Remember how Napster was demonized for taking money away from artists? Anti-pirating messages have been pushed by platforms much more than artists, because they are protecting their own ill-gotten pirated wealth. #piracy #Royalties
(Note: Napster is no longer peer-to-peer so this isn't really relevant to them anymore, but this is about the other platforms which were always legal, licensed, and "legitimate".)
@ned What I remember is all the utopian talk from the mp3.com era about how there was all this great music we never got to hear because of those evil record labels. Soon we'd be rid of the labels and artists would get paid what they were worth and we would have all this new music.
Now I keep reading about how artists wish for the old days of merely being ripped off by record labels.
And it is hilarious that the corpse of Napster is the best paying service.
@ned Also that Youtube is both the worst paying service, and the easiest one to get clean rips off of. Youtube and Clipgrab provide faster and easier pirating of music than Napster ever did.
Napster had data showing that many of their customers were willing to pay up to $15/mo. They were willing to collect that money, count downloads, and pay royalties. The record labels, backed by some big artists, said no, we want them dead.
How did that work out for them?
@mike805 @ned one of the original intents of MP3.com was artist education about making a direct relationship with fans. We would often find that an artist who became popular on MP3.com would sign an agreement and subsequently remove their music from the Internet.
Those inside MP3.com were convinced that streaming was the future - we did not predict that live performance would be where the artists could make a good living.
@dkoneill @ned I remember the talk about the "celestial jukebox" and being able to summon up any song you wanted.
Well that worked technically, but nobody has figured out how to make a good living out of it except the middlemen.
So some people did get signed from mp3.com? Labels probably made them pull the mp3s.
Given the success of vinyl, someone should develop a new super fidelity analog format. Ideas: magnetic with GMR heads, or electron beam lithography as a means of mechanical recording.