What do you think of downloading music?

[Pots n Pans]

What are your opinions on this? Are you completely against it? Or are you one of those people who hoovers up so much stuff that you never have time to watch/listen to it all? (Probably best not to mention it if you are - don't want to get this board or yourself into any trouble.) Or are you somewhere in between?

I used to download a lot of stuff, *buuuuuttttt* -

1) I would download more stuff than I could ever watch/listen to - I was the proverbial kid in a candy store!

2) The sound quality ranged from pretty good to absolute garbage - I had never heard reggae sound so thin and sick! Horrible.

3) A lot of files were misnamed or cut out half way through, or were taken from DJ mixes or were in some other way just wrong!

4) Lots of files or sites were riddled with malware, spyware or other general nastiness, and this ended in a computer that was so ill that I had to format the lot and start again. Which is kinda what I deserved - very little honour among thieves, I guess.

I don't download any more, but I am not against it in principle. It just hasn't been done in a way which appeals to me yet. I am willing to pay for downloads, but at the moment the emphasis is on MP3, and I cannot abide the drop in sound quality. And the fact that download sites are run like giant supermarkets doesn't endear them to me either.

I guess that in some weird way I still expect an online music store to be staffed (if that is the right word) by people who know their stuff and have a love of music. Whereas a lot of these sites are still doing things the music industry way of doing things, and have been sucked into the process of carpet bombing (sorry, saturation marketing) whatever nonsense the industry wants them to push. New technology, old approach.

But as I say, I am not against downloads in principle. What's your take on it?

[poio]

http://www.roots-archives.com/forum/rea ... 242,page=1

[ACEtone]

@Pots and Pans
let me be the first to say. Good post. Very clear very concise.
I'm all for dem meself and agree with your appraisal of the stuff that's out there - it ranges from the sublime to the absolutely unlistenable - and all of the encoded music theoretically actually good music. Digitization has a bad name for no good reason but the poor bit rate on offer. They call 190kbps audiophile. Rubbish. Shame on them

I have never downloaded from iTunes or any other online distributor. Bitrate too low to pay that much for. I say this as a producer with stuff available online - do they listen? - certainly not to me.

But I do see an avenue for lossless - or 320kbps mp3 - I would be willing to pay for something that sounds good.
Enuff from me.

Anyone else?
http://www.acetonestudio.com

[bonga]

It's probably because you downloaded from crappy spyware infected p2p networks like kazaa and edonkey...

I've heard stuff that was ripped with 10K turntables/equipment... ( or taken from a soundboard... )
http://www.roots-archives.com/forum/read.php?3,60783

@ ACEtone:
I know some people who rip stuff at 128 kp because it's so extremely rare, they don't want them stuff ending up on fake dubplates, pirate releases, or sites like audiomaxxx

[bonga]

4) Lots of files or sites were riddled with malware, spyware or other general nastiness, and this ended in a computer that was so ill that I had to format the lot and start again. Which is kinda what I deserved - very little honour among thieves, I guess.

> during the last 5 years I've downloaded hundreds of gigs, never found 1 virus on my pc....

[Nugstriker]

I used to download torrents from an amazing site called oink before it got closed down. There was so much music that I would probably never be able to hear or obtain, lps worth hundreds on ebay could be downloaded for free and it was all good quality. For me its not even about the money, I love buying records and listening to them, but the fact is I need to be listening to music as much as possible throughout the day and my B&O system cannot follow me everywhere I go. I think its amazing that a record that may have only been pressed a couple hundred times all the way over in jamaica 20 years ago can make it to a man in NYC.

[ACEtone]

@Bonga
my criticism is of Apple, Napster etc. selling tracks for $0.99 at a bit rate of 196kbps which is not audiophile quality by any stretch of the imagination.
Such bit rate if properly encoded can sound fairly good but knowing that there is a loss of some of the original data in a low bitrate audio file should certainly be a disincentive for people to buy. And rightly so.

Serious listeners such as the Root Archive massive might be generally more open to buying digital audio files if the sound quality were to be guaranteed as close as possible to the original vinyl. Confidence in the product, seen?

People can rip to whatever bit rate they want for their own personal use, but when selling a product it is shameful to sell something that is essentially a pale imitation of the original recorded music. It assumes that the listener/customer/consumer knows no better and will put up with inferior quality. Not a good business model, but it is the one that currently rules.

For general listening I personally consider 128kbps and higher acceptable - the higher the better for serious listening. But I'm not going to spend $0.99 for a track encoded at a casual listening quality level. Get my point?

If they were to change that, people like me might actually put our hands in our pockets and spend real money on virtual music - until then, no way.

[Guest]

What do you think of downloading music?

FREE DOWNLOAD IS BETTER

[stepping razor]

Free download you dont know what you`re getting!

peace

[bonga]

who cares , if it's crap you just delete it...