Manchester is the music capital!

[Macca]

I'm not sure that it would. Too many people have had free music for too long now, even asking them to pay pennies for it will not work. How would you feel if the water board came along and said 'You know all that rain that falls on your garden? - we are now going to start billing you for it.' Your response would be 'Dream on!'

[bobbasrah]

If the big record companies just addressed the issue (over pricing) and stopped ripping off both the consumer and the artist, then the problem would go away...

Whilst I would like to agree, Martin does have a good point, and such a move would be contrary to everything the media empires have strived to protect in their markets for many years (optical disc and tape surcharges, hardware blocks, regional-coding, etc, etc). They are not about to capitulate now....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19619646 is not going to make any more a splash than the others who have gone this route from a artist point of view, but it easy to see why they feel ripped off also.

The writing has been on the wall for the big multinationals for some considerable time, and I suspect the independents will flourish in their wake...

[Tim]

Pricing?

I have LP's that I bought in the late 70's early 80's that still have price labels on of £7.99 and £8.99..... 30 years on is music really too expensive? Its never been as cheap as it is right now, or as accessible, but it's really hard for bands to make a living unless they are mainstream. Piracy for successful well know artists can help raise their profile, but it can also kill off lesser known ones. To blame illegal activity on someone else is so typical of many folk today, what happened to "I won't do it because its wrong", instead of "Nah, who gives a .... I won't get caught". This really is my final post on this thread, as I know where its going and I'm likely to turn blue.

It's a social issue, it's not the record labels fault. The next time I'm in Tesco and I think they are charging too much for something, I reckon I just might take it and f*** em, after all it's not my fault, it's theirs for charging to much - I mean, how much money do Tesco need anyway?

[synsei]

I believe it is now André, but it didn't use to be...

[sq225917]

A short answer to that Simon is no, all you need to do is get on the same network and monitor the data, IP addresses and hash values. Give it some thought and you will realise how simple it is.
The mistake a lot make is they think the web is one huge pool, it's not, it's a number of networks using different protocols. All you need to do is monitor the file sharing networks.
Anyway, I'm out of this thread now

Wow, and people are stupid enough to do this with unencrypted data, the fuckwits.

[keiths]

The vast majority of the general public just don't see downloading music as stealing. I know someone who went mad with her daughter for "wasting money" when she bought a CD with her birthday money instead of just "downloading it or copying it off a mate like everyone else does".

[northwest]

Well obviously I am not unaware of the diversity of feeling around this subject but now I would like to make comment around another subject not unrelated to "pirated music". I remember clearly (sadly:-)) those days back in the late nineties when pirate music was readily available on cd from eBay (yes, it was around back then too - eBay that is) but you could pick up the "yellow paper" or exchange and mart and buy cd's full of MP3's - until someone woke up to this and suddenly all the ads vanished - many people didn't know and others simply didn't care that this was "illegal"!
Well here we are in 2012 and yesterday I read an article about how, now, digital book downloads are outstripping printed book sales.

Well Hello?

I have owned a digital reader for longer than most, I am up to my third now, they are getting smaller, lighter and the battery life is getting longer every generation, I love mine.
I had occasion just a year or so ago to have a conversation with the director of possibly one of the top five publishing houses in the world - Ow nooo, not digital, it really isn't important yet? Was the comment. What? What?
I knew then the writing was on the wall. It is just the sheer arrogance that is breathtaking, we have very robust copyright laws you know! What?
It leaves me with a headache, the door is open ladies and gentlemen and the horse has long bolted, you can by cd's RIGHT NOW on eBay full of books. But these tosses really don't endear themselves to me, I have the Barnes and nobleve reader, the nook, and I cannot turn on the wireless feature when I am in the uk as half of my books, bought in the us from my account at Barnes and noble, become crippled and unreadable because of "international restrictions" .
The arrogant unreasonable - unable to get their shit together - greedy fuckwits are going to watch the book industry go right down the pan, the same way as the arrogant ignorant fuckwits steering the music industry fucked that up.

And what are you going to do? Lock up millions of people? Oh you know, there are laws against that you know! Yes, there are, but by and large nobody pays any bloody notice. No, I don't have an answer other but what I DO know for certain is that it does NOT cost the same to produce the same version of a book in digital format as it does the printed version so if you keep on trying to charge the same, you will lose it all. And furthermore, it costs more to buy the same book in digital form in the uk than it does in the US - because of "copyright and distribution issues" ........ Leave it out, I am not stupid, it means you want more for it here than you do there because the "distributor" wants their slice. No wonder everyone takes the pi**!

[The Grand Wazoo]

Funnily enough there was an item on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning about this & I'm sure it was reporting that, although sales of ebooks were massively up, it had not affected real book sales nearly as much as would be expected - they were down but only fractionally.

[bobbasrah]

The arrogant unreasonable - unable to get their shit together - greedy fuckwits are going to watch the book industry go right down the pan, the same way as the arrogant ignorant fuckwits steering the music industry fucked that up.
!

I keep thinking of the chairman of BSA motorcycles pronouncing that the great british public had no need of indicators and electric starters on motorbikes before going bust a year later....

Neverthless Graham, some good points made, particularly on the cost side for download v hard copy. I can't enjoy reading e-books personally but they are most definitely where the future lies....

Wonder if we will see i-books appearing soon, with every second word omitted to save space?

[Marco]

Yes, anything to increase convenience (for gadget freaks) at the expense of using items of genuine originality and timeless quality!

Marco.