not a paticularly positive developement

Vivendi Deal for MP3.com Highlights Trend

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21 — Internet start-ups like MP3.com, Napster and EMusic.com set out several years ago to challenge major record labels as the predominant distributors of music. But the announcement on Sunday that Vivendi Universal is buying MP3.com punctuates how radically things have changed: in recent months, a number of the leading music upstarts have been absorbed, in whole or in part, by the very labels they set out to challenge.

The upshot, industry analysts say, is that the five major record companies could wind up actually consolidating their power in an Internet age that some analysts thought would shake the labels to their core.

Napster is struggling, too, in light of a court decision earlier this year that required it to prevent the exchange of copyrighted files owned by the major record companies. The company said today that last week its average traffic had fallen to seven million visitors a day. In April, the company had averaged eight million visitors a day, a Napster spokeswoman said.

Aram Sinnreich, an industry analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix, said the spate of acquisitions had dashed some peoples' expectations that the Internet would become a "democratizing influence" to mitigate the role of the major record companies.

"A lot of people used to gas off about how the Internet was going to kill the major labels," he said. But the Internet has turned out to be "one more instrument for the major media companies that own the major record labels to consolidate their power and influence."

"It ultimately means that neither consumers nor musicians will have much greater choice than they had in the first place," Mr. Sinnreich added.

Eric Scheirer, an analyst with the consulting firm Forrester Research, said Vivendi Universal might be able to use the acquisition to reach its own goal — beginning the Duet music service with Sony — more quickly

But, echoing Mr. Sinnreich, Mr. Scheirer said the acquisition of MP3.com could be frustrating to independent, unsigned musicians who hoped the Net would reduce some power of the labels. And Mr. Scheirer said the death or acquisition of the smaller sites could raise the concerns of some members of Congress, who have suggested that record companies should be forced to license their music to competing music services on the Internet.

"At this point, there is no Internet start-up that's functioning well, that's stable and that's not under the control of the labels," Mr. Scheirer said. "This is explicitly something Congress has not wanted to see come to pass."

5/22/’01 NYT

[thinker]

Yep. *TSK TSK*

[KevC]

Npaster.... pffft

[TankGirl]

Hi Jack, and thanks for an interesting link!

Aram Sinnreich, an industry analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix, said the spate of acquisitions had dashed some peoples' expectations that the Internet would become a "democratizing influence" to mitigate the role of the major record companies.

"A lot of people used to gas off about how the Internet was going to kill the major labels," he said. But the Internet has turned out to be "one more instrument for the major media companies that own the major record labels to consolidate their power and influence."

"It ultimately means that neither consumers nor musicians will have much greater choice than they had in the first place," Mr. Sinnreich added.

Mr. Sinnreich seems to identify strongly with the wishful thinking of the major media companies. So far the giants have been pretty clueless about what to do with online music and the developing p2p technologies. They wasted their time on SMDI while Nappy and related technologies kept growing. Now they concentrate on suing and buying the centralized services but have no idea how to make them attractive to the consumers. Not to talk about the booming decentralized technologies that they have hardly addressed yet. It is curious how the big public has taken a clear initiative in testing and adopting cutting edge distribution technologies while the media giants are just doing their best to sabotage them or water them down. A major reversal of roles.

But, echoing Mr. Sinnreich, Mr. Scheirer said the acquisition of MP3.com could be frustrating to independent, unsigned musicians who hoped the Net would reduce some power of the labels.

Independent musicians will likely suffer from deals like this along with us, the consumers of art. But we both have enjoyed the free centralized services on borrowed time. They all are on sale if the price is right, and the same applies to the new decentralized services like Morpheus and WinMX. I expect to see more stable and consumer-friendly solutions only when we - with the help of the open source community - can provide our own p2p software and sustain our own networks without any critical dependencies to the centralized services. At the end of the day we really need just our ISPs and a handful of skillful programmers to establish a digital luxury zone.

