AllofMP3.com owner faces jail time

Russian Software

You obviously have never heard of Tetris then?

Shame!

Fantastic service trampled on...

My music spending has gone back to £0 p/m again.

Surely it would have been sensible for the record companies to take whatever percentage of the not insubstantial amount of cash I used to spend on that fantastic site.

Er...

Kaspersky?

Ignorance

Eisenstein? Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible...

Tarkovsky? Solaris, Stalker...

Anything by Tchaikovsky?

I'll leave others to do the software...

RE: Very Nice

Tetris......?

They can do anythign they like

No, they can do whatever they like, they sign, or not sign any international copyright treaties they choose.

They could completely abolish copyright, or ban open source/CC licences. There is no intrinsic right of copyright so copyright can be constructed however society sees fit.

There are already different copyright terms in different western countries and things are public domain in one country while still being copyrighted in another.

The reason they are doing this? So they are allowed the join the WTO. Its that simple. They won't be allowed to join until they align their copyright provisions closer to those of the USA.

PS.

No Russian software?

Haven't you ever heard of Tetris?

I think I may have overheard that it is the biggest selling game of all time.

RE: Very Nice

Oh, also forgot to say - I fail to see your point?! So, because companies arn't happy about it - they can dictate laws from another country? Or whiney US record labels can basically bully anybody they want into closing down??

Not that I would ever buy anything from these guys, but rather than imprisonning people because some companies complained about them making money legally from within their own countries laws, maybe the Russian authorities should be modifying their laws to suit what the rest of us have.... a US style system that rewards the record companies for being bullies and liars - while punishing music lovers with DRM/ManufacturedCrapArtists/LawSuitsAgainstStudents/BullyingTactics.

Just a thought.....

Re: Very Nice

"& haven't heard of ANY Russian software either...LOL"

So you've never heard of Tetris then?

Invented by a Russian mathematician in the 80s. I think the Spectrum version was the original but I could be wrong.

Jags you muppet.....

You have an opinion, congratulations, that was probably quite difficult for you. What you don't have is any kind of a grasp of grammar.

I wouldn't be surprised if you were an 'educated' (note the inverted commas, they're emphasising the sarcasm) American, brainwashed like the rest of the world to blindly accept what you are told. Oh, and before you come after me, emphasising is a verb, so it's spelt with an S, because I'm English, and know how my language works (unlike you with your 13 spelling and grammar mistakes in your very short message).

Personally, I don't think that Russia owes the US anything, I think that movie, television, and music celebrities are greedy, as are the corporations that represent them. I think that sooner or later the world will realise that by sharing our ideas and cultures without expecting to be paid every two seconds we can develop as a species, rather than remaining the idiotic, blood hungry, opinionated, paranoid, brainwashed sheep that we are.

If you don't reply, I'll assume you've gone to try and kill some underrepresented ethnic minority who lives in poverty somewhere in the third world, confident that you and only you (and your government) have the right to differentiate between right and wrong.

In conclusion: You haven't heard of any Russian music/film/software because you don't speak Russian, you've never been to Russia, and you firmly believe that the Russians are Communists. You've likely never left the US, and theres a good chance you've never left the Deep South. You would rather cut off your own hand than buy something made outside of the US because to do anything otherwise would be unpatriotic.

Get a life, If you don't want any personal attacks, don't invite them, and by "don't invite them" I really mean "don't write iditiotic things that are prejudiced in really public places where thousands of better educated people will read them and know what a fool you are".

say what?

Jags, I missed the law that was passed that only permitted countries to distribute their own material!?

They missed a trick with this. NO to DRM. NO to unfairly and overpriced music.

Tetris

Russia's contribution to the modern world .. Tetris .. and allofmp3.com.

What's interesting is that it took the Russians to show the world how to create a new distribution model for music (again). With or without DRM, legal or illegal - now they are shutting it down. Like Grokster, Napster, AudioGalaxy, Kazaa, mp3.com - the music industry continues to fart against thunder - I look forward to the next round .. this one was unexpected due to the Russian law loophole thing and it lasted MUCH longer than I thought it would.

