OiNK Raided and Owner Arrested.

[zioxide]

What's that got to do with the issue? If you want quality and to help the artists and the infrastructure that supports them, you buy the CD and rip it to lossless, like I do.

And your dad's friend sounds exactly like a cheapskate. Just because someone buys dozens of CDs a year, doesn't excuse anyone at all...

Umm, how exactly is a cheapskate? He buys the album, and then downloads an EAC secure rip in flac to have a perfect lossless copy. That's the same exact thing as buying an album, and then ripping it yourself using EAC, except you save time. There's a lot more to ripping a good lossless rip than opening iTunes and hitting import to alac. iTunes doesn't check for drive offsets, doesn't do secure error checking, etc.

 

[Fuchal]

RIAA-backed CD? You don't seem to know what the RIAA is or what its purpose is... any legit file released from a major label, regardless of where you get it from, will have been produced by people that are members of the RIAA.

And as for the people that say they always buy the merchandise of artists at shows, I don't believe them, particularly as the number of bands currently touring and the venues they play is nowhere the number of files that people download...

It's all just hollow justification for greed and selfishness.

I know what the RIAA is. I won't buy major label CDs for their rip off $16 prices. I will buy CDs from independent artists on sites like CD Baby, but I'll also buy some major label artist albums from itunes or amazon for example, because the prices are more reasonable. (Apple gets some cred and the major labels hate that iTunes does so well, so its win-win)

If the artist is small or up and coming, they basically get no profit from me buying their cd, so why bother. I buy merch because its worth it to me much more than a CD I'll never use that funds men in fancy suits. They actually make a good portion of cash from fans buying this stuff. I get shirts that I wear all the time and various other great items. Why would I lie that I buy merch? Maybe for the same reason that people lie about how downloading music is killing music artists. The Arctic Monkeys got their break from music downloads, and countless other small acts love the exposure they get.

In fact, a growing number of live shows I've seen have had the artists telling the crowd how corrupt the music industry is and how we should download their music. (Metric being the most recent I've been to, NIN for others)

When the artists tell me that buying CDs is screwing them, I listen. Live music is more popular now than it ever has been and there is no shortage of touring.

 

[NoOneButMe]

What's that got to do with the issue? If you want quality and to help the artists and the infrastructure that supports them, you buy the CD and rip it to lossless, like I do.

And your friend's dad sounds exactly like a cheapskate. Just because someone buys dozens of CDs a year, doesn't excuse anyone at all...

Quality is a potential reason why 200,000+ people turned to Oink, Allofmp3, and other sites that the RIAA doesn't endorse.

The 'infrastructure' is broken and a relic of the 70's and 80's when technology for music wasn't mass-produced. Open your eyes - look at modern times. An artist doesnt need to go to an expensive studio to record an album. They don't need to burn thousands of copies of their cd to get a hit. All they need is a $250 computer, a microphone, and an internet connection. The paradigm for music isn't the same as it was when you were growing up (I'm assuming you're not a teenager, pardon me if I'm guessing wrong)

How is it wrong to download a cd that you already own? You're not prohibited from watching a movie on TV if you own the DVD (Or VHS or Betamax or Laserdisc) of it, are you?

As for the Walmart/Best Buy thing? I know a dozen bands where I'd love to buy their cd's. But i dont have the money to spend $40+ (As listed on amazon) per cd (Excluding shipping and tax) to import it from Europe.

 

[JNB]

Sounds like it's time for an explanation of long-tail economics...

 

[Sdashiki]

I dont know of a better place than oink to have learned about new artists.

Downloading, piracy and all that baggage aside, it was a great searchable site.

I dont know how many artists i discovered by looking for a band I already liked and clicking "other people are also downloading these files" and see whats there.

Id then goto iTMS or myspace and give a listen to this newly discovered band.

there is absolutely NO FRIGGEN WAY i would ever have even heard, learned, or seen these bands if it wasnt for places like oink.

so, who is the biggest loser here?

the artists who are missing new fans everyday

the listeners who are missing new music everyday

 

[Fuchal]

I dont know of a better place than oink to have learned about new artists.

