5 ms·

Why pirating music is old school

23 points by Corrado 16y ago

gfdfgds56yrh 16y ago
Who pays you to spend hours cleaning up downloads?
- nodata 16y ago
  Comparing my usual hourly rates against the price of all 5 albums on the iTunes store, I actually won money by purchasing them there, He didn't win (earn) any money. Unless he cancelled a billable hour with a customer, he didn't save any money either. He saved time.
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    In roundabout language he's talking about saving the opportunity cost of doing it manually.
    - getonit 16y ago
      I thought that was the original commenter's point - that opportunity cost is a theoretical maximum that is rarely worth anywhere near as much...
      - jonhendry 16y ago
        Depends on what the alternative activity is. Put it this way: he could waste the time fiddling with audio files, or he could be having sex. Which is a better use of time?
  - silvestrov 16y ago
    But time IS money (i.e. valuables), especially as you get older. You won't have time for everything you'd like to do, and you won't have the energy. Young people think energy is unlimited, old people know energy and time are the precious valuables. And even for young people: the time you spend cleaning up downloads are time you can't spend on getting better at whatever you're good at.
    - trotsky 16y ago
      By following this logic you should * never cook for yourself, always eat out * never wash your own car * never cut your own grass ad infinitum If you make a sufficient salary this can be extended to everything you do and you might reach the conclusion that it's best if you do nothing besides working and sleeping. Then you realize how ridiculous the whole argument is.
      - jonhendry 16y ago
        "If you make a sufficient salary this can be extended to everything you do and you might reach the conclusion that it's best if you do nothing besides working and sleeping." working, playing, and sleeping. Fiddling with audio files, washing your car, cutting grass... these are not playing, sleeping, or profitable working. If I had the money, you can bet I would pay for people or tools to take care of pointless, Sisyphean daily chores.
        snes 16y ago
        And if you had worked more, maybe you would have the money.
        trotsky 16y ago
        It would seem observationally that rich people often end up relishing doing life's simple tasks after they've spent a time having them all done for them. I think for many first-world people, the more removed they end up being from daily tasks the more unhappy they may find themselves in the end.
hackermom 16y ago
Spot on. This can't be repeated enough: it's not about saving a few bucks, it's about getting your goods in spotless quality, instantly, without hassle. People want ease; instant ease; not a labyrinthal click-fest. Even if you are a seasoned P2Per who does not need many minutes to locate at least one available source of the album in question, it usually takes a while to find a proper AAC or FLAC rip (contra usual MP3 slush), and unless you're into vacuous pop music you're almost always faced with anything but snappy download speeds. $0.99 for a pristine 256kbps AAC track, with no waiting, is a good deal. The iTunes Store isn't a money-making behemoth for no reason.
- wladimir 16y ago
  I agree completely. After iTunes dropped DRM, I've legally downloaded most of my music: Guaranteed quality, and no need anymore to search through tons of fakes, viruses, to get the songs I want, and then hope someone actually comes online to share them. I 'pirated' because I don't feel like going to a store, spending hours to find music I liked, buying it, then ripping the CD. Or ordering the CD somewhere and impatiently waiting before it arrives... Not because of the cost savings. Let's hope this is a lesson for the movies and software industry as well, if you make it easy for people to get your stuff, in the same or better quality than a pirated version (so, no DRM, annoying restrictions, or difficult download process), they will prefer to get it legally from you.
- usingp2p 16y ago
  This might be true if you're looking on public sites, but there are very good private music trackers (What, Waffles) and if you have an account on one of those it's completely wrong. Things are well-seeded, download speeds are fast, the selection is huge, and there's almost always a FLAC (or at least a v0 or 320k mp3) version available. (And I don't listen to "vacuous pop music".)
- Snoddas 16y ago
  Unless you live in another country (say a backwater like Sweden). Then you are told by iTunes: "The item you've requested is not currently available in the Swedish store"
makeramen 16y ago
anyone else have a what.cd account? this is what I see when I search for an album: http://d.pr/OFXu http://d.pr/OFXu you get pretty much any format/bitrate of any song/album you can imagine, most are almost always well seeded.
- torpor 16y ago
  >anyone else have a what.cd account? Try as I might, I can't work out how to get a new account .. got any clues for me? Does it involve IRC?
- cloug 16y ago
  seems interesting, do you have any invite ?
  - xiongchiamiov 16y ago
    Giving invites to people you don't know is a bad idea, as you're responsible for them. They have an irc channel for applications; take a look at http://whatinterviewprep.webs.com/ http://whatinterviewprep.webs.com/ .
- spindritf 16y ago
  Including "perfect" FLAC rips, quality not available on iTunes. And no geographical restrictions (well... almost).
danparsonson 16y ago
And the moral of the story is... outsource! :-)
bound008 16y ago
1.open new tab in google chrome 2. type demonoid hit tab, type the band name followed by discography 3. hit download button. everything else happens automatically. torrent file gets automatically added to Transmission, and when done, the music gets moved into the "Automatically add files to iTunes Folder" and iTunes takes it from there. But don't steal music. Its wrong.
Tichy 16y ago
But how can he buy the music for his wife? iTunes music is still DRMed (owner encoded in the files). Also 2 hours is way overblown.
rb2k_ 16y ago
While I agree that "legal" music downloads are really cheap these days, most of his criticism is just not true if you actually know what you're doing... "scene releases" have a fixed quality scheme (encoding, ID3, ...) and the proper torrent community orftp/usenet server will max out your home connection easily. That being said, if you actually have a regular income, music should not be that big of a problem to buy...
J3L2404 16y ago
I get my music the old fashioned way, I record it off the radio. (via internet)
robryan 16y ago
I think there is a real opportunity for Apple to identify when people have loaded in pirated music to iTunes and try and sell them the legal equivalent.
unicornporn 16y ago
This person has obviously not tried the better specialized torrent sites like what.cd. When browsing through the Queen discography at what the other day I realized it is far better then what iTunes offers me. Releases sorted by catalog number, 24/96 lossless FLAC vinyl rips, you name it. Run the files through MP3Tag with the Discogs "plugin" installed and you've got flawless metadata in seconds.
- rick888 16y ago
  It's interesting that after all of the people in the pirate community screaming that the cost of songs are "too high" and the quality isn't "good enough" and music has too many "draconian" protection schemes like DRM that piracy is bigger than ever, even when they can get everything they wanted. Why can't people just admit that they pirate because they just want free stuff?
  - unicornporn 16y ago
    It might be that some people are screaming that, but I'm not. I'm saying, if you are interested in a multitude of releases for each album to chose from and the technical aspects of digital audio you might be more pleased visiting a private torrent site. They are impressive pieces of collaborative work. I do not judge people buying music from iTunes, nor do I judge people that "pirate" music. Each to his/her own.
    - rick888 16y ago
      "They are impressive pieces of collaborative work. I do not judge people buying music from iTunes, nor do I judge people that "pirate" music. Each to his/her own." I do. Because the people pirating music have pretty much destroyed the music industry. The same is happening to any industry that can be digitized.

