I guess my days of downloading music illegally are over...

[ahjteam]

...I just got myself Spotify-account. Okay, it doesn't have everything, but that thing also has a lot ot stuff to listen like the latest Lamb of God etc. For those who don't have a clue what it is, its kinda like iTunes, a digital music store where you can buy the songs etc (its in beta phase now and buying songs is not possible), but the trick is that you can listen all of the songs there for free! The trick is that the program has commercials on it which pays for the costs, but I don't really give a fuck about it. Free music of my choise is always nice.

 

[Trevoire520]

Saw a thing on the news about this the other day. Seems like a very good idea and something the record companies should have thought about ages ago!

 

[abyssofdreams]

Yes, I give this concept maybe a year (after beta) before they close the doors again

 

[Trevoire520]

Just downloaded this and it seems great, sound quality is actually pretty decent. They need to get more stuff in the library, but obviously this is still in the beta stages so there will be more to come.

Abyss, why do you think it will be shut down? Seems like a great concept to me. Try before you buy, the company gets money from advertising and everyone gets to listen to music for free. Without being over dramatic I honestly feel this is the future of music distribution.

 

[abyssofdreams]

I'm not saying it is a bad concept or anything.
I just predict that it won't work the way they probably hope it will.
Who knows, I might be wrong but I have my reasons to doubt it

They might get a large user-base but in the end I simply doubt they'd make enough profit to cover the costs.

 

[Gomez]

Hey dude, thanks for this! I'm digging it. Works well in mac osx btw.

 

[Machinated]

been using spotify for a few weeks - fucking awesome.

i have got so many other people using it too (although some of them are people that regularly purchased music of itunes...)

 

[Plankis]

Yeah, spotify is really good. Nothing to complain about there, fast, easy to use, a bit annoying with the commercials but it's free. They are over 1million users now too.

 

[James Murphy]

any "future of music distribution" that doesn't involve me getting to buy a nicely packaged, full resolution, hard copy of the product to put on my shelves and keep forever, invulnerable to hard drive failures and changing media player formats, etc.... can go fuck itself. i wil not pay for vapor.

 

[grywolf627]

I thought I just read yesterday on BBC news that hackers stole a lot of personal information from Spotify? (I didn't read the article, only the headline)

 

[Ermz]

I was under the impression that CDs had a relatively short life span.

 

[Morgan C]

any "future of music distribution" that doesn't involve me getting to buy a nicely packaged, full resolution, hard copy of the product to put on my shelves and keep forever, invulnerable to hard drive failures and changing media player formats, etc.... can go fuck itself. i wil not pay for vapor.

Call me, uh, 'new-fashioned' but I've never really understood that. I mean, if I buy a CD I'll watch any extras, then rip it and never look at the CD again, thats just me :/

And as for paying for 'vapor', you pay for software, plugins, heaps of stuff that is technically 'vapor' and can succumb to all of those things too? Whats the difference?

The car is the only reason I'd ever use a CD post-ripping and I can understand that, anything else.. not really.

 

[Machinated]

I think spotify is great as you can stream the music, and if you like it you can go out and buy it (so you can put it on your ipod etc). I'd love to see it incorporated into itunes, but i guess that would fuck with the itunes store a bit too much.

 

[462studio]

any "future of music distribution" that doesn't involve me getting to buy a nicely packaged, full resolution, hard copy of the product to put on my shelves and keep forever, invulnerable to hard drive failures and changing media player formats, etc.... can go fuck itself. i wil not pay for vapor.

Couldn't agree more. I'd rather stick with CDs until something else better comes along.

 

[James Murphy]

I was under the impression that CDs had a relatively short life span.

i have CDs that i've had for 25 years.... they still play perfectly and show no signs of degradation. of course i take care of my CDs. but show me a hard drive or computer based media format that has lasted or will last 25 years withough breaking or becoming obosolete within a fraction of that time. CDs are even compatible with all but the earliest Blu-Ray players, so their viability is assured for many more years. Ha.... for that matter vinyl was supposed to be obsolete 20 years ago.

 

[Torniojaws]

I was under the impression that CDs had a relatively short life span.

25 years for factory pressed ones. 5 - 15 years for CD-Rs (depending on quality). Though I'm sure the 25 years is just a guess and made when CDs were a new thing. With modern process, I'm sure the factory pressed ones last much longer.

However, one thing has always irked me about CDs: they're so fragile unless you really look after them (which I do, but that's beside the point). Drop a CD even once by accident at a wrong angle and it's gone forever, forget one in the sun for a while and it's toast, keep a CD in your car in the winter and it's done for with the constant change in temperature from around -20 C inside the car when it's parked for 8 hours to whatever the temperature they reach during reading (about 50 C, I guess).

Flash-type storage is the next step in my opinion (though not in the current form, which can only take between 10k to 1M writes). They're far more robust even in adverse conditions, and they have much higher capacity available (and also less capacity, if wanted, to reach lower cost - 1 GB is most likely the choice for audio sticks).

 

[Gomez]

I was under the impression that CDs had a relatively short life span.

You're correct. I have cd's that just don't play anymore - and not due to scratches... fuck knows... long live vinyl.

any "future of music distribution" that doesn't involve me getting to buy a nicely packaged, full resolution, hard copy of the product to put on my shelves and keep forever, invulnerable to hard drive failures and changing media player formats, etc.... can go fuck itself. i wil not pay for vapor.

I'm like James in this respect... but as an artist myself, I see something good could come out of this - imagine a spotify client that you could install say, in your mobile phone... you could listen to a bunch of music for free whilst the artist is still being paid... for those on the move - great.

 

[jacare]

Couldn't agree more. I'd rather stick with CDs until something else better comes along.

I agree. I don't trust a hard drive that can burn anyday to save all my music collection... I'll stick with CDs (listening to MP3 when i'm not at home) as long as they're around.
But I think that this might be a step into a better direction thou (about the file exchange)... (it seems that) at least artists will get paid for their work.

 

[James Murphy]

Call me, uh, 'new-fashioned' but I've never really understood that. I mean, if I buy a CD I'll watch any extras, then rip it and never look at the CD again, thats just me :/

i listen to CDs on my hifi system at home.. nothing beats full quality. i do rip my CDs as well for my iPod and iTunes library.

And as for paying for 'vapor', you pay for software, plugins, heaps of stuff that is technically 'vapor' and can succumb to all of those things too? Whats the difference?

i was hoping someone would say this.... TOTALLY different. software/plug-ins/etc. are tools... tools used to create the hard product. very different concept and use... and those tools are constantly needed to be upgraded, etc, so you have accounts with each vendor you sue software and plugs so you can download updates and buy upgrades, etc.... so really not a valid comparison at all.

 

[James Murphy]

You're correct. I have cd's that just don't play anymore - and not due to scratches... fuck knows... long live vinyl.

yeah, i have some 1500 vinyl as well.. but i guess you either have some CDs that were bad manufacturing to start with, or that were exposed to elements... because i have over 200 CDs that i've had since the mid to late 80's.. and they all play fine... i know, i ripped the all into my iTunes for use on my iPod very recently.