- tg

[lezzbeefriends]

Originally posted by TankGirl

At the end of the day we really need just our ISPs and a handful of skillful programmers to establish a digital luxury zone.

- tg

Yes, we are here to move into the new "digital luxury zone" you mentioned. Do you know where we can get our fleet of highly talented programmers?

I do believe you're right though. We've had a wonderful taste of this type of environment- and I'm not ready to just hand it over to the Nazi's! So keep at it all you open sources out there and all you wonderful programmers!

an interesting developement from left field is nudester, a beta p2p porn sharing client recently launched. what makes it intersting is the developers insistance that it not be used for kiddie porn so to that end they claim it filters out words like kiddie, child and mom etc. i don't know if it works and i just heard about it today, but if it's that easy to put filters on a porn p2p how hard can it be to put them on a music or movie p2p? i'm guessing not very.
i really thought the whole point of the gnutella nets was to allow ALL trading free of government controll. if i could program i'd put out a balls to the wall freeware p2p that would do just that.
so where's a gun totin', gubment hatin' anarchist motherf*ckin' libertarian superprogrammin' hippie freak when you need one?

put down that joint and pick up that keyboard! can you do both? even better...

[Ramona_A_Stone]

From mp3.com's artists FAQ:

Q. Who is Vivendi Universal?
A. Vivendi Universal is a multi-national, $65 billion corporation that operates well-regarded properties in the telecommunications, tv/film, publishing, music, Internet and environmental services spaces.

Q. Will services and products offered to independent artists cease?
A. We expect to continue our current offerings to artists including marketing, promotion, and a full roster of online services for all artists. We also expect that our current artist services will remain in effect including our Payback for Playback program. There will be no automatic changes to artist contracts as a result of the transaction, and artists will continue to own the rights to their music.

Q. How long will it take to complete this transaction? What will happen at that time?
A. While we cannot be certain of any anticipated closing date, normally transactions of this nature take between 90-120 days to complete.

Q. Will the company discontinue being a public entity? If yes, when?
A. MP3.com will no longer be a public company effective at the time of the merger.

Q. I am a shareholder. What is my stock worth? How can I cash in my stock?
A. Shares of MP3.com will continue to be traded on Nasdaq until the close of the transaction. MP3.com shareholders will have the ability to elect $5 per share in cash, a number of Vivendi Universal shares (in the form of American Depositary Receipts) having a value of $5, or any combination thereof. This election will be subject to aggregate transaction consideration caps of 50% cash consideration and 50% share consideration, which may result in proration. The transaction has been structured as a reorganization that will be tax free to MP3.com shareholders to the extent they receive Vivendi Universal shares.

Q. What was your thought process in deciding to be acquired by Vivendi Universal? (Ramona:LMAO)
A. A partnership with Vivendi Universal was in the best interest of our shareholders. With Vivendi Universal's global resources, our strategic vision for the digital music industry takes on a whole new meaning - it becomes super-charged. (Ramona: what an industry word.)

Q. What is ahead for MP3.com?
A. We will continue with our current MP3.com pursuits, but also work with our new partners to innovate subscription systems and music offerings that reach a global audience across many devices. We believe consumers will see the full promise of digital music. Artists and consumers are the winners in this partnership.

Q. How will the MP3.com web site look going forward?
A. We anticipate no change to the MP3.com web site and feel this new partnership will strengthen our ability to improving our products and services for artists and consumers.

Q. Will the MP3.com web site contain just Universal content going forward?
A. No, MP3.com will remain an independent promoter and distributor of music for all independent artists and record labels.

Q. Will MP3.com artists remain independent?
A. Yes. The terms and conditions of the various artist agreements will not automatically change as a result of this transaction. Any changes not within the scope of such agreements would, of course, need to be agreed to by the various artists. MP3.com will continue to function as an independent distributor of music content for all independent artists and record labels.


