Who Killed Spotify? 257
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that ad-supported music service Spotify is bringing strict limits to its service, allowing users ten hours listening time per month and a lifetime total of five plays per track. Rory Cellan-Jones discusses how much their hand was forced by the labels, and how much it was down to their own desire to move more than the current 15% of users to their paid subscriptions. The overwhelming reaction from users seems to be straightforward disappointment at the loss of a service which managed to bridge the commercial radio business model and modern listening habits. As the first response to the announcement said: 'So long Spotify. It was nice knowing you. Guess I'll go back to pirating music again then.'"
Only to free (Score:5, Informative)
Must admit though that I cancelled my subscription last week. Wasn't anything wrong with the service, which is a good one, was simply that I found I wasn't using it nearly as much as I thought I might.
Cheers,
Ian
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I've heard that spotify is a great service, but they still haven't managed to launch in the US, I can only wonder if this has something to do with them trying to broaden their availability in regions not yet supported.
Re:Only to free (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, this has to do with Warner music group holding back spotify with retarded licensing.. [techdirt.com]
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Spotify is less radio-like than Pandora.
Spotify allows you to pick a song and play it -- something which Pandora (last time I tried it) does not. Indeed, I think Pandora's weighted-random personal radio station is a legal hack, so that they're classed as a radio station rather than something else.
Spotify really is like having an iTunes with a vast library.
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My issue with Spotify is that it doesn't integrate with my existing library.
This is mainly an issue because most of my favorite music just isn't available through Spotify or there are only a few songs by the band/musician in question available.
If it would integrate with iTunes so that it preferred the local copy but could be told to use the Spotify copy it'd be extremely nice.
I actually got Spotify Premium when I bought my current cellphone (free for six months) and so far I've barely used it, I just find m
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You can import music into Spotify either just from folders on your hard drive or your entire iTunes library.
There is information on how this works on the Spotify site : https://www.spotify.com/uk/about/local-music/ [spotify.com]
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Yeah, but that's importing the iTunes library into Spotify, not integrating Spotify into iTunes.
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Wrong direction. When I wrote "integrate with iTunes" i meant "into iTunes" not "import the iTunes library".
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But who the fuck wants to use iTunes?
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Ok..I guess I don't get this set up then. I like to use Pandora, much like a radio...gives me a nice random play, within a genre....I've been discov
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I'm old like you, and I also prefer the Pandora model (I'm in the US, but tried Spotify via vpn to check it out). I guess that Spotify is for the youth who don't have huge music collections already - I ripped my 400+ CDs when I went digital, I was all over Audiogalaxy, I have a lot of music on local storage. I like Pandora because it helps me hear new stuff, and I don't have the time these days to be making compilations and playlists. For $36 a year, it's like Netflix for me - sure I could download all this
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The economics of radio suck if you try to cater to a very narrow segment of interest. That's why you end up with radio stations broadcasting the same Bieber/Idol/Britney compilation over and over again - because it's the lowest common denominator that lots of people will listen to.
If you're looking for a radio station that plays Bright Eyes and Pavement 24x7, or "Nothing but the Ramones, all day!", you've got a very narrow listening audience, which means your ads will be, generally speaking, a great way to
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Paid Spotify won't pay the bills. This is a death knell for Spotify--they don't know it, but it is.
What are your figures for this and why do you believe that Spotify don't know something about their business model that you do? The idea that paid spotify wont pay the bills seems rather arbitrary when you consider that a digital service like Spotify can scale up or down its infrastructure and costs according to demand. Costs and demand move in quick step with each other unlike physical manufacturing where if you invest heavily at a certain productivity and demand falls, you may be stuffed.
I had to scale
Who Killed Spotify...? (Score:2)
...When after all, it was you and me.
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Oh god yes. My only complaint about the ads on Spotify free is the monotone voice announcements, not sure what it is about his American accent that is so robotic! Get an English voice actor and the ads would be so much less annoying.
Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess I'll go back to pirating music again then
I know this attitude well. Being Canadian, it's even worse here.
I try to buy media, and would love to be able to legitimately buy various movies and TV shows online, but thanks to the CBC/CRTC, they can't be made available here thanks to some very backwards and broken laws.
So you browse say, netflix or itunes (ugh.. but meh). Find something you want. Money (figuratively) sitting in my pocket, theirs for the taking .. NOPE! DON'T WANT IT! But please stop pirating because it's costing us money! Oh, here is a show made in the 80's with a 1 and a half star rating who's title contains one word from your query.. THAT we can give you! *froths at mouth*
Then pay with your ballot (Score:2)
but thanks to the CBC/CRTC, they can't be made available here thanks to some very backwards and broken laws.
