Sound and Vision

[andrewducker]

I'd been thinking about AllOfMp3.com for a while - I mean, sure, it's completely unethical - but seeing as I'm just using it to download music that they won't let me have legally (i.e. Napster doesn't have it), I refuse to feel bad about it.  So when purelyskindeep mentioned it was pretty darn good, I decided to give it a go.  And it is - there's still lots of gaps, but I managed to find a couple of albums I wouldn't otherwise have.

I recommended G-Force to him, which will happily keep me hypnotised for whole track's at a time.  It synchronises well with the music and manages to have just the right rate of change through different animations - not long enough for you to get bored, not so short that you can't take in all the details.

In response he recommended R4 - which doesn't synchronise so well, but has some lovely 3D effects.

Both of them have standalone versions that will work with any sound source you like - and G-Force has a free version - plus a $10 paid version, which frankly is so cheap that it's hard to say no to.

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Why do you think using allofmp3.com is unethical? It's legal, and it's a byproduct of the global market - in many ways I think the way that the pricing here isn't similar is an example of the unethical price fixing methods used by the record companies.

[andrewducker]

Legal != ethical.

The original artists get absolutely none of the money in this case - the providers are using a loophole in copyright law.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't believe they're using a loophole in copyright law, rather a loophole that allows them to sell tracks online in Russia.

Perhaps someone should setup a site that allowed people to make donations to artists directly - add that to using something like allofmp3.com and you have legal+ethical.

I wonder if the artists really deserve all that money anyway - they seem to be wealthy enough, and anyway with so much of the money from a CD sale going to evil organisations like the RIAA (in the US of course) I think its unethical to buy CDs.

[andrewducker]

There's a loophole in Russian law which means that digital reproduction of music isn't covered by copyright.

I wonder if the artists really deserve all that money anyway
Well, if you want to get rid of copyright then fair enough. But the majority of artists don't actually make that much, comparatively. Franz Ferdinand, for instance, don't even own their own flats. Only really big artists actually make much money.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't want to get rid of copyright, but I don't think it should be owned by big corporations, and either way I think it should only last a limited amount of time, 5-10 years say.

The real problem with artists not making much money lies not with us buying things from allofmp3 but rather with the evil record companies creaming off all the profits.

[andrewducker]

I don't vew record companies as actively evil. They're just interested in making money. Nobody, after all, is forced to sign up with them.

And you _could_ stop big corporations buying up copyrights - but only by taking away my right to sell my copyrights. Which would make writing, for instance, Lonely Planet guides a tad tricky.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I think their evil activity like all corporations comes from the fact that their primary and only interest is making money, anything else is only relevant where it affects their ability to make money.

It is true that they serve a useful purpose and that if they weren't around then it would be tricky to publish / distribute things - but that's only because no other methods of distribution can come into being because of their vice like grip on the industry. It's like with Microsoft in the IT industry, where there are potential competitors (like BeOS) they use their immense power to crush them.

This isn't good for consumers or society.

[andrewducker]

Distribution actually isn't the stranglehold the music industries have - nowadays you can distribute with a webpage and a copy of bittorrent.

What they make themselves indispensable with is providing the initial input of cash to make a record/fund a tour/etc. Oh, and manage all of the stuff that musicians don't want to (like transport, tours, artists, engineers, etc.)

If you want to be a self-managed band it's perfectly possible - it's just a lot of hard work.