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Topic: Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore? (Read 22407 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #25
When you have hard drives get killed from a lighting strike you'll remember why CDs are important. 

I'm talking about a regular home user not a server setup. 


What?

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #26
When you have hard drives get killed from a lighting strike you'll remember why CDs are important. 


That is why you should do extra backup on optical media or tape for critical files. I've had *multiple* HDD's fail and data lost.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #27
Erm no, where exactly do I say it's fine copying old music?


Right here: "then what incentive do they have to continue creating and releasing music?". The objective of your proposal seems to be to stimulate artists to continue creating music, doesn't it? In the two sketched scenarios the download of old music would have no effect on production of new music. In fact, for artists who are still active, profits from their back catalogue actually serve as a disincentive to work.

In the patronage system, OTOH, artists have the greatest possible incentive to continue creating and releasing music, and of good quality to boot. That's because their meal tickets depend on their performance.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #28
Erm no, where exactly do I say it's fine copying old music?


Right here: "then what incentive do they have to continue creating and releasing music?". The objective of your proposal seems to be to stimulate artists to continue creating music, doesn't it?


Now you are extracting your implications from his[/hers?] argument. Not only that, but you are extracting your implications from what the argument does not say anything about. So you are invoking the implicit assumptions that (i) this is the only argument, and (ii) your opponent agrees with you on the implications. Of course this is sometimes justified (should we be restricted to putting forth only arguments which follow by logical necessity AND everyone else's sometimes fairly f**ked-up idea of logic, then we would probably not be getting anywhere), but I'd say you pushed it quite a bit too far here.

What would have been wrong with 'OK, then I guess it is fine copying old music' (written on your own behalf)?

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #29
Mainly directed to Shadowking - The best way to back up data depends heavily on how much data you're talking about, but hard disks are nearly always going to be the best option these days. (I'm going to have my personal music collection size of aprox. 200 GB in mind for the rest of this post.)

DVDs are really too small to be backing up this amount of data. My collection would take a shelf full of DVDs (43 discs, to be exact) to back up in its entirety. Assuming about 20 minutes for each disc, it'd take some 14 solid hours of flipping discs to finish the backup. Blu-Ray bumps up the capacity from 4.7 to 25 GB per disc, which makes it a bit less time-consuming (and a bit more expensive). But really, I don't think any burnable optical media is a good choice for a serious backup. Writeable CDs are known to deteriorate much faster than factory-pressed silver discs, and the same should hold true for DVDs and Blu-Rays. If anything, I would expect the deterioration problem to be worse on the newer discs, since each bit is represented by a much smaller surface area, due to their higher data density.

Tapes are more reliable for long-term storage, and have the large capacities to make them convenient. But they are also prohibitively expensive. Looking at Newegg real quick to get a handle on prices - It seems like modern tape drives (that store hundreds of gigs) start at $500 rock-bottom, quickly working up to $1000, $1500, or more.

Now, those are LTO-3 tape drives that store 400 GB. Compare that with hard disks, where you can get 2 TB (2,000 GB) disks for $150. So even if you don't trust your disk for some reason, you could buy TWO 2-TB disks for redundancy, and still spend $100 less for 4.5x more capacity, versus LTO-3 tape.

Also, the prices on hard disks are actually a little inflated right now because of flooding in Thailand last year that wiped out something like 30% of worldwide hard disk production. In the near-term, HDD prices will fall a bit as the factories come back online. Long-term patterns for HDDs have always been: drastically enlarged storage, plus lowered price. No doubt this trend will continue into the future as HDDs see competition from the newer solid-state drives that have been introduced in the last few years. Point is, the price advantage that HDDs currently enjoy vs. tape is only going to get bigger.

