This piracy thing

& what does congress think will happen when the porn industry cites precedent & comes to collect on it's intellectual property? a majority of very embarassed paupers & all the money in the nation's entertainment budget straight into the pockets of who?

apologies for americanized references... not so familiar with the UK sitch.

all i'm saying there is that while its clear the music industry is suffering and in contraction i don't believe that file-sharing is far and away the primary cause. the games and software industries have done nothing but flourish despite the constant problem of piracy for example.

that said, i do recognise that it will be difficult for people to make AS MUCH money as they did in music if so many people are accessing and distributing it for free. i have no real solution to that at present but the pros outweigh the cons as far as i am concerned.

* of course a lot of downloading is speculative as in 'I'd like to find out what this sounds like...' - doesn't necessarily equate to a lost sale.

I was interested in your earlier post because you appeared to be suggesting that free downloading taken to its logical conclusion would somehow help the industry.

free downloading DOES help the industry i'd venture. this is just as 'true' as the 'truth' that downloading hinders the industry. it's hard because the people i know who download the most are also the people i know who buy the most, go to gigs the most etc.

i think free downloading is simply MORE logical than trying to combat it or impede people from accessing music how they want to. of course it's not an ideal or fair situation for all parties but hey neither is capitalism.

Back on the free downloading - it sort of helps currently, on one level, because it acts as a form of marketing. Downloaders spread the word on new artists, write reviews etc. This can stimulate sales among the people that don't download (and also stimulate more mainstream media interest and radio play - eg the Dizzee Rascal thing - which in turn stimulates more sales). But if EVERYONE downloads, and it's free - through an official channel - where does the money come from? That was my point.

i think downloading and uploading should be - if not legal - ignored as long as no profit is made from the third party. i think it does more good than harm overall, even to the point where it forces the industry to buck it's ideas up more and ensure the quantity/quality ratio is more appropriate for the consumer (this doesn't necessarily have to involve more funding).

* perhaps with added value - free t-shirts, discounts on concert tickets and other goods...vouchers for a free Big Mac at McDonalds, with a reciprocal deal where the label buys 'airplay' of its latest acts at the restauarants - no more muzak or best of the '80s. Obviously McDonalds wouldn't work for everything...Gap would be a better option for some things.

I think what really drives the labels insane is losing control of the media chain - there's a whole culture of consumption now sufficiently outside the Clearchannel/MTV/Tower Records hegemony that basically means that they've lost control of the product.

BTW - for the record, it's not 'piracy' if you're not making money from the copy, it's simply copyright infringement; it's not a criminal offence.

Michael, is that the situation in the US or the UK (or any other country)?

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2011/08/31/Most-pirated-artists1.jpg

CCR surprisingly popular

that can't possibly be right

I mean, Phish?

If you take into account downloads of live bootlegs, I'm not all that surprised.

well i wonder if bootlegs play a part in this? like phish people download a ton of shows, which isn't technically "piracy" in the manner i think we think of it, but ...
xp

same probably goes for dylan & the dead to some extent

I'm so proud of Gentle Giant! They're one of the legible ones!

do you have a link to an original, larger version tyler?

I was just looking at that.. Why don't they just list them in order like normal people?

the whole thing seems incredibly rockcentric

I guess fans of Madonna actually go out and buy albums

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2011/08/31/Most-pirated-artists1.jpg

The Mountain Goats are legible? (sorry aero)

The Blow was downloaded more than Cold War Kids or All-American Rejects?

lol @ Black Kids slightly bigger than Muddy Waters

looking at it, the whole thing seems a little suspect, wouldn't mind learning more about how they came up with this.

Mariah Carey was downloaded less than Stars but about as much as Mates of State? Really?

Umphrey's McGee?

Pink Floyd rules so hard they even rule at getting pirated.

mountain goats as big as blink 182...this ~means~ something.

Note this covers only from 2007-2010

Boxcutter jumps right out at me, that seems kinda bizarre given that he doesn't seem nearly as popular as many of the other acts with a similar size on the graphic.

Lol at Ricardo Villalobos being right on the fringes in the top left-hand corner - as in music, so to piracy, eh? (kinda)

^^It means the graphic isn't reliable

Source: data scrape of the largest private music tracker in the world, with a membership of over 100,000 users.

Whatever that means.

yeahhh, what does that mean?

Breathe Owl Breathe?

anco look surprisingly big

Thats kinda like listing "Popular encyclopedia with over 100,000 readers." as a source for a term paper.