23 points by Corrado 16y ago

gfdfgds56yrh 16y ago

Who pays you to spend hours cleaning up downloads?

nodata 16y ago
Comparing my usual hourly rates against the price of all 5 albums on the iTunes store, I actually won money by purchasing them there, He didn't win (earn) any money. Unless he cancelled a billable hour with a customer, he didn't save any money either. He saved time.
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  In roundabout language he's talking about saving the opportunity cost of doing it manually.
  - getonit 16y ago
    I thought that was the original commenter's point - that opportunity cost is a theoretical maximum that is rarely worth anywhere near as much...
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      Depends on what the alternative activity is. Put it this way: he could waste the time fiddling with audio files, or he could be having sex. Which is a better use of time?
- silvestrov 16y ago
  But time IS money (i.e. valuables), especially as you get older. You won't have time for everything you'd like to do, and you won't have the energy. Young people think energy is unlimited, old people know energy and time are the precious valuables. And even for young people: the time you spend cleaning up downloads are time you can't spend on getting better at whatever you're good at.
  - trotsky 16y ago
    By following this logic you should * never cook for yourself, always eat out * never wash your own car * never cut your own grass ad infinitum If you make a sufficient salary this can be extended to everything you do and you might reach the conclusion that it's best if you do nothing besides working and sleeping. Then you realize how ridiculous the whole argument is.
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      "If you make a sufficient salary this can be extended to everything you do and you might reach the conclusion that it's best if you do nothing besides working and sleeping." working, playing, and sleeping. Fiddling with audio files, washing your car, cutting grass... these are not playing, sleeping, or profitable working. If I had the money, you can bet I would pay for people or tools to take care of pointless, Sisyphean daily chores.
      - snes 16y ago
        And if you had worked more, maybe you would have the money.
      - trotsky 16y ago
        It would seem observationally that rich people often end up relishing doing life's simple tasks after they've spent a time having them all done for them. I think for many first-world people, the more removed they end up being from daily tasks the more unhappy they may find themselves in the end.