Downloading, piracy and all that baggage aside, it was a great searchable site.

I dont know how many artists i discovered by looking for a band I already liked and clicking "other people are also downloading these files" and see whats there.

Id then goto iTMS or myspace and give a listen to this newly discovered band.

there is absolutely NO FRIGGEN WAY i would ever have even heard, learned, or seen these bands if it wasnt for places like oink.

so, who is the biggest loser here?

the artists who are missing new fans everyday

the listeners who are missing new music everyday

You have said everything that needs to be said.

 

[yg17]

You have said everything that needs to be said.

Agreed.

Although I have a feeling OiNK will be back up. Raids weren't enough to stop The Pirate Bay, I'm sure the OiNK staff has planned for this

 

[Sdashiki]

I wouldnt be the least bit surprised if eventually artists use sites like Oink as they do myspace...

a free place to distribute your stuff to a wider audience than you could ever reach under the "protection" of the music industry.


Moment of silence...

no wait, better yet, no silence...


Moment of crackling bacon smells and sounds!

 

[Blue Velvet]

Umm, how exactly is a cheapskate? He buys the album, and then downloads an EAC secure rip in flac to have a perfect lossless copy. That's the same exact thing as buying an album, and then ripping it yourself using EAC, except you save time. There's a lot more to ripping a good lossless rip than opening iTunes and hitting import to alac. iTunes doesn't check for drive offsets, doesn't do secure error checking, etc.

To use this purported example as an example of how and why 99% of people who torrent albums are justified in what they do is ridiculously far-fetched and is virtually unworthy of reply.

When the artists tell me that buying CDs is screwing them, I listen. Live music is more popular now than it ever has been and there is no shortage of touring.

If you think the industry is about men in fancy suits, then you know less than you pretend. And when others within the entire production chain tell you that you're screwing them? And there are a huge number of artists that don't tour at all.

All they need is a $250 computer, a microphone, and an internet connection.

Yeah, right. Having some experience in audio production, you're not kidding me or anyone else... but if you want to listen to music recorded like that and then ensure you have some mythical flawless rip, you're having a laugh.

And you know where I hear of new stuff? Reading reviews, following artists's sites, signing up to alerts, and streaming, not torrenting. Using torrenting as a reason for learning about new music; this is all an excuse for laziness and cheapness and I don't really have a problem when people admit that.

It's the people who try to jump through convoluted and dubious moral hoops to justify their actions... sticking it to the man etc. People who have never created a single thing of value in their life and also rely on it to make a living.

As for small acts giving away their first efforts as loss-leaders to establish exposure, the next time any of you produce a creative work, piece of software, whatever and rely on its income... and are happy to see it freely traded without your permission, come back to this thread and tell us how you're feeling, OK?

 

[zioxide]

I wouldnt be the least bit surprised if eventually artists use sites like Oink as they do myspace...

a free place to distribute your stuff to a wider audience than you could ever reach under the "protection" of the music industry.

Well like people said above, many artists are realizing that the music industry is ****.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5iHaV0dP4

Trent Reznor of NIN talking telling people to steal the album because the record company was "charging the people of Australia extra because they thought they would pay it"

A month later, the record company let NIN out of their contract, and their next album is going to be freely distributed on the internet (probably on TPB). Trent even released the garageband tracks for their latest album on TPB.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Agreed.

Although I have a feeling OiNK will be back up. Raids weren't enough to stop The Pirate Bay, I'm sure the OiNK staff has planned for this

Strange wasn't it?
First the Swedish police raided all of TPB's servers, and stupendously some more servers which didn't belong to TPB.... and now they're bigger than ever.

If OINK comes back, they will probably be bigger than ever too. What more media attention do they want?

OINK's server was stationed in Amsterdam, thus the Dutch police raided it, but the admin was in the UK. I wonder what the outcome of the trial will be...

As for the piracy vs. availability discussion...

