although they usually only make them for the hit songs, so I guess they wouldn't be able to predict that.

Heh, you think todays artists don't know their hits from their filler before the album is released?

Most hits you hear on the radio are manufactured, I'm afraid. Carefully and methodically. By your own example: The music videos are always made in advance, to coincide with the album's release, and the hits will get the high-budget treatment for the video. It's a giant marketing machine, and the videos are the TV commercials for the album.

There are lots of exceptions, of course. There are plenty of artists who make committed albums rather than manufactured hit/filler packages. But even those artists know which songs will "make it" and which ones won't. All artists know what their "A" material is.

___________
Tony Fabris

I still maintain that you are missing the fact that NO artist is going to create their own album that has 1000 songs on it. Just think of the recording careers of ANY artist. NONE have recorded 1000 songs. Probably not even Madonna.

You're still missing the point. Artists don't create albums, record companies do. And record companies have access to ALL their musicians music and that's certainly more than 1000 songs. "Just think of the recording careers of " ALL ARTISTS in a recording company.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but I'm willing to bet that you aren't that percentage of people who use Napster and still bought the CDs, are you? I am, and I never even used Napster.

I'm not sure what your analogy refers to, I've never used Napster ever. I don't have a computer at home, and am firewalled. Sorry bud, but an argument stating that it would be great to pay only for songs you like is not related to Napster. I've never used Napster but I suspect Napster is mostly used for music piracy and doesn't have a system in which you pay for items am I correct?

I think artists DO want to be heard and want to be paid. Is this jaded? Nope, it is reality! Find me an popular, respected artist that DOES NOT want to be heard and doesn't want to be paid. >:)

Ok, see if you can tell me the difference between these two scenarios:

Log onto the Internet, browse through a record company listing and pay for 4 songs by your favorite musician, then wait 4 hours to download the songs, then listen to them?

Contrast that to browsing through the Internet, looking at a record company listing, and then purchasing 4 songs by an artist and listening to the music right away?

What would you prefer? In both cases you can get the song lyrics online, the album cover online, all of that?

Calvin

Yep.

Calvin

Ok, you got me Tony! That certainly is a powerful argument against.

OTOH -- these days, the point of encryption and data security is not to make things so secure no hackers will crack through -- but to make the process so annoying and difficult to crack through that no one will bother. 128 bit encryption is not undefeatable, but it is complex enough that nobody is going to reasonably bother for a very long time. It IS the basis of nearly all the e-commerce on the net now, but the idea is to make it so annoying to bust through it few people will bother and so far that's held true.

Calvin

Calvin

Does anyone remember those Sam Goody music stores a 10 or 15 years ago? They used to sell individual songs. They had a vending machine you pick out the songs you want, and the machine will record those songs onto a tape and it'll pop right out. :) And it was cheap! Comes out to a couple of dollars per tape.

Okay, I'm not going to say much else here, because you aren't understanding my points and what I am arguing against.

The Napster part wasn't an analogy. I was saying that you don't seem to be the type of person who listens to any whole albums. I'd say that I enjoy and listen to about 95% of all the songs I own, and that's why I buy albums.

You're still missing the point. Artists don't create albums, record companies do. And record companies have access to ALL their musicians music and that's certainly more than 1000 songs. "Just think of the recording careers of " ALL ARTISTS in a recording company.

You see, I was talking about one album by an artist. This was a completely separate point from your packaging idea, and I was saying that because you seemed to be saying that with more storage space, an artist could conceiveably put 1000 songs on one CD. I was saying that nobody would do this for obvious reasons. That was COMPLETELY separate from the multiple artist database idea.


As for that, my point was simply that you would still have to pay alot for each song you wanted to buy, because the money isn't spent on the packaging and shipping of the CD's, it's spent on the executives.

I totally understand that there are people who don't want the big clunky album with filler that they know they only want a couple songs for. My point of view on that is that if I only like 1 song someone puts out, the artist is a waste of my time because they're either a one-hit-wonder or they don't care enough to make good music. But that's my opinion, and I know it sounds a bit crazy.

I only considered your response to sound slightly jaded because you seemed to imply that the only reason anyone and everyone creates music is to get paid. I'm sorry, but you are just plain wrong about that.

DiGNAN

Most hits you hear on the radio are manufactured, I'm afraid. Carefully and methodically. By your own example: The music videos are always made in advance, to coincide with the album's release, and the hits will get the high-budget treatment for the video. It's a giant marketing machine, and the videos are the TV commercials for the album.

Okay, sadly I agree with you in the majority. I was forgetting that I don't listen to "popular" music anymore. I definitely think that groups like the backdoor boys and and all the rest are complete marketing and record company tools, and don't have any control over what they do. Then again, do I feel sorry for them? Can't say I do. And in these cases I'm astonished that these groups can have singles before the album comes out. It boggles my mind.

There are lots of exceptions, of course. There are plenty of artists who make committed albums rather than manufactured hit/filler packages. But even those artists know which songs will "make it" and which ones won't. All artists know what their "A" material is.

This is true, usually, but sometimes...just sometimes...in a blue moon...artists actually wait for input on which songs their listening public will like and enjoy.

DiGNAN

128 bit encryption is not undefeatable, but it is complex enough that nobody is going to reasonably bother for a very long time. It IS the basis of nearly all the e-commerce on the net now, but the idea is to make it so annoying to bust through it few people will bother and so far that's held true.

Although the concept you just stated is fundamentally correct and applies to copy protection as well as e-commerce ("encryption can be cracked, the question is how much trouble will the hackers go to"), there is a big difference between e-commerce encryption and CD copy protection/unlocking.

E-commerce encryption is only designed to prevent eavesdropping on the in-transit data stream, and it depends upon each transaction being unique and having hidden keys generated at both ends. It's useless if you have access to the machine at one end or the other.

CD copy protection/unlocking, on the other hand, has all the necessary data, code, and keys on the client machine all at once (at least at some point during the transaction), and has a fixed (non-unique) encryption for every session. This makes all sorts of hacks possible, from reverse-engineering to brute-force decryption.

___________
Tony Fabris

It IS the basis of nearly all the e-commerce on the net now

Really? I thought it was porn

DiGNAN

All I can say here is that my argument is consistent all the way through each of the posts. Your argument is self serving, and I am not arguing what you are arguing. You are simply talking about something not at all related to what I'm talking about, in this way, you're missing my point.

Also when did I say the ONLY reason anyone and everyone creates music is to get paid? I never said that, ever. I suppose I can argue your way:

You see, I was talking about consequences of raising the bandwidth ceiling, the desires of artists and albums is a completely separate point from your album theory, and I was saying that because you seemed to be saying that no artist will ever want any money because they produce music for the good of all mankind and the happy shininess within them that drives them to sign contracts with recording companies--of course, you're still missing the point--artists blah blah, and as for that, my point was simply because since blah blah blah executives still want money they will get it and that I understand that there are people who don't want single songs since most people such as you want 95% of music on albums, so in short, it's better to buy full albums? I suppose. But that's only an opinion, and it does sound a bit crazy. blah.

Calvin "clipping and quoting DiGNAN out of context in order to create a run on sentence"

Even porn uses ssl.

Calvin

CD copy protection/unlocking, on the other hand, has all the necessary data, code, and keys on the client machine all at once (at least at some point during the transaction), and has a fixed (non-unique) encryption for every session. This makes all sorts of hacks possible, from reverse-engineering to brute-force decryption.

I'm no privacy expert here, but I won't rule out a method :) -- for example, you assume all the necessary data, code and keys are on the client machine all at once. What if some of the necessary data, code and keys are on the client machine? What if NONE of the necessary code and keys are there? These are rhetorical because I don't know the answer, and I don't doubt a system can be put together that either cost wise, it would be too expensive to bother picking the locks or cost wise, people can just very cheaply buy personalized keys outright.

Did you see that movie Gone in 60 seconds? How come people just don't built a manufacturing plant (or get in the know with someboyd at one) and obtain master keys to cars and steal them at will? Surely some people can and do, but yet people continue to buy and sell cars right? I think a lot of the 2000 and 2001 generation cars have interesting features in them like chips and extra notches and odd shapes, none of which are beyond the technology to duplicate but it's such a pain in the $*&( to do it that people don't bother.

Calvin

Artists will not be selling a CD with 10 songs on it.

This is what I've mostly been arguing about, and based on what you've said afterwards, I'm guessing that you didn't word this correctly for the point you were making. I gathered from this statement that you thought an artist would release a single album with a greater number of songs just because it was possible.

This is what you said, and this is what I've been arguing about.

And how are my arguments self-serving, exactly?

DiGNAN

Murray, remember my old luggable Amstrad PPC640? With a whole 640KB of memory, two 720kb drives and a 2400baud modem? I optimised the way that thing loaded stuff into memory and its performance (faster video BIOS replacer programs and memory timing tweakers...) until it creaked.

And you're talking about Andrew's C64, aren't you?

*laughs* Those were the days...

I heard an interesting opinion that kids these days don't know about debugging and problem solving the way we used to. When all you have to do to get a playstation working is throw in the CD, what would they know of the tricks of debugging cable connections, floppy disk firmware and memory usage? Or POKEs to run cheats on games...

They don't know what they're missing ... eh, altman?

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

I just figured out the ultimate use for this technology!

Not for mass/easy distribution...
Not because of "not enough space" problems...

AHA!

For PaulWay to make and store a really big mix!

Kureg

It seems to me that you have a particular statement to drive home, however, your statement is not a valid argument against my argument but is instead, a statement of its very own. However, by reading my argument and reading things that I never said, or intended to create a different argument to make your statement clearer, you're effectively serving yourself and not arguing my original line of logic. For example:

This is what I've mostly been arguing about, and based on what you've said afterwards, I'm guessing that you didn't word this correctly for the point you were making. I gathered from this statement that you thought an artist would release a single album with a greater number of songs just because it was possible.

Your statement above seems to imply that at some point I stated that artists would want to release a single album with 10,000 songs say. However, if you check all the posts I made in this thread, I never, ever, EVER stated this. You invented this in order to serve your own statement, hence it is a self serving argument. I'll imagine that every statement I made about releasing a uber-CD will also have "record company" nearby. Also I used uber-CD to describe the concept in the beginning to emphasize that it is not a single cd, a single release or album by a single artist but rather a higher order CD that encompasses many other CD's (hence, uber-CD).

Calvin "annoying, aren't I?"

Are you not reading my posts? Here, I'll make it simple.

Again, here is what I quoted from you:

Artists will not be selling a CD with 10 songs on it.

What I'm saying is: "Yes they will"

It's that simple.

DiGNAN

Hell, it doesn't matter. The record industry isn't going to change anything quickly. Even if they could do this tomorrow, it would probably be 10 years before they changed anything--if at all! Hell, we all remember how long it took for the cassette->CD changeover. Changing technology in a non-technology-related business is probably the slowest process on earth (next to all those events in Geography that Toby knows so much about ).

I thought this cartoon was fairly appropriate for the discussion:



DiGNAN

next to all those events in Geography that Toby knows so much about

Yeah, and Geology, too.

___________
Tony Fabris

D'oh!!

DiGNAN

Sorry, I just had that on the brain. I just had breakfast with my mom at her work this morning. She works at National Geographic.

DiGNAN

;)

Calvin "made you look"