The movie studios will be happy to take your money once you vote in a Parliament that will repeal "some very backwards and broken laws." It's like voting with your wallet, only the other way around.
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A political ad doesn't do much good if you don't mention the party!
That depends on how quickly Canadians can get Pirate [pirateparty.ca] candidates onto ballots.
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Dont let that stop you.
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It's like voting with your wallet, only the other way around.
Walleting with your vote? I'm pretty sure selling votes is illegal in most countries.
We call them 'campaign donations' and that makes it legal. Didn't you know?
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Unless you manage to educate all the ignorant, and all the morons, NOTHING. WILL. GET. DONE.
Then what's the best way to promote knowledge of copyright and privacy issues among the constituency?
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The average person doesn't have a clue about this media vs copyright war that has been happening since before the internet even existed.
I don't know what this "average person" is to whom you refer, but outside of Slashdot, I think most people think the notion of copyright is reasonably fair. Inside of Slashdot, you get modded down for being anti-piracy.
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It is not the CRTC or Canadian Law that stops shows from being available in Canada. It's the regional licensing systems the entertainment industry has that that require negotiating separately for each region that sites like Netflix want to make the content available in.
Often you can't even go to a single source either because often the same content has different corporations to manage it depending on country or continent. Scrabble is a fantastic example of that: British scrabble players can't play North A
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It is not the CRTC or Canadian Law that stops shows from being available in Canada. It's the regional licensing systems
It is Canadian law that makes licensing systems enforceable. Therefore Canadian law is responsible for broken licensing systems.
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Wrong. So very wrong. Most of it can be laid at the feet of the CRTC and Cancon. The CRTC for blocking innovation and a increase in the number of competitors in the market. And Cancon for forcing a specific percentage of all broadcasts must contain 'canadian content'.
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At this point that doesn't apply to the Internet. Canadian broadcasters are begging the CRTC to change the rules to change that though.
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Indeed they are. Especially after they just ruled that netflix is not a broadcaster. Let me just say, good luck with that.
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You pay a piracy tax on writeable media in Canada. Since this is (supposedly) used to offset piracy, go ahead and download whatever you want. It's already paid for.
It's OK to pirate if you are Canadian (Score:2)
Since you are forced to pay a tax on blank media to support the music and movie industry, I would personally cease to buy any TV, music or movies from that point on and make full use of the license you cannot opt out of and are forced to pay. Buy a CD? That's worth 100 movie downloads, easy.
petty people (Score:5, Interesting)
That is just ridicilous. In Norwegian money, one month of spotify membership costs less than a beer bought at a pub*: and the amount of music you have available is excellent. If they really want the radio model with advertisements and a fixed playlist - listen to a goddamn radio station. Spotify is something completely different - you have full controll over what you are listening to.
*That is for the least expensive option, where you do not have the option to use it on mobile devices. For double this, or about one and a half beer you get the added possibility of installing the spotify application on mobile devices; including offline storage to not tax your wireless data plan.
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In fairness, the price of beer in Norwegian money is fucking ridiculous. The only thing that’s stopped me going for a pay version of spotify is the fact I don’t use it all that much and the catalogue has a number of holes. I can let the holes go, but I can (and do) get better value buying albums with the money I could spend on spotify.
If it ever gets near £5pm with support
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If it ever gets near £5pm with support for mobiles I’d subscribe without thinking about it.
Would you also like a pony with that? Seriously. 10€ per month is nothing. I spend way more on beer each month (here in .fi 10€ would be 2-4 pints, depending on the pub - although the places where that is 4 are not the ones you want to visit). I understand that some people find the omissions in the catalogue a letdown (the only hole I encounter is King Crimson - seriously Fripp, be reasonable - but I have already ripped the albums from them I want to listen), and some people simply don't listen to
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ItT's not nothing, it twice his price point, but hey you go ahead and dictate the value people should put on stuff.
How do you know he can even afford beer?
I have no idea who started it, but the idea that 99 cents, 5 dollar is 'nothing' should be whipped.
It's not nothing, its ANOTHER 99 cents, or ANOTHER 5 dollars.
The fact that you think it's nothing either means you are rich, or you have become the bitch of marketing people.
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Which says more about the beer prices in Norway...
Pardon me for saying so, but the biggest fans I've seen of the service are those who are total music fans, own plenty CDs, listens to plenty music, used to pay plenty for it. No doubt it's a great offer for everyone who listens to music all day long, it's a very vocal and happy minority. For a lot of people - like me - music isn't all that important. It's nice to have from time to time during exercise and travel and during parties, but I rarely if ever sit a
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For a lot of people - like me - music isn't all that important. [...] Perhaps when you manage to look beyond your own situation you will see that Spotify for many people no longer makes sense.
