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RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:57:15 GMT

I understand where you are coming from on this and I too do not condone it. However I disagree that it is like stealing a CD from a store. A CD has a tangible value, it has been manufactured and distributed, that takes a vast amount of labour and theft of such items lead to insurance claims, which in turn will end up hurting us all. That is why I maintain that driving P2P underground will stop them from catching the biggest culprits, i.e. the shifty gits that make a living selling poor quality copies of whole albums or films. They should be the ones they concentrate on as these people are known to use the money to fund other crime and terrorism. Someone having a couple of dozen songs off Limewire isn't intentionaly profiteering and I maintain that the same way I used to tape my favourite songs off the radio, people will eventually go and buy the material or watch the band in the long run.

The RIAA banging on factory doors and demanding money to listen to the radio, as happened the other day to the factory my father is the MD of, will drive a wedge between them and the public. My father argued this point and they recommended the 200 strong workforce in a huge quarter mile long paper factory with spinning machines and many many fork trucks, all wear iPods, honestly, they couldn't see the health and safety implications. My father has now had no choice but to ban radio's completely...pathetic eh? Now this is going to turn people against the media companies, that there is little doubt of. Even my father was furious and refused to pay it. His words were "if they think I am paying £2000 per year to keep Robbie Williams in new Jags, they are on acid. How dare they hold hard working, working class people to ransom, well I am not paying it and I will ban radio's" of course this was met with fury from the shop floor but they supported the reasons why he did it. I can imagine all 200 of them getting home and firing up Limewire before their coats had even hit the sofa. So forgive me if I am a little Citizen Smith, but I think they have themselves to blame for it and I honestly think it is a storm in a teacup anyway.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Tom Morton — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:07:38 GMT

[quote][b]Mitch (31/07/2008)[/b][hr]To brand a handful of people that download music etc on Limewire Evil Pricks is downright childish and I have never heard such crap in all my life. You astound me with your ignorance. Do you work for the RIAA? It sounds like you have some affiliation somewhere? I could name 1 or 2 evil pricks, but someone that downloads music off Limewire, although not going about things legally, are not evil pricks! Are Viacom evil pricks for promoting the use of Youtube? Are Youtube and Google themselves Evil Pricks?

Pathetic mate...I sit with my jaw on the floor. How old are you, 10?[/quote]

OK yeh.. strong choice of words, regretted it as soon as I clicked post.

I dont think it is childish at all though to blame people.... They are definitely pricks, perhaps not evil. These idiots are blithely doing this without a thought for anyone but them: me, you, the record companies, musicians etc. all lose out.

Using P2P legally becomes really tough and there is the constant worry that you'll get into hot water over legal content. All their fault.

I would dispute it is a handful of people: there are far too many.... :(

BTW not affiliated with the RIAA or record companies etc. - I do however think that they have a right to defend their intellectual property if I dont condone the exact actions they take all the time. In fact I would disagree with a lot of the underhand methods used, even if I see *why* they are doing it (and would argue that they become as bad as those they are fighting).

Did you read the rest of the post around those 2 words? I think I made salient points there :)

I dont see how this can be considered any different than walking into a shop and making off with a CD (or other merchandise).

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:08:13 GMT

To brand a handful of people that download music etc on Limewire Evil Pricks is downright childish and I have never heard such crap in all my life. You astound me with your ignorance. Do you work for the RIAA? It sounds like you have some affiliation somewhere? I could name 1 or 2 evil pricks, but someone that downloads music off Limewire, although not going about things legally, are not evil pricks! Are Viacom evil pricks for promoting the use of Youtube? Are Youtube and Google themselves Evil Pricks?

Pathetic mate...I sit with my jaw on the floor. How old are you, 10?

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Tom Morton — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:30:39 GMT

[quote]Since when did living beyond ones means mean that people don't want something? If it is there, they will take it. A well-off person may find a wallet on the floor and hand it in, but I bet a less well-off person would be more likely to empty it first. I am not saying all less well-off people are 'at it' but it stands to reason that the temptation is higher[/quote]

Sorry I think you misunderstood: my point was that uf someone can't afford to buy the CD it doesnt mean they have a right to download it for free (or that they are in the right!).