Really Nice :)

Really Nice :)

They Don't Get It

I shopped at AOMP3 a lot. While I admit the low prices were nice, I mainly enjoyed receiving my music DRM-free and in FLAC format. I can't see shelling out $10 for a bunch of trashy compressed mp3's. iTunes Plus is a step in the right direction, but how about Apple Lossless, Flac, or SHN compression to give us true "CD Quality"?

Back to suying second-hand CDs, I guess.

Funny isn't it....

That nobody used to be so vocal or so numerous in their complaining that music was overpriced in the days before digital copying and the internet.

The record industry goes way beyond the four majors and for those of you that think music is overpriced consider this. Average return per sale for a single is around 45p. A number one single these days is lucky to sell 40,000 copies in a week. To get the track in the shops will cost well over £100k - do the profit analysis on that and you will see there isn't much, even with compilation income and the other sundries. Not every artist is in the same situation as The Beatles.

Music is probably cheaper in the UK than it ever has been - the supermarkets and digital track sales have seen to that. Yes you can buy it cheaper in Russia, but the problem is that even if allofmp3.com sends 15% of the revenue back to the Russian copyright bodies, those bodies do not send any of their money back to the western based societies like the PPL or MCPS.

I put this to you - you work here in the UK for say £15 an hour. I could probably offshore your job and save 50% on my wage bill. Given that you are happy to go and buy records abroad purely based on cost, regardless of wether the artist gets their dues I take it you won't complain when I send your job abroad will you - fat chance I'm guessing, and don't say it's different, it's not and if you say otherwise its hypocrisy.

A growing portion of the music business is indie based. Indies who pay artists a fantastic royalty rate compared to majors, indies who support local industry and indies who support local talent. If you want to be a set of pirates feel free, but don't be fooled by thinking that the only people you are hurting are the majors who can afford to take the hit. There's a worrying trend that people think music should be free, purely based I'm guessing on people trying to justify their piracy habits as not being illegal. Shall we stop paying our phone bills? C'mon, BT's a big company, they will be able to absorb it!

The only reason people are so swift to say that stealing music is ok is because they know that there is little the record companies can do about it. I'm sure if someone was stealing from their business or livelihood it would be a different situation completely.

To the guy attacking Jags

That was the most hypocritical pile of B.S. I have ever heard. How much ignorance does it take to believe every U.S. citizen is out there committing some act of genocide?

'You've likely never left the US, and theres a good chance you've never left the Deep South.'

I sir live in the deep south and have been to London, Paris, Madrid.. blah blah blah. Only a complete fool believes that an entire region of the planet is a homogeneous horde. What do you know of Flannery O'connor, Robert Penn Warren or Faulkner? They're all from the South (actually do you even know where the 'deep' south is in comparison to the rest of the South?).

Tetris kicks ass, Dostoeyevsky rocks (especially Demons I just finished it and it was stunning) but Russian rock music has a long way to go.

Will.

P.S. It takes a big man to post anonymously I must admit.

comment

While I despise the RIAA & believe a different paradigm should be used than DRM and punishing 13 year olds and grandmothers for downloading music, if a foreign country is making money off copyrighted material from sales outside of their country, (and therefore their control) and not paying the copyright holder, there is a problem... It wouldn't be a big deal in my opinion if just Russians were downloading music from these sites, but other countries outside of Russia's laws and jurisdiction, including the US, have access to this.

con

Our jobs are being outsourced! Particular in IT and any phone based.

The point would be if a companies employees all work at home then the company doesn't need to pay for an office. So it can either pay the employees more, reduce costs to customers or sit there getting very rich.

This example is based on the whole mp3 verses CDs and overheads.

I am very annoyed at having to pay 79p an mp3. This for twelve tracks is £9.48. An album like this in Asda can be roughly £9.99. So for a 50p saving I have tracks with no bass, DRM and no CD artwork, extras or posters etc. It's a bloody con.

And have they even been found guilty yet? So you can't comment on the legality of the other sites until a result from the trial has been found surely

Jags is a clueless RIAA-moron, no question - but...

...he's nowhere a representative sample of the average US internet user, trust me.