I don't think Spotify should be basing their pricing around what appeals to people who don't have much interest in music. ;)
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Just how expensive are these pub bought Norwegian beers?
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Steam shows a successful model (Score:2)
Spotify vs. Free (Score:2)
In most businesses, there is a tipping point at which consumers will slow their buying habits. What recording execs consistently fail to understand is that in the music business there is a tipping point at which consumers go away forever and don't come back.
The record labels need to remember that the option confronting users is on the one hand a model like Spotify -- and on the other hand, free (as in, I'll just bring a 2TB drive over to my friends house and get a lifetime worth of free music).
The belief
2 observations: (Score:2)
1) The existing distribution system failed, and ceded electronic sales to 1 party: Apple.
Once all the other minor players are killed off Apple will eat the RIAA.
2) The paid distribution model is doomed in any case.
Drive away enough customers and they will find other things to do, other places to get music, and, most importantly,
they will ignore your promotions.
Once the consumers dictate the fashion, the distributors become irrelevant.
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1) The existing distribution system failed, and ceded electronic sales to 1 party: Apple. Once all the other minor players are killed off Apple will eat the RIAA.
You seem to forget about the other big electronic music players like Amazon, Pandora, Last.FM, etc.
Not all is well for paying subsribers (Score:3)
I really love Spotify, especially the social aspects. Playlists URIs, collaborative playlists etc. are really great.
But as a paying subscriber I really hate it everytime a song gets disabled from my playlists because of the label's greed. I've been paying more to the music industry the past year compared to the last ten years, but it's still not enough.
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Fortunately the song is still in the playlist (however not playable), so you don't lose the information on what song it was. But still it's far from a good situation.
Memo to the music industry: (Score:4, Informative)
Otherwise: Fuck you. You can't stop the signal, no matter how hard you try. We'll all go back to sharing mix tapes if that's what it takes, or recording off the radio. You will NEVER be able to close the analog gap. You will NEVER be able to create any form of DRM that can't be cracked in a matter of hours or days. You will NEVER be able to stop the sale of used media. You will NEVER be able to prevent people from loaning and borrowing CDs from friends. Give it up. Change, or die.
Re:Memo to the music industry: They started it (Score:3)
They started it in the form of radio, which was seen as essentially advertising, and then became payola (pay to play). They were paying stations to play things they wanted us to buy!
Free music has become a lifestyle, and they started it. I'm just playing along. What's the difference between turning on the radio and hearing a song, and having it on my hard drive on-demand? Nothing I say.
Bzzzt!! Wrong Answer (Score:2)
Yell and stomp your feet all you want, nothing will come of it.
The point of DRM is to make it sufficiently hard to violate copyright. That's all.
Breakable DRM is a balancing act between looking the other way while entertainment media is distributed as a kind of loss leader, and generating sufficient fear that the RIAA will litigate you for violating copyright.
They don't need to change, they know what you like and have copyright and intellectual property law on their side. Meanwhile your right to repurpose
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"Mr. Anderson. What good is music, if you can not hear?"
I'd not put it past the music/movie industry, or the government censors they support, to try to make it a felony to "broadcast" to music you haven't paid for.
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I'd not put it past the music/movie industry, or the government censors they support, to try to make it a felony to "broadcast" to music you haven't paid for.
Don't sell them short. They're working on it as we speak:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382048,00.asp [pcmag.com]
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Change, or die.
I read the last sentence with the voice of the this old Atari skateboard game, 720 [youtube.com] running through my head.
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That is exactly what spotify premium is. Cheap, easy to use, great selection and has high availability. £5 per month is the right price. I can't believe you think otherwise.
If you want free, use bittorrent and stop pretending you would ever pay for it.
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They have changed their business model in the last few years. Now its about political lobbying to make stronger laws making it illegal, then suing those people that break those laws for exorbitant amounts of money, trying to fear monger the rest of their consumers back in line to their old model of distribution! See!
Not sure how that's working for them...
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People always claim they'll stop pirating music when there's a cheap and convenient way of legally buying the music. So far there really haven't been such ways.
I'm pretty sure that Radiohead put this baby to bed. Hell, even Duran Duran released their new album on iTunes in December before releasing the CD in March. The artists are more than willing to support anything that gets their music out there. Their record companies, not so much. Check the sales figures on those two examples above and tell me that people don't want to support the artists they like.
Besides, everyone knows the bands make their money off their concert merchandise...
In addition, guess what all
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By the way: I have a job, I have money. I buy used CD's, resorting to new only when I can't find them used because the music industry is BULLSHIT. So you can bite me.