Hmmm. Is Vivendi related to Bertelsmann?

As an independent artist with an mp3.com site for nearly 3 years I can tell you, regardless of the happyhappyjoyjoy language above, this trend is not promising. Mp3.com started out as a free service to independent artists, and was the only hope of obtaining a 'commercial' website with unlimited content for many artists. Lately, artists are being pushed into a corner to pay for the service. "Premium Service" artists, for a fee of 19.99 U.S. a month, are now offered: More control over their pages, Eligibility to receive P4P (pay 4 play) payments, No banner ads, Chart prominence, Review priority, Search results positioning priority, and Approval priority. (Also, for awhile now, chart positions have been being auctioned off to the highest bidders.) Also while I'm just bitching, this transition (to Vivendi) has been an error filled nightmare, resulting, among other things, artists being threatened that their work will be removed from the site if they don't comply with updated agreements... which as far as anyone can tell, cannot be accessed. It's been well over two years since any requests for info etc. to mp3.com via email on my part have been answered by a conscious living Human intellect. I can assure you, this is all frustrating indeed. And familiar.

But, according to my personal statistical analysis, this is all but arbitrary anyway. In three months, during the peak of Napster, and before the filters when I was able to use references to other specific artists, albums and songs to insinuate myself into Napster user's searches, my number of downloads exceeded almost two-fold the sum total of downloads I've gotten at mp3.com in 3 years. My sales from Napster users (yes, sales) exceeded the figure at mp3.com by ten times, in one tenth of the time. If this doesn't speak to the power of P2P tech, then I don't know what. (These stats remain consistent by the way, even though I am the contact for 5 different artists including myself at mp3.com, and on Napster I only shared my own work.)

My conclusion is that mp3.com is wasteland, a static mass of unappealing, low quality (128k ceiling) overload. It is about as effective to the artist as the "Discover section," the cheesy little ill-thought-out, unmoderated, afterthought in the Napster program that no one ever used. (I had one user who told me they sought me out as a result of my listing there.) For awhile now, mostly because of the quality constraints, I've been encouraging people interested in my work to get it from Napster as opposed to getting it from mp3.com. But of course now the utility of Napster is for shit.

The fact is, artists who have been successful at mp3.com have paid for it; paid to be pushed in front of the artists that haven't paid. (by the way, just as the 'Napster Featured Artists' paid - or their independent record labels paid - for that privilege - which I always found very interesting - independent labels willing to pay for your free downloads, while the big labels moralize about it being a detriment to promotional control.)

I think my point, as far as an appeal to the plight of independent artists, was probably best encapsulated in this post I made in February at the Napster Speak Out forum:

"Let's build an independent napster, a new zone for the proliferation of truly free music.

We (and of course I mean you programmers and servo-engineers out there) need to build a program and a peer to peer sharing network exclusively for the work of independent artists. Let it be patterned after Napster: chat rooms, instant messages, user libraries, etc.

There would be two kinds of users to define. The first would be the registered independent Artist User. These would be artists who wish to share their work freely with the public. The second would be the public user.

The functional distinction:

The registered Artist Users would 'register' their MP3 files to insure that all of the music they shared was in fact their own (granted, this review process is a fairly labor intensive aspect) and each file would be approved and then given a special tag by the system. This tag could be periodically encrypted or whatnot, and the program would ONLY recognize these tagged files. It would be a system more or less exactly like Napster, but a purely opt-in system from the beginning, the only files which the program would recognize would be these 'official' tagged files, and the tags would be only for identification purposes - it wouldn't prohibit sharing the files within the system by other users or making other copies or being burned to CD etc. The artists (or all users) would have a small webpage as part of their libraries, which they could use as a profile to describe their work, use a bit of graphics, HTML etc.