Piracy is illegal.... But, the music industry should be asking themselves why so many people take so many risks to be able to acquire the music they want.
IMO it is not just a cash issue: as so many have said before, you like to try before you buy. The iTMS does not have enough content to satisfy all.
I think there are lessons to be learned. Apple did by learning at least one lesson:
People want to be able to get hold of music just by simply clicking.

But people also want to be able to get hold of everything, and not just what is "in store".
Why can't the music industry find a way to do this? You know, something like a 1 minute streamed sample of every song?

 

[threedaysatsea]

hi there! i am a person who creates things and while i don't *rely* on the income from their sales, it does support me about 25%.
i love the sharing of music, art, movies, whathaveyou. if it gets more people listening/viewing, there's a better chance someone will pay for it, instead of no one, when you have virtually no audience.

people who have never heard your music, nor heard of you, will probably not drop sixteen bucks on your cd. people do not like/cannot afford to be throwing money around. i know artists who saw their work distributed through file sharing sites, and, while initially upset, end up being very pleased with the increased exposure.

 

[Sharewaredemon]

Blue Velvet is really making some strong points, torrents aren't the only way to find out about new stuff. Although that was the only way I did it for the longest time (from OiNK only).

The thing is, paying for music, and supporting the artists is really one thing I'm interested in. As a student with a smaller income, I would prefer not to buy all the music I consume, as I really like music. One thing I'm anxious for is to be done school, have a career, and buy all my music.

BUT I am in the same boat as the people who don't like the industry. Paying 16 dollars or more for music is really unreasonable for me, whether I can afford it or not. ITMS has it right with 10 bucks for an album, and I used that a lot prior to OiNK. One thing I plan on doing this year, is "buying" (by sending money to 10 bands) my 10 favourite CDs that were released this year, for 10 dollars, the same price as a ITMS purchase, but instead of the band getting barely anything, they are getting it all.

The year after I will expand it to 20 bands.

One interesting thing about music downloading, especially in large amounts, is that you don't realise that for the most part you don't REALLY like a lot of the stuff you get, on over half the stuff I get, my playcount is under 15 for the album. So it really shows that there are between 10 and 20 albums that I really listen to each year.

So my long winded post ends like this - it's too bad OiNK is down, but I would never say that downloading music is morally upstanding.


EDIT: One thing I really feel the music industry needs to do as MacsRgr8 suggested, is re-evaluate how the distribute music, and the amount of money they want to get out of it. One thing, is that with the internet, and social networking sites (last fm, myspace etc) music labels can make a lot buzz without spending all the money they do on advertising.

 

[Fuchal]

If you think the industry is about men in fancy suits, then you know less than you pretend. And when others within the entire production chain tell you that you're screwing them? And there are a huge number of artists that don't tour at all.

As much as I actually do understand the entire production chain, I care little about the others in the production chain, as they are not making the music that I listen to.

Today's bands are very capable of recording and mixing an album themselves, or hiring someone to do production or mastering. Hell, many of the great bands of the 1990s and 2000s recorded their albums in their homes, and it sounds great to me.

It's when you spend the dollars to produce and advertise no-talent crap into teen superstars that all the money in the industry is wasted. When you have talent you don't need to pour tens of thousands of dollars into production. Most people are in it for the music, not for the mixing, which is generally terrible and clipped to hell anyway.

Anyway, theres no point arguing about this because neither of us are going to change our minds. Obviously from what I've said, all the bands I listen to tour tremendously, and I support them as they do. It is a rare occasion when they are NOT on tour.

 

[antdgar]

I wondered why Oink was down... oh well =(

and just when the leopard torrent was uploaded.....

 

[NoOneButMe]

Yeah, right. Having some experience in audio production, you're not kidding me or anyone else... but if you want to listen to music recorded like that and then ensure you have some mythical flawless rip, you're having a laugh.

And you know where I hear of new stuff? Reading reviews, following artists's sites, signing up to alerts, and streaming, not torrenting. Using torrenting as a reason for learning about new music; this is all an excuse for laziness and cheapness and I don't really have a problem when people admit that.

