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~~someonecompletelyrandom~~ · 06-11-2009, 12:12 PM

This Issue:
6/11/09
Recent Issues:
7/14/09

Our Mission

By Sonace

With this first edition it is my sincere hope that the MusicBanter community will enjoy our E-Zine.
This thread we will be doing things both familular and new, but we wouldn't be doing anything without the e-friendships and support of this website.

I've discovered so much because of MusicBanter, and it is my goal to contribute something lasting and entertaining to the community. So without further ado, please enjoy the very first issue of The MusicBanter Gazette.

- Sonace

The Sharing of Music

By Peter Hughes (Pobodys_Nerfect)

For as long as there has been recorded music, there have been people finding ways to duplicate it and give it away for free. The desire of wanting something for free is not a new attribute to the human behaviour. Stealing goes back to the dawn of mankind when one caveman saw something that another caveman had and they wanted it for them self. Has the times progressed we have added certain laws and people to in force those laws, the earliest known “law” being the Ten Commandments in which the 8th states “Thou Shall Not Steal”. One would think that after thousands of years of being told that stealing is wrong, our society would have become one in which it wasn’t a concern, yet people still steal, whether it’s to eat, to become wealthy, or for the simple thrill of doing something they’re not allowed to do, people steal. One group in particular that is perhaps the most rampant on a global scale are music fans. It seems like everybody gets their music for free now-a-days, and why not? It’s as simple as clicking a button in most cases with almost no chance of consequence. First off I want to say that I am a huge advocate of the sharing of music and that in this essay I hope to bring to light the many positives of sharing music, as well as the negatives to keep things balanced.

One of the things that always makes me chuckle is when I read quotes from music executives on the rampant downloading of music for free off the Internet. They act like it is a totally new phenomenon that came out over night as a personal stab at them. What they fail to realize is that since the 1980’s, people have been trading music with one another. With the invention of the Tape Cassette and the introduction of that device as a medium for music to the music industry, fans were finally able to easily and affordably copy music. All it required was a blank tape and cassette duplicator and that Motorhead tape you just bought was now your friends as well, and it just cost the one cassette instead of ten dollars. Not only could you copy a cassette in its entirety but you could create mix tapes as well. Imagine what that must’ve been like for the first time, when you realized that you could put all your favourite songs from different bands onto the same tape, instead of changing it constantly or fast forwarding through songs. Not only could you make Mix Tapes for yourself, but you could give them to friends as well.

It was around this same time that fanzines started putting ads in the back of their zine for people to subscribe to. You would give them a mailing address and would be put on a list, and occasionally you would receive a mix tape or duplicate tape of a full album. This proved to be insanely popular with fans of more underground music, specifically the extreme subgenres of metal. As large music publications (Rolling Stone, NME, etc.) would only cover the more popular groups, the underground musicians relied heavily on word of mouth, fanzines, constant touring, and the sharing of their music as a way of getting their name and music across to people. As technology has improved, the process of finding a band from somewhere other than my country has become almost laughably easy. I just go to Google, type in their name, and within seconds I am bombarded with links to websites where I can purchase their music, listen to it for free, read a biography on the band, or download it for free. In the days before the Internet, you were extremely limited to what you could hear and the knowledge of what was out there. I just recently finished reading a book entitled “Choosing Death: The Improbably History of Death Metal and Grindcore” that chronicled the extreme metal scene from its early beginnings to as recent as 2004 (when the book was published). One of the things it talked about was how for many musicians, they relied heavily on trading mix tapes as a means of seeing what else was out there, if other musicians were doing similar things as them, and as a source of inspiration. I sometimes like to think of the music industry as a whole (that includes indie and mainstream) as a giant funnel with a very narrow neck. So much music goes into the funnel, but you are only aware of the miniscule amount coming out at the other end. I believe that what sharing music does is widening the neck of that funnel and allowing a little bit more music to come out.

As I stated earlier with the explosion of the Internet in the past fifteen years, people have found ways of using it as a medium for trading things. One way was a more advanced version of the trading of mix tapes, but now you could trade CD’s. Not just in audio format either, as with a data format you can hold 700 megabytes of information. With the rise in personal computers in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, people began to take their music from their CD’s and place it on their hard drives, essentially making a digital copy of the information on the CD. That digital copy could then be compressed to smaller sizes, allowing more information to be put onto one CD. Eventually it worked out to where you could put about 11 full albums onto just one CD and mail that out to someone. Another way, which is proving to be extremely popular right now, is the uploading of music to file sharing websites, then sending links for a download. This is the next step in the evolution of music sharing as it is almost instantaneous and does not require shipping through a mailing system that is not digital. It is truly amazing that somebody can ask for an album I have, and then I can take that album and put it onto a website, then pass the link for a download onto the person who wanted it all within the time frame of an hour or less as opposed to the actual task of creating the mix tape or CD or whatever, packaging it, putting it in the mailing system, and hoping I did not mess up their address.

