i still maintain my opinion of uneducated use of bittorrent is very dangerous, and unsafe.”

At the moment, Usenet newsgroups and sites like Rapidshare are the safest method of downloading music or recent movies. Public file sharing networks like BitTorrent seem relatively safe for older movies and TV shows.

My days of music go back to remembering the 45 vinyl records, back when the major labels didn’t sell albums so much, the main market was the single A and B side. This is where the sales market is once again. Because as mentioned, no one wants the filler and the filler represents unwanted music that is not worth the price, making the cost of an album the price for the one or two good songs. While the album was where the profit was, the majors screwed people so badly over the buying of the album, people began to see the cost of the album as a rip off.

They have no one to blame but themselves because of the direction that music sales has taken. With subpar bands “made” and the back catalog being pushed on the radio all the time. Funny, songs 30 years old are more expensive today than they were when they came out! Since they are no longer the hot Top 40 hits, that is certainly a rip off. No wonder no one wants to pay for their stuff any more. If you think about it, this is most likely the start of where file sharing got it’s popular approval, not the lack of wanting to see the artist get paid but the constant screwing the majors did to the customers. They are receiving their just deserts now and it doesn’t seem to sit so well with them as it did when it was the customer getting screwed. Amazing isn’t it.

The music industry has been screwing both the customer and artist for far longer than 20 years. Before the introduction of Rock and Roll, Blues, and Country, it was the Big Band era. The Big Bands became sort of dead musically for the younger generation that desired something with a little more snap to it.

Back in the 1920’s blues were being sang by the blacks and it was relativity unknown to the radio listening public. When it was felt that The Blues would be the next big thing for racially directed and aimed music, they set out to secure works of the blues. Only the blues artists were harder to find than what the artists of the time were playing for public consumption. What resulted was the roaming agent, recording blues works where ever they could find the artists. Often that was in the Mississippi Delta area. The artists were told that the agent would like to record their music for showing back in Hollywood. If they signed the agreement, they were then paid somewhere around $10 for the song and turned over all rights to it.

Now today, major labels have a real problem with mix tapes and mashes. Hip Hop suffers distinctly from this as they tend to take snippets of music and mix it into their work, making a new work. During that time, major labels had no troubles with it. Popular artists of the time were welcomed and encouraged to listen to the recordings, steal the licks from the music, and incorporate it into their own songs which would be later recorded as yet more major label works. Elvis Presley was one of those artists that blended blues and rhythm into yet an entirely different set of works but have strong works in the blues.

But stealing from the artists was an established practice in the 20’s before the Great Depression.

i still maintain my opinion of uneducated use of bittorrent is very dangerous, and unsafe.

You previously said that anyone still using BitTorrent was a clueless loser, or words to that effect…

I think that should have said “format shifting”.
Phase shifting is a sound manipulation technique that has nothing to do with this discussion.
: )

Otherwise, nice overview, Surfer!