Torrents: The Future?

[Dasquian Belargic]

From http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23318742-5014239,00.html


INDUSTRIAL metal band Nine Inch Nails has uploaded their latest record onto one of the world's most controversial file-sharing websites – The Pirate Bay.

<!-- // #article-intro --> Less than six months since he encouraged Australian concert-goers find his music online and “steal, steal and steal some more”, frontman Trent Reznor released the nine-track Ghosts I album as a torrent on the Swedish-based website.

A Swedish court is currently trying The Pirate Bay, which has the world’s largest directory of BitTorrent files on the web, for alleged breaches of copyright law.

On a message posted on the notorious website, Reznor said the band “personally” uploaded the new album and said people were free to spread it amongst friends.

“We believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them,” Reznor said.

<!-- // article-dropzones --> “We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc.”


[...]


In a Sydney concert last September, Reznor reportedly described (http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/steal-music-nails-frontman-tells-fans/2007/09/18/1189881482912.html) his then record label Universal Music Australia as “greedy buggers” because of the price of his records.

“One way or another these silly silly chaps will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right.”


What's everyones thoughts on this? Is distribution by BitTorrent the way of the future?

[Cat X]

WTF? The FUTURE????

It's the best distribution method NOW.

[Aretsuya]

God, I adore that man.

Except that I'm far too impatient to bother downloading anything and would prefer buying it anyway.

[Turbogeek]

God, I adore that man.

Except that I'm far too impatient to bother downloading anything and would prefer buying it anyway.

Okay, wait a moment because you have just not made a lick of sense or you dont understand what's going on here and how it's good for you.

a) You can buy it if you want. You can also get Ghosts 1 for free at your lesiure, but he's also offering Ghosts II - IV and lots of other value ads for a price if you want. It's about choice and what your prepared to pay for or even want.

b) Impatient to download....? What on earth are you talking about? Fire up your favorite Bit Torrent client, click torrent, walk away and do somethign else. It'll be ready for burning to CD or copied to your favorite MP3 player well before you could hop in the car and buy it from a store, if it's ever offered that way. It's a fact Torrents are the fastest way to get digital media by far. And the bigger and better the internet conenction, the more true that becomes - my rally fetish is fueled by torrents that take less than 5 minutes to grab and I have 30 minutes of WRC goodness to play on whatever medium I want.


Understand this - CD's for music have been dead for 5 years. The industry has been clinging to a dying medium as Itunes and torrents pull the rug from under CD's and have shown that digital distribution is by far better and has been ever since dial up started to die off. The whinign of the RIAA about CD's death is their own fault, if they had a clue they could have joined in the digial dowloading before it was too late and consumers decided it for them.

Also understand that bands offering official torrents is not new at all. It's only making news now as more than just clever independants work out they dont need the RIAA anymore.

[Flux]

The only reason I'm not torrenting the hell outta everything is because (for some reason) torrents make the internet connection in my whole house go kablooey. :(

[Dasquian Belargic]

I said "the future" because torrenting isn't the most common legally endorsed method of music distribution.

[Yog]

Well, in the future, I foresee you'll have to pay some monthly subscription fee for full access to all music that ever has been created, or something like that. And because of the convenience, it will be well worth it. With easy browsable archive of every artist, every album and song, with wikipedia type information, news articles and users star ratings and charts all neatly integrated together. Wake me up when the music industry gets real about their outdated business model.

Edit: as a further note, I do think bittorrent type tech will be important for legal media distrubtion, simply because peer to peer networking saves so much on server and bandwidth load.

[Aretsuya]

God, I adore that man.

Except that I'm far too impatient to bother downloading anything and would prefer buying it anyway.

Okay, wait a moment because you have just not made a lick of sense or you dont understand what's going on here and how it's good for you.

a) You can buy it if you want. You can also get Ghosts 1 for free at your lesiure, but he's also offering Ghosts II - IV and lots of other value ads for a price if you want. It's about choice and what your prepared to pay for or even want.

b) Impatient to download....? What on earth are you talking about? Fire up your favorite Bit Torrent client, click torrent, walk away and do somethign else. It'll be ready for burning to CD or copied to your favorite MP3 player well before you could hop in the car and buy it from a store, if it's ever offered that way. It's a fact Torrents are the fastest way to get digital media by far. And the bigger and better the internet conenction, the more true that becomes - my rally fetish is fueled by torrents that take less than 5 minutes to grab and I have 30 minutes of WRC goodness to play on whatever medium I want.