You mentioned something about having two HDDs fail on you at once - Unlikely, but possible. Now ... if you buy two HDDs to make a double backup, and still have the music stored on your daily-driver HDD inside your computer, that's a total of three disks that have to fail at the same time for you to lose your data. Which is exceedingly unlikely to the point of non-consideration. That's the kind of resilience to disk failure that you have in business-critical corporate RAID systems that process hundred-thousand-dollar transactions daily. If it's good enough for that, it should be good enough for your music collection...

The main things contributing to disk failure are heavy usage and high operating temperatures. These are largely mitigated for backup disks. You're only going to use it maybe once a month when you do your backup, and the rest of the time it's going to be sitting on the shelf somewhere. Unplugged, protected from power surges, viruses, etc... not in operation.

In terms of price, convenience, and longevity, your best option to back up music is going to be having the collection stored on two or three hard disks. Of course, if you've still got the factory-pressed CDs (which don't deteriorate like CD/DVD-Rs) you probably don't need to make a computerized backup at all. Although it could save you the hassle of re-ripping every CD later, if something should happen to your computer.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #30
I've had a hdd fail mechanically, the second one had some filesystem issue..I even made careless mistakes myself , went to another drive only to discover its dying or backup never happened properly.. I even lost *part* of a DVD archive due to fungus that invaded storage. The backup procedure itself can go wrong and i've seen it many times. There are many point of failure and yes two hdd's is usually fine , But there is extra security in an additional HDD archive or *snapshot*  backup (weekly / monthly / yearly etc)  that way you can go back in time if some mistake corrupted your stuff ( no amount of HDD's will not protect you in this case )



Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #31
Mainly directed to Shadowking - The best way to back up data depends heavily on how much data you're talking about, but hard disks are nearly always going to be the best option these days.

Personally, I use Blu-Rays for my backups which I do roughly bi-annually. I am somehow more comfortable backing up to a write-once medium. I retain the last few backups. I usually store them at an off-site location.

EDIT: My entire collection is on my desktop as well as on my (DJ gig) laptop so I guess I have an up-to-date hard drive backup as well.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #32
The main things contributing to disk failure are heavy usage and high operating temperatures. These are largely mitigated for backup disks. You're only going to use it maybe once a month when you do your backup, and the rest of the time it's going to be sitting on the shelf somewhere. Unplugged, protected from power surges, viruses, etc... not in operation.


Counterintuitive as it may seem, there is a well known 2007 paper by Google engineers that demonstrates just the opposite: http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Of course, speaking about backup disks used once in a while, it's true that having them offline, disconnected from any power source, even stored away from the main system is the best way to protect them.
And don't forget, from time to time, to try to actually read all the data stored on them! 
... I live by long distance.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #33
Erm no, where exactly do I say it's fine copying old music?


Right here: "then what incentive do they have to continue creating and releasing music?". The objective of your proposal seems to be to stimulate artists to continue creating music, doesn't it? In the two sketched scenarios the download of old music would have no effect on production of new music. In fact, for artists who are still active, profits from their back catalogue actually serve as a disincentive to work.


You've completely misinterpreted what I was saying. The whole point is that artists get paid. You have to produce something in order to get paid for it. This doesn't just mean new stuff. I wasn't proposing anything, I was saying artists are unlikely to want to create anything (new) if you're not going to pay them because you just download anything they produce.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #34
artists are unlikely to want to create anything (new) if you're not going to pay them because you just download anything they produce.

There's a big secret in the world of music, literature, acting, and other art: the artists generally don't divulge that they have ever had a day job, nor do they divulge when they cross that boundary in one direction or the other, and it happens all the time; very very few are living off their back catalog. If some full-time artists whose contracts depend on direct sales of artificially scarce copies of their work feel uninspired by low sales in this era of instant global distribution without middlemen, then too bad for them. They were mainly just in it for the money, and now they have to go get a job and do their art on the side, or find some other way to make money from their art...like everyone else.

