Roots Archives Forum

Bwoy, how clever you are ! Yes I have copied and received some copies in my life. If YOU don't see the difference between giving away a cd to a friend and downloading it on the web for free share, then that makes YOU one in a million. But you always find an arrangement with your conscience when you're directly concerned, don't ? Keep on doing this s..t, my friend. And f.. the world. You're the best.

"Only for a select group of people"

..the chosen few that can use google?

doesn´t sound like it was recorded through radio to me..

nofoo wrote: doesn´t sound like it was recorded through radio to me..

Internet radio, not terrestrial.

well, the question is: where do you draw the line? at one friend? at ten friends? and is your friend himself allowed to copy it to other friends, other friends you may not even know? if so, what's the difference to sharing it to strangers over the net? simply the number - and once again, where is the line?

apart from that, I don't really see how anybody is hurt when these files are shared over the net; quite the opposite, people might like something they hear and then buy a repress or a full CD

btw: I have absolutely **no idea** what makes you believe that I am "directly concernend" in this (jumping to conclusions, my friend?!) - I have received this CD compilation years ago, long before this website had a forum to discuss subjects like these...but yes, I would not sweat a bit to share it, I'm just too lazy to do so

Yes, ice, good question - where is that line? A difficult issue...

When I was 17, I made a mistake: I broke up with my girlfriend while a load of my records were still at her house. Among the gems was my copy of BLUEBEAT SPECIAL. A couple of years later, a friend gave me the lp on a cassette (an unofficial copy, but before anyone knew what was to come, right?). That lasted me thirty-odd years, in spite of the hiss. But when I did a casual google search last year and discovered I could download it with a few clicks...I went over to the dark side for the first (but not last) time. Did I become "part of the problem"? Yes, no question, and no excuses. But, man, it sounds GREAT.

(BTW - I contacted Heartbeat ages ago and suggested it as a possible reissue. Never heard back. If it ever does come out, I'll buy it, like I just did with Trojan's cd reissue of the Pioneers' LONGSHOT.)

As Prince Buster said: "If you liv'in a glass house - don't t'row stones!"

We are seriously all having the wool pulled over our eye's by the "all powerful" music industry here lol, you know that right? Do you really think we are the criminals here lol?

All this discussion over file sharing has largely been blown out of proportion by the majors (because they can shout the loudest) lol, If you ask me the hype is likely being spread by the media and industry majors to draw attention away the real issues, it's funny the way we all just assume, "yeah hey we are criminals" lol, because that what we've been told by the media so it must be true? Trust me, if you share files you are not a criminal, or a pirate or even doing anything immoral. This hype around file sharing is only serving to divert attention away from the real thieves in the industry , it's actually us who are beg conned, not them.

The real issues are things like how much damage is the mp3 format doing to the quality of music, (not what we do with our mp3's) The market is being absolutely flooded with low bit rate mp3's which is irreversibly damaging the quality of audio not just for us presently but for many generations to come, this is the real crime that's happening in the world of music and it's being lead by the majors themselves, seriously, last week I bought a Vinyl record from Pressure sounds, that was actually just mp3's pressed to Vinyl, same with a lot of cd's these days too, the last Joe Gibbs CD I bought was just a compilation of mp3's burned to CD wtf, can't you people see, our file sharing is doing nothing that the industry wouldn't do to us first, at least the people who upload files to share actually care about their music and aren't just in it for the money!

Asides from this sidestep the industry has taken away from better quality audio format they constantly rip off artists (and consumers) their industry is completely unregulated and we're left with no rights whatsoever. None of the laws have been set up to protect (Us) or anyone other than the majors, as consumers we are at the bottom of the pile my friends and the industry couldn't give a flying f.. about us, or what quality of products or music we get, as long as they can still make money that's all that matters.

I'm doing wrong by file sharing? Give me a break lol. I have to say there's a bit of an irony there, if the majors hadn't made this move to the lower quality formats then they wouldn't be having to worry about this kind of thing, one thing I do detest though is this kind of contempt the industry has towards us as consumers,it's a joke.