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I resent the music industry monetizing every single thing they can, yet still fighting against fair use. If I buy a CD, I should be able to rip it, put it on my phone, put it on a PMP, put it on my computer, make a copy to keep in the car if I have a CD player in the car, etc etc etc, but they want everyone to pay for the same music over and over and over again. I don't use and have never even used this "Spotify", and I really don't care about it, either. My who
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Bad Pricing Model (Score:2)
Like Spotify, Rdio has a pricing model where they charge more if the endpoint is a phone. This makes no sense to me whatsoever and reminds me of the bad old days when cable tv companies wanted you to buy a separate subscription for each television set.
For Rdio, I can tether my laptop to my phone and listen for $5 / month. Great! If, however, I wanted the phone to be the endpoint, they double the price. I can understand there are costs associated with producing a mobile app, but I would rather they just char
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I'd pay for a subscription today if I could stream it to my phone without needing to connect my laptop. I stream Pandora to my phone all the time and it has worked flawlessly, even when I drive around in my car.
I actually don't want to download music to my phone. I have a Nexus S which is extremely limited in storage space. This week I uploaded my entire collection to Amazon's cloud service and to be honest, this is more useful to me than Rdio and it is much less expensive. Amazon + Pandora is working out t
WiMP killed spotify (Score:2)
Who killed it? (Score:2)
Uh... Kristin Shepard?
I've got an idea... (Score:2)
...to stop piracy, let's treat our customers who access our product legally terrible and blame the dirty pirates! Surely this will turn public opinion against them. It's the pirates' fault we can't have nice things.
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I think the same thing about DI.fm. I listen to the free one, but they often have commercials for the high-quality streams. If I listened at home, I'd be more tempted to pay for it, but for now the cheap stream is nice.
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I agree with you, except that I don't need the high bitrate and mobile support, and get away with half the price. :)
It's not that bad IMHO to pay $8/month for unlimited access to that music library. At least not enough to speak of Spotify being "killed". It's far better than anything you could get in the nineties, or even early 2000's, so I still think that this is definitely progress in the right direction. Yes, you don't get to "own" your music, but I consider it like I do with movie visits or (back in th
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Trust Slashdot to highlight the "So long, guess I'll go back to pirating music comment". Honestly - is it really that hor
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"out of whack to charge £5 a month for endless music?"
Yes.
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Ditto. In addition I can have my wifes mobile phone on my subscription as well without extra cost.
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If you compare it to something like a LoveFilm or Netflix account where you pay £10-£15 a month and can only have a limited number of DVDs at once then it is really good value. You have access to any music in the Spotify library which is incredibly extensive and you can download it and carry it around on your phone or when you are out of the country.
Being able to listen to anything from a massive library of music as much as you want including on mobile devices for the price of maybe 2 cds seems
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Well, it kind of depends on there cost and value compared to competitors.
I wish people would stop comparing music to movies. There different things.
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It was never really free, insofar as it was supported by ads. I'd be interested to know what it is that makes ad-supported Spotify unsustainable, while ad-supported commercial radio continues to be profitable.
If feels to me (I say "feels" because I have no figures) as if the licensing terms for Internet streaming must be unreasonably high in comparison to radio broadcasting.
Or, Spotify hasn't convinced enough advertisers that it's a worthwhile channel.
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Two words: Phone-ins.
Also, afaik commercial radio can charge more for their ads because it's a safe medium in the eyes of the advertisers. I can only assume this is true, considering the variety of the adverts I hear on spotify compared to those I hear on the radio. Listening to spotify, I get 1 or two ads every 15-20 minutes (I listen to alot of prog rock, so that's 1 after every track) and there's usually only three or four adverts that aren't spotify information spiels. They do change quite often, but it
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That said, based on Spotify's revenues which they have publicl [bbc.co.uk]
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50p per year for unlimited streaming is about the maximum that I'd be willing to pay.
Then you are either phenomenally cheap or your have no interest in streaming music. Neither of which apply to most of the people in this discussion.
Re:What A Disgusting And Vile Statement (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Canadian I can understand this argument.
I try very hard to pay for all my media.... but man is it hard. Thanks to some very broken laws and the CBC/CRTC, most content can't be offered in Canada for online download. So you find something you want... money sitting in your pocket (figuratively), theirs for the taking... but nope, they can't take it... but they can sell you something made in the 80's with a 1 star rating! Oh but please stop pirating because it's costing us revenue!
So your choice is basically:
- go to the store.. buy the DVD (assuming they even have it in stock and not in blueray).. go home.. rip it onto your computer (which is where you wanted it to begin with)
- download it and be watching in ~half hour
Relying on people to choose the morally correct option over the sane and easier one is a really bad business model!
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You can rip blueray just as well, drives are not that expensive these days.
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You have no entitlement to receive a given piece of entertainment exactly how you want it when you want it.
Agreed, which is why as said in my post.. I pay for