Before anyone says I should walk a mile in the artist's shoes...I am an amateur photographer and musician, and my partner is a writer signed to a major publishing house. We are both modestly successful with our art (a CC-licensed photo of mine will be in a prestigious museum this year, and her book is selling despite also being torrented), but we also both have and rely on day jobs. We are far more inspired by the positive aesthetic response we get to our art than we are by any amount of money.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #35
As a musician I try to buy some albums. I do it from a moralistic standpoint, I want to support bands.

However, I am not particularly wealthy, and through the years I have realized that since I can't buy all the albums from all the bands I like to support, I simply try to buy albums from the bands that seem to need money the most.

The last 50 cd's I bought are in a box somewhere unopened, I haven't even ripped the plastic off the casings. I downloaded them and gave them a thorough listen, the ones I liked I eventually ordered. But those are almost exclusively albums by bands who are fairly unknown and probably see a clear difference between selling 8000 and 9000 cd's.

Bands I like that have sold millions of records and go on international tours, yes ideally I'd like to buy their records too but since I can't afford all the albums I like and have to choose, I'll just wait and buy their records when I get rich some day

Through my nearly 20 years as a musician I have had the debate countless times how to deal with and how I view pirated music, and this is my standpoint - If you are an actual musician who likes to make music, be grateful for what money you can get from it but create for the sake of creating - if you are already making millions off it and still demand that "you should still pay for listening to my music by the simple laws of paying for a product" then I have strong doubts about their authenticity as a musician. You work to get paid, you create because you feel the urge, I want musicians around the world to be able to live off their music if possible, but once you start making 7 figures, you are kind of out of that bracket.

This leads to me being fairly sure that the genre that hurts the most from file sharing is popular music, which is in fact an industry to make money, it's work and economics, not artistic freedom, and they need to sell their crap fast before it goes out of date. Within any other timeless genre bands that are good do as well as they deserve to do (quality directly related to income) with file-sharing only improving their chances to get more listeners.

To sum it up, I like to buy albums from smaller groups that might need the money to keep making the music I like, that's our give-and-take relationship. Then again, I am a non-capitalist European with little understanding of the typical capitalist black and white view on earnings.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #36
What would have been wrong with 'OK, then I guess it is fine copying old music' (written on your own behalf)?


It's fine only if you think copyright legislation is a bait for the production of new art. I don't believe it is. My own advice to squallkiercosa is more along the lines: either you follow the law because it's the law or else you should feel free to do whatever you want, as long as you can get away with it. I had understood probedb's remark to mean some sort of rationalization of the kind "buy cds - it'll be for your own good in the long run". I don't think this sort of argument works, but if you disagree I'd be eager to hear why.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #37
I've had a hdd fail mechanically, the second one had some filesystem issue..I even made careless mistakes myself , went to another drive only to discover its dying or backup never happened properly.. I even lost *part* of a DVD archive due to fungus that invaded storage. The backup procedure itself can go wrong and i've seen it many times. There are many point of failure and yes two hdd's is usually fine , But there is extra security in an additional HDD archive or *snapshot*  backup (weekly / monthly / yearly etc)  that way you can go back in time if some mistake corrupted your stuff ( no amount of HDD's will not protect you in this case )


I  just use an external hard drive for backup , that I  can connect by USB from western digital "passport essential" of 1Tb.
I  avoid to use it too much.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #38
It's fine only if you think copyright legislation is a bait for the production of new art. I don't believe it is.


Apologies to the international audience if this is too US-centric.

The contstitutional justification for copyright comes from this power of congress:

Quote from: US constitution link=msg=0 date=
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.


So, yes, it is intended as bait for the production of new art.  In return for that incentive, the public gets a pipeline of new stuff that becomes public domain after the inventor/writer has a limited time opportunity to cash in.

That limited time for copyright was originally in the same general range as for patents.  It's very unfortunate that it is now interpreted as "a time not less than that needed to keep the first Mickey Mouse cartoon protected,"  thanks to the best government money can buy.

