Mike Flynn
21st October 2002, 06:30
Irish Independent (http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/)
Despite objections by record companies, more and more people are downloading their favourite songs from the net and, says EDDIE LENNON, it's getting easier all the time
When Bono gave a BBC Radio 1 DJ a present of U2's new single, 'Electrical Storm', the song became pop music's latest free advance copy to music fans courtesy of the internet.
The song, played on Radio 1, was recorded, posted on the internet and downloaded by thousands of music fans to their computers, within just a few hours of its broadcast.
It was yet another strident reminder to the recording industry that, although the two biggest sources of free music Napster and Audiogalaxy have been recently kicked off the internet in a blaze of publicity for giving music fans what they want, many more renegade music sites have moved quickly into the vacuum.
For just the cost of a local phone call, music fans across the globe are feasting on a banquet of free tunes. The planet's appetite for free-for-all songs is vampiric and immense.
At the height of its popularity in 2001 Napster had more than 80m registered users. And a new site, kazaalite.com, now boasts over 150m users.
What put the likes of Napster on shaky legal ground was that it needed central computers, called servers, to work. All the record industry had to do was sue the company and show that Napster had an information database that allowed people to download music from it. And that's exactly what the industry's lawyers did.
But now there are other, more sophisticated sites to which music fans are flocking. The new buzz word in free music is P2P or 'peer-to-peer'. P2P websites allow anyone with an internet connection to swap music with fellow music fans, wherever they may be.
Dot coms such as kazaalite, winmx, musiccity, bearshare and limewire are home to millions of recordings. Want some songs from the new Coldplay album? No problem, they're all there. The Strokes' new single? Easy. Underworld's new record? No bother.
No wonder the record industry is not sleeping too soundly these nights.
The real problem for industry moguls is that these new sites are not really companies at all, but software programs. They float music all over the internet by simply connecting computers to each other.
The result is that the record industry is faced with a new headache a technological hall of mirrors that internet experts say is difficult, if not impossible, to blast out of cyberspace.
Even better news for music fans is that these music sites are also home to thousands of recordings that never made it to the shops in the first place.
There are live concert recordings. Hard-to-get limited editions. Once-off cover versions. Remixes of just about any song (particularly dance music) that you could care to mention. New albums that are still months away from official release.
Oasis fans downloaded the Gallaghers' current album, and promotional video for the single, 'The Hindu Times', three months before its release. And, two years ago, Manic Street Preachers fans downloaded tracks from Napster before they were commercially released.
Napster had several down sides. If your internet connection went down or the person you were downloading from went offline, it often meant you had to start downloading again, from scratch.
Furthermore, you couldn't listen to that part of the track you had already downloaded to check if it was the song (or the version of the song) you wanted.
With the new P2P websites no such technical obstacles stand in the way. You can listen to what's already downloaded, pause the download whenever you want, and resume when you're next online.
Even if the recording industry succeeds in shutting down these new music sites, analysts warn that once one file-sharing site is closed, another will spring up in its place. It's a moving target the record industry is destined to acknowledge as a lost cause.
The record companies' attempts at launching their own legal music download networks, such as PressPlay and MusicNet, have not been popular partly because of the number of free alternatives and partly because they offer a limited selection of music.
P2P enthusiasts argue that it has not yet been proved that the availability of free music on the internet has dented worldwide record sales.
Many would point a more convincing finger to the fashionability of CD burners. These cost as little as €100 and allow anybody to copy a CD to another CD, with precious little deterioration in sound quality.
Also record sales have been dipping for years anyway, partly due to the schmaltzy junk being dished out by record companies largely to serve the teenybopper market and alienating the more musically-educated fans and partly because of the exorbitant price of CDs.
It may be that the buying appetites and musical curiosity of genuine music fans are being whetted in a way that never happened before that music fans are making connections between bands and genres of music that are far more lateral and enlightened than in pre-P2P times and buying a wider range of music than before.
The record industry's beef with free music sites (or 'pirate' sites, as they prefer to call them) is summarised by Sarah Roberts, communications manager for the British Phonographic Industry: "People think downloads don't do anyone any harm but they forget that everyone, from the session musicians to the producers, gets their income from music sales. If the record companies don't make a profit on the big-name artists, they cannot reinvest and sign new artists. There will simply be less music to buy."
If less music is released by major record companies, the best music will go even further underground.
But the underground, from which everybody from Madonna to U2 derives inspiration and new ideas, will continue to be richly represented by the internet.
And not only by free music sites, but by educational music sites, like the excellent allmusic.com and epitonic.com, which enable music fans to update their bank of knowledge on a massive assortment of music.
The former gives in-depth profiles of all the important names in music, sorts them into different genres, and even lists their influences and music they, in turn, influenced.
Epitonic allows you to listen to lots of samples of, and download in full, a wide range of songs many of them genuinely cutting edge music.
