5 ms·

One thing does suck, though... the elimination of social sharing of bookmarks, music, videos, etc. For example, when Napster was a thing, I started buying 2-5 C

One thing does suck, though... the elimination of social sharing of bookmarks, music, videos, etc. For example, when Napster was a thing, I started buying 2-5 CDs per payday because I was discovering so much great stuff. They they (the record companies) started comparing the sharing of music with Piracy of Ships on the High Sea, and suing customers... and things imploded. F*ck the record companies! Delicio.us was a social bookmarking site - it was an awesome way to discover interesting things because people actually shared their bookmarks, and discovered new ones... then it got killed This trend repeats over and over as too much capital seeks too few resources. 8(

ghaff 4y ago
>Delicio.us was a social bookmarking site - it was an awesome way to discover interesting things because people actually shared their bookmarks, and discovered new ones... then it got killed There are still social bookmarking sites. However: 1. Relatively speaking, very few people use them 2. Even those of us who have been using them since delicio.us mostly don't bother sharing The sharing is probably mostly on Twitter these days.
- gammarator 4y ago
  I use pinboard a lot but have my bookmarks defaulted to private so I don’t have to deal with the mental friction of whether someone would judge me for it. Ironically my Twitter faves are likely much more useful in building a profile of me.
0898 4y ago
I'm always surprised and intrigued when people recall discovering music through Napster. All I remember is using it as a pirate search engine for songs that I already knew I wanted. How did Napster work as a music discovery tool? Obviously there was some aspect I was missing out on.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  Before it got weird, you could look and see all the music a given person was sharing.... and that's how I found some amazing stuff I'd never heard on the mainstream radio stations. I figured it was the right thing to do to actually buy the music, so I was doing that. Somewhere I've got a few hundred CDs on spindles that I bought retail at full price.
  - letitbeirie 4y ago
    If you found someone else on, say, your college network, you could download songs from them faster than you could read their titles.
  - pas 4y ago
    Direct Connect (and later DC++) had a few good years for this :)
nindalf 4y ago
Are you looking for a site where people share interesting links on a variety of subjects? Perhaps we could make it even better if we had high quality discussion of those links. But of course, we should have good moderation of the submissions and comments so folks stay on topic. Maybe we could bootstrap the site by appealing to a small subculture, like “news for hackers”. Yes, if only there was a site like this.
- redmen 4y ago
- tellmelies 4y ago
  wherever that is, this comment won't be found on it.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  I've been on hn for a long time and I like it for what it is. But it doesn't do music discovery and only occasionally does other sorts of discovery. There are plenty of things to miss about the earlier web.
  - pas 4y ago
    subreddits? basically music subreddits are half the usual reposts and the other half is the usual reposts of "recommend me artists/albums/tracks like this" :)
kristopolous 4y ago
It's a different model of consumption. Voting systems are based inherently on popularity. Whether that's direct or whether it's a FoaF operation, such as "those who like x also enjoy y" - it's still a popularity system. All popularity systems centralize and are extremely hostile to divergences and counterintuitive things. It'd be like if you asked the bedeviling Monty Hall problem, took a survey of the most common answer and only presented that one while the correct one gets hidden and downvoted. The centralizing feedback loop is because you're now reinforcing the most common wrong answer as the right one and thus the noise becomes the signal. The failure of these systems is it pushes up those who know how to be popular and not expertise. It regurgitates commonality. There's other ways. You can for instance, take a movie you like, see what studio made it, the director, the whatever - sound engineer, then browse out from there. It's a version of the Monty Hall problem where you go "let's only look at what most mathematicians say". My favorite analogy for this is if you went to a beginner's karate/yoga/physical therapy class on the first day and took a survey of a proper punch/movement and considered the instructor's opinion as an equal vote with the 20 other first day people and went with whatever the plurality was. Or you went to the doctor's office and along with the doctor, surveyed the patients in the waiting room what their opinion of your ailment was. Or a foreign language class and had the students guess a translation and assign the fluent instructor's answer equal weight. No really, that's how we've structured most content curation on the internet. Exactly like that. Naive equal democracy and systems weighted in popularity are fine for general purposes but completely fail for the narrowband where specialized expertise is desired because it occludes expert knowledge systems and networks and swaps it out for popularity systems and tribes.
tomcam 4y ago
> when Napster was a thing, I started buying 2-5 CDs per payday You and no one else. Lars Ulrich was right. Practically speaking it could be that bands‘ doing it all themselves may be an actual improvement, or may be a wash. Hard to tell. at least they have better control over their intellectual property.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > Lars Ulrich was right. Which reminds me of this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeKX2bNP7QM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeKX2bNP7QM In my case, I didn't buy CDs, but I did buy lots of singles. I was probably one of the earlier iTunes customers, and LimeWire and RantRadio were where I found my music.
discardedrefuse 4y ago
> discovering so much great stuff Spotify is doing this for me with their algorithms and playlists. I assume they're based on "other people that listen to this, also listen to this other thing".
nl 4y ago
Pinterest is Del.icio.us for people outside of tech. It's widely used and the behaviors are almost exactly the same as how people used to use Del.icio.us. And Spotify playlist sharing is a very common thing and a popular way for people tio discocver new music.
retcon 4y ago
During the period you mention CD sales grew YOY >10%.