It's the people who try to jump through convoluted and dubious moral hoops to justify their actions... sticking it to the man etc. People who have never created a single thing of value in their life and also rely on it to make a living.

As for small acts giving away their first efforts as loss-leaders to establish exposure, the next time any of you produce a creative work, piece of software, whatever and rely on its income... and are happy to see it freely traded without your permission, come back to this thread and tell us how you're feeling, OK?

Are you saying it's not possible for me to go out, spend $250 on a computer and $25 on a mic, and record myself playing something and upload it? It's not difficult to get to a quiet area and play a song for 3-4 minutes 🙄 Likewise, using tools such as Audacity to clean the music up and make it sound better isn't to difficult if you know how to use the tools. Will it sound as good as if i spent thousands and thousands of dollars on ultra-high end audio recording equipment? Probably not. But it'll sound as good as if i had a V0 rip from a CD.

Guess what: I read reviews, i follow artists sites and get alerts. I do all that. Yet i still want to hear the album before i buy it. Know why? Because when something costs $15+ (excluding tax), I want to make sure it's worth spending my money on it before i do so. And $15 is assuming it's a modern pop cd. If i want to import something from Europe (Where its much less likely i'd hear about a band through a review / another artist), it's even more expensive.

Look at Open Source software if you want to see stuff happily and freely traded. Samba (Share files with a windows computer from Mac's), ipfw (OS X's firewall), Apache (Webserver OS X has running), cups (You like printing stuff, dont you?), viewing images (libpng/jpeg/tiff are open-source) and more - http://www.apple.com/opensource/ for a list of Open Source - "Freely traded creative works" that authors happily watch being used and traded - and someone else making a profit with. And these people are the creative one's. The innovators.

 

[nbs2]

To use this purported example as an example of how and why 99% of people who torrent albums are justified in what they do is ridiculously far-fetched and is virtually unworthy of reply.

I don't see how it is "ridiculously far-fetched" as long as more than 0% of the people are doing it. I have CDs that iT just won't rip properly. I'm not an expert and I don't even know the proper terms for the problems - I've had clicks, static, and a CD that just won't read. I don't need high quality rips, but even I was annoyed. What allofmp3 did for me was provide a ripping service without the hassle of sorting through poor pirate rips on sharing sites (what the iTMS was designed to do, but cutting out the buying the CD first and just getting the file already "ripped"). Would I have paid someone $1 or 2 to rip my CDs if they had the equipment to keep it from sounding like crap? Yes - same deal.

Do I expect that everybody operates the same way? No. I know few people that do what I do. But, I still do it - and I see no difference between my actions and those of the guy down the street that pays little Jenny $50 to rip his music collection into iTunes for him.

 

[Fuchal]

Are you saying it's not possible for me to go out, spend $250 on a computer and $25 on a mic, and record myself playing something and upload it? It's not difficult to get to a quiet area and play a song for 3-4 minutes 🙄 Likewise, using tools such as Audacity to clean the music up and make it sound better isn't to difficult if you know how to use the tools. Will it sound as good as if i spent thousands and thousands of dollars on ultra-high end audio recording equipment? Probably not. But it'll sound as good as if i had a V0 rip from a CD.

Guess what: I read reviews, i follow artists sites and get alerts. I do all that. Yet i still want to hear the album before i buy it. Know why? Because when something costs $15+ (excluding tax), I want to make sure it's worth spending my money on it before i do so. And $15 is assuming it's a modern pop cd. If i want to import something from Europe (Where its much less likely i'd hear about a band through a review / another artist), it's even more expensive.

Look at Open Source software if you want to see stuff happily and freely traded. Samba (Share files with a windows computer from Mac's), ipfw (OS X's firewall), Apache (Webserver OS X has running), cups (You like printing stuff, dont you?) and more - http://www.apple.com/opensource/ for a list of Open Source - "Freely traded creative works" that authors happily watch being used and traded - and someone else making a profit with. And these people are the creative one's. The innovators.