The Public User could freely register and begin to acquire the music. Of course they would be acquiring these tagged files and sharing them, and there would be no way to share files that were not part of the system. The public users could also be registered as the artists, and have their files tagged if they cared to introduce and share public domain or other approved works.

Perhaps, ideally, users could be given the choice to stream or download files.

Its 'P2Pness' would have some advantages compared to a system like mp3.com, the most obvious being inter-user communication and unlimited file quality. Like mp3.com, this system could 'rank' the popularity of artists, and possibly even begin to pay artists, in the same way mp3.com has in the past, the dispensation of monies gleaned from advertising distributed as 'royalties.'

"Profits?"
Could be. Perhaps some initial boosts of support or advertising could carry it until such time that the philosophy of the whole undertaking could take on aspects of a label, and actually produce the work of its most popular artists for other markets. (The dinosaurs across the Digital Divide that still graze the retail shelves, the Radio - MTV - M2 post-media cells) It could, with the right philosophy, become the world's first 'democratic' record label, and support a truly free global connection between independent artists."

After a few months, this all sounds very couched in the rectitudinal politic of the Old Forum, (I meant to sound more like a "gubment hatin' anarchist motherfuckin' libertarian superprogrammin' hippie freak, although as I mentioned in another thread, I don't carry a gun, and my programming skills are limited to Prechristian Basic and HTML,) and while it may be a bit primitive in conception, it still doesn't sound all that outrageously idealistic or improbable. I would even predict the future may entail waves of such programs focused on developing genres, emerging media and specific global dialogues.

The feedback I got about this post however was almost entirely negative. Most artists have bought into the belief that the astronomical odds offered by the music industry are their only chance of success. Napster users seemed to only want what they already have 'been sold': "Well, it sounds pretty cool, but it'd probably be a bunch of crappy 'artists' no one wants to hear anyway. affirming that the whole position of the traditional industry to create a specific, tailored kind of mass object is focused accurately on the most prevalent musical demographic. One can scarcely harbor any illusions that the interest in independent music will ever produce the kind of numbers that the interest in the phenomenon of Napster generated.

There absolutely is and will inexorably continue to be a trend of artists to deal directly with the public through the internet, but the slowest wheel turning in this set of gears seems to be public interest in undiscovered music; it may be sometime before a "true underground" takes formidable enough shape to serve as a truly independent and alternate source of music, and longer still, apparently, for one of these undergrounds to emerge successfully and not turn itself into a blind capital venture, thoughtless of its users and content providers. Perhaps finally this could be argued to be the inherent nature of such ventures, which, as far as I'm concerned only confirms the need to make such gestures as persistently and as often as they can be assimilated, to exploit this 'instability.'

As an artist, it seems a sad reality check that Napster, as well as all its clones, are fueled by consumers of music that a narrow scope of industry has imparted an artificial sense of 'legitimacy' to over the last half century, while the 'undiscovered' continue to languish in a prefabricated void of obscurity. This void however, is engineered as much by the consumer as by the industry, That the music industry is a kind of filter seems to only to ping the consciousness of artists. While you fight for a 'digital luxury zone,' artists seem to be starving, not for financial gain or even for your attention, but for minimum hope of accessibility.

you have ramona summed up the dichotomy of the post lp world quite nicely. one need only spend some time at a convenience store on a friday afternoon to see first hand the power of promise in a get rich scheme like in that case a lottery but the same holds true for the big record contract. the fact remains that for many young artists the medium itself, the entire recording industries' procession of talent agents, star makers promotion moguls etc. is itself the end to which the music is simply the means. many young people crave the blinding light of fame more than anything else and something that almost by definition negates that, like p2p schemes, is threatening and must be challenged. the music industry didn't create that facet of human nature but they're sure glad that nature did. and they're more than happy to take advantage of it at every opportunity.

