You think correctly, trevor

I wasn't talking about stealing, trevor, I was talking about the means of delivering music/movies/news/books via a medium increasingly favored by customers for each of those. iTunes has now sold 10 Billion songs. What peeves the record industry is that they want to sell me an 89¢ plastic disk for $15 with 11 songs I don't want and one I do.

Ah! Now I see what you're saying. My bad. In that case I agree with you. Stupid Record Industry.

(Although I will admit that I personally prefer that 89 cent plastic disc, and before that the analog vinyl disc--the music on it is not data-compressed, comes with already-printed artwork, and does not need to be laboriously transferred to new computers and operating systems every time I upgrade technology. But for those people who prefer legitimate downloaded music, you're completely right, and the dinosaurs in the record industry need to learn that.)

Trevor

Hmm...I'm still mostly agree with my original assertion. I think trying to make all of your money off of recorded music is foolhardy, and I think the industry will have to adjust to a model where artists make more money at venues...

And -- by extension -- actors shouldn't be paid for films, movies or TV shows... just plays and live theater shows. Authors and books? No bread. They must travel the country reading their novels aloud.

:rolleyes:

[my guess is: you're neither a composer nor a performer.]

@trevor: I too have a lot of CDs, but I do transfer them to iTunes because I want to put some of the music on them on my iPod. I often listen to those by plugging the iPod into a Bose Wave Radio's input jack or on a Bekin device for playing on the car radio. Yes, the car and the Bose both have CD players, but don't have the ability to prepare and play a program or to skip songs I don't want to hear.

Having said that, it's clear that we're in the minority (you and I); my 7 grandkids are all big music to iPod downloaders, and to some extent so are their six 40-something parents. My wife, on the other hand, buys CDs and plays them on her car radio or the Wave as is; wouldn't dream of fiddling around with a computer to play music. We still watch DVDs on a player to our wide-screen TV too.

We're old folks, though. We still subscribe to two newspapers which we swap back and forth over coffee in the morning (with a running acerbic commentary between us), and I read the NYTimes online. My son-in-law subscribes to the NYT, Bloomberg Reports, and the WSJ on his Kindle. I too have a Kindle (Christmas present from on offspring), but have so far only downloaded oldies but goodies at low prices because I think $15 for an eBook that really isn't mine to do with as I please is a rip-off, particularly when the soft cover version will cost much less and I can pass it on to someone else or sell it to a used book store. Similarly, I don't read the NYT on the Kindle either -- I consider the subscription too pricy given their free web site -- I'll see how I feel about that after they put up a paywall.

But the pisser for me, tw, is that I've never pirated a movie, music, or eBook and yet because some people do, I have to put up with draconian DRM. If I want the some of the music off a music video like Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival without the video, I've got to jump through hoops to get it even though I own the DVD. It's like the shoe bomber; now I've got to take my shoes off too -- a retired 73 year-old engineering professor must look like a real danger -- next they'll be looking in my underwear.

I'm a teenager and I'm way out of the music fray. In terms of a rat race, I'm a mouse. '70s rock, '80s Christian rock (don't laugh, they're like Metallica), '70s instrumentals, and more Christian music, all on cassette for our 21-year-old car. I can tell you that I buy the albums at full or slightly reduced price in the store or on Amazon.ca or whatever, not off iTunes. My dad and I collect some records (Some!? We have like 100!) and occasionally listen to them. I'm not much for piracy except for the cassettes which are half-ruined with age and quality anyway.

Just to clarify, NovaScotian, I transfer my CDs to my computer, too, and listen to them on my iPod and/or iPhone in my car or at work. But I don't buy music from the iTunes Store, so if I lose or upgrade a computer, I haven't lost anything or have to jump through hoops--I still always have all the original CDs around to do with whatever I need to do with.

Yes, in some airports in Europe and the US they already are looking in your underwear.

I don't like it either--(that's both DRM and invasive airport search techniques)--but that's hardly a surprise. If lots of people break the law in some way, the people who are losing something are going to react with greater restrictions. Go to a convenience store in a bad part of town, and the clerk is behind bullet-proof glass. This makes it less convenient to pay and to shop--you are being negatively impacted because of other people's wrong-doing. DRM is the same.

Trevor

Do you really think this makes DRM and airport searches a necessity. I think these are arrogance and have nothing to do with authors rights or security. And there is a part to scare people in general to keep them obedient. So you are reminded every step that you be watched and procecuted to full extent......whatever.
I feel stressed every time I fly because there are so many thing you have to have in order(passports, tickets, things in the luggage) and if you don't you will be most likely abused by officials. That some very few people brake the law is so convenient excuse to bully others.
Also I rip all my DVD's and remove FBI warning and advertising and regions.

vanakaru, that's a wholly different question, the answer to which is much more complicated than I can put into a forum post. Very briefly, I'll say that yes, I think they are a necessity, but they have to be done right. They are currently being done wrong, and I don't support current music and movie DRM schema nor current airport search policies that I have personally experienced.