[quote]The record companies may as well make peace with it. P2P is not going to go away, and putting pressure on ISP's to throttle, will drive it to an encrypted, underground past time so it can go undetected..[/quote]

Why should they make peace? The problem here is not the record companies OR the p2p providers etc. It is the *evil* pricks who download copyrighted stuff thinking they have a right to break the law as they like.. sorry but that's the way it is. P2P is a really useful tool but unfortunately it i s tainted by the misuse so many people make of it.

I agree that all this stomping about is giving the companies a bad name: and IMO that is undeserved. They are trying their best to protect their rights and their material without any help or care from joe public! People are breaking the law - they are doing their best to catch them. In the meantime it means inconveniencing everyone else who uses P2P legitimately - which obviously gives them a bad name.

In fact a lot of the P2P providers actively converse with the RIAA in a non-hostile environment. The community is desperately trying to come up with ways to eradicate the blight but it's fairly impossible isn't it? (and in the face of SO many idiots it becomes harder still). In the face of no solution these companies are becoming more and more cross....

Talk to any legitimate P2P user (like myself) and they will moan about ISP's and the RIAA for years - but ask about copyright theft and then they will REALLY get venomous... Record companies try to destroy P2P services because their material is under threat - illegal copyright thieves ARE destroying the services by misusing them..

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:03:13 GMT

Since when did living beyond ones means mean that people don't [u]want[/u] something? If it is there, they will take it. A well-off person may find a wallet on the floor and hand it in, but I bet a less well-off person would be more likely to empty it first. I am not saying all less well-off people are 'at it' but it stands to reason that the temptation is higher.

Either way, it doesn't matter if people are downloading copyrighted material or not - ultimately. The record companies may as well make peace with it. P2P is not going to go away, and putting pressure on ISP's to throttle, will drive it to an encrypted, underground past time so it can go undetected. There will always be a way around it and the more you punish for it, the harder it will be to detect. When that happens, they won't be able to find the real crooks that are downloading everything under the sun, burning it to CD and DVD and flogging out of the back of a car or down the pub.

The more ruthless the media companies and ISP's get over stopping this, the more it will cost them in the long run. They are already getting bad press for targeting 'perceived' innocents for having Lime-wire on their PC and throttling what they see as 'illegal' P2P activity when in fact they have no idea if the user is doing anything illegal at all. I have no sympathy for the ISP's and Jason's comments on the ISP's being "overburdened" holds no water with me at all. Perhaps if their networks [u]were[/u] 8mb as advertised, they would not be overburdened and if their claimed "unlimited" downloads were TRUE, then why would they care anyway? They have been at it for years and now they are moaning because people are trying to use what they have paid for.

All this makes people loath media companies and ISP's and that is bad for business. Ask Microsoft who have had the comfortable position of being a virtual monopoly for the last 15 years, but now seem to be losing business. Linux seems popular now doesn't it!?

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Tom Morton — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:20:52 GMT

[quote]People that download off P2P, in my experience, are people that cannot afford to buy albums. Therefore they would never have gone out to buy music anyway, so the record companies are losing nothing.[/quote]

That is (I'm sorry) a rubbish argument.

If they *really* can't afford the CD (or legal download) then they are living beyond their means. And they are still stealing: not being able to afford something is NOT an excuse at all!

I do sorta agree about the gaining fans bit.. but the people doing the downloading are still in the wrong. Instead the record companies are missing a trick: because they could provide, say, a sample song which would have the same effect surely (in fact in a way they do: see below)...

I dont disagree that downloading the album, having a listen, and then going to buy the CD is a valid argument. However getting it from a P2P site means the record company has NO control over how long you can trial it for. Take software - often you can trial it for 30 days. What MAKES people go and buy the software after that (if they want it?) - the fact it stops working till they do. No one makes you go buy the song.

And if they don't like it enough to buy it - does it get deleted as well? Or left in the music collection...

most of the people I know who download music have no intention of buying it at a future stage and are just pleased they have the music.