one of the most amazing things about napster for me was the discovery process whereby i would set out in search of some artist or song to fill a collection gap and wind up with the best tune i'd heard in months from a band i didn't know existed until that very hour and then finding out that they'd been around for years and had six albums! a case in point was komeda. i first stumbled across them browsing someones' file one day and soon i was playing this previously unheard of gem at one of my shows. this became a regular occurrence and almost overshadowed my original reason for using napster which was to find (known) obscurities, out of print rarities, and develop an unparalleled rock, pop & jazz collection that i naively thought in the beginning of the process last year would be complete at 50,000 titles. when i hit 10,000 and realized i HADN'T EVEN STARTED i evolved a new awe and appreciation for the sheer volume of tunes the planet pours forth regularly. and therein lies the problem that has brought us to this point.

but more on that in another post. it's memorial day weekend & we all have things to do & enough to read.

[TankGirl]

Great posts, Jack and Ramona... illuminating beautifully both sides of the curtain that separates the artist from the lover of his/her art...

JackSpratts:
one of the most amazing things about napster for me was the discovery process whereby i would set out in search of some artist or song to fill a collection gap and wind up with the best tune i'd heard in months from a band i didn't know existed until that very hour and then finding out that they'd been around for years and had six albums! a case in point was komeda. i first stumbled across them browsing someones' file one day and soon i was playing this previously unheard of gem at one of my shows. this became a regular occurrence and almost overshadowed my original reason for using napster which was to find (known) obscurities, out of print rarities, and develop an unparalleled rock, pop & jazz collection that i naively thought in the beginning of the process last year would be complete at 50,000 titles. when i hit 10,000 and realized i HADN'T EVEN STARTED i evolved a new awe and appreciation for the sheer volume of tunes the planet pours forth regularly. and therein lies the problem that has brought us to this point.

I share very similar experiences to those of Jack's. It has been a fascinating adventure to find the 'tunes of the planet' and realize what a vast expanse of great music there is to be found! New interesting artists and albums keep appearing onto my HD from week to week - there seems to be no end to good music on this planet. What a blessing and inspiration! What a great gift from my online friends and community fellows!

To me all artists are on the same line - or rather behind the same opaque veil of potentiality. I find it irrelevant whether somebody is signed or unsigned - the only thing that counts to me is his/her music. The same applies to my fellow peers who recommend these artists to me. I accept virtually every suggestion from my best contacts and get rarely disappointed with what I hear. At the very least that stuff is interesting; often it is rewarding enough for me to share it further through my own library.

This intelligent, unforced and wonderfully equalizing mechanism of exposure is already out there but it is doing its work very slowly and almost invisibly. It takes time for two persons to find a shared moment on IM and even then, recommendations are given and received only when the tone and the timing of the communication is right for it. Without external commercial promotion it may take months or years for a fresh artist to make a community-wide impact through this mechanism, even if his/her music is really good. Is this too bad? Not really, if you compare it to the time and effort that is needed for an artist to develop his/her skills and to become popular outside cyberspace. Does it have to be this slow and inefficient? No. It is just that the more advanced ideas of social interaction have not yet crystallized into p2p software. Once that happens the exposure mechanism based on trusted personal contacts will both speed up and scale up greatly

Napster developed the idea of social intelligence up to the level of hotlists, IM and browsing. WinMX and audioGnome continue to support this level on their own p2p networks but haven't so far come out with any further ideas. Morpheus hasn't got any social intelligence at all and may not get much anytime soon. We are still living early days of p2p and our tools are still primitive. The more intelligent they get, the better the situation will be both for the artist and for the potential lover of his/her art.

Ramona_A_Stone:
As an artist, it seems a sad reality check that Napster, as well as all its clones, are fueled by consumers of music that a narrow scope of industry has imparted an artificial sense of 'legitimacy' to over the last half century, while the 'undiscovered' continue to languish in a prefabricated void of obscurity. This void however, is engineered as much by the consumer as by the industry, That the music industry is a kind of filter seems to only to ping the consciousness of artists. While you fight for a 'digital luxury zone,' artists seem to be starving, not for financial gain or even for your attention, but for minimum hope of accessibility.

