At 10:24 AM 3/7/00 -0700, Nub wrote:
quoted 3 lines i tend to think the opposite way, that Napster (and mp3s in general - this
>i tend to think the opposite way, that Napster (and mp3s in general - this
>is an old debate) introduce people to music they would not otherwise have
>heard, and thus can only be beneficial to the music industry.
The way that Napster works makes me pretty skeptical of this idea.
You log on to a server (or don't, most of the time), and type in the name
of whatever band/track you're looking for. People know exactly what they're
looking for when they use Napster. I doubt that people "discover" any new
bands. That's why the blurb on the Napster web page to the effect of "Are
you an undiscovered band? Share your mp3s with the world!" is so comical.
If no one's ever heard of you, then no one will search for you, and the
odds are slim that they will gamble and download your mp3 if they browse
someone else's collection. Come on. People log on to napster, type "GIVE ME
METALLECA MP3S" into the search window, and try to leech down albums. I'm
not saying this to argue about the badness of mp3s; people will trade tapes
or cd-rs or whatever new format comes along, anyway.
Besides, who ever finds anything with napster? i've ripped off a
few artists, but by and large, I never find anything I search for. It's
disheartening to search for someone fairly well-known and popular like
Thomas Brinkmann, and turn up 0 results out of terabytes of mp3s. Bah.
If someone wrote a version of napster called Pr0nster, for
searching and sharing porn, they would become extremely rich overnight.
----
THEY'RE REVERTING TO THEIR DOLPHIN SHAPE!
THE CONTAINMENT FIELD FAILS jeff@spof.net
http://bling.spof.net/ Jeff Pitrman
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