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I agree with the general point you're making about friction, but you're underestimating how quickly and thoroughly free distribution sources have evolved. A 's

I agree with the general point you're making about friction, but you're underestimating how quickly and thoroughly free distribution sources have evolved. A 'seasoned P2Per' already belongs to one or more invitation-only torrent sites where nearly everything you could ever want is available and well-seeded in multiple formats, including FLAC. (One's already been mentioned on this thread, but there are others.) If I were the type of person to steal music, I would log into one of these communities, do a quick search on a pretty decent search engine, throw the .torrent into a Dropbox folder synced with my media server. The media server then would automatically do the downloading / adding to my music library / etc. I hear this is often faster than downloading from iTunes, and completely ad-free. Even better, it doesn't involve iTunes. $0.99 is a hell of a deal if you've never pirated music and don't know where to start, but when faced with paying vs. a bit of hassle, the core P2P community has again and again decided to forego paying and focus their efforts on eliminating the hassle.

hackermom 16y ago
"A 'seasoned P2Per' already belongs to one or more invitation-only torrent sites where nearly everything you could ever want is available and well-seeded in multiple formats, including FLAC. (One's already been mentioned on this thread, but there are others.)" This is only true if you're into pop music from "the big five" labels, or at best looking for some generic "Ibiza X-treme Tribal Goa Trance Collection #392". Now, I know that arguing about taste is pointless, but I still feel like saying this: if you try to get your hands on something remotely sophisticated and with musical substance, you will have a hard time finding it via the scene releases; your best shot is to find it among like-minded people with an artistic mind, and you probably know that comes down to only about three places on the net: Karagarga, Cinema Obscura, and ~drumroll~ The Pirate Bay (the cultural cauldron of the Internet). I'm actually a "scener" (both demo scene and "xvid scene"), and I frequent my share of private trackers, so I got an up-close relation with the available assortment.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  You just need to know the right places to look. I'm a member of a private tracker that has cassette rips of 80s jpop - you probably won't find that on a general music tracker (much less an online store), but it's relatively common for a Japanese-music site. if you try to get your hands on something remotely sophisticated and with musical substance, you will have a hard time finding it via the scene releases I like how you propose that the music the majority of the world finds value in is trash. Anyways, who said you had to get it from release groups? There are plenty of people who are perfectly able to use EAC on a CD they bought.

hackermom 16y ago

"A 'seasoned P2Per' already belongs to one or more invitation-only torrent sites where nearly everything you could ever want is available and well-seeded in multiple formats, including FLAC. (One's already been mentioned on this thread, but there are others.)" This is only true if you're into pop music from "the big five" labels, or at best looking for some generic "Ibiza X-treme Tribal Goa Trance Collection #392". Now, I know that arguing about taste is pointless, but I still feel like saying this: if you try to get your hands on something remotely sophisticated and with musical substance, you will have a hard time finding it via the scene releases; your best shot is to find it among like-minded people with an artistic mind, and you probably know that comes down to only about three places on the net: Karagarga, Cinema Obscura, and ~drumroll~ The Pirate Bay (the cultural cauldron of the Internet). I'm actually a "scener" (both demo scene and "xvid scene"), and I frequent my share of private trackers, so I got an up-close relation with the available assortment.

xiongchiamiov 16y ago
You just need to know the right places to look. I'm a member of a private tracker that has cassette rips of 80s jpop - you probably won't find that on a general music tracker (much less an online store), but it's relatively common for a Japanese-music site. if you try to get your hands on something remotely sophisticated and with musical substance, you will have a hard time finding it via the scene releases I like how you propose that the music the majority of the world finds value in is trash. Anyways, who said you had to get it from release groups? There are plenty of people who are perfectly able to use EAC on a CD they bought.