The music industry is indeed a filter, and also an amplifier, for what is allowed to resonate in the collective musical mind of its 'consumers'. The mass movement of these 'consumers' - the funny little beings with a pair of ears and a wallet - over to the digital luxury zone does not yet damp down the mighty milk-and-honey-dripping vibration of Britney Spears's boobs. But it leaves room for all the other vibrations to co-exist with it and to be equally perceived by anybody within the zone. The industrially generated power fields of suggestive manipulation lose their grip as soon as they enter the thick and intelligently interwoven substrata of p2p relations. Using its 'external' means the music industry can surely generate an interest in and even a presence of an artist in a p2p network but once the art is available inside the luxury zone it is on its own. It either finds its true lovers or not; its vibration either starts to live a life of its own or dies away as soon as the external promotion is over.

There are several ways how the p2p substrata can be made much more perceptive and swifter, enabling it to amplify that which is most passionately and devotedly loved instead of that which is most aggressively and effectively sold. Developing the social intelligence of p2p software into this direction is an area where we cannot rely too much on our commercial bedfellows. They have their own agendas and we have our own. They want to maintain at least some vital control and power lines into the collective mind of their communities, cashing the outside world for the privilege of using them. We, on the other hand, want to have the fullest possible control over our own p2p environment and its perceptive space.

- tg

[Tom9504]

I wish there were some way that a peer-to-peer application could exist without a company being invloved anywhere along the way, as this is the only way that filesharing for independent artists could ever be truly 'free'... we have seen with Napster the way that a company will just try to exploit the goodwill of its users for their own ends. To anyone with any faith remaining in Napster, I point you to this:

Ramona_A_Stone:
"The fact is, artists who have been successful at mp3.com have paid for it; paid to be pushed in front of the artists that haven't paid. (by the way, just as the 'Napster Featured Artists' paid - or their independent record labels paid - for that privilege - which I always found very interesting - independent labels willing to pay for your free downloads, while the big labels moralize about it being a detriment to promotional control.)"

Anyone remember:

Napster Inc., in their FAQ:
"Q: How does Napster make money?

A: Napster, Inc. doesn't make its business model public at this time. Napster, Inc. is a privately held company."

I became suspicious of them the moment I read that, and it looks like I was right.

While people were busy 'Speaking Out' against Napster's demonized hate figures of Lars Ulrich, Dr. Dre etc, Napster Inc. was busy charging artists to become 'featured' and therefore liked by the people in the Napster community who thought that the featured artists and Napster were the non-greedy ones with no concept of money or financial gain, fighting against the evil money-hungry RIAA - the distinction between Napster and the RIAA was never as clean cut as it had its users believe, I reckon. By the way, that's why I was 'anti-nap' back on Speak Out; I wasn't against peer-to-peer filesharing, but what I was against was Napster's tactics of turning well-known artists and users against one another just so it could win its court case and survive as a business, to keep on happily making money out of both parties.

However, I'm not sure I see an alternative.

If you want a big free peer-to-peer Napster-style service for independent artists, there are a number of problems which I can't see being resolved. Firstly, who would run it? We've already seen that companies can't be trusted at all with this kind of thing (Napster, mp3.com, and I also point at BearShare, Imesh and MusicCity as examples of this). Any project like this would need to be run without investors, and without any idea of making a profit, otherwise it will end up self-destructing itself as the others have. However, the question is, with no investors where would the money needed come from?

TankGirl:
"There are several ways how the p2p substrata can be made much more perceptive and swifter, enabling it to amplify that which is most passionately and devotedly loved instead of that which is most aggressively and effectively sold. Developing the social intelligence of p2p software into this direction is an area where we cannot rely too much on our commercial bedfellows. They have their own agendas and we have our own. They want to maintain at least some vital control and power lines into the collective mind of their communities, cashing the outside world for the privilege of using them. We, on the other hand, want to have the fullest possible control over our own p2p environment and its perceptive space."