If you want to make a distinction between moral and legal respect of copyright and old music, that would be a place to draw the line.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #39
Usually no CDs here as well.

When you have hard drives get killed from a lighting strike you'll remember why CDs are important. 

No, you just learn about holes in your backup concept.
Redundancy if the hard drive starts having bad sectors and therefore my folders now a days consist of par2 redundancy files with 10% recover size.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #40
Quote
[...]
Quote
lighting strike
[...]

Redundancy

Lucky if that would help. If Thor hits one of your hard drives, then the rest of the RAID will probably be hit as well. Edit: and redundancy bits on the same hard drive, even harder.

Go offsite.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #41
It's fine only if you think copyright legislation is a bait for the production of new art. I don't believe it is.


Apologies to the international audience if this is too US-centric.

The contstitutional justification for copyright comes from this power of congress:

Quote from: US constitution link=msg=0 date=
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
It's not just the US.

It was part of the intent in the first copyright act, in the UK, too...

Quote
Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

I think we lost sight of this during the second half of the 20th century, and things are just getting worse IMO. It's not just Mickey Mouse in the USA. We have our own problems in Europe too, where it's keeping the Beatles recordings in copyright that's recently caused the situation to become worse...

http://musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com...mic-assessment/

Cheers,
David.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #42
So, yes, it is intended as bait for the production of new art.


I’m not well acquainted with the anglo-american system but I found this account of Eldred v Ashcroft very instructive. It happened in the context of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The plaintiff argued that the progress of the arts and sciences would not be stimulated by expanding the duration of copyright to previously created works. The Supreme Court decided for the validity of the law, but Justice Breyer disagreed:

Quote from: Justice Breyer link=msg=0 date=
Justice Breyer dissented, arguing that the CTEA amounted to a grant of perpetual copyright that undermined public interests. While the constitution grants Congress power to extend copyright terms in order to "promote the progress of science and useful arts," CTEA granted precedent to continually renew copyright terms making them virtually perpetual. Justice Breyer argued in his dissent that it is highly unlikely any artist will be more inclined to produce work knowing their great-grandchildren will receive royalties. With regard to retroactive copyright extension he viewed it foolish to apply the government's argument that income received from royalties allows artists to produce more work saying, "How will extension help today’s Noah Webster create new works 50 years after his death?"

Despite that, the act was upheld by a 7–2 vote. So it seems even in the US the matter is not so clear cut and copyright can be extended indefinitely, so long as congress restricts the extension to a finite amount of time. This is so whether the extension is supposed to stimulate the progress of the arts or not. But I’ll admit that the literal letter of the law would incline one to think that the anglo-american system protected exclusively the rights of the public.

In the continental system (droit d'auteur), however, the matter is markedly different due to the focus on the moral (that is, personal and non-financial) rights of the artist. Many prerogatives (like the right to keep your work secret, that of ordering it destroyed, or that of recalling it from the public if it jeopardizes your reputation) are in direct contrast to the desires of the public in having as many new artworks as possible. A lot more is being done here than just baiting new productions. The issue could even verge on the metaphysical by emphasizing the unique relationship of creator and created work.

Whatever the case, I still think squallkiercosa's dillemma ought to be solved by non-utilitarian means. Most people would never consider stealing a car. Not even if no one were looking. Not even if they were sure to get away with it. Not even if the owner were a millionaire and they were certain he wouldn't be harmed by the larceny. Why should we treat copyright any differently?

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #43

Redundancy

Lucky if that would help. If Thor hits one of your hard drives, then the rest of the RAID will probably be hit as well. Edit: and redundancy bits on the same hard drive, even harder.

Go offsite.


As a matter of fact RAID and other fault tolerance techniques are all about availability, not backup.
... I live by long distance.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #44
Quote
[...]
Quote
lighting strike
[...]

Redundancy

Go offsite.

