Yes, William Telltale, you definitely have a point here. No matter how good Led Zep's first three albums sounded decades ago, after hearing "Stairway to Heaven" going on 10,000 times now, all its nostalgia and luster have worn off. Sometimes I'd like to hear some obscure sucky song I hated back in the 70s instead of George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone," ZZ Top's "Well-Dressed Man," Rush's "Spirit of Radio," or Pat Benatar's "Hit Me with Your Best Shot". If I never hear any of these songs again, it's all fine and dandy. I loved these songs but that was before each took up three months of my life!
I know some lucky people saw all the "Supergroups".
But most of us caught a concert now and then and listened to the music when it
was fresh and climbing the album charts for Billboard
while working at our jobs, finagling with our cars in the backyard, shooting
hoops in the neighbor kids' driveway, or hanging out at the pool. Just like Mom
made us eat vegetables and fruit cocktail, we had to trudge through listening
to several "sucky" songs before a good one played. Such was life in the '70s,
'80s, and for the most part, the '90s. And although we never had money to buy all our favorite tapes and records, at least we paid good money for them.
Those were the days before YouTube, iPods,
and computerized systems that can tell what music you'll like because you already
really like a certain song -- like the way Pandora will automatically fix a whole music
set for you based on a song you pick. How convenient and, really, how scary!
Someone I don't know and will never meet already knows what songs I like.
Wow!
Back then, you had to listen to a few songs you didn't like, then on came a
song that was pretty good, and finally, a song that you liked a lot hit the
air. And all was good again. Nobody thought these bands of the '70s, '80s, and
'90s would inevitably evolve into consummate rock & roll acts who would be
defining their genre of music some 20, 30, or 40 years later. No, back then
Rock & Roll was just Rock & Roll. But we loved it. And the AOR regulars were always replaced by new and fresh good stuff. It was all good!
Now, all you need is a YouTube account and after typing in the pertinent search info -- there's four, five, or six versions of a song that have been posted up there by some guy with a sock-puppet name like 'Poorman's Pyrate', 'FreeMusicMan' or 'TypedTunes'. You can click on a song for free, and seemingly, with impunity. You think, "Can I do this? Is it legal? Aren't these songs under copyright?" Then you see that "Loser" by Beck has already been downloaded 585,632 times from a YouTube offering. You figure there will be a lot of other people in trouble too, for downloading "Loser", so why not just click it and play it? The guy who put it up there in the first place, a nathan sprague, will get into trouble, not any of the other half million who've listened to it -- and it's not even a video but a music stream, anyhow. Anyhow, they always have an advertisement at the beginning of these things so Beck's gotta get a few pennies. And it's nice to know that I can click off that stupid advertisement at the beginning after five seconds... .
And then you search YouTube for "Jane Says" and serendipitously discover it was made by Jane's Addiction (which you knew in another decade), and since the Classic Rock stations rarely play that song, you click on it. This one, put up there by some sock-puppet named TheLyricsLegend, already has over 4.33 million views. Why in the hell not click and play, right? They're going to need one big courtroom for all these copyright offenders.
*******
File sharing -- allowing music downloads from the Internet free, without using a third-party provider -- began in June 1999 with the advent of Napster. Dubbed a "peer-to-peer file-sharing service", Napster allowed people to share MP3 files with others. Shut down by a court order in July 2001, Napster's assets were liquidated and bought by other concerns though bankruptcy-court deals. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and some recording artists -- namely members of the heavy-metal band Metallica -- spearheaded the civil legal attack on Napster, alleging infringement on record labels' copyrights. After Napster, similar companies emerged to take its place like Limewire and Kazaa, which were also closed due to litigious actions. And even though file-sharing music under copyright is illegal, a multitude still use it as a primary source of listening to their favorite tunes. According to The Guardian, more young people discover new music on YouTube than by listening to the radio or by paying for music on iTunes (see: http://www.ibtimes.com/downloading-music-youtube-legal-best-youtube-mp3-converter-sites-are-often-shut-down-799693). The legalities concerning whether or not it is legal or illegal simply click and play a YouTube video containing streaming music even once is a convoluted mess. But in all honesty, I can't see how it could possibly be deemed "legal".
What the RIAA, Google, and the music industry seem most concerned about, however, is the ease in which YouTube videos can be transformed into MP3s. Even a kid can do it, it's so easy! And millions of them are doing just this -- creating their own burned-off CDs by simply doing some cut-and-pasting and a bit of other witch-doctoring to create their own custom-made discs.
From flickr.com/photos/39160147@N03/11957011123/: Hot Wheels: Always a mainstay and very well represented all over Classic Rock, Who's this?
(Image by Unknown Owner) Details DMCA
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