ghaff 4y ago

>Delicio.us was a social bookmarking site - it was an awesome way to discover interesting things because people actually shared their bookmarks, and discovered new ones... then it got killed There are still social bookmarking sites. However: 1. Relatively speaking, very few people use them 2. Even those of us who have been using them since delicio.us mostly don't bother sharing The sharing is probably mostly on Twitter these days.

gammarator 4y ago
I use pinboard a lot but have my bookmarks defaulted to private so I don’t have to deal with the mental friction of whether someone would judge me for it. Ironically my Twitter faves are likely much more useful in building a profile of me.

0898 4y ago

I'm always surprised and intrigued when people recall discovering music through Napster. All I remember is using it as a pirate search engine for songs that I already knew I wanted. How did Napster work as a music discovery tool? Obviously there was some aspect I was missing out on.

mikewarot 4y ago
Before it got weird, you could look and see all the music a given person was sharing.... and that's how I found some amazing stuff I'd never heard on the mainstream radio stations. I figured it was the right thing to do to actually buy the music, so I was doing that. Somewhere I've got a few hundred CDs on spindles that I bought retail at full price.
- letitbeirie 4y ago
  If you found someone else on, say, your college network, you could download songs from them faster than you could read their titles.
- pas 4y ago
  Direct Connect (and later DC++) had a few good years for this :)

nindalf 4y ago

Are you looking for a site where people share interesting links on a variety of subjects? Perhaps we could make it even better if we had high quality discussion of those links. But of course, we should have good moderation of the submissions and comments so folks stay on topic. Maybe we could bootstrap the site by appealing to a small subculture, like “news for hackers”. Yes, if only there was a site like this.

redmen 4y ago
tellmelies 4y ago
wherever that is, this comment won't be found on it.
joe_the_user 4y ago
I've been on hn for a long time and I like it for what it is. But it doesn't do music discovery and only occasionally does other sorts of discovery. There are plenty of things to miss about the earlier web.
- pas 4y ago
  subreddits? basically music subreddits are half the usual reposts and the other half is the usual reposts of "recommend me artists/albums/tracks like this" :)

kristopolous 4y ago

It's a different model of consumption. Voting systems are based inherently on popularity. Whether that's direct or whether it's a FoaF operation, such as "those who like x also enjoy y" - it's still a popularity system. All popularity systems centralize and are extremely hostile to divergences and counterintuitive things. It'd be like if you asked the bedeviling Monty Hall problem, took a survey of the most common answer and only presented that one while the correct one gets hidden and downvoted. The centralizing feedback loop is because you're now reinforcing the most common wrong answer as the right one and thus the noise becomes the signal. The failure of these systems is it pushes up those who know how to be popular and not expertise. It regurgitates commonality. There's other ways. You can for instance, take a movie you like, see what studio made it, the director, the whatever - sound engineer, then browse out from there. It's a version of the Monty Hall problem where you go "let's only look at what most mathematicians say". My favorite analogy for this is if you went to a beginner's karate/yoga/physical therapy class on the first day and took a survey of a proper punch/movement and considered the instructor's opinion as an equal vote with the 20 other first day people and went with whatever the plurality was. Or you went to the doctor's office and along with the doctor, surveyed the patients in the waiting room what their opinion of your ailment was. Or a foreign language class and had the students guess a translation and assign the fluent instructor's answer equal weight. No really, that's how we've structured most content curation on the internet. Exactly like that. Naive equal democracy and systems weighted in popularity are fine for general purposes but completely fail for the narrowband where specialized expertise is desired because it occludes expert knowledge systems and networks and swaps it out for popularity systems and tribes.

tomcam 4y ago

> when Napster was a thing, I started buying 2-5 CDs per payday You and no one else. Lars Ulrich was right. Practically speaking it could be that bands‘ doing it all themselves may be an actual improvement, or may be a wash. Hard to tell. at least they have better control over their intellectual property.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> Lars Ulrich was right. Which reminds me of this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeKX2bNP7QM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeKX2bNP7QM In my case, I didn't buy CDs, but I did buy lots of singles. I was probably one of the earlier iTunes customers, and LimeWire and RantRadio were where I found my music.

discardedrefuse 4y ago

> discovering so much great stuff Spotify is doing this for me with their algorithms and playlists. I assume they're based on "other people that listen to this, also listen to this other thing".

nl 4y ago

Pinterest is Del.icio.us for people outside of tech. It's widely used and the behaviors are almost exactly the same as how people used to use Del.icio.us. And Spotify playlist sharing is a very common thing and a popular way for people tio discocver new music.

retcon 4y ago

During the period you mention CD sales grew YOY >10%.