I suggest you point your friend to such sites as liv365.com, last.fm and similar. There you can listen to clips, whole songs, free previews and so on - with links to places to buy the song.. How often do you have to be able to listen to a song to decide if it's worth buying (I'd say 10 times max).

Lets not confuse the 2 issues here.. one where the record companies are miles behind the time catering to a modern web audience and the other where people are downloading copyrighted material with NO excuse from P2P sites....

End of story; your mate is doing something wrong and illegal.

(btw I am all in favour of P2P and am a big advocate of it - so dont get me wrong there :))

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:45:05 GMT

I agree with that. :)

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:56:13 GMT

It may be a wasted effort but you can't just assume it is illegal because of that. That is what the record companies are doing. It was ripped at some point Martin, and just because it has a dopey name, why does that mean it is illegal? People have very idiosyncratic ways of naming things.

People that download off P2P, in my experience, are people that cannot afford to buy albums. Therefore they would never have gone out to buy music anyway, so the record companies are losing nothing. In fact, I would argue that they are gaining fans who, like my relative, will go out and buy the music when he has the money. Allowing him to preview the music has built the desire for that product. That is one of the hardest things a salesperson or marketeer has to do. Build the desire so you can ultimately get the sale. Students with a hard-drive chocked full of P2P music will one day be in the position to be able to afford music on CD's etc. They are unlikely to have 'gone-off' the band, so they will ultimately update their music collection to that of the music they listened to when they were younger.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

MartenReed — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:47:15 GMT

Every tool I can think of for ripping CDs will give them correct tags.

Whether it is WMP, iTunes, CDex...

Why would someone name a song "band - title - band"? It's a wasted effort!

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:32:48 GMT

While I commend your music taste martin, you're missing a trick. If you rip a CD and you don't WMP or iTunes to update the tags, then you have to do it yourself. That means you can name a song "that ace song by Daft Punk" if you want. The record companies are terrified of P2P rightfully so. But they are now getting paranoid. They need to view it as an advertising platform in my opinion. As MP explained in another box-out. The record companies can't have it all their own way. You can't use Youtube to promote on the cheap and then bitch when some people take the pee and use similar platforms to avoid paying. I think I am seeing the next generation of this too. I was outraged when I saw a close relative at uni's PC and he had downloaded an outragoues amount of music via P2P. But now he is in a job, he is going out and buying the CDS for his stereo!

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

MartenReed — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:13:17 GMT

[quote][b]Jason (31/07/2008)[/b][hr]We know that ISPs are overburdened. We know that they throttle P2P traffic. Clearly somebody somewhere is downloading an awful lot of stuff, and you can bet dollars for doughnuts it's not the out-of-copyright works of Shakespeare.[/quote]

Exactly, Jason. It's the people who are downloading pirated games all the time, torrents of TV shows, hundreds of albums...

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:12:09 GMT

We know that ISPs are overburdened. We know that they throttle P2P traffic. Clearly somebody somewhere is downloading an awful lot of stuff, and you can bet dollars for doughnuts it's not the out-of-copyright works of Shakespeare.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

MartenReed — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:04:58 GMT

[quote][b]Mitch (31/07/2008)[/b][hr]You say "stealing left right and centre" how so? Can you back that up? I haven't seen that at all amongst my friends and family. I have heard a lot of record companies saying it, but come to think of it, an article in MM recently said CD sales are 'as was' a few years ago. So who is stealing, what, and how much? I would be interested if someone could quantify it for me?? It's a myth in my opinion.[/quote]

I cannot give solid proof, but I can do my best to give experience. There are (I believe) more people who get music these days than "a few years ago". Sure, the CD sales maybe as they where, but where are all these extra people? We all know the internet has boomed in recent years, and this means more people will be downloading music illegally. I quite often see it in people my age (as a user of MSN, I can see what people are listening to), and the terrible ID3 tags give away the illegal music instantly. Something like "leona lewis - bleeding love - leona lewis" is more likely to be illegal then "Built Then Burnt (Hurrah! Hurrah!) by Thee A Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band" Also, the number of songs with URLs in the tags that show up is another give away.