One of the ironies of the RIAA crackdown is it that it made people afraid to pirate major label music , but did little to deter them from downloading indie stuff, which they probably wouldn't be sued for.

If this graph were more trustworthy, it could be cited as evidence of that effect

Do you have any evidence to back that claim up?

Because the RIAA "crackdown" didn't appear to do much to deter anyone from doing anything and major label music sales would appear to back that up.

No evidence at all, just a theory in search of evidence. But I did have friends who were scared witless of downloading major label music, but had no qualms about helping themselves to any matador/sub pop release they wanted

Why is there so little hip hop here? On most torrents, top 20 is 75% hip hop.

I think their "source" is the Geir Hongro Subsidized Rockist File Sharing Database.

Perhaps it's just that people who are discerning enough to choose what they listen to are also discerning enough to choose how they get it. This is the best music chart I've seen in my whole life btw.

I mean there's stuff on there I've never heard of and am already curious about.

re: geir hongro rockistbase -- is that what what.cd is called now?

Also (assuming this chart has any grounding in reality at all) The Beatles is probably the biggest name there because it was famously unavailable to buy digitally until last year.

I'm so proud of Gentle Giant! They're one of the legible ones!

― Axolotl with an Atlatl (Jon Lewis), Friday, 2 September 2011 07:15 (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Bigger than King Crimson! Again, probably more to do with availability than anything else.

just to give a little insight to the phish thing from upthread: phish allows the unlimited trading of audience recordings of their shows (i.e. made by kids with microphones and machines in the "taper" section). they offer for sale via their website (for prices that are like crazy eddy's used car lot level reasonable) soundboard recordings of their shows, usually available withing hours of the show. despite the aforementioned rockbottom prices, the soundboard recordings are definitely passed around for free anyway. so maybe that accounts for their inclusion.

Clearly that's just a scan of one eclectic dude's monthly downloading habits.

I suspect that this is a straight scrape from w✧@✧.c✧, in which case it's skewed by freeleeches and so on. Beatles box set was freeleech for a while and so EVERYBODY downloaded it, whether they wanted it or not.

yeah... the ratio system seriously distorts people's download behavior on that site. a lot of bandwidth wasted as a result. it's sad because bittorrent was supposed to make enable a more efficient use of bandwidth.

supposed to make enable

smh

like do i seriously have 7 gigabytes of music i don't even plan to listen to?!

or maybe it is efficient... making bandwidth barterable?

not sure how the ratio system would lead to a waste of bandwidth. it's simply an incentive to keep people seeding and thereby increasing their own ratios, so that they can in turn download more stuff. that's how it's supposed to work anyway

who are "The Disco Biscuits"?

Uniting elements of electronic dance music with more traditional forms of American rock, the Disco Biscuits have long established themselves as one of the most exciting - and influential - touring bands in the country. In the late 90s, the band pioneered a unique style of music, often referred to as "trance-fusion," that distinguished them from their peers, while heavily influencing an entire generation of younger "livetronica" acts.

oh man

anagram -- it incentivizes people downloading things they don't want to listen to, just in hope of getting uploading some of it back for ratio. i've seen tons of torrents that are posted, promptly downloaded for a couple dozen users, and then never downloaded again... it's clearly users hoping to upload to each other for ratio. a bandwidth ponzi scheme?

like, people are using bandwidth on the wrong stuff -- the stuff that nobody will listen to. it's cool that all that music is available, for free, high quality, but the system is flawed.

but i guess it works... i can download as much as i ever could on slsk, but the quality is so much higher and the downloads are faster.

xp The upload/download ratio system on many BBSs in the early Nineties had a similar bad effect, and vectored a lot of viruses to boot.

The graphic shows the Legendary Pink Dots were more downloaded more than either Nick Cave and MBV, which seems a little odd..

This graphic seems influenced by possible quantity and availability elsewhere.

I've been coming across a comprehensive series of uploads of everything ever associated with L. Pink Dots. There really is much less popping up on Nick Cave or MBV.

The Who are pretty small compared to David Bowie on the picture too, but there has been a complete Bowie Archives series turning up from a defunct list, while there seems to be a still functioning Who private site going.

Flaming Lips fans have some FTP server going, so there stuff doesn't turn up as often on torrent sites.

Every single pressing of every Beatles boot or official vinyl is out there for the comparison.