Continued on next page

06-11-2009, 12:12 PM	#1 (permalink)
~~someonecompletelyrandom~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 4,538	The MusicBanter Gazette This Issue: 6/11/09 Recent Issues: 7/14/09 Our Mission By Sonace With this first edition it is my sincere hope that the MusicBanter community will enjoy our E-Zine. This thread we will be doing things both familular and new, but we wouldn't be doing anything without the e-friendships and support of this website. I've discovered so much because of MusicBanter, and it is my goal to contribute something lasting and entertaining to the community. So without further ado, please enjoy the very first issue of The MusicBanter Gazette. - Sonace The Sharing of Music By Peter Hughes (Pobodys_Nerfect) For as long as there has been recorded music, there have been people finding ways to duplicate it and give it away for free. The desire of wanting something for free is not a new attribute to the human behaviour. Stealing goes back to the dawn of mankind when one caveman saw something that another caveman had and they wanted it for them self. Has the times progressed we have added certain laws and people to in force those laws, the earliest known “law” being the Ten Commandments in which the 8th states “Thou Shall Not Steal”. One would think that after thousands of years of being told that stealing is wrong, our society would have become one in which it wasn’t a concern, yet people still steal, whether it’s to eat, to become wealthy, or for the simple thrill of doing something they’re not allowed to do, people steal. One group in particular that is perhaps the most rampant on a global scale are music fans. It seems like everybody gets their music for free now-a-days, and why not? It’s as simple as clicking a button in most cases with almost no chance of consequence. First off I want to say that I am a huge advocate of the sharing of music and that in this essay I hope to bring to light the many positives of sharing music, as well as the negatives to keep things balanced. One of the things that always makes me chuckle is when I read quotes from music executives on the rampant downloading of music for free off the Internet. They act like it is a totally new phenomenon that came out over night as a personal stab at them. What they fail to realize is that since the 1980’s, people have been trading music with one another. With the invention of the Tape Cassette and the introduction of that device as a medium for music to the music industry, fans were finally able to easily and affordably copy music. All it required was a blank tape and cassette duplicator and that Motorhead tape you just bought was now your friends as well, and it just cost the one cassette instead of ten dollars. Not only could you copy a cassette in its entirety but you could create mix tapes as well. Imagine what that must’ve been like for the first time, when you realized that you could put all your favourite songs from different bands onto the same tape, instead of changing it constantly or fast forwarding through songs. Not only could you make Mix Tapes for yourself, but you could give them to friends as well. It was around this same time that fanzines started putting ads in the back of their zine for people to subscribe to. You would give them a mailing address and would be put on a list, and occasionally you would receive a mix tape or duplicate tape of a full album. This proved to be insanely popular with fans of more underground music, specifically the extreme subgenres of metal. As large music publications (Rolling Stone, NME, etc.) would only cover the more popular groups, the underground musicians relied heavily on word of mouth, fanzines, constant touring, and the sharing of their music as a way of getting their name and music across to people. As technology has improved, the process of finding a band from somewhere other than my country has become almost laughably easy. I just go to Google, type in their name, and within seconds I am bombarded with links to websites where I can purchase their music, listen to it for free, read a biography on the band, or download it for free. In the days before the Internet, you were extremely limited to what you could hear and the knowledge of what was out there. I just recently finished reading a book entitled “Choosing Death: The Improbably History of Death Metal and Grindcore” that chronicled the extreme metal scene from its early beginnings to as recent as 2004 (when the book was published). One of the things it talked about was how for many musicians, they relied heavily on trading mix tapes as a means of seeing what else was out there, if other musicians were doing similar things as them, and as a source of inspiration. I sometimes like to think of the music industry as a whole (that includes indie and mainstream) as a giant funnel with a very narrow neck. So much music goes into the funnel, but you are only aware of the miniscule amount coming out at the other end. I believe that what sharing music does is widening the neck of that funnel and allowing a little bit more music to come out. As I stated earlier with the explosion of the Internet in the past fifteen years, people have found ways of using it as a medium for trading things. One way was a more advanced version of the trading of mix tapes, but now you could trade CD’s. Not just in audio format either, as with a data format you can hold 700 megabytes of information. With the rise in personal computers in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, people began to take their music from their CD’s and place it on their hard drives, essentially making a digital copy of the information on the CD. That digital copy could then be compressed to smaller sizes, allowing more information to be put onto one CD. Eventually it worked out to where you could put about 11 full albums onto just one CD and mail that out to someone. Another way, which is proving to be extremely popular right now, is the uploading of music to file sharing websites, then sending links for a download. This is the next step in the evolution of music sharing as it is almost instantaneous and does not require shipping through a mailing system that is not digital. It is truly amazing that somebody can ask for an album I have, and then I can take that album and put it onto a website, then pass the link for a download onto the person who wanted it all within the time frame of an hour or less as opposed to the actual task of creating the mix tape or CD or whatever, packaging it, putting it in the mailing system, and hoping I did not mess up their address. Continued on next page Last edited by someonecompletelyrandom; 07-15-2009 at 12:14 PM.