hackermom 16y ago

Spot on. This can't be repeated enough: it's not about saving a few bucks, it's about getting your goods in spotless quality, instantly, without hassle. People want ease; instant ease; not a labyrinthal click-fest. Even if you are a seasoned P2Per who does not need many minutes to locate at least one available source of the album in question, it usually takes a while to find a proper AAC or FLAC rip (contra usual MP3 slush), and unless you're into vacuous pop music you're almost always faced with anything but snappy download speeds. $0.99 for a pristine 256kbps AAC track, with no waiting, is a good deal. The iTunes Store isn't a money-making behemoth for no reason.

wladimir 16y ago
I agree completely. After iTunes dropped DRM, I've legally downloaded most of my music: Guaranteed quality, and no need anymore to search through tons of fakes, viruses, to get the songs I want, and then hope someone actually comes online to share them. I 'pirated' because I don't feel like going to a store, spending hours to find music I liked, buying it, then ripping the CD. Or ordering the CD somewhere and impatiently waiting before it arrives... Not because of the cost savings. Let's hope this is a lesson for the movies and software industry as well, if you make it easy for people to get your stuff, in the same or better quality than a pirated version (so, no DRM, annoying restrictions, or difficult download process), they will prefer to get it legally from you.
usingp2p 16y ago
This might be true if you're looking on public sites, but there are very good private music trackers (What, Waffles) and if you have an account on one of those it's completely wrong. Things are well-seeded, download speeds are fast, the selection is huge, and there's almost always a FLAC (or at least a v0 or 320k mp3) version available. (And I don't listen to "vacuous pop music".)
Snoddas 16y ago
Unless you live in another country (say a backwater like Sweden). Then you are told by iTunes: "The item you've requested is not currently available in the Swedish store"

makeramen 16y ago

anyone else have a what.cd account? this is what I see when I search for an album: http://d.pr/OFXu http://d.pr/OFXu you get pretty much any format/bitrate of any song/album you can imagine, most are almost always well seeded.

torpor 16y ago
>anyone else have a what.cd account? Try as I might, I can't work out how to get a new account .. got any clues for me? Does it involve IRC?
cloug 16y ago
seems interesting, do you have any invite ?
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  Giving invites to people you don't know is a bad idea, as you're responsible for them. They have an irc channel for applications; take a look at http://whatinterviewprep.webs.com/ http://whatinterviewprep.webs.com/ .
spindritf 16y ago
Including "perfect" FLAC rips, quality not available on iTunes. And no geographical restrictions (well... almost).

danparsonson 16y ago

And the moral of the story is... outsource! :-)

bound008 16y ago

1.open new tab in google chrome 2. type demonoid hit tab, type the band name followed by discography 3. hit download button. everything else happens automatically. torrent file gets automatically added to Transmission, and when done, the music gets moved into the "Automatically add files to iTunes Folder" and iTunes takes it from there. But don't steal music. Its wrong.

Tichy 16y ago

But how can he buy the music for his wife? iTunes music is still DRMed (owner encoded in the files). Also 2 hours is way overblown.

rb2k_ 16y ago

While I agree that "legal" music downloads are really cheap these days, most of his criticism is just not true if you actually know what you're doing... "scene releases" have a fixed quality scheme (encoding, ID3, ...) and the proper torrent community orftp/usenet server will max out your home connection easily. That being said, if you actually have a regular income, music should not be that big of a problem to buy...

J3L2404 16y ago

I get my music the old fashioned way, I record it off the radio. (via internet)

robryan 16y ago

I think there is a real opportunity for Apple to identify when people have loaded in pirated music to iTunes and try and sell them the legal equivalent.

unicornporn 16y ago

This person has obviously not tried the better specialized torrent sites like what.cd. When browsing through the Queen discography at what the other day I realized it is far better then what iTunes offers me. Releases sorted by catalog number, 24/96 lossless FLAC vinyl rips, you name it. Run the files through MP3Tag with the Discogs "plugin" installed and you've got flawless metadata in seconds.

rick888 16y ago
It's interesting that after all of the people in the pirate community screaming that the cost of songs are "too high" and the quality isn't "good enough" and music has too many "draconian" protection schemes like DRM that piracy is bigger than ever, even when they can get everything they wanted. Why can't people just admit that they pirate because they just want free stuff?
- unicornporn 16y ago
  It might be that some people are screaming that, but I'm not. I'm saying, if you are interested in a multitude of releases for each album to chose from and the technical aspects of digital audio you might be more pleased visiting a private torrent site. They are impressive pieces of collaborative work. I do not judge people buying music from iTunes, nor do I judge people that "pirate" music. Each to his/her own.
  - rick888 16y ago
    "They are impressive pieces of collaborative work. I do not judge people buying music from iTunes, nor do I judge people that "pirate" music. Each to his/her own." I do. Because the people pirating music have pretty much destroyed the music industry. The same is happening to any industry that can be digitized.