Category: Music

Received from a link on SVN:

Not only is this a great read, but it’s the first article on Napster/MP3/subscription-based services to include a Hotline (the pirate’s paradise) reference:

Ease of use may relieve the pain of paying, but subscription services will always face competition from the free-music underground — Gnutella, Hotline and so on. (Napster seems unlikely to offer music for free in the long run.) As a result, according to Harvard economist William Fisher, such services effectively butt up against a price ceiling — ”you can’t charge very much if your customers can always peel off and get basically the same thing without paying.”

So read it. It’s probably the smartest, most accurate, to-the-point MP3 article written yet.

Before you read this post, just remember that I’m 21, and cut me some slack.

Okay. So today is the 20th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination, and of course there has been story after story published all over the place about what a great man he was, etc. So this has brought back a confusion that’s been lying dormant in my mind since junior high. You see, my friends at the time were all about the Beatles, and I struggled (as a 14-year old) to understand exactly what was so great about them (The Beatles, not my friends). My parents weren’t Beatles fans, even when they were around in the 60s, so I never inherited a sense of wonder like my friends did from their parents. My father was more into Jethro Tull and Black Sabbath, and that sort of thing.

So now, today, I’m asking the same sorts of questions I asked 7 years ago.. ‘What’s the big deal about The Beatles?’ ‘Why is John Lennon still worshiped, 20 years after his death?’ So I, being the resourceful youth I am, downloaded ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ via Napster, just to see what the big deal was. And I gotta admit, I still don’t see it. I mean, I understand that what they did in the 60s sounds commonplace and normal today but was on the edge then, but it just seems like the Velvet Underground was more influential than The Beatles.

So. I’m sure I’ve enraged a lot of people by this point, but I would really appreciate some perspective on this. Keep in mind, I was not around when The Beatles ‘changed the world,’ and my parents never imparted any information to me, so please, let me know what you think, and maybe some ways for me to better understand this phenomenon. Thanks.

Here is another example of what happens when a journalist tries to think about what’s going to happen to the record industry because of Napster. He basically suggests that the recording industry is going to come up with its own version of MP3, only their version you’ll pay for.

He almost dismisses the fact that the MP3 format was introduced and developed entirely by the public. But it’s in fact this very point that ensures that the record industry will never seize control over it. To illustrate this, I’d like to use The Allegory of the Cave, from Plato’s Republic. In case you’re not familiar, it tells the story of people who live their whole lives in a cave, watching shadows playing on the wall in front of them. No one tries to look behind them to see what’s producing the shadows, they’re just content with looking forward, being almost hypnotized by them. One brave soul decides to venture out of the cave, and into the sunlight. What he experiences is both painful and liberating: the sunlight burns into his eyes, but he realizes the truth. This, of course, is where my analogy breaks down, because the character cannot deal with the truth. But I digress.

The people in the cave, to me, are like everyone who’s ever purchased a CD without knowing truly what forces lie behind the production of it. To us, it seemed as though basically the Band On The CD went through the entire process themselves, with the record company only having a logo on the bottom: the shadows on the wall. The MP3 revolution, however, has served the purpose of the brave person leaving the cave, only we are all now enlightened as to how the industry really is, and we now know we have power.

Maybe this is a fantasy of mine, but I see the record industry slowly falling into oblivion. They will not be able to harness this digital format, only succumb to it. I’m not saying Napster is the answer, but it certainly was the catalyst. The ingredients for this revolution have been around for a long time. Anyone who remembers bookmarking Hotline servers, FTP sites and Newsgroups to find the latest music knows this, but it wasn’t readily accessible to the public. Now, with broadband internet access in the home, Napster, and cheap easy-to-use MP3 players on the market, we have the power. The RIAA might as well go after Covad and AT&T for providing DSL and Cable access. They might as well go after Intel and Motorola for making faster processors. How about Diamond Multimedia for making the first really cool MP3 players?

This ‘MP3 thing’ is not just going to go away if Napster is done away with. And I’m not just talking about Gnutella and whatever else. I’m talking about the fact that we have control over what the record industry spoonfeeds us, and we don’t have to pay $17.99 for it any more.

If you want to know the honest-to-god truth, I’m kinda sick of covering Napster items. But this article I had to comment on….

‘…Napster is essentially a criminal organization that exists to help people steal. Now the question is, is there a legal use of Napster?’


Of course not, you buffoon. Jesus. The problem here is not with Napster being illegal, but with the copyright laws in the first place. Napster wouldn’t be illegal if it WEREN’T ILLEGAL. Get it? It shouldn’t be illegal.

This part of the story is the best: ‘Hollywood sued Sony over the VCR, a home-recording technology, alleging it would illegally cut into their profits’ Now, did you NOT know that the VCR is a home-recording technology? How stupid do you guys over at ABCNews.com think we are, anyway?

(By the way…the bolding of the section of that quote in the last paragraph was added by me…also, I specifically tried not to use the word ‘fuck’ in this post, seeing as how 7 of the last 10 posts contained some usage of it, usually more than once. As you can see, it would have fit nicely right into the ‘you buffoon’ statement above. But, I stopped myself, all for you dedicated readers.)