If you used that mic to record separate tracks at a time and then mix them you could easily make a presentable piece of music that the majority could never tell was not done in a studio. I've done it plenty of times. 🙂

Sure, it may not be produced "correctly", but even the people in charge of doing that don't produce correctly. The loudness war has ruined CD mastering forever.

So, in some ways it will sound better!

 

[Blue Velvet]

It's when you spend the dollars to produce and advertise no-talent crap into teen superstars that all the money in the industry is wasted.

I wouldn't know. Or care... I don't buy music like that.

And a production chain is essential for most artists. If you're the White Stripes, sure get some geezer in East London with an 1 inch, 8 track... but you still need the bloke who knows how to run the equipment, the people that know how to master, the people that carry Meg's kit, etc. Plus a manager and admin that's going to take care of your bookings and bail you out when you're caught with some weed in Norway. 😉

Music is an industry; unless you're a singer-songwriter with just a guitar or similar instrument and you're busking, you're going to need support staff of some sort. These things don't come out of thin air.

 

[Kernow]

If you used that mic to record separate tracks at a time and then mix them you could easily make a presentable piece of music that the majority could never tell was not done in a studio. I've done it plenty of times. 🙂

Links to audio files or it didn't happen 😛

 

[Fuchal]

I wouldn't know. Or care... I don't buy music like that.

And a production chain is essential for most artists. If you're the White Stripes, sure get some geezer in East London with an 1 inch, 8 track... but you still need the bloke who knows how to run the equipment, the people that know how to master, the people that carry Meg's kit, etc. Plus a manager and admin that's going to take care of your bookings and bail you out when you're caught with some weed in Norway. 😉

Music is an industry; unless you're a singer-songwriter with just a guitar or similar instrument and you're busking, you're going to need support staff of some sort. These things don't come out of thin air.

They will all get paid through touring. If they do their job correctly (manage and book, carry things on stage) then they get paid as a result of their direct efforts.

If you can't attract people to your shows or interest people in your music, then you probably aren't a good musician to begin with.

 

[Blue Velvet]

What allofmp3 did for me was provide a ripping service without the hassle of sorting through poor pirate rips on sharing sites (what the iTMS was designed to do, but cutting out the buying the CD first and just getting the file already "ripped").

No, what allofmp3 did for you was to release material that they did not hold the copyright for and filter the money away into the hands of unaccountable people in Russia, entirely unconnected with the artists. Don't tell me that you're that naive about allofmp3... that you're entirely happy releasing our credit card details to people like that says a lot.

 

[AJ Muni]

This is truly a sad day for the community. For those who were active members, we all knew what a tight and great community it was. Anyone know the irc channel?

 

[Blue Velvet]

They will all get paid through touring, not from cd sales. The money spent on cds goes somewhere, and it goes back into the money-making artists like britney spears to turn a higher profit.

No, in fact it's the reverse that happens. Britney Spears and others of her ilk subsidise all the one-hit wonders and smalller artists that fail for other reasons. And you just don't get it; not all acts tour, many of them are not guys with guitars. Not all acts are even still together but they rely on residual payments from sales.

 

[Fuchal]

No, in fact it's the reverse that happens. Britney Spears and others of her ilk subsidise all the one-hit wonders and smalller artists that fail for other reasons. And you just don't get it; not all acts tour, many of them are not guys with guitars. Not all acts are even still together but they rely on residual payments from sales.

They don't need to pay people to book or carry things, then. I'm not saying that CDs should go away, I'm saying the infrastructure in place right now to distribute music is completely wrong and corrupt, and it should be streamlined to put the artist & co in the forefront and not corporate management.

Music can sell itself, if it's good. If it's bad, it needs brainwashing and repeated exposure to sell. In that case, it shouldn't be sold. But it is.

As much as artists should receive royalties, acts that aren't even a group anymore might want to think about getting a job like normal people if they are having problems paying the bills.