I live here - EU 'transplant' enjoying low taxes and cheap prices on electronics :) - and I know at least two DOZEN American who use AoMP3 on weekly basis. Brainwashed? They are, in many ways but not when it comes to their wallet, you know... ;)

What ashame,

Regardless of your stand on the rest of these issues, AllOfMp3 was the one music site that got it exactly right: easy to join, no proprietary hardware or formats, no DRM, fast downloads, your choice in compression rates. The music industry should have just bought them out. Looks like I'm back to having expensive crappy CDs and proprietary music files flogged at me from a bunch of people who would rather sue me than give me decent customer service.

Looks like I am back to having to drive to the record shop, wait in line, talk to some PFY, shell out $22 for the latest Justin Timberlake record, get searched after the security alarm goes off, drive back home, cut that damned sticker off with a hack-saw, then actually listen to the damned thing. Ouch! Thank you Sir, may I have another?

Honestly, what kind of masochist buys their crap anyway?

Pleahhhhse

Steve wrote it:

"Funny isn't it....

By Steve

Posted Wednesday 25th July 2007 14:13 GMT

That nobody used to be so vocal or so numerous in their complaining that music was overpriced in the days before digital copying and the internet.

The record industry goes way beyond the four majors and for those of you that think music is overpriced consider this. Average return per sale for a single is around 45p. A number one single these days is lucky to sell 40,000 copies in a week. To get the track in the shops will cost well over £100k - do the profit analysis on that and you will see there isn't much, even with compilation income and the other sundries. Not every artist is in the same situation as The Beatles.

Music is probably cheaper in the UK than it ever has been - the supermarkets and digital track sales have seen to that. Yes you can buy it cheaper in Russia, but the problem is that even if allofmp3.com sends 15% of the revenue back to the Russian copyright bodies, those bodies do not send any of their money back to the western based societies like the PPL or MCPS.

I put this to you - you work here in the UK for say £15 an hour. I could probably offshore your job and save 50% on my wage bill. Given that you are happy to go and buy records abroad purely based on cost, regardless of wether the artist gets their dues I take it you won't complain when I send your job abroad will you - fat chance I'm guessing, and don't say it's different, it's not and if you say otherwise its hypocrisy."

You know, Steve, if I were employed by ANY RIAA-MEMBER PUBLISHER THEN I SDHOULD BE DUMPED ANYWAY.

Don't even 'outsource' my RIAA-job - just FLUSH IT DOWN THE TOILET, together with all the stuidos and RIAA.

Stop using this BS excuse about $100k for recording - this is the classic straw man argument RIAA-trolls use.

A classic utterly false crap: $95k of that $100k goes to sustain their own (studios) parasitic "nervous system', it's well known by anybody who knows the music business. Studio prices are dirt cheap, they are constantly going down ever since computer-based mixing/mastering softwares became commodity.

BTW you are contradicting yourself: you are praising the indies yet you are arguing how expensive is to make good music - it's totally false, go and check the records on cdbaby.com or any other indie distribution sites. The last one I bought arrived on a CD-R - who cares? It's got a case, a decent cover art, track list, everything and the music was great - I am satisfied with my purchase and they certainly did not spend more than few thousand bucks on the whole project including recording studio rental, mixing/mastering and illustration, duplication. Heck, even pressed CDs are buck-apiece nowadays (from 1000 pcs and up.)

The point I'm trying to make is NO NEED FOR PARASITES, NO NEED FOR THE MIDDLEMEN, period.

THE SOONER THE PARASITE STUDIOS DIE, THE BETTER FOR THE MUSIC AND MUSICIANS, for the whole industry including us, customers.

QFT

"What ashame,

By Brent Gardner

Posted Wednesday 25th July 2007 15:13 GMT

Regardless of your stand on the rest of these issues, AllOfMp3 was the one music site that got it exactly right: easy to join, no proprietary hardware or formats, no DRM, fast downloads, your choice in compression rates. The music industry should have just bought them out. "

Well said, Sir.

STFU

'A classic utterly false crap: $95k of that $100k goes to sustain their own (studios) parasitic "nervous system'

Nervous System = Employee Salaries.

Yes mixing and mastering SOFTWARE is cheap but the hardware is not. Plus the guy behind those consoles is a craftsmen to a very high degree and charges a rate that he's worth.