LimeWire and such programmes are still widely used to distribute music, as are things such as MSN. It's so easy to send something over MSN and no one will bat an eye lid.

That, Mitch, is my evidence. Many years experience of MSN and such things..

EDIT : I used that second song as I had just listened to it. It's very good :) Nothing like political post-rock :D

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:59:22 GMT

You say "stealing left right and centre" how so? Can you back that up? I haven't seen that at all amongst my friends and family. I have heard a lot of record companies saying it, but come to think of it, an article in MM recently said CD sales are 'as was' a few years ago. So who is stealing, what, and how much? I would be interested if someone could quantify it for me?? It's a myth in my opinion.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

MartenReed — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:45:55 GMT

Put it this way....

I don't give a rat's behind about DRM. It has NOT affected my views on the music industry, except it's starting to get desperate. And who can blame it? People are stealing left, right and centre without a moment's thought spared to the band. It sickens me! If a band I like come local, I will try to go see them, and maybe buy a CD or something at the merch stall. Or I'll buy a CD from Play/HMV/Amazon if it's cheap enough.

Yes, Tesco do sell the vastly overrated pop carp that the great unwashed follow like sheep, but can you honestly blame them? I did find Vampire Weekend's debut there for £7, and in Sainsbury's I picked up a Stone Roses album for £3. That's not paying through the nose at all.

If anything, I'm the one out of us on here who has to spend the most on CDs. Why? Half the bands I listen to are on independant labels (or self released), and I generally have to get an album imported if I want it, and it can cost quite a bit. I believe it cost me somewhere in the region of £25 to get two The Decemberists albums. A Godspeed You! Black Emperor record, whether from iTunes, Play, etc, will cost me £16. Explosions In The Sky retail for about £12. My only Enon album cost me a massive £14. iTunes is a blessing to people like me, as I can get most of these albums for £8, or there abouts.

I think that's a bit worse than your £10.50 for basically a 2 album set. Mind you, I can get a 3CD boxset of Pavement recordings for £10 from the ever lovely Crash Records :)

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:38:28 GMT

You're forgetting that a large chunk of that £10 goes to the retailer. For example, Amazon takes 50%-60% of the cover price on each book it sells. That's why it can sell so cheap -- it takes a hit on its own margins. I've no idea how much a retailer takes for selling a £10 CD, but you can be sure it's a nice wedge.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:26:08 GMT

Well my OEM version of Vista has seen 2 different MB's 3 different CPU's, 2 different sets of RAM, 4 different HD's and 3 different Graphics cards and is still happy. Mind you, the next change could bite me on the ass, so I am glad I have a while before I need to upgrade.

I work in manufacturing and would love to know the outlay to produce a new album. I guess that is why I am sinical. We work on circa 20%-30% margin as most manufacturers do in this day and age. So 80%ish of your selling price is raw material cost. The raw material cost they have is a studio presumably? So to demand £10 for something that sells in high volume like CD's is a luxury that may be on the way out??

Anyway, I have grown 3 new grey hairs debating this, lets agree to sort of agree and disagree if that makes sense - I guess?

One last thing though, you say a CD isn't tied to one CD player but the way DRM is going.....are we not getting to a point where it will be? Or at least anything downloaded will be DRM'd to the point that people will start looking at P2P just to dodge DRM, because it will annoy them when they can't borrow it to a friend via the multitude of web 2.0 social interaction sites and apps, or even listen to it in the car???

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:52:34 GMT

First, Windows sells in far higher volumes than any album, so it can afford to be "cheap". Second, a £50 copy has severe restrictions -- that is, it's tied to the PC it's installed on. A £10 CD isn't tied to the first CD player it's played on. But I take your point that we could argue forever about it.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:02:24 GMT

[quote][b]Jason (30/07/2008)[/b][hr]You've not convinced me that £10 isn't a fair price, though, as I said, I agree with most of your other arguments. £10 doesn't even buy you a curry and a drink in a restaurant, so I just can't see how the same money is poor value when it gets youa copy of a piece of work a group of people have spent a year or more making. A copy that will last a lifetime, too.