I have an unRAID server with system images for 2 desktops and 1 laptop, backups of all our music, photography and other important files, and movies. Periodically I create on offsite backup with only the music, photography, and other important files. The system images and movies are too large and unimportant to bother with saving offsite. My offsite backup currently just fits on a 2TB drive but my wife's photography will probably push us over that soon.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #45
Ok, enough with the increasingly off-topic conversation about backups.  We have several other discussions dedicated to the subject.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #46
The point is, I am losing the pleasure of buying music.

I do not intend to excuse myself. I am questioning what can i do. How can I change or what companies can do to evolve the industry. Not only merely looking and reading the booklet I will change my mind.

It is not your obligation, as a consumer, to do anything but choose how and where to spend your limited entertainment budget. If buying CDs doesn't reward you enough to make it worth the asking price, then don't buy them. Don't worry about what message it is sending to future generations, or what may or may not be happening to the copyright exploitation industry and those artists who choose to rely on it. The businesspeople behind the scenes are well-aware of changing patterns of consumer behavior, and they are responding in various ways—sometimes progressively, such as by trying to move music (and games, movies, books, etc.) toward being on-demand services, often of the "value-add" type, rather than being a direct product. There are pros and cons to their tactics, and they are making some huge mistakes, but they are also getting some things very right. Art will not die because you chose not to buy the latest Lady Gaga CD.


I will never, ever buy the lastest Lady Gaga Cd. Seriously.

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #47
I will never, ever buy the lastest Lady Gaga Cd. Seriously.


Last year  , there was in France an anti-piracy campaign.
There were an advertisement with a fictional pop star, with a single released in 2022.
And then, there's a flash back , where you see the little girl.
The moral: without hadopi (an anti-piracy french law), that little girl wouldn't be able to release her smashing hit in 2022.

The effect of the advertisement was the opposite of the one expected :
everyone thought that if piracy could help to kill such kind of junk music, then piracy must be good at the end.

The hadopi advertisement , sorry if it's in French:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xj6h6s_ca...e-l-hadopi_tech

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #48
I am one of these old farts that still likes the hard physical media in his hands.
I buy used cds on ebay and Amazon marketplace since some years now. I guess that out of my last 100 CDs there were more then 70 used ones.
Today i purchased one that normaly sells for 20,99€ new. Used prices were around 16-19€ all the time. Since i bookmarked it i sometimes have a looky. Today there was a 9€ offer i couldn´t resist.
Since i started watching this CD on Amazon around 2 months back i saw several used offers come and go but the Amazon stock only went from 5 to 4 in this time.
I really wonder how many people use that way to order, rip and resell. If soemone makes a hobby out of that it is an easy way to get a nice collection for a bargain. I doubt the music industry isn´t exactly happy with this development and whining about loosing sales is not only from the murder pirate downloader.

Me does collect these things still and the CD will go directly to one of my shelves when ripped.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Why I am not interested in buying cds anymore?

Reply #49
Sorry for the second post in a row but this is related but completely different and deserves a seperate post or even thread.

Me bought the last "Tom Waits - Bad As Me as Deluxe Edition" lately. Since i still like the physical media i was happy with the delivered song-book and saw myself on the sofa enjoying the new album with scrolling thru the pages of the book. Seldom enjoyed a new buy that much.

Now 2 weeks later while absorbing my daily dose of internet surfing i stumbled across the HDtracks offer of this Tom Waits album.
They offer a 24bit 96kHz version. WTF!?
Does my CD version sound different? Is the HD version not as compressed? Did they rip me off with a lousy ultra-compressed CD version?
To be honest you won´t find any info on how it is created, leave alone how it is supposed to sound.

What to do from now on? Better buy nothing anymore till the day arrived we can easily get lossless downloads? Will they offer a coupon with the bought CD for a HiRes download because it doesn´t fit on a CD?
Several negative conclusions against buying CDs can be reasoned from that!

Seems like the industry only created another market making the loyal fan left with some bad aftertaste...
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!