At the end of the day a good studio is not a mac book pro with pro-tools on it. It's a room with amazing acoustics (no small feat) all that equipment and a few humans who deserve to be paid well for their work. 100K barely pays one of them for a year let alone the rent and constantly upgrading all that 'cheap' equipment.

Well put Levente Szileszky...

I keep reading this kinda crap in the Economist and such, even The Register some times. The argument goes like: "The industry has lost X percent of its reveneue in the last 5 years. We need to find a fair an equitable balance between consumers and the music industry. It would hurt the economy to loose an entire industry".

This is crap. We lost an entire industry of telephone operators when automated dialing came out. And man they cried like hell too. That doesn't mean we should still have to talk to some damned cable-pluging monkey every time we need to make a phone call. More efficiant methods came out and the market adopted them.

There is no need for an industry of middle men when a garage band can record, press, market, distribute, and indeed *turn a profit* on a record. Music is not dead, just "the industry".

RE: Funny isn't it....

Looking at these arguments about money and music makes me wonder how long ago it was that people made music for the love of it, and were glad that anyone even liked their songs enough to listen to them, let alone liked it enough to go to a concert.

But then I suppose that back then the musicians had day jobs. Nowdays it seems that anyone who gets in the charts expects to be able to live off the proceeds.

@Steve: Free and BT?...

> There's a worrying trend that people think music should be free, purely based I'm guessing on people trying to justify their piracy habits as not being illegal. Shall we stop paying our phone bills? C'mon, BT's a big company, they will be able to absorb it!

Hey, you know what? That's exactly what's happening, and it's high time it was.

Phone calls are increasingly becoming free everywhere inthe world, and you know what? It's normal because it costs nothing.

What costs money is the phone network. Phone calls cost nothing to the companies, and economics predict the only efficient solution is to price the consumers that exact price: nothing.

So actually, indeed, BT is increasingly not being paid for phone calls. What it's getting paid for is the network, via a monthly fee.

It so happens that music is, in the same way, costless. 1 track or one million times the same track has exactly the same price, 0. What has a cost is producing the music in the first place. And that's precisely why economics predict the only efficient solution is that music tracks be free (with investment being paid for by either a tax or a monthly fee).

The worrying trend of considering the music should be free is, admittedly, for some people a way to try and feel good about their piracy habits, but for the less numerous but more relevant part of society, it is mostly an obvious statement based on the last three centuries of economic theory, the last few decades most of all (and it's being put in practice, too, in always more fields).

Oh, I'm just thinking about it, there's also a worrying trend that people think email should be free... What? oh, it's normal, because emails cost basically nothing, only putting the service in place does?

At least the RIAA and music fans agree on one thing...

It's nice to see that among the squabbling over copyright, monopolization, DRM, and music distribution, fans of music and the RIAA can come together on one point:

Neither the fans nor the RIAA believe that artists should get any money.

The recording industry pays artists--you know, the people who actually MAKE the music--almost nothing for their time, effort, and creativity.

The fans, in complete agreement on principle with the RIAA, go one step further. They bootleg music on P2P networks or give their money to Russian outfits, and give NO money to the artists. Clearly, the music fans believe the recording labels don't go far enough; how else to explain music fans' emotional insistence on their God-given right to not pay the artists they love a single red cent?

well said greg, free emails?!

Greg made a valid point and one that i considered...Phine calls should be free, The internet is allowing us to achieve VoIP, and if companies like orange/ BT owned the internet, can you imagine.... ? 10 p per 1kb of data, we currently pay 10p for a txt, just a small piece of data.... With wimax on the horizon they must be nervous.. i agree it costs money to create the structure, but only a certain amount and wth the billion made yearly i think they may have covered this expense (looking at BT). Its a joke really, i remeber browing on my mobile phone, being asked whether i wanted to pay a subscription to access sport "pictures". Its just the capitialist way of making a dime from whatever one can and exorting as much as possible, by controlling access... Artist should be paid, get rid of the middle men, and compensate the arist diorectly through their own websites (,mp3s sales or even concert tickets maybe even webcasts from their own home!) With the advent of youtube and open access internet (unlimited 24/7 access) the way business is done is changing. and it would be nice to see everything free or incorprated into taxes or monthly subcription fees. People contributing because not that they be paid but because they can (Blogs, webcasts, vlogs, amature artists on youtube) Arists can still make money they just need to find different avenues to do it... roll on wind of change (just dont cross your eyes)..