Understand this - CD's for music have been dead for 5 years. The industry has been clinging to a dying medium as Itunes and torrents pull the rug from under CD's and have shown that digital distribution is by far better and has been ever since dial up started to die off. The whinign of the RIAA about CD's death is their own fault, if they had a clue they could have joined in the digial dowloading before it was too late and consumers decided it for them.

Also understand that bands offering official torrents is not new at all. It's only making news now as more than just clever independants work out they dont need the RIAA anymore.

Actually, I DO know what I'm talking about. First of, I wasn't talking about his album anyway. Secondly, it DOES take me ages, owing to other factors other than the speed of my bittorrent. I've used bittorrent long enough to know how it works.

Besides, I just prefer CDs anyway. It makes things more personal for me.

[Alpha]

Torrents are an amazing piece of tech, and incredibly useful for this kind of thing. Hell, I've known friends who pirate a full discography from the bay and then just send money directly to the band as a way to cut out the middlemen. This kind of thing is working, as shown by Radiohead, and now NiN.

[Khendon Sevon]

The way of the future is for artists to be paid once and for music to be distributed online without fee.

Failing that, the music industry will wither and die as technology leaps forward and they're no longer able to make money printing CD's.

No, "torrenting" in its current form is not the future. It's starting to get old (torrents have been around for a long time). The future is coming, though.

And I'm not talking about the Pirate Bay's protocol.

[Morgan Evanar]

I bought the lossless, DRM free .flac version because I have stated on other forums that when someone releases something decent in .flac for a fair price I would buy it. It's solid ambient music and would have been a fair sell for $10. It's $5, which makes it a great deal IMO. I wish everyone would sell albums for $5-7 in .flac. I'd go broke but that would be fine.

[Dasquian Belargic]

What do you think is the future method of distribution, Khendon? Or rather, what do you think should be?

[Firebird1]

I'm sorry I missed out on the Radiohead so I'll try to make it up to myself by the NIN and download it. Yes I said Buy, with Amazon having the entire thing for $5, and a set with CDs for $10 from the NIN site it's kind of hard not to in this case.

[Khendon Sevon]

What do you think is the future method of distribution, Khendon? Or rather, what do you think should be?

Mmm, I'm no internet guru. This is not an area I'm super knowledgeable at.

But, in my opinion, the future will be all about anonymity. Torrents aren't anonymous. When you connect to a torrent, you're exposing information about your connection to anyone that feels like connecting to the same broadcast as you.

There are solutions to this problem. In fact, I know what I would do about it. I'm sure some PhD guys will come up with better solutions than I can dream up in a minute, though.

I have no clue about anything else, really. I know that the Torrent guys want to make the protocol work better when it comes to actual bandwidth allocation. Sharing, according to them, should ensure a better connection speed.

That's fine.

So, yeah. If I really knew the future I'd be a consultant making mad cash. Or I'd be out there implementing it.

[Cat X]

But, in my opinion, the future will be all about anonymity. Torrents aren't anonymous. When you connect to a torrent, you're exposing information about your connection to anyone that feels like connecting to the same broadcast as you.

This in fact doesnt have to be true anymore if you want. There is no reason why you need to expose yourself if you dont want to. It's not like the info how to do it is all that hard to find either.



There are solutions to this problem. In fact, I know what I would do about it. I'm sure some PhD guys will come up with better solutions than I can dream up in a minute, though.


PHD's dont know crap. Ask a real hacker - they have the problem already solved.



I have no clue about anything else, really. I know that the Torrent guys want to make the protocol work better when it comes to actual bandwidth allocation. Sharing, according to them, should ensure a better connection speed.


The protocol is open, anyone can do that. That's the true beauty of Open Source and BitTorrent. It's already a very configurable and changable set of applications and protocols that you can do basically anything with and if you want you can also have quite a range of administration tools to tune and monitor.



So, yeah. If I really knew the future I'd be a consultant making mad cash. Or I'd be out there implementing it.

Why do you think I said Torrents are the future now? There's not a single protocol that's so open to do quite amazing stuff with - and even more to the point I use BitTorrent on networks now not just for file sharing. It's also a network monitoring tool, an analyser, even when I feel like it a security tester. It's quite an unusually effective tool. And the fact you can build on it, modfy it and do what you want with it is just bonus points.

