Youtube as a source of music

[Don]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/1 ... index.html
I think this actually works pretty well. You can find some pretty obscure stuff pretty quickly by just typing the track name in Youtube most of the time, but the format is inconvenient enough that it functions more as advertisement as opposed to a replacement. Of course it might just compel you to pirate the songs, but in that case it's not like the content owner lost anything compared to it being on Youtube.

[Kupek]

I've been using YouTube to find songs I want to hear for a while now.

[Eric]

"I use Imeem for music, then I use Free Music Zilla to rip the flash files off their site, then I use my Freez software to convert the FLV file to an MP3."

That's what my friend told me he does, damn thief. *cough*

[Lox]

I've ripped the flv into mp3's on occasion. For instance, I did it to get The Day That Never Comes by Metallica before the CD came out. I generally don't do it to anything I can buy just because I figure that if I like it enough, it's worth $1.

[Don]

That sounds like too much effort to pirate something.

[Zeus]

That sounds like too much effort to pirate something.

Sometimes beggars can't be choosers

[Kupek]

I value my time most of all.

I do the YouTube thing because it's stuff I want to hear on a whim, and I'm in front of a computer anyway.

[Lox]

That sounds like too much effort to pirate something.

It's really not that hard. You can just use a web-based converter that takes the URL of the Youtube video and lets you download an mp3.

[SineSwiper]

Why bother? I can buy an album for $2.

[Shellie]

I like sites like last.fm and Pandora. I get to hear music I like, and discover new artists at the same time.

[Flip]

Am i the only one who just pays the frickin $50 a year for a Rhapsody subscription to have access to anything, all the time, easily, and helps the music industry get what it worked for?

In one year i've added 1200 songs to my library, thats $1188 if bought on iTunes. Granted, if i unsubscribe i wont have access to them, but i dont think i will ever quit considering thats the monetary equivalent to 24 years of subscription.

I can transfer them to my Sansa player or iPod, i can see my library from any computer, and if i had verizon, i could play it from my phone.

Stop being cheap asses, geez.

[Lox]

I've always thought about using Rhapsody, but I don't listen to enough stuff to warrant the $50 yearly. That's why I end up just using iTunes for single songs and buying CDs for whole albums. I don't think I've spent anywhere close to $50 on music in a year in ages.

I can see why Rhapsody is a sweet deal if you listen to a lot of stuff though.

[SineSwiper]

Am i the only one who just pays the frickin $50 a year for a Rhapsody subscription to have access to anything, all the time, easily, and helps the music industry get what it worked for?

Can I burn these songs and put it in my car MP3 player? If not, it's fucking worthless to me.

[Mully]

Am i the only one who just pays the frickin $50 a year for a Rhapsody subscription to have access to anything, all the time, easily, and helps the music industry get what it worked for?

In one year i've added 1200 songs to my library, thats $1188 if bought on iTunes. Granted, if i unsubscribe i wont have access to them, but i dont think i will ever quit considering thats the monetary equivalent to 24 years of subscription.

I can transfer them to my Sansa player or iPod, i can see my library from any computer, and if i had verizon, i could play it from my phone.

Stop being cheap asses, geez.

Hey, I have a subscription to Rhapsody too. How do you transfer it to ipod? I don't see ipod as a "compatiable mp3 player: in their list."

[Mully]

Why bother? I can buy an album for $2.

How do you do this?

[Flip]

Am i the only one who just pays the frickin $50 a year for a Rhapsody subscription to have access to anything, all the time, easily, and helps the music industry get what it worked for?

In one year i've added 1200 songs to my library, thats $1188 if bought on iTunes. Granted, if i unsubscribe i wont have access to them, but i dont think i will ever quit considering thats the monetary equivalent to 24 years of subscription.

I can transfer them to my Sansa player or iPod, i can see my library from any computer, and if i had verizon, i could play it from my phone.

Stop being cheap asses, geez.

Hey, I have a subscription to Rhapsody too. How do you transfer it to ipod? I don't see ipod as a "compatiable mp3 player: in their list."

I stand corrected. I saw a commercial that said iPod works with Rhapsody now, but thats only the purchased tracks. I dont have an iPod (still use a Sansa Express) so i wasnt talking from experience.

[Zeus]

Why bother? I can buy an album for $2.

How do you do this?

www.mininova.org

[Julius Seeker]

I usually just make my own music with my guitar and keyboard. Oh, and my oh-so-awesome singing voice

[SineSwiper]

Why bother? I can buy an album for $2.

How do you do this?

Got an account on LegalSounds.com. Used to use MP3Sparks.com, but they no longer take CCs now.

[Mully]

Why bother? I can buy an album for $2.

How do you do this?

Got an account on LegalSounds.com. Used to use MP3Sparks.com, but they no longer take CCs now.