I think that independent artists will always be more truly loved than those who are just in it for the fame or for the money, and there will always be a small 'underground' of users willing to appreciate this - in fact, these users might be best served by just exchanging music via IMs and Email with users they have met on forums like this one. If we try and take the idea to the great 'masses', they will only try and exploit it to their own ends.

Ramona_A_Stone:
"The registered Artist Users would 'register' their MP3 files to insure that all of the music they shared was in fact their own (granted, this review process is a fairly labor intensive aspect) and each file would be approved and then given a special tag by the system. This tag could be periodically encrypted or whatnot, and the program would ONLY recognize these tagged files. It would be a system more or less exactly like Napster, but a purely opt-in system from the beginning, the only files which the program would recognize would be these 'official' tagged files, and the tags would be only for identification purposes - it wouldn't prohibit sharing the files within the system by other users or making other copies or being burned to CD etc. The artists (or all users) would have a small webpage as part of their libraries, which they could use as a profile to describe their work, use a bit of graphics, HTML etc.

The Public User could freely register and begin to acquire the music. Of course they would be acquiring these tagged files and sharing them, and there would be no way to share files that were not part of the system. The public users could also be registered as the artists, and have their files tagged if they cared to introduce and share public domain or other approved works."

It's a great idea, and I would certainly lend my programming skills to it (if I had any to speak of), but I see this as a system that would be open to abuse. What's to stop someone registering as an 'artist' user and then submitting all of their Metallica (or whoever) albums for tagging? We would need a third level of user, a 'Moderator User', and what's more there would need to be a lot and they would need to be trusted - each song to be tagged would have to be listened to by an actual human, and then it would need to be verified that the 'artist' user owned all copyrights to the work (to avoid any legal issues). This would almost certainly stunt the service's growth - can you imagine the number of people it would take to pick through the continous submissions?

What's more, the plan assumes that these 'moderator' users, as well as the original system programmers, will be willing to put in their work for free (as I said, I would, but people do have to make money somehow). If it was a Napster-style server system (which it would need to be, I believe, to tag and filter songs in this manner), then someone would also need to pay for and look after the servers - without becoming reliant on investors, who would force the company to be sold as soon as it was conveinient for them, I don't see how this would be possible.

JackSpratts:
"As an artist, it seems a sad reality check that Napster, as well as all its clones, are fueled by consumers of music that a narrow scope of industry has imparted an artificial sense of 'legitimacy' to over the last half century, while the 'undiscovered' continue to languish in a prefabricated void of obscurity. This void however, is engineered as much by the consumer as by the industry, That the music industry is a kind of filter seems to only to ping the consciousness of artists. While you fight for a 'digital luxury zone,' artists seem to be starving, not for financial gain or even for your attention, but for minimum hope of accessibility."

TankGirl:
"To me all artists are on the same line - or rather behind the same opaque veil of potentiality. I find it irrelevant whether somebody is signed or unsigned - the only thing that counts to me is his/her music"

I agree totally. The thing is that 'music', as it exists now, can be a shared experience between friends - if you sing a song that's been on the radio or on TV, someone else will know it and begin to sing with you... if all artists were equal, there was no promotion and no 'fame', as such, then music would become far more individual to each person. Maybe your close friends (both on the net and in real life) would have heard the same music as you, but if you went up to someone who you'd never met before, the chances are that they wouldn't have. Just as one social element to music is added, another is unfortunately removed. Music becomes less a product and more an adventure - but there will always be those who just want it on a plate, who will just buy whatever is 'in' or 'cool' or is currently at number one in the Top 40. In fact, my estimate would be that these people made up a large number of Napster's users. They didn't see any great musical adventure (in fact, some people I've spoken in real life to didn't even know there were people on the other end of uploads until I told them), they just saw it as a chance to get a product that they would usually have paid for free-of-charge.