(I'm in fact using it to suss out why a connection seems to be behaving oddly)

[Khendon Sevon]

Yes, I agree with everything you said.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Just thought I'd post a follow-up on this, since the Chicago Tribune is reporting that Reznor announced he has made $1.6 million in the first week of release for Ghosts I-IV. On top of this, Trent made the following statement:


Today we announce the expansion of the Ghosts project into the visual world. This record began as an experiment with us using sound as a means to describe visuals. Early in the project we thought it would be interesting to see what the community could create / collaborate on as a reaction to the music we were making. We wanted to keep the canvas as blank as possible for you, hence the lack of descriptive song titles and the primarily textural artwork and packaging.

So here's the plan: we've teamed up with YouTube to host a "film festival" around Ghosts. The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual "film festival" with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.

This isn't a contest and you don't win elaborate prizes - it's meant to be an experiment in collaboration and a chance for us to interact beyond the typical one-way artist-to-fan relationship. We've discussed some interesting ways this could go, including multiple installments of the online "film festivals," to broadcast TV specials, to a one-time live performance of the entire Ghosts record with your visuals involved. It really depends on how this progresses and develops.

We are all very much looking forward to what you come up with, and hope you enjoy the experience. Visit our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/ninofficial) for information on how to participate.

TR

[Mu Satach]

[begin hijack]

The Future is Now! (1955)

<div><object width="420" height="339"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x35r4m" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x35r4m" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="339" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always"></embed></object><br /><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x35r4m">The Future is Now (1955)</a></b><br /><i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/donaldtheduckie">donaldtheduckie</a></i></div>

[/end hijack]

[Yog]

There are now rumours of Apple working with the music industry to develop different types of payment models for iTunes (unlimited downloads)..

Apple talking to labels about unlimited music (http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1926136720080319)


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple is in talks with major music companies to offer customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPods and iPhones, the Financial Times said.

Citing people familiar with the talks, the paper said the negotiations hinged on a dispute over the price Apple would be willing to pay for access to the labels' libraries.

One industry executive said research showed consumers would pay a premium of up to $100 for unlimited access to music for the lifetime of a device, or a monthly fee of $7-$8 for a subscription model.

Apple was not immediately available for comment.

I assume there will be some kind of catch such as DRM. Still, this is encouraging news.


Related blog article:


If Apple can pull the trigger on a potential deal with major music companies to offer a “radical new business model that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices,” it could be a game changer.

The fact that music companies are even considering this deal shows you the very real and dire straits that they’re in. Music is alive and well and doing great, but the industry is crumbling, and we might be seeing a new order rising from the ashes very shortly.

Part of the equation for consumers is whether or not they’re willing to forego “ownership” of music for a model where they have access to a huge library with the ability to “keep” only selected tracks. This path also is somewhat contrary to the current trend of eliminating DRM from downloaded tracks. Instead of offering unlimited acces, the somewhat ironically termed “unlimited music bundle” model would tie access to the iTunes library to select Apple devices. In other words, you can listen to the entire iTunes library, but only on your iPhone or iPod. (And perhaps for only limited periods of time, like 30 days or so before the download “expires”?)

MG Siegler notes that this deal could be a way for Apple to jack up prices on highly profitable iPods by leveraging the less profitable iTunes Store. And the price point will also be crucial – where will the upfront and monthly cost come in and how willing will consumers be in shelling out for it?

Some notes on numbers from Valleywag: “Labels are looking to get as much as $100 from iPod buyers and $8 a month from iPhone subscribers. Both sides are really fighting over how much of the profit from music they’ll keep.”

As for me, I just got Sirius satellite radio recently and I’m loving it. Maybe I’m just at the age and level of business where it’s really nice to be able to stream in great music across a wide variety of channels without taking the effort to hunt for it on my own. Or maybe I’m part of that evolution of consumers who can begin to live without ownership of music?

Just don’t take my Pointer Sisters cassette tape away from me. Sometimes you just gotta do the Neutron Dance.

http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/technology?type=technologyNews&w1=B7ovpm21IaDoL40ZFnNfGe&w2=B8jR2GIu7TLKBj1N4Ufg5Sg&src=blogBurst_technologyNews&bbPostId=CzDDRV7JVfgpLB5TY8FCatqQrCz91D37gvuoqoB52 fsdXdF7Ku&bbParentWidgetId=B8jR2GIu7TLKBj1N4Ufg5Sg