I believe Radiohead have already said it's not something they'll be repeating, haven't they? Not sure what the reasoning was, though. And while it's true that big names can make money from concerts and merchandise, the same isn't true of less popular artists or those not in the mainstream. Touring often leaves such acts actually out of pocket. Royalities from music sales are probably their sole source of income.

Not all modern music (in the charts and availableat Tesco) is rubbish.

I'm not sure what the Channel Islands have got to do with it (they're not part of the UK, by the way, though they are "British").

The same sort of arguments probably apply to the publsihing world, too. Did you know that the author of a book -- the person who has actually made the product and puts the money in everyone else's pockets -- receives on average only about 10% of the cover price from each sale? Perhaps there should be a shakeup there, too. The snag is that the Internet has made barely a dent in book sales, so publishers have largelyescaped the problems now faced by the music industry.[/quote]

We could argue about the worth of an album forever, with umpteen different examples of why it is or isn't value for money. One could argue that for £50 you can get a legit copy of Windows. Now how much work has gone into that, by how many people, for how long? How much does MS spend on R&D for it's new products? Isn't £50 a bit cheap then? Anything is only worth what people will pay for it Jason, and if people are now walking away from CD's (which I don't know they are granted), is that convenience, cost or both? It's a tricky one I agree. Personally I offered Radiohead £0 for there new album, as I would have had a quick listen on my PC, then gone out and bought the album. But they refused to give it out for nothing, so I haven't got it. (Thankfully, by the sounds of it - according to Slippy) If it was a good album, I would have willing spent £10, £15 or £20. However, gone are the days that I am going out spending anything on an album until I know it is good, and the reason why - because I don't have too. This is what the music industry has to accept I think. People will now try before they buy, because they can. I have hundreds of crap CD's that I bought on recommendations but I don't have to do that anymore. The record companies should realise though, that most people are honest and because somebody may download something off P2P, it doesn't mean that they won't get there couple of dimes for it too.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:28:59 GMT

No, this is a known issue with modern CDs. Bob Dylan alluded to it once and was shot down in flames by people who didn't understand what he was saying. Most modern music is mastered at far too high a volume, resulting in the clipping that Slippy mentioned. Apparently it's because of radio airply. If your song is quieter than someone else's, it won't be as noticed. That means that the dynamics of the sound go out of the window. It seems the only companies not guilty of this are the ones with artists who are unlikely to get mainstream airply in the first place.

(My original comment was meant to suggest that Radiohead are such a rubbish outfit that even supreme audio quality wouldn't have lifted the material out of the mire.)

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Bruce R — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:23:33 GMT

Hi (PM exceeded). Perhaps, like certain monitor makers who employ quality staff with impaired colour vision, recording studios are employing folk with impaired hearing ? :)

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Slipstreem — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:11:05 GMT

Nine Inch Nails did the same thing with their last album and made it available in various formats including lossless FLAC and LAME VBR MP3 at -V0. It sounded hideous in any format due to the original waveform of the uncompressed version still looking like a square-wave rather than anything meaningful. I'm talking about very, very bad clipping throughout most of the album!

It's a shame when the equipment now exists in all major recording studios to make totally transparent sounding recordings that quite literally "put you there" when you're listening and it's all going to waste due to incompetent techies being put in charge of them. There are plenty of highly conscientious recording engineers around who [i]know[/i] how to operate a digital recording studio properly, but it seems as though very few of them are employed by any of the major studios. Why? :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:58:35 GMT

[quote]I deleted the 'In Rainbows' albums after the first listening because it hurt my ears too much to listen to it.[/quote]

I suspect the same thing would have applied even if it had been encoded properly. :)

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Slipstreem — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:53:06 GMT

I'm not convinced that Radiohead proved anything really, except that it's still very easy for people who have no idea what they're doing to screw up an MP3 encoding. I deleted the 'In Rainbows' albums after the first listening because it hurt my ears too much to listen to it.