How is this legal? I guess what I'm asking is how is this different from illegally torrent-ing the music?

It seems that these type services are legal in their own country, while other countries are crying "foul". It was recently publicized that these services cannot be litigated against due to the lack of "physical evidence". To the Russian government's legal system, if you can't hold it in your hand or see it, it isn't physical evidence so they can't do anything about it!

[SineSwiper]

How is this legal? I guess what I'm asking is how is this different from illegally torrent-ing the music?

It seems that these type services are legal in their own country, while other countries are crying "foul". It was recently publicized that these services cannot be litigated against due to the lack of "physical evidence". To the Russian government's legal system, if you can't hold it in your hand or see it, it isn't physical evidence so they can't do anything about it!

It's legal in Russia. Hell, standard CDs over there are in the $2-5 range. Also, there is some evidence that it's legal here because of export laws.

In any case, they probably aren't giving money to the artists, but I've been taking a stance of "If you're not a part of the solution, then you're a part of the problem." I'm really tired of the artists playing the victim here, when they are the ones who sign their life away to the RIAA. If you want to make money and cut the middle man, then cut out the fucking middle man.

I've bought NIN's couple of new albums online, and if I didn't miss the announcement, I would have bought Radiohead's album from there site. Everybody else should be doing this. I'm willing to pay $2-4 for an album, but I'll be damned if I ever pay $15-20 again for a CD that I'm just going to rip into MP3s. And I'll be damned if I buy ANYTHING that is DRM.

[Zeus]

The "signing their life away" thing is actually extortion by the companies. They control the distribution (aside from smaller Internet sites) of music. How the hell else are you gonna get your music out there and make coin off of it? you're not gonna get a radio station any bigger than maybe a university one to play it, you're not gonna get your CD in stores, heck, people ain't even gonna know you exist without the companies. So they're forced to sign their lives away.

Don't you remember that whole thing with Courtney Love and Neil Diamond about 8 years ago after the Napster shit hit the fan and there were all these articles and interviews with them regarding the lifetime contracts and extortion the companies did?

[SineSwiper]

Radio stations and CDs are old media now. The Internet is the new media. I've found so many good artists using stuff like Last.FM, and that's MUCH more than whatever I've found on the radio. The fact of the matter is that the industry is beyond saturated, so expecting to gamble with the RIAA is like playing roulette: Sure, you get a lot of money and fame when you win, but the odds really suck and you lose everything when you don't win.

There are literally millions of artists out there, and it goes beyond just the US, which many of them probably appeal to your tastes. Perhaps musicians should stop expecting to be insanely popular just because they are doing the same thing as millions of other people.

[Don]

I remember a conversation I had a long time with my econ prof. He was saying with piracy you might have artist making the same money as someone flipping a burger, and that's capitalism at work because that artist probably only has the skillset of someone flipping a burger. At least he gets to make the same amount of money doing something he presumably enjoys. Maybe the market is only willing to pay burger-flipping rates to your average artist, and if they could've done something better with their time they should be doing that instead.

As far as I can tell those who sign their life away, if they didn't do that they'd be stuck flipping burgers anyway so that doesn't sound like it's a bad alternative.

[SineSwiper]

Well, with the RIAA, you only make as much as a burger flipper, even if you made a million CDs.

Piracy isn't the "end all be all" solution to music buying. It's just a stance of waiting until the media war resolves itself. People can make lots of money going into Internet music sales, but there needs to be enough people diving into it.

Hell, I still use my eMusic account for rare artists, and I know that money is at least going to the artist. (At least the labels are independent, so they are less likely to fuck them over.)

[Lox]

I remember a conversation I had a long time with my econ prof. He was saying with piracy you might have artist making the same money as someone flipping a burger, and that's capitalism at work because that artist probably only has the skillset of someone flipping a burger. At least he gets to make the same amount of money doing something he presumably enjoys. Maybe the market is only willing to pay burger-flipping rates to your average artist, and if they could've done something better with their time they should be doing that instead.

As far as I can tell those who sign their life away, if they didn't do that they'd be stuck flipping burgers anyway so that doesn't sound like it's a bad alternative.

That's kind of an ignorant blanket view of musicians. Your whole theory is based around the assumption that anyone who is a musician can't do anything else of value.

[Don]

If someone could've done something else they wouldn't be settling for making money equivalent of flipping burgers, unless they really enjoy doing this stuff. In that case the personal satisification is the reward, not the money.

If you could sell a million CD you eventually should realize that you don't have to sign your next album away assuming it was indeed you and not the RIAA that made the million sales possible. Now if you're just someone who happen to sell a million because RIAA put their considerable resources trying to market you, then they are the ones who should get most of the money anyway. As far as I know all these guys selling a ton and not making much money would not have sold a ton to begin with if they went solo, which suggests it's not really the artist that was responsible for the sales.