Well, allow me to retort!

Steve, you said:

'That nobody used to be so vocal or so numerous in their complaining that music was overpriced in the days before digital copying and the internet.'

Really? I seem to recall a class action suit against the RIAA Big Boys that resulted in a crappy check coming to me in the mail, as a settlement for the price fixing they'd engaged in.

I also recall the RIAA and MPAA whining and trying to stop the sale of VCRs and cassette recorders. Then screaming about lost revenue.

IAs an anecdote that I'm sure is most likely common, I never spent a lot of money on music. Why? Let me give you several examples: Butthole Surfers - ElectricLarryLand; Blur - Blur; Better Than Ezra - Deluxe; Metallica - St. Anger. What do these all have in common? Each one was a full album I paid roughly $16 (~£8) for, and each one had exactly 1 song worth listening to. These bands, with the exception of Metallica, are commonly and jokingly referred to as "one-hit wonders". But there went $48 (~£24) of my hard-earned(being a broke teenager and then a poorly paid Private) money, for basically 4 lousy songs.

Now I have an iPod. And an Alltunes account. And I've purchased more music in the last 2 years thn then entire rest of my life. Why? Because I sit here on a Saturday night, after a depressing viewing of SNL, and turn on Vh1's 'Metal Mania', and suddenly get caught up in a wave of nostalgia. I usually find myself downloading at least 5 songs every time I watch. Or I turn on the radio, and here one decent song out of the miserable manure pile that passes for Top 40 nowadays, go home, and pull it up on Alltunes. It doesn't feel like I blowing my cash when it's only 13 cents, as opposed to buying an entire, likely 95% shitty, album.

If 2 cents from every 13 cent song I downloaded would be accepted by the RIAA, if they would just give up their losing battle, and accept their small cut that ROM is offering, I'd bet my left nut they'd find themselves making more money than they are now; if they'd stop wasting their money on corporate lawyers to use scare tactics against grandmothers, small children, and the kin of the recently deceased, they'd be able to stay in business.

They need to wake up and realize that they live in a country when sweet, sweet capitalism has always been the rule. By sticking to their archaic business model, bravely denying the changes all around them, they're losing money. And as for the artists? Well, the Recording Industry has been giving it to them up the ass since the Edison invented the phonograph.

I like going to shows in small venues, where the artists and their friends set up a table to sell T-shirts and CDs, where I can buy a CD, get it autographed by one or more band members, and get a (however insincere) 'Thank You' from the people I'm giving my money to. That's how small-time(read:most) punk bands survive. I'm not a music purist, I don't masturbate over bands that only myself and 3 other people have ever heard of, but it's nice to have a personal touch. It's nice to know that most of the money I'm spending goes to the people who earned it, not the leeches exploiting young, unsigned talent. Of course this model would never work with the hugely popular bands like Metallica, but I would expect that any album with their name on it would have more than one decent song on it (St. Anger, sigh).

I still buy CDs. I buy from CD Baby. Occasionally, when it's a band I really like, such as the Offspring, I buy every new album faithfully. But I'm not going to drop $16-$18 bucks on the new Fallout Boy album for one lousy track.

And for the rest of you folks across the pond, yep, I'm an American, if you can't tell. And I like Russian music. Which would be wonderful if Alltunes actually carried ТАЯНА albums. I also like Christy Moore, Luka Bloom, and Shane McGowan. Good luck finding "Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash" at Sam Goody.

We're not all fat, loud, guntoting, mouthbreathing rednecks over here. Some of us are thin, quiet, guntoting IT workers.