The overall production, mixing and mastering standards that led to the eventual master recording were appallingly bad, so even going and buying the album on CD at any price wouldn't have made it sound significantly better. Being encoded to MP3 properly would still have helped though, and the people who made the official MP3 for this album were supposed to know what they were doing, but clearly didn't. Who in their right mind encodes a rock album in CBR at 160Kbps?! They obviously have no understanding of how MP3 and its associated codecs work.

This brings me back to one of Mitch's comments from earlier regarding the acceptable standard of quality for lossy downloads. If it's in CBR MP3 at anything less than 320Kbps encoded with any codec, then it's wrong. If it's encoded in VBR MP3 with LAME at any settings other than -V0 through -V3 with no additional switches, then it's wrong. I can think of many a legal site that doesn't guarantee this level of quality.

I think the music industry is in absolute shambles nowadays, but I'll still go and pay £10 if I have to in order to give me an officially stamped backup of the best that's on offer in technical terms to Joe Public. :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:31:42 GMT

You've not convinced me that £10 isn't a fair price, though, as I said, I agree with most of your other arguments. £10 doesn't even buy you a curry and a drink in a restaurant, so I just can't see how the same money is poor value when it gets you a copy of a piece of work a group of people have spent a year or more making. A copy that will last a lifetime, too.

I believe Radiohead have already said it's not something they'll be repeating, haven't they? Not sure what the reasoning was, though. And while it's true that big names can make money from concerts and merchandise, the same isn't true of less popular artists or those not in the mainstream. Touring often leaves such acts actually out of pocket. Royalities from music sales are probably their sole source of income.

Not all modern music (in the charts and available at Tesco) is rubbish.

I'm not sure what the Channel Islands have got to do with it (they're not part of the UK, by the way, though they are "British").

The same sort of arguments probably apply to the publsihing world, too. Did you know that the author of a book -- the person who has actually made the product and puts the money in everyone else's pockets -- receives on average only about 10% of the cover price from each sale? Perhaps there should be a shakeup there, too. The snag is that the Internet has made barely a dent in book sales, so publishers have largely escaped the problems now faced by the music industry.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:39:31 GMT

Does Guernsey qualify as the UK? Not hot on Geography.

Not everybody has access to the internet and some people don't like ordering over the net even if they do have it. It won't be less than a tenner in a high street store and supermarkets generally only stock contemporary rubbish, the likes of which I mentioned earlier.

Either way, £10 cannot be a competitive or fair price, because Radiohead and Prince along with many others have proved it! They can do it for free and pull their money in from concerts, which by the way, the last one I went to was £85 a ticket!

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:23:36 GMT

The Wall is a double album, spanning two discs. Obviously that's going to cost more than a single CD, just as the double LP or cassette would have cost more than contemporary single LPs or cassettes back in the '70s and '80s. The majority of Pink Floyd's single-CD albums are under a tenner -- and that's just from a quick look at Amazon.

I stand by what I said.

When CDs first came out, they were priced at around the £11.99 mark. That's well over 20 years ago. In real terms, the cost of a CD is now much cheaper than it ever used to be. I agree with most of your other arguments, but the argument from price has never made much sense to me. A tenner doesn't buy you much these days, and I reckon £10 for an hour's worth of music, on a format that will essentially last you a lifetime (my CDs from the early '80s all still work), is good value.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Slipstreem — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:12:51 GMT

£9.89 was definitely more than a tenner when I posted. The exchange rate must have changed in the intervening time. ;)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

PlaneMan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:47:53 GMT

[quote][b]Slipstreem (30/07/2008)[/b][hr]So Mitch was right then. You couldn't find it for under a tenner. :P

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:[/quote]

Last time I looked £9.89 was less than a tenner. Nobody mentioned anything about having to be in stock.:P

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Slipstreem — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:34:20 GMT

So Mitch was right then. You couldn't find it for under a tenner. :P

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

PlaneMan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:56:33 GMT

Like this one? :P

Pre release addmitedly.