Despite objections by record companies, more and more people are downloading their favourite songs from the net and, says EDDIE LENNON, it's getting easier all the time
When Bono gave a BBC Radio 1 DJ a present of U2's new single, 'Electrical Storm', the song became pop music's latest free advance copy to music fans courtesy of the internet.
The song, played on Radio 1, was recorded, posted on the internet and downloaded by thousands of music fans to their computers, within just a few hours of its broadcast.
It was yet another strident reminder to the recording industry that, although the two biggest sources of free music Napster and Audiogalaxy have been recently kicked off the internet in a blaze of publicity for giving music fans what they want, many more renegade music sites have moved quickly into the vacuum.
For just the cost of a local phone call, music fans across the globe are feasting on a banquet of free tunes. The planet's appetite for free-for-all songs is vampiric and immense.
At the height of its popularity in 2001 Napster had more than 80m registered users. And a new site, kazaalite.com, now boasts over 150m users.
What put the likes of Napster on shaky legal ground was that it needed central computers, called servers, to work. All the record industry had to do was sue the company and show that Napster had an information database that allowed people to download music from it. And that's exactly what the industry's lawyers did.
But now there are other, more sophisticated sites to which music fans are flocking. The new buzz word in free music is P2P or 'peer-to-peer'. P2P websites allow anyone with an internet connection to swap music with fellow music fans, wherever they may be.
Dot coms such as kazaalite, winmx, musiccity, bearshare and limewire are home to millions of recordings. Want some songs from the new Coldplay album? No problem, they're all there. The Strokes' new single? Easy. Underworld's new record? No bother.
No wonder the record industry is not sleeping too soundly these nights.
The real problem for industry moguls is that these new sites are not really companies at all, but software programs. They float music all over the internet by simply connecting computers to each other.
The result is that the record industry is faced with a new headache a technological hall of mirrors that internet experts say is difficult, if not impossible, to blast out of cyberspace.
Even better news for music fans is that these music sites are also home to thousands of recordings that never made it to the shops in the first place.
There are live concert recordings. Hard-to-get limited editions. Once-off cover versions. Remixes of just about any song (particularly dance music) that you could care to mention. New albums that are still months away from official release.
Oasis fans downloaded the Gallaghers' current album, and promotional video for the single, 'The Hindu Times', three months before its release. And, two years ago, Manic Street Preachers fans downloaded tracks from Napster before they were commercially released.
Napster had several down sides. If your internet connection went down or the person you were downloading from went offline, it often meant you had to start downloading again, from scratch.
Furthermore, you couldn't listen to that part of the track you had already downloaded to check if it was the song (or the version of the song) you wanted.
With the new P2P websites no such technical obstacles stand in the way. You can listen to what's already downloaded, pause the download whenever you want, and resume when you're next online.
Even if the recording industry succeeds in shutting down these new music sites, analysts warn that once one file-sharing site is closed, another will spring up in its place. It's a moving target the record industry is destined to acknowledge as a lost cause.
The record companies' attempts at launching their own legal music download networks, such as PressPlay and MusicNet, have not been popular partly because of the number of free alternatives and partly because they offer a limited selection of music.
P2P enthusiasts argue that it has not yet been proved that the availability of free music on the internet has dented worldwide record sales.
Many would point a more convincing finger to the fashionability of CD burners. These cost as little as €100 and allow anybody to copy a CD to another CD, with precious little deterioration in sound quality.
Also record sales have been dipping for years anyway, partly due to the schmaltzy junk being dished out by record companies largely to serve the teenybopper market and alienating the more musically-educated fans and partly because of the exorbitant price of CDs.
It may be that the buying appetites and musical curiosity of genuine music fans are being whetted in a way that never happened before that music fans are making connections between bands and genres of music that are far more lateral and enlightened than in pre-P2P times and buying a wider range of music than before.
The record industry's beef with free music sites (or 'pirate' sites, as they prefer to call them) is summarised by Sarah Roberts, communications manager for the British Phonographic Industry: "People think downloads don't do anyone any harm but they forget that everyone, from the session musicians to the producers, gets their income from music sales. If the record companies don't make a profit on the big-name artists, they cannot reinvest and sign new artists. There will simply be less music to buy."
If less music is released by major record companies, the best music will go even further underground.
But the underground, from which everybody from Madonna to U2 derives inspiration and new ideas, will continue to be richly represented by the internet.
And not only by free music sites, but by educational music sites, like the excellent allmusic.com and epitonic.com, which enable music fans to update their bank of knowledge on a massive assortment of music.
The former gives in-depth profiles of all the important names in music, sorts them into different genres, and even lists their influences and music they, in turn, influenced.
Epitonic allows you to listen to lots of samples of, and download in full, a wide range of songs many of them genuinely cutting edge music.