock 'n roll scene in the 50s wasn't crap? The same for rap and hip-hop, electronica and world music in the 80s and 90s?

    The very thing that is so great about MP3.com is that the wide range of styles, types, and, yes, even relative "talent" of music offered is in itself exciting. The public has a chance to hear musicians with new visions that the industry wouldn't dare take chances on or let us hear. The music industry has no desire in promoting anything new that isn't young, sexy and hip like your Britney Spears or other teenybopper one-hit wonder. And remember, young, sexy and hip means big profits, and usually not quality.

    I applaud MP3.com--I have a page [mp3.com] up there, and I don't expect to see a red cent or a record contract from what I do. I am happy knowing that there exists a facility where I can post my music and anybody who wants to can go and hear it of their own free will. With radio playing the same five or six songs in rotation every hour, I'll gladly take a so-called low-quality, no-talent, interesting MP3 artist over the latest überproduced pap I feel as if I am being fed every time I listen to the radio or watch TV.

  • Migration toward free distribution (Score:3)

    by Ophelan ( 55379 ) on Saturday June 05, 1999 @06:37AM (#1865880) Homepage
    If one takes a step back and looks at more than just MP3s, the migration toward free distribution is becoming more relevent in all industries. Obviously, Linux and Open Source is the greatest example of this, but who is to say music can't join in on this as well? The time has come where people are no longer satisfied with what major corporations, record companies, and the media have to offer. The Internet has becomes the generic media that enables each and every individual to become a content provider on their own, with the help of sites such as MP3.com.

    It is my belief that as high bandwidth becomes available to more and more consumers, and as the quality of television decreases even more (no, we haven't hit absolute rock bottom yet, I'm sad to say), independent TV shows orgininating on the Internet will come into play. This may sound absurd, but if you look at the trend, it is the next logical step. It is simply the transition from totally profit-oriented business to those that seek to provide the better product, with profit as a secondary goal.

    If people aren't buying the music on MP3.com, is it really that big of a deal? There is a thing called advertising revenue, and I'm sure they're not lacking it. Is something a failure just because consumers don't directly purchase it? Perhaps the solution here is to provide an incentive for purchase, such as songs that aren't available for download. Obviously the artists need to be supported if they are expected to continue with this, but they must also keep in mind that the widespread distribution and acceptance of their music is a success in itself, one which should be valued more.

    Daniel
    -
    Editor - Dualism.org
    President - Ophelan.com
  • I believe the Upside article substantially misses the point. Although I'm sure I'm not qualified to be the arbitrar of "The Point", here are a few candidates...

    1. How many record labels boast 11,000 artists? The fact that the typical artist sees only a few sales per year must be viewed in the context of this larger picture.

    2. MP3.com is establishing a brand with a close identification with digital music distribution, and brands have value commensurate with how they are ultimately used. MP3 is still very early stage -- remember when you could only buy about 10 titles on CD? With a large following, there is potential for them to make big $$ (although to satisfy the financial markets they will have to demonstrate some specific capacity). N.B., there is also a danger that with changing technology their brand could quickly become as outdated as Vinyl.com.

    3. The model of MP3.com is changing the fundamentals of the music biz, from demand creation to emergent demand. The long-term potential in this change is to make current distribution models obsolete, not to merely take over the role of the record industry. Although it's possible to play out a number of scenarios, I don't think anyone can predict the ultimate impact with any accuracy.

    When Oracle (et al) use slogans like "The Internet changes everything", I'm not sure they fully appreciate the scope of the word "everything".
  • The midly popular WinOnCD package does this in the new versions. It's not quite EZCD levels of use, but it's pretty darn drag and drop.

    Also, convience hinges on dominant platform... and the industry is pretty geared up to change formats from the CD to something else. (it's time.)

    But yeah, if the industry is wise, they'll make sure that whatever the new platform is makes it difficult to impossible to use MP3ness.

  • I find myself in almost 100% agreement with the upside articles. Naysayers take note:

    Much has been said about the subjective nature of "quality" -- what party A likes isn't necessarily what party B likes. Some people dig lo-fi noise or songs about poop. God knows I do. But sadly, such products are not mainstream commodities. They are a niche market, and for as much as the media (tv, print, music, etc.) has discussed and feared demassification over the last thirty years, it was never realized. One product that the majority of folks will dig continues to be the dominant model, and will most likely continue as such for a great deal of time.

    Musical tastes are conditioned. People buy Brittney Spears and the Spice Girls not just because it has been "shoved down their throats" by advertisers, but also because it's *musically* what they've been taught to like. This is the same reason that (again, for the most part) westerners don't really dig a well-written and catchy raja. Indian music just sounds wrong to their ears. The same process, albiet a more subtle derivative, is at work with radio vs mp3.com music.

    You can analyze pop music the same way one would analyze classical music. Regardless of personal taste, there is good, and there is bad. When I first heard the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" I was floored. It was the _perfect_ pop song. Personally, I hated it, but I'm a niche market. It's still a great song -- as well it should be with all the work that went into the manufacture of it.

    Granted, there are still nitche markets available for menial exploitation, of course, but people dig brand names. I buy $5 pants at the mexican store down the street, but Calvin Kline and the like are still going to do good business.

    Everyone I know is on MP3.com. Some have been number 1, artist of the day, etc. But from a strictly traditional standpoint, they all suck, myself included. (sidebar: there was one band i liked on mp3.com -- anarchy steering committee. they have subesequently been signed to a real label. go figure.) My friends like my music. I like my music. But the songs arn't on par with mainstream music by any stretch of the imagination. For the purposes of the Upside article, good music was music that most people will like. (read: pop commodity)

    Something that ALL the preceeding posts have overlooked is the tremendous amount of capital that is needed to make a hit record. People who have been lucky enough to circumvent interacting with the music industry might not realize how many people are involved and how much input they actually have. Producers, label execs, financers, A&R folks, engineers, the list is staggering. Not to mention image consultants, advertising agencies, video directors, and a million phone jocks doing promo for radio stations. All these people are professionals, working together to create the perfect commodity that will agree with consumers' tatstes. And for the most part they succeed. All you "new media revolution" types need to take this into consideration.

    And this is ultimately where this discussion began: money. MP3.com will make money off advertisers. MP3.com will continue to exist entirely outside the music industry, except for bands that get signed. Please remember my pants.

    A final technical note: DAM CDs will always suffer MP3's limitations -- once a file has been encoded to MP3, it's never going back to the original quality. MP3 works by deleting less vital data, thus conversion "back" to wav will always sound mp3ey. Also bear in mind the inherent poor recording conditions of independent music in general.

    viva.

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