[/rambling_rant]

RE: At least the RIAA and music fans agree on one thing

Franklin wrote:

"or give their money to Russian outfits, and give NO money to the artists"

I am not sure if it is blindness or an unwillingness to believe that other countries may have laws that are different from the USofA, however, those "Russian outfits" HAVE been collecting money for the artists, and paying it to ROMS, as required by Russian law. Roms in turn has tried to pay the RIAA so that the artists could indeed receive their royalties. The RIAA however, are the ones saying NO, "if we can't control how much money to collect (rip off from the consumer) then we refuse to accept any money and then we can cry foul that the artists are not being paid their royalties". As far as AllofMp3 and the other Russian sites that pay into ROMS goes, the only ones to blame for artists not getting their rightful royalties is the RIAA.

calculations

So the RIAA rails against allofmp3.com because the "artist" doesn't get their cut? does that mean the £13 difference between buying the album from russia compared to an "approved" service goes to the artist? I'm willing to bet not. Now both services must have server costs, bandwidth, building overheads and so on, so please at least be honest. they're protecting massive profits by protectionism (ironic isn't it? the US crying foul for protectionism against those nasty free market ruskies!)...

Re: Funny isn't it....

"I put this to you - you work here in the UK for say £15 an hour. I could probably offshore your job and save 50% on my wage bill. Given that you are happy to go and buy records abroad purely based on cost, regardless of wether the artist gets their dues I take it you won't complain when I send your job abroad will you - fat chance I'm guessing, and don't say it's different, it's not and if you say otherwise its hypocrisy."

What part of your "job offshoring" comparison is hypothetical?

It seems to me companies are very happy to go the globalized way, but they hate it when their customers do the same.

Frankly, it was the companies that started the carousel of cost reduction, not the consumers.

And what about us oldies?

You see, I'm a 50+ who used to buy a lot of over-priced vinyl waaaaay back when. Then I started to buy a lot of over-priced CDs. Then I stopped buying. Why? Because I refused to buy the album yet again because the CD now had 1 or 2 bonus tracks, or because they had issued a box set of all 5 albums plus a bonus cd of outtakes. To me that was blatent profiteering by the record industry. So I decided that I'd rather give my money to the Russian mafia than the US-corporate mafia. And in reality I wander just how much much of the full retail price actually ended up with the artist. Probably precious little. To those genuinely poor artists who might have lost a few pennies I am sorry. But an awful lot of what I have bought form allofmp3 was by mega-stars. And it's because of the sheer greed by the "suits" that I chose to "offshore" my purchases. Just look what they did to CDNow. They really hate it when we try to avoid paying their outrageous prices. So who exactly are the pirates?

Good one Greg :)

Finally, an American who talks as if he has a mind behind his mouth. Greg, a pleasure to hear your rebuttal. Yes, Will, that was a not-so-subtle attack.... I did like the way that you completely ignored any point I was making about music and borders, and society..... and focused only on the idea I presented stereotyping Americans. Congratulations on only having the three errors in your post, you're doing better than Jags.

As to my having a view on a large chunk of the planet being homogeneous (as opposed to homogenous - we most certainly are).... you'd be a fool not to believe it!

The whole idea of national identity is where it falls apart. You are an American, and would probably be offended to be called an Arab, or French, or Russian, but in fact theres absolutely no difference, other than who's been brainwashing you. I'm not attacking you as individuals, I'm attacking the group identity, which has led you down the garden path until you believe only the group view. Individuals not towing the line are extremists, or nutters, or disturbed, or just plain old ignored or disowned. When America gets the idea it shouldn't police the entire world, because you drag other countries (like mine) down the toilet bowl with you when you do.

I hope the Russians let the bloke off the hook, and give him a medal. I also hope our next government kicks the US military off our nations soil, and ignores the US when it next invites us to get involved in a war that is all about money and oil, which has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives...... and in that, I want you to know that I do not believe that any man who would fight for country or religion is innocent. They are guilty as anything. The only things worth fighting for are love and family. Everything else is subjective.

talking sense?

> Finally, an American who talks as if he has a mind behind his mouth. Greg, a pleasure to hear your rebuttal.

Hmm, well, if I was in a basic anti-american mood, I'd reply "maybe that's because I'm actually NOT american". But I'm not (in a basic anti-american mood, not not american, is anyone still following? :D).

So I'm not american, but I'll not resent you for thinking so for this once.

And since I'm there posting again, I could add other examples of free things:

- Watching TV or listening to radio (accessing TV is not, but watching it generally is). Why? because producing the content costs, building the network costs, but broadcasting it to one person or everyone is the same, so adding customers is free => watching is free

- Driving roads. Why? Because building them is expensive, but once it's done, it costs almost nothing to have people riding them compared to leaving them unused. If you'd make people pay, less people would use them, which would be a shame and not optimal since they're here anyway. So using roads is free, but you pay for their building (and occasionnal rebuilding) via taxes.

