After one of my quick links didn't work due to copyright claims on youtube (yet again), I posted this.



Now, I wrote this out of, well, annoyance, yet, when I re-read it, it actually made some sense. You guys all have alot more experience on these things than I do, so am I missing something here? Not only do they seem to be destroying their free publicity, if they go on like this, they'll take youtube with them.

This is going to be a terrible answer to your question, because I have never experienced the link problem you describe. I did want to say this, though. I suspect that many in my age group don't bother to contemplate a subscription to an online music service, thinking that it is geared towards the younger lads and lasses. (I'm 53)

This is a huge mistake on your part, if that is your inclination/thought process. (Speaking to my fellow geezers, here) Remember how we used to spend hours and hours transferring tunes from our LP's to cassette? By the time we got done, we were tired of the music we transferred! (Not to mention the relative difficulty in finding the actual track on the cassette if we got the urge to hear a particular song.)

Last Christmas I purchased an MP3 player for my wife. She is a music nut, and we have literally thousands of CD's in my home, 99% I have never heard of. My thinking at the time was that she would be transferring all of her esoteric crap onto an MP3 player in order to listen to it at her work.

As almost an afterthought, I subscribed to Rhapsody, in order that she could also download music to her MP3 player. I think I pay either 13. or 15. dollars a month. This has turned out to be one of the smartest moves I have ever made. Not only has this household stopped buying CD's (on what seemed like an hourly basis to this cheapskate), my lifetime record collection (the one in my mind, if you know what I mean) is at my fingertips, subject to whatever mood strikes me.

To those that are unfamiliar with these subscription services, regardless of your age/musical tastes...trust me, they are an incredible value. No, you do not need an MP3 player to get "value" from them. I personally do not even own one, still. What is especially awesome is the ease with which you can find SO MANY different versions of the same song.

Sorry for not answering any of your question, Detlev, but hopefully I did answer one for some of my fellow geezers...

Rock - I agree with you completely and I'll tell you why from my own experience.

If I like something, I will buy it to support the artist. I want to see them get paid for their work.

I buy a lot of music. No longer CDs, because they're a pain to store. Say what you want about mp3s, I'm a former professional musician (no, I never made that much), I can't tell the difference. Maybe my ears are shot. Who knows. I just can't.

An mp3 is a pretty good format. It's small. It's convenient. It's open. What I can't stand is when someone sends me a wmf. I get really pissed and give them a lecture. mp3s only.

dfosterf subscribes to Rhapsody. I think that's great. Every time someone grabs something from Rhapsody, the artist gets paid. I happen to subscribe to eMusic.com which is a service like Rhapsody but independent artists only. Like Rhapsody, every time someone downloads, the artist gets paid. When there's something I can't find on eMusic (which is common because like I said, independent artists only), I buy them from iTunes or Amazonmp3.

About half of the mp3s I buy are things I heard of somewhere else, went to youtube to check them out, and decided to buy them. Had youtube not existed, a lot of these people wouldn't be getting my money. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.

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That's pretty much excactly what I mean ZS.

Oh, and I put down CDs there, but I meant non-streaming music. What I wanted to say is that people don't constantly want to go to a website to listen to music.

I do, however, listen on youtube to particular songs which I like enough to sometimes listen to online, but don't really want to pay money for (Like the one I made that comment on). Maybe that's what they're trying to stop?

The truth is some of these execs have their heads up their you know wheres.

Jack Valenti, the ass clown that gave us our motion picture rating system (where you can see a decapitation and someone literally getting blown up in a PG movie but a hoo hoo will make a movie R, great values there), and his cronies were the people for the whole copyright paranoia. They have absolutely no business sense. Keep in mind, Valenti spent his career fighting the VCR because he said it would put the movie industry out of business. No, not joking. Here's an exact quote for you:

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

He was convinced it would put the movie industry out of business and instead, it made it larger than ever. He was also against the cassette tape because it would destroy the music industry. What really happened was people would make cassettes for their friends, then their friends would be exposed to ever more music and sales of new music went through the roof. Cassettes were the best thing that ever happened to the music industry. It was free advertising.

As is youtube. Now, independent bands can put videos of themselves on youtube and bypass the industry. That's what's driving the music industry nuts. They're realizing that youtube, myspace, and facebook combined with ever cheaper technologies for producing music are making the industry obsolete while artists are making more money than ever.

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I still can't get my mind around the fact that Big Western Music/Group/Company or something does not get how much free advertising you get from youtube, while Sony for instance puts up all their own music. Especially on 80s music, which someone like me would never have found without youtube.

You'd say they would have people for this. People who understand that they can make alot of money out of this....