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If you used something like ipfs, syncthing, or generic torrents you could easily distribute anything you want at large scale at no cost, as long as people were
by zanny 11y ago
If you used something like ipfs, syncthing, or generic torrents you could easily distribute anything you want at large scale at no cost, as long as people were interested in having it.
If you choose to centralize distribution on one web server that is your own choice, but the better phrase is "digital distribution is free if you want it to be".
I doubt we will see a return to pay-to-listen models in music. Reality has taken too big of a bite around the copyright extortion ring surrounding sine waves. The future of music is in patronage, merchandising, and live performances - which really, it has always been. Only extremely rare unicorn performers ever have the stars align to be able to monetize their music itself (in the past it was making it big with a label, today last decade it was topping itunes) while we are seeing the rise of music as a viable profession without extraordinary fame as long as you can provide a niche and be good at it, you can attract enough whale fans to support you regardless of if the tracks themselves are free - your real audience is those that not only want what you already made, but want you to continue to make.
Remember, as in all things IP, it is not the actual music file that is scarce or expensive to produce, it is the idea behind the music that took an artist hours or days to hand craft into a digital creation. The first iteration was the expensive one - all other ones are effectively free. It is essential that going forward we culturally recognize the distinction and move to seek sustainable business models around the former rather than the later, which we only invented as an imperfect way to translate ideas into the physical goods market back when they were less distinct than they are now (ie, costs of distribution did exist for paper books, so pigeonholing writing into markets via copyright was a reasonable train of thought when per-unit costs still existed and thus people could not effortlessly propagate the information on an individual basis).
- sbierwagen 11y agoIf you used something like ipfs, syncthing, or generic torrents you could easily distribute anything you want at large scale at no cost, as long as people were interested in having it. The problem there of course is the "as long as people were interested in having it" part. You can publish stuff for free on Freenet, but to a first approximation, nobody actually uses Freenet. If a torrent/magnet URI runs out of seeds then it dies forever, unless you have a way to contact former seeds and beg them to give you a copy, etc etc. Bandwidth costs money, and always will. Distributing files costs money, and always will. The UX of peer-to-peer file sharing will always be more complex than "go to this WWW URL" if just to avoid the free-rider/spam problem.
- URSpider94 11y agoThis. Torrents are a terrible solution for the long tail of content.
- colechristensen 11y agoThis is false. There are a collection of private trackers run by motivated volunteers and paid for with meager donations which have collections far superior to the best paid services or archives anywhere or at any time in history. They do this by erecting and maintaining virtual economies where what you can get is limited by how much you've shared.
- baddox 11y agoThat's true, but private trackers have centralized costs and are often funded by donations or paid perks.
- zanny 11y agoYou don't really need 100% uptime trackers, DHT lets you do peer to peer file discovery. There are trackerless torrents, the only problem being how you get the torrents in the first place, but all that takes is a magnet URI from the original uploader / creator somewhere.
- babuskov 11y agoSo, you're suggesting that SoundCloud seeds all the files instead of offering the download option. Perhaps this could work if "play-in-browser" vs "download" ratio is not too big.
- mst 11y agoAnd play in browser could be handled by something like torrent time, no?
- 11y ago
- darksim905 11y agoPretty Lights seems to do well on their own.
- cheese1756 11y agoSpotify used to use a peer-to-peer architecture: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-blessed-by-record-labels-110617/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-bless... I'd be interested in knowing why they switched away from it.