- Tricky one: electricity in some tiny arab states. Why? because building the fuel burning station cost some money, but oil was so abundant that it cost basically nothing to produce the energy once the station was there. So taxes (burdening only foreign companies but that doesn't matter) were financing the building of the centrals, and then energy was free. Now that it is realized that, being in limited supply, oil is not really free, those states are making their population pay.

The last one is a very appropriate example because it shows two things:

- People there complain of the change. They want to keep it free because it used to be. They're wrong. For music, some people want to make it free because they're used to pirating it for free. They're wrong too. But they're wrong about the reason. Not necessarily about the conclusion.

- Things can change. Producing electricity there cost nothing, so the state managed to get it delivered for nothing. It's not true anymore, so it changes. Tracks used to be sold for a price, because it cost something, and there was no reason to complain about that. But now it costs nothing (and I'm careful to talk about tracks, not music production), and the people who can't see the difference just want to avoid spending some time thinking, and believe there's no reason things should change. Bad luck, there is, and for the better (better for the consumers AND the artists).

As a conclusion, I'd advise anyone who is both thinking there's no reason to stop paying music based on quantity and who is open-minded enough to try and realise he just might be wrong to look at economists papers, some appropriate keywords being "zero"+"marginal cost" or "non-rival"+"goods".

You should quickly find some articles that explain in more details than I did why things costless to produce (after an initial investment) should be given away for free if free-market economy is to be efficient.

the game is foul

The fact is that the music game was and is a foul

repulsive creature and it's run this scam it's way

since radio was king now it's dieing it's commiting

suicide musicians will still make music but these

record companies are on their way to hell. Good

the sooner the better I say. I have one good solid

reason not to care about allofmp3 it's hosted in

Russia and as far as I know thats where MPAC

and so many trojans come from it's not any

loss to have the only commercial site of any

note (minus Kaspersky because solving a problem

you constantly create doesn't count) that

pathetic country has managed to produce

gone and it's owner jailed it shows the truth

Russia is doomed it's people lower than rats

may they go back to being behind some kind

of solid wall soon. Hey Putin we have your mobsters

come get them.

(Cog)nomen es omen - RE: STFU

"Nervous System = Employee Salaries.

Yes mixing and mastering SOFTWARE is cheap but the hardware is not. Plus the guy behind those consoles is a craftsmen to a very high degree and charges a rate that he's worth."

Yes, this is the kind of clueless idiotic BS I read from people who eat all the crap they've been fed by the music industry and other RIAA-trolls.

$100k per album would make these guys CRAZY RICH - IF IT INDEED WOULD GO TO THE POCKET OF THOSE guys behind the mixer consoles, the private recording place owners .

BUT IT DOES NOT GO FOR THOSE GUYS.

Most importantly ~80-90% of THAT $100k COST DOES NOT EXIST, it's completely false utter crap, made up by 'managers of the studios.

Why? Studios CHARGE IT AGAINST THE BANDS' SALES, lowering the bands' payment so they can feed themselves, the parasites - ergo they will MAKE UP all kind of BS "costs" .

"At the end of the day a good studio is not a mac book pro with pro-tools on it. It's a room with amazing acoustics (no small feat) all that equipment and a few humans who deserve to be paid well for their work."

The difference between you and me, dear STFU, that I've been to studos many times and I know that they actually DO NOT SPEND A DOLLAR FOR YEARS after they invested in things only very few bands need anymore.

"100K barely pays one of them for a year let alone the rent and constantly upgrading all that 'cheap' equipment."

Another utterly idiotic comment - usually these places are located in current or former industrial areas, itself converted from industrial use or a basement etc.

$100k rent for a year is a PRIME MANHATTAN OFFICE rental fee, dear STFU.

Let me repeat, maybe you can swallow it now, dear STFU: $100k studio fee IS COMPLETE BS, 90%+ goes to sustain an ALREADY DEAD, PARASITIC INDUSTRY.

It's everybody's interest to shorten this aginy and KILL THE RIAA & STUDIOS AS FAST AS WE CAN before it ruins our music industry (artists and market).