Edit.

Go here and use the first voucher. Then search for Pink Floyd The Wall, and you should find that it's £10.49.

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:09:07 GMT

Find me Pink Floyd - The Wall for under a tenner from a UK online retailer then. I only listen to decent music Jason. I am sure you can get Gareth Gates for under a tenner....but who would bother?

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Jason — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:00:34 GMT

I'm not sure where you get £15 from. Most albums can be bought for under a tenner from numerous places (online).

RE: Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

Mitch — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:33:55 GMT

I think the Radiohead/Prince box-out was very interesting indeed. Radiohead clearly understand the value of the internet and recognise that record companies are still pushing an outdated business model. As Thom said: "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F*** you' to this decaying business model." Following this, they went on to ask punters what they would like to pay for the album via download and 1.2 million people paid something for the album, rumoured to be circa £4 on average. I guess they would be fairly happy with that, as they produced the album themselves and I expect it increased the exposure to new potential fans greatly. They can then make the vast amount of their money from live performances.

Prince however is not in the same league as Radiohead and although he gave away an album in the newspaper, I expect that if he decided to ask what people would pay for it, the answer may have been a little sobering for him. Most would probably ask to be paid to listen to it.

There is no hiding place for rubbish bands anymore, and certainly no hiding place for record companies. They can continue to slap DRM on music and bitch and moan about illegal downloaders, but they will never change anything, the world has moved on. Illegal downloads are now a fact of life, there will always be a way around it, and it is now the record companies decision, ultimately. They either stop producing music, or they find decent bands and new ways to extract money off people for box-sets and bonus material, improved quality and bit-rates, live performances? They cannot expect to sell a CD for £15 of some Pop Idol no-mark covering/murdering decent songs. Either way, once a song has found it's way on to one persons hard disk, you are never going to stop piracy. People say that it has always been this way, but I think now differs a lot, because there is little degradation of quality from an illegal download. The record companies need to try to impress upon people that music is an investment, and that a download should be treated as a preview. If you like your illegal download, go and buy the album so you have a hard copy. But the days of large volumes of £15 CD's is long gone and ain't coming back. I have been "previewing" music for years and many bands have got a CD sale from me, as I have "previewed" the tracks first. I have a very expensive HiFi and music is very dear to me, so I guess, that is what makes me go out and buy a CD and others will live with the download. But £15 is getting hard to swallow for me now.

Mark Pickavance Viacom Vs Google

roguefx — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:56:00 GMT

I read the article Viacom Google by Mark in the latest Micromart.
An excellent view of the current case between them and very well written.
However, one thing that isn't mentioned in the article is the things that viacom wanted to get hold of that the judge didn't allow.
I gave a quick laymans look to the court results and found it very interesting that viacom were trying to get their hands on the backend code for you tube along with the search code. It was claimed that this was needed to find out if youtube were trying hard enough to remove copyright material?
Once you have this it would save a lot of cash if you wanted to set up your own version. [i]Of course Viacom as a respecter of copyright would not do this[/i]:laugh: (Sorry couldn't type that with a straight face)
Given that there are a lot of rumours of Viacom sniffing around various social networking sites it does make you wonder.
If I were a cynic I might think that this was a legalized smash and grab raid to get at the code and mess up the competition in the process.
Of course a company such as Viacom would not stoop to such levels.:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Another couple of things occurred to me when reading the results.
The first is that viacom asked for all deleted videos from youtube. The judge failed to specify that they could only have copies of their own material. This would mean that if the deleted material contained videos with copyright which did not belong to viacom, then viacom would be committing copyright theft by being in possession of the material. The judge could also be in the frame for facilitating copyright theft.

By asking for and been granted the list of all users instead of all users who accessed viacom copyright material. Both viacom and the judge have left themselves open potential legal actions from those users who did not access the copyright material as this sort of invasion of privacy breaks several laws both in europe and the states.

The fallout from this could get very interesting and given that the Eu is already taking an interest in this case it my be a good idea for the viacom bosses and the judge to postpone any european holidays for the forseeable future.