Radio made file sharing the next logical step.

[Dthraco]

Think about it. We listen to the radio for free. Music free to the listeners if they have a radio. That's been happening for a long time. It was only a natural transition for people to expect to get music for free once file sharing made it possible.

 

Thoughts?

[sabriel9v]

If radio made music free, then tv and music videos also made it free. And hundreds of years ago when court musicians were playing for nobility, they also made music free.

[BlueStrat]

I think one doesn't necessarily cause the other. It isn't that radio made free music normal, it's that technology made it possible to steal it anonymously and without consequence. In that case, it would have happened even if there were no radio.

 

If there were some way for people to steal cars or clothing or any other commodity without getting caught or punished if they dd get caught, they'd be doing that, too.

[paulz]

 

If there were some way for people to steal cars or clothing or any other commodity without getting caught or punished if they dd get caught, they'd be doing that, too.

 

 

iV6RO2OwbqQ

[FrankW]

Radio music isn't free. The company that run ads during the shows pay for the music.

 

But to people that listen, it feels to them like it's free.

[richardmac]

 

I think one doesn't necessarily cause the other. It isn't that radio made free music normal, it's that technology made it possible to steal it anonymously and without consequence. In that case, it would have happened even if there were no radio.

 

 

The combination of the Internet plus the mp3 file format is what lit the fuse.

 

Back in the olden days of yore, music copying was happening a lot. My buddy Craig would buy "Strange Days" (the record) and he'd bring it over and I'd tape it on my Sharp cassette deck using one side of a 90 minute TDK tape. Or sometimes I'd buy a record and he'd tape it.

 

But the number of people who I could borrow records from to tape was small - maybe less than 20 people. So there was a whole lot of stuff out there that, if I wanted it, I had to buy it. Not to mention the fact that good tapes cost money, too, and of course the tapes would get run down eventually.

 

Well. With the Internet, instead of less than 20 people, now you've got thousands or hundreds of thousands of people out there, if you know where to look. And instead of buying blank cassettes, you just put them on a computer or burn them to a ten cent blank CD. And the quality won't sound any different after you've played it a million times.

[Dancebass]

I would think it's more comparable to copying cassette tapes from my friends when I was young. Ok ok, don't laugh at me if you're too young to understand!

 

There use to be these things called cassette tapes and we would always copy them and hand them around to our friends. If my buddy and I went to the record store, I knew I would ultimately get a copy of whatever he bought and vice versa. That way we would split it up and get something different on purpose. If we liked the copy enough we couldn't help but to go back and buy ourselves the real thing. We {censored}ing LOVED music and it played a HUGE social role in our lives. I wanted everything, I wanted the cover art, I wanted the lyric sheet, I wanted to know the band members names. It was not background to me, it was LIFE OR {censored}ING DEATH!!!

 

That was piracy, now multiply it by 1,000,000 in an instant, and ad in the fact that "normal" listeners are not like we were. They are passive. They don't care as much.

[paulz]

 

I would think it's more comparable to copying cassette tapes from my friends when I was young. Ok ok, don't laugh at me if you're too young to understand! There use to be these things called cassette tapes and we would always copy them and hand them around to our friends.

 

 

I get the feeling that a lot of the people here are older than cassette tape as the overwhelming popular thing

[Kramerguy]

it's amazing how far people will argue to justify breaking the law..

[daddymack]

just because you can do something...

[RickGoetz]

Radio? I dunno... I think it was more about access than anything else. Something had to un-bundle the album. They never released commercial singles of the one song you wanted on an eleven song CD so you wound up paying $18.99 for it. I heard someone once say that it wasn't the download that toppled the record business - it was forty years of greed and arrogance.

[Matximus]

I totally agree. I don't see any difference between ripping a song off the internet or listening to it on the radio. Or even listening to it on-demand on Youtube or Lala. As PDAs develop this whole Idea of actually paying for records is going to be ridiculously antiquated. Professional content providers will figure out how to make money in the Brave New World. It isn't for us consumers to worry about. They have to serve us.

[paulz]

 

I totally agree. I don't see any difference between ripping a song off the internet or listening to it on the radio. Or even listening to it on-demand on Youtube or Lala.

 

 

One big difference with radio is that it isn't "pulled" but "pushed" in networking terms -- I think they even use that as part of the legal difference.

But with other stuff that's pulled, like youtube, hulu and that, the owner has the opportunity to attach advertsiting, or drive traffic to a site, put stuff up for a limited time, that kind of stuff

 

 

As PDAs develop this whole Idea of actually paying for records is going to be ridiculously antiquated. Professional content providers will figure out how to make money in the Brave New World. It isn't for us consumers to worry about. They have to serve us.

 

 

Already happened about 400 years ago. know what it lead to? copyright laws.

Even got written into the US constitution, not as an amendment, part of the basic deal