Comments on: Meet the Overdub Tampering Committee

By: Rohan

Rohan — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:25:25 +0000

I personally think it’s a great idea, and not that hard to accomplish… The changes they talk about are just extra instruments (like their example, one day you hear the ‘real’ version and say ‘where’s the piano gone?’) so you wouldn’t notice it. The ‘problem’ of not noticing isn’t really a problem cause it sounds like they enjoy doing it, even if no one notices.

The key point is that they are making people talk about it and pissing the labels off, so I say go for it! I actually want to listen to their stuff from an artistic perspective cause there’s several songs I’ve thought ‘a piano/accordian/triangle would sound great there, why didn’t they do it?’ and it’d be cool if these guys had added it…

And @ Henry: I hate DRM because I use Linux. Linux doesn’t decode DRM. This means that (as happened a couple of months ago) I may download songs completely legally, only to have to find a friend with windows and a CD burner before I can listen. That ain’t right in any way shape or form. Also making crap versions defeats the point because when it’s obvious people just delete the bad stuff (as the overdubbers said themselves) so that would be even more pointless…

Meh, rant done now! lol.

By: GoLeafsGo

GoLeafsGo — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:34:45 +0000

Hmmmm…….and Paul McCartney is dead. He was replaced by a dopple-ganger after getting decapitated in a car wreck……George W. Bush is dead…..above the head…..wait, that one’s true! Jim Morrison and Elvis are sharing a split-level condo on an uncharted island somewhere near Bora Bora……

By: BOb

BOb — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:40:02 +0000

If you think that p2p is poor quality crap, as you put it, you are very wrong. Only if you are using the worst types of p2p services, ie: limewire, winmx, etc. will you get bad quality. The internet has lossless everything and the only way you will end up with poor quality, wrong, or infected rips is if you are completely ignorant to the ways of p2p. Even as far as the legit music services go, the bitrate and quality is already complete garbage. FLAC and high bitrate MP3’s are everywhere and the only people affected by this are the people who are already used to getting low quality, poorly labeled music from garbage p2p services (read: limewire).

This will not slow down internet piracy at all. After all, music wants to be free and music gets what it wants.

By: melvillian

melvillian — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:59:56 +0000

wow, we’re really dealing with the bottom of the barrel here. almost everything you could want is available in lossless quality, you just have to know where to look. not that i have any interest in “illegally downloading” music. really what’s the point because all mp3 rippers, players, headphones etc. all sound different anyway; everyone knows that your home stereo sounds different than your car, ipod, etc. i also find it highly unbelievable that these changes were so subtle that years later this group could still distinguish “their songs”. i’d like to see some proof, but even if they did produce “proof” whose to say that they didn’t just produce it on demand. circulating for years?! c’mon! the funny thing is that most music these days is crap anyway, so why the f- would you bother. that’s my $.02! ; )

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:01:30 +0000

Henry’s always good for a laugh

Cheers!

By: Mostly Harmless

Mostly Harmless — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:52:54 +0000

Henry Emrich Says:
“Lower the (already dismal) “quality” of the p2p crap, and REALL music fans will stop bitching about how CD’s “cost too much” and/or the authorized downloads have “DRM”. (DRM only interests most of them because they want to pirate the stuff over onto p2p networks anyway.)”

So, if everything was crap quality on P2P networks then people would not bitch about the price of CDs? And “most of them” are interested in buying downloads without DRM mainly so they can “pirate the stuff over onto p2p networks”?

Yeah right…

I will not stoop to name calling, but it is so tempting.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:15:09 +0000

Meh

By: Henry Emrich

Henry Emrich — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:43:12 +0000

I LOVE this idea!

The “quality” is already abysmally bad on many tracks you can get from p2p networks.
this is brilliant!
But they don’t go far enough:

1. Somebody needs to create really cheezy cover-versions of songs (the worst, most unlistenable ones they can). Then tag and label them as the “real” thing. This will increase the possibility that if you use the p2p networks, in addition to visues, spyware, adware, and really badly encoded files, you’ll end up with the equivalent of one of those knockoff CD’s done by “the hit crew”.

Lower the (already dismal) “quality” of the p2p crap, and REALL music fans will stop bitching about how CD’s “cost too much” and/or the authorized downloads have “DRM”. (DRM only interests most of them because they want to pirate the stuff over onto p2p networks anyway.)

These guys rule!

By: defib

defib — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:12:14 +0000

If the overdubs are so subtle as to be unnoticeable, who cares? This is the proverbial tempest in the teapot. Only at the point where the tampering becomes obvious will the listener care*; but at that point the file is considered “bad” and is discarded for a pristine copy. This method of subversion undermines itself, because as soon as it rises to the level of “subversion,” the subversion is quickly discarded. It’s self-refuting.

*I suppose there are a few pathological OCD listeners who will go crazy listening for the possibility of surreptitious overdubs in their music collection, but they will do that now anyway even if there are no actual overdubs in existence, now that this manifesto has been released. Anyone that concerned with the fidelity of their music is not going to be happy with the quality of downloadable mp3’s anyway.

Thus I conclude that this feat is primarily masturbatory in nature, primarily. In essence.