talldarkbishoujo:
laceandcombatboots:
talldarkbishoujo:
gaysagainstgaga:
If you get your music from unauthorized downloads instead of paying for it, you’re an asshole. End of story.
…are you really trying to blame music piracy for the closing of record stores?
Really?
It’s got nothing to do with technology marching on or anything. It’s people bootlegging that are to blame?
That koolaid must be delicious.
Plus people that go to record stores are going to buy records regardless of whether they’re also supplementing that with pirating music.
They’re the reason that independent bookstores and record shops still exist at all. That’s the amazing part. Not that they’re closing down.
Seriously I bootleg like a motherfucker but I buy music too, and I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD in an actual store. When Napster first came out and downloading became a Thing I probably bought more music then than I ever did. But my main thing is CDs are absolutely useless to me. I don’t even own anything that can play CDs anymore except my computer and my PS3, neither of which get used for that. They take up valuable real estate and I’ll have to rip them to play on my iPod anyway so what’s the point? The only time I ever buy CDs anymore is directly from the artists (if I go to a show, or buying CDs from filkers at conventions, etc).
My tech-impaired mom who can barely work her iPad without supervision buys all her music on iTunes.That’s why record stores are closed—downloading is the future of mainstream music sales. Their old business model just isn’t feasible anymore, those days of Sam Goody et al are long gone. The record stores that still exist are smart enough to realize that and cater to niche markets like vinylheads and the like.
^^^ All of this.
I mean, hell shit. The same YOU MONSTERZ U PIRATED THINGS N NOW ITS DED shuffle happened after Sam the Record Man went kaput. A bunch of people was like NUUUUUUUU NAPSTER/LIMEWRE/WHATEVER IS THE DEVIL HDU HDU WAH when really what was happening was (a) the market was getting hypercompetitive and other chains were crowding them the fuck out, (b) iTunes had just happened and was capitalizing on downloadable music, (c) recording companies still had their heads so far up their asses about (b) that they coud examine their own prostates, and (d) a lot of CDs at that time were basically bloat-o-riffic, with just one or two popular songs and a slew of bluh that people didn’t really like and not much capacity to get at a single. Those circumstances are what knocked down the Jenga tower.
People are going to rip, crack, datamine and distribute what is not readily available because there is a demand for it and because it can be done. “Because it’s there” is sometimes the only reason. And that isn’t going to stop. Whether it’s morally sound or not doesn’t matter (and I am not going to argue on that point, so nyah), it’s going to happen regardless of how BADBADBAD people say it is. It’s a mutliheaded hydra of a thing too—you take out one person who’s datamining and then BOOOOOOOOMF six more pop up to fill the void. (If you want proof of this phenomenon, just look at the neverending game of account-hacking-gold-farmer whack-a-mole surrounding WoW. lawl?) Anyway—the more epic security gets, the more likely it is to be cracked—especially since a lot of these ~*digital rights*~ measures involve bloatware and malware. I mean, jesus hell, I still remember the old candy-coloured iMacs getting sent to repair shops regularly because OOPSIEDAISY HURRHURRDEEDURR some lackwit at a record company FORGOT MACINTOSH EXISTED and put in an *~anti-ripping measure*~*~ (spoilers: it didn’t even WORK, lose lose) that interacted oddly with OSX such that it got the goddamn CDs stuck in the fricking machines with no way to get them out except manually at the bloody shop. GENIUS!!!1!1!
And I am so very very sorry, sniffles, but WAH WAH BLUH BLUH IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE THEN THAT KINDA DRM STUFF SHOULDN’T MATTERRRRRRRR WAAAHHH BLUH doesn’t fly with me. It shouldn’t fly with you either and if it does you’re a dupe and a nitwit and you really need to not be online at ALL, because if you are seriously letting all this crapware sit around on your machine opening backdoors for whoever, compromising everything, rewriting your shit and bypassing christ-knows-what-all, your box is probably a festering, vomitacious conglomerate of malignant data-barf stew just waiting to implode in on itself. And you know what, specious assholes can and will use such boxes as yours to dick about with others’. Any little compromise can screw you over and screw over anyone who’s got contact with you. I’m not even kidding, I used to know someone who did that kinda shit just for lulz, and he was a complete wad and I don’t talk to him anymore.
If people wanna cry about music on CDs and movies on DVDs getting ripped and torrented they can just go on and cry to the people who decided region locks and that shit were a super-de-frigging-duper stellar idea (I swear to christ, region locking has CAUSED more piracy and done sweet piss-all to prevent it), to the record companies who commit highway fucking robbery so that artists can go triple fucking gold and STILL be desperately broke while the RIAA whines and dicks around and drags its stupid damn feet and refuses to embrace new formats and thus screws these artists over MORE because all this whiny-baby WAH BUT DIGITAL EVULZ song and dance they are STILL goddamn doing is costing the artists a shitpot of money.
tl;dr blame the nincompoops who drag their feet and cry like stink babies every time a new format threatens their goddamn monopoly. Napster didn’t kill Sam, big-box stores and the RI-goddamn-AA did.
Want me to prove my shit? Look at Sunrise Records. They are right near where Sam was on Yonge Street in Toronto, and THEY’RE alive and well. They sell TV series on DVD, they sell CDs, they sell region-free foreign films, they sell vinyl and record players, and they make a killing.
At the end of the day: I am not opposed to digital rights stuff that actually benefits artists. I am not opposed to stuff like that when it leaves my computer the fucking hell alone and doesn’t end in situations like the stupid goddamn ‘oh well you have to buy this this and this all over again if this stops working, because of DURRRR FART FART FART and we said so wweh’ bullcrap like so many game companies tried to pull a bit back. iTunes ditched their limited-number-of-machines DRM thing because it was ultimately more profitable to do so, and they are doing juuuuuuuust bloody FINE thanks so much.
Downloads didn’t kill Sam the Record Man, troggy idiot music companies and slow-on-the-uptake retailers did.
(Source: thesolereader)