There is a good thread over at B&F right now discussing this, the difference being that those involved are music producers, so they have a very different take on it. Basically they say they rarely sell more than 500 copies of anything anymore, which takes it from being a business to just a hobby, which reduces the amount of music released, which in the end ruins the whole scene. Having access to music isn't a right. It doesn't deserve to be "free". It's art that people put time, effort, and money into creating.

Once upon a time there was a label which tried to do everything right. Paid the artists, paid the producers, paid for top mastering, paid for quality artwork and liner notes. Top quality vinyl pressings. They couldn't make a go of it, even with wealthy backers willing to put up with a company losing money. It was the dying market for music in general, reggae in particular, that killed them. And you have to be honest, it's not that people stopped listening to music, they just stopped paying for it.

And aside from the Sound System Scratch album (which admittedly is dubious in many ways), I can't see Pressure Sounds doing mastering from mp3s. And if they did source some tracks on that one from some mp3's it would probably be from a lack of access to the original dubplates (which are crap sound quality anyway).

This is where people are getting confused imo, Vinyl and CD sales are down because mp3 sales are taking their place, not because of file sharing. It's just the industry's way of pointing the finger at us rather than admitting their own wrong doing The profit from an mp3 sale is so small that the artists make nothing from them and lose out on Vinyl and CD sales to boot. this has nothing to do with file sharing, but people assume that it has because they automatically think mp3 = files sharing when it doesn't. Here's another reason, when was the last time you bought a complete album as an mp3 download? I suspect most people never do, they just buy the individual tracks that they like from the lp, so that means even less profits. like I said the real culprits to blame are the people pushing the mp3 format, this format was developed to allow faster streaming of audio data over the internet, it is not a format that should even be sold commercially, for example the standard bit rate of an Amazon mp3 is 260 bit's a cd is 8 times that quality.

Yes, music should be free under some circumstances, if you choose to give music away as a gift then that's you're choice and is in fact perfectly legal to do so, weather you do so over the internet or not. Record companies often give music away for free in promotions, what the file sharing sites are actually doing is just that, promoting the artists and I might add this "Free" Promotion on blogs and file sharing sites is actually saving the record companies money. I find it very hard to believe that any music buyer would ever stop at just owning an mp3 from a file share site, most people just use the blogs and other downloads to preview the lp's their interested in actually buying, if they like them then most people (the majority of people) go out and buy the LP's. File sharing is actually doing the music industry a lot of good, it allows people access to music they would otherwise never have heard, it's the format it'self that is killing it.

Indeed the Perry Dubplate is an mp3, it's also been poorly mastered which is actually what stands out the most when you listen to the track, I feel that's a reel insult to their customers and Vinyl or Cd buyers in general, but hey, it's pressure sounds I can forgive them the odd mistake, they're usually bang on the mark when it comes to quality. However the Perry Dub[late should have been mastered better.

Bleep.wich pressure sounds lp is a vinyl press from mp3?

.sorry dont read all your print if mentioned

Well some of the tunes on the lp, in particular the track "Chim Cherie"" on both the lp and the 7", here I'll show you.

This is what a healthy audio waveform looks like (this is vinyl and cd quality apprx)

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/3855/2 ... 051653.jpg

Bellow is the Pressure sounds release, you can see how much data is missing, this is due to variable bit rate mp3 compression. l,this is kind of "techy" boring stuff but it's a good example of what mp3 compression does to music and why it shouldn't be sold commercially, Really there should be guidelines in place but there aren't.


http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/1980 ... 051431.jpg

A lot of DJ's a do use 320 bit mp3's so mp3's have been being used for cutting vinyl for a while, it's no secret, the problem here is, people are buying vinyl and cd's because they are the best audio quality you can get, but more and more often they're actually getting no better than mp3, the same quality as youtube lol, this sht is seriously killing music, no joke.