Ramona_A_Stone:
"Perhaps some initial boosts of support or advertising could carry it until such time that the philosophy of the whole undertaking could take on aspects of a label, and actually produce the work of its most popular artists for other markets. (The dinosaurs across the Digital Divide that still graze the retail shelves, the Radio - MTV - M2 post-media cells) It could, with the right philosophy, become the world's first 'democratic' record label, and support a truly free global connection between independent artists."

It would need a lot of support to start up, and the service making any profits would instantly force it to become a company, with all of the legal action and hostile takeovers that could involve. It would need to have one hell of a strong philosophy not to sell out to Big Business. Also, do you really think that the big record companies would sit back and let this happen? It's a sad thing to say, but I just know they'd have their lawyers working 24/7, just waiting for this service to slip up on copyright in some small way so that they can leap in, legal guns blazing, and force the company to either go bankrupt or become 'integrated' into their own comfortable little multinational business model. How do we stop this new service, in turn, also becoming 'super-charged'? To expand peer-to-peer from where it currently is, we have to overcome both the profit-hungry record companies and the investors, we have to find programmers and servers that we can use for free, and once we've done that, we have to overcome the smallmindedness of the public at large when it comes to as-yet undiscovered music - so many just think that 'undiscovered'=crap.

If we can make it work, then it will truly be a revolution.

tank, you're such a poet when you toss out gems like “the same opaque veil of potentiality”. wow.
but when you threw out “the mighty milk-and-honey-dripping vibration of Britney Spears's boobs”,
i got a chubby.

even better.

[fblaguy]

Originally posted by lezzbeefriends


Yes, we are here to move into the new "digital luxury zone" you mentioned. Do you know where we can get our fleet of highly talented programmers?

I do believe you're right though. We've had a wonderful taste of this type of environment- and I'm not ready to just hand it over to the Nazi's! So keep at it all you open sources out there and all you wonderful programmers!

To start be fore I reply to what LBF wrote, it would just like to say that these stories prove that money talks and the little guy gets f ucked over again.

LBF, just give me, pace and others a year or 2 and we will start working on this digital luxury zone......right pace?

I agree, we got a taste of paradise when we were able to share our music, and none of us will go down without a fight.

Now, all I need to do is learn linux and how to program with it so we can stop using windows and challenge the Microsoft Monopoly......

F uck Windows F uck Office and that damned paperclip! You know what?

F uck Microsoft!

[TankGirl]

Tom9504:
To expand peer-to-peer from where it currently is, we have to overcome both the profit-hungry record companies and the investors, we have to find programmers and servers that we can use for free, and once we've done that, we have to overcome the smallmindedness of the public at large when it comes to as-yet undiscovered music - so many just think that 'undiscovered'=crap.

An excellent post, Tom9504 and ditto on your conclusions!

That is exactly how it is. The media industry doesn't spare money or lawyers if their commercial interests are threatened by another commercial entity. Napster and mp3.com are good examples of this. Better remain totally outside the commercial zone and provide everything that we need from among our own. It may take more time that way but then the commercial way does not really give us what we want. We are lucky if these hot p2p start-ups even bother to talk with us - not to talk about hearing what we have to say.

- tg

One really cool beer for TankGirl please... and, rooo, everyone who posted here, on me
I like this lady Roooooo !!

(may I have a cookie too ? )

[TankGirl]

With Jack's permission I moved this thread over to P2P. There is so much good p2p-related content in it and this might be a more focused place to reflect further on it. Thanks for all of you who have contributed to the discussion so far!

Originally posted by netcoco
One really cool beer for TankGirl please... and, rooo, everyone who posted here, on me
I like this lady Roooooo !!
(may I have a cookie too ? )

You certainly can! Thanks for the beer - here is cookie and a kiss!

- tg