OFF: Re: Hi again

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

Stephen Swann wrote:
> But it's a very common notion that Napster didn't promote
> sales, which just isn't true.  Lots of us who knew how to
> use it to explore new music.  I bought many, many CDs (of
> bands that I would otherwise have never heard of) during the
> heyday of Napster.  I don't buy nearly as many now, because
> I don't have the means to discover nearly as much cool music
> as I did back then.

I would agree with that, generally. I mean, I bet some real sales were
lost to Napster, but I also bet that more were then generated by other
people hearing stuff and thinking, "Woah, that's cool" and buying the
album.  I'm also sure that plenty of college students with time and
bandwidth on their hands downloaded vast piles of stuff on spec -- and
probably never listened to it again!  And some of the sales that were
lost, well they probably "shouldn't" have been "sales".  I mean, half
the time you have to shell out full price for the CD just to hear even a
smidgin of what it sounds like.  And if it sucks, then you're stuck:
you've bought it!

I used Napster some -- mostly searching for available rarities :) or
stuff I heard was cool.  And if I played a track I found and like a
bunch of times, I bought the CD (if it was available).  Otherwise, I
usually deleted files of songs that were crap or boring in order to save
disk space :)  But mostly I found Napster a pain in the ass: it was
slow, most files were encoded like crap, were mislabelled, and ... it
was a pain in the ass.

I don't want free music -- I can get more free'n'legal music than I
could possibly listen to anytime from etree or whatever.  I want to hear
something I haven't before so I can know whether its worth buying.

Nowadays, I might buy the CD of an artist with which I'm familiar
without hearing it, but if there's not at least a little 128kbps full
length MP3 for me to hear ... well, I'll risk my money on someone else's
CD who gave me a bit better sense of what I can expect.  I mean, how is
that different from radio?  Radio gives away songs for free (bar some
advertising!) and you can record it if you want.  Obviously, the
majority of artists will never be on the radio, but they can put some
tasters on their web site.  Or encourage you to tape and trade their
live shows while buying their studio output :)  Then you can spend hours
downloading those bittorrents and figuring out where the hell you're
going to put all the disks you burned ;)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/