How have your viewing/listening habits been changed by P2P

[napho]

Now when I think of movies it's in terms of downloading the ones opening every weekend in theatres.
Whenever I want the latest albums I just go to one of many sites and get whatever is current. For older music or singles P2p's are so convenient. There's no chance of me ever buying a CD.
The days of anticipating a highly touted album seem to be over. Even Eminem's new one was being traded months before it was officially released.
Times really have changed, at least for me.

[theknife]

Originally posted by napho
The days of anticipating a highly touted album seem to be over. Even Eminem's new one was being traded months before it was officially released.
Times really have changed, at least for me.

Thank god the days of getting burned by some band with a good single and a bad album are over...

[alphabeater]

i'd use p2p for more things, but i'm picky.

with movies, i simply will not stand for any cam version of one. they're awful. so that usually limits me to older (out on dvd, at least) movies. i don't think of it in terms of cost, though - i usually see 'famous' films that i've not yet seen, and that have been on free tv channels but i missed them for some reason. i wouldn't have really bothered with them at all if it hadn't been for p2p.

if it's a newer movie, then to be honest i'm far more likely to pay the pound (£1 per day for dvds at my local video hire store) and watch it on my dvd player with a proper picture and surround sound. it's not worth the tradeoff - support my video hire store (they're not a chain, i like it in there) or wait a few days while kazaa chugs along and then watch a reasonable-but-not-great divx rip? exactly.

with cds, yeah, i'm certainly guilty of downloading eminem's new one (out of annoyance at those looped 'hook' mp3s that were put about, mainly), but apart from that i rarely download whole albums. either the rest of the album is not worth bothering with, or it's an artist that i like enough to actually go out and buy their cd, just for the sake of owning an original (hard disks fail, and cd-rs seem less reliable and on top of that somehow just less satisfying than owning the proper cd).

most of my downloading is for listening at the computer while i do something else, or occasionally for burning compilations for friends if they happen to ask.

to answer the question - how have my viewing/listening habits been changed by p2p? i see more, hear more, and buy about the same amount as i always have. before, i bought my favourites and didn't get to experience the rest, and now i still buy my favourites but get to experience as much of the rest as i'd like to as well.

[ssj4_android]

I watch movies in the theater. The really good ones at least.

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by napho

Whenever I want the latest albums I just go to one of many sites and get whatever is current. For older music or singles P2p's are so convenient. The days of anticipating a highly touted album seem to be over.

Originally posted by theknife

Thank god the days of getting burned by some band with a good single and a bad album are over...

Originally posted by alphabeater

i see more, hear more, and buy about the same amount as i always have. before, i bought my favourites and didn't get to experience the rest, and now i still buy my favourites but get to experience as much of the rest as i'd like to as well.

i'm in complete agreement. the amount of music i’m now hearing that’s new to me has exploded in the last two years, and i'm a dj, it's not as if i'd been in a desert song-wise. i’ve always been surrounded by new stuff, promo copies etc but getting 25,000 mp3s in six months showed me once and for all how truly vast the musical world is and how no matter how far i thought i traveled in it, i barely ever left home.

it's really changed everything. for instance at a large show i did today (10,000 people), another dj introduced himself to me and said half joking, "cds - what are those?" (wise ass). he went on to say that he now does all his gigs with two laptops - no cds at all - and brings 30,000 songs to every show! that's a massive amount. if you went back just a year the most material a dj would carry would have been 600 cds or apx 7500 cuts, most of which would've been filler from the albums, so you'd be lucky to show up with 1000 great songs. but since you'll only play 60 songs during most shows (15 an hour), having 15x more than needed was fine. not anymore. the day's fast approaching when people requesting even fairly obscure material will be more than a little put out if you fail to have it. after all, they’ll have it at home on their pcs, laptops and nomads. to put that 30,000 figure into perspective, the average radio staion only rotates 1000 songs during an average month.

it reminds me a bit of when vcrs first came out and people realized they could watch tv when they pleased and not just when a programmer put on a show, and how liberating that was. of course with the music you own you can listen to it when you want but the analogy works for exposure. now you realize you don’t need the labels and the clone fms to expose you to new musical trends and ideas. you just need the will to dive onto some ones’ hard drive and sample the platter.


makes me wonder what kids are going to do about their musical identity with so much different stuff around. my friends daughter (and her friends) all dig these goofy compilations called NOW, as in NOW 6 and NOW 7 etc. when a new NOW comes out they all have to have it and they listen to it for days like it’s the new britney, or insync (or name a band), but it’s just a compilation of different bands! with no continuity and no singular identity. when I saw that last fall I knew something fundemental had changed.

- js.

[assorted]

It hasn't changed my consumer habits at all. I wasn't buying CDs since I was a teenager and I'm still not. But happily music is back in my life and I'm seeing a few more live shows because of mp3.

Movies haven't changed me at all. I consider the quality awful still and I would much rather go to the movies or buy the DVD.

But thanks to video trading I can now collect television shows that I love but can't be bothered to buy or catch on tv. Evangelion, Brak, and South Park are all brilliant shows that I can see in completion now thanks to P2P.