What I said, and what I still say, is that it is not a surprise. People steal music ubiquitously on the internet today, so the music rightsholders, or the people tasked with keeping airports safe, react. This should not be a big shock to anybody. That they in general react stupidly and without proper forethought is a different matter.

Trevor

I've bought exactly one tune from iTunes, more or less to try out the process. Similarly, I've bought 3 oldies but goody books from Amazon for my gifted Kindle, but only the kind of stuff you wouldn't find in a book store anyway, e.g., a John Steinbeck collection and some old SciFi novels that don't get reprinted. Normally, I buy several hundred dollars worth of books twice or three times a year when my wife and I are in New England (she does the same). I refuse to pay the huge Canadian markup (e.g. US Price, $6.99, CDN Price $9.99, or US price $9.99, CDN price $11.99, with the exchange rate at $0.94 CDN/USD). Same goes for most music videos, much cheaper in the USA than in Canada. That's not because I'm poor; it's that I have a hair-trigger rip-off aversion.

When was that?
i.e., did you get a 'protected' .m4p file or a 'purchased' .m4a file?
[note: .m4p files are no longer sold at iTunes, since early 2007.]

And anyway, what did you conclude from the experience?

What I conclude from my experience is that it's way too easy to buy stuff. I work on the computer all day so it's only about 60 seconds from impulse to download.

I also think I'm more likely to buy ten albums under ten dollars than one album at seventeen (full price in the AU store).

Re. teenagers and piracy. I read that the people most likely to purchase music are the illegal downloaders, mainly because they are the ones most interested in music.

As a specific example, my brother-in-law's broadband kept exceeding it's download cap and he couldn't understand why. It was his son downloading music.

Now that the son is earning, he is gradually replacing all the music he downloaded (well, the stuff he still likes) with CDs.

I agree with fazstp; much too easy to buy impulsively. My experiment was back when iTunes downloads were still protected files. Didn't like that, so haven’t repeated the process even though they are no longer 'protected'. Perfect example of "You only get one chance to make a first impression".

Your (mis)perception, your loss. :) [works fine for me anyway]

(and, there's a couple of Canadian bands i would never have heard of were it not for iTunes: A.C. Newman, Apostles of Hustle, Black Mountain, Broken Social Scene, The Dears, Death From Above 1979, Faunts, Finger Eleven, The High Dials, The Most Serene Republic, The New Pornographers, Pilot Speed, Stars, The Stills, Thornley, Thousand Foot Crutch, Wolf Parade, . . .)

I totally agree there. It's a great way to find new stuff, either through links in reviews of albums or links in the people who bought this also liked this section or just trawling through the browser columns.

You heard of TFK (and it is 'Krutch') too? Good. I hope you're a fan. I sure am: have you heard 'Fire It Up'?

Actually I'm both a composer and a performer, plus I've worked in a recording studio. Granted, I don't make much money at any of them, but I am familiar with several people who do.

It's interesting to me, just how much this society has the idea of a studio artist entrenched in their thinking. The fact is that most musicians are performance artists. They make a lot of money by going on tour (something that a TV shows or 'live' movies would never do, expenses of moving the sets alone would nix that idea. I don't personally see theatre as being the same thing...)

For a musician (at least a major one, more on that later) it is a perfectly viable option to make a good living from just touring. Take a look at The Who, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Eagles or Paul McCartney. Yes, they still sell albums, but nothing like modern pop acts. Yet they still tour, why? Because you can make a lot of money touring.

All I'm saying is that you can't really compare a book tour with a music tour. The very nature of the medium makes a live tour more viable for musicians than for any other artist.

Quite frankly, the venues have gotten extraordinarily greedy over the last twenty years. They think they can get away with it because artists make money in other places. Unless you're a headliner, it's hard to make decent cash. I think this structure might change because of current market pressures, but we'll see. If making money on albums become difficult venues may have to relent a bit on prices just so they can continue to have shows at their locations... But hey, it's a stretch at best. I might know the artists, but I've only really gotten to know a couple of venue operators, soo....

Sorry... yes: i meant Krutch. I preview tracks at iTunes, and grab whatever sounds good for those brief 30 seconds. The 'Fire It Up' track (which i have) is fun... as are 'Phenomenon', 'Rawkfist' and 'Move'. I'm more old-school though, so my collections from The Guess Who and Rush are relatively more complete.

[since you're into the God-rock thing, check out these USA bands (if you haven't already): Barlow*Girl, Casting Crowns, Deas Vail, Matthew West, Pillar, Skillet and Switchfoot.]

I am not really that fond the ITMS. I use youtube, (begrudgingly myspace - but it is a good source), pandora, and other online sources to find music. Then I go to the band's site and buy directly from them, and I typically try to buy vinyl if they got it.

In my opinion the ITMS is still lacking a few features for me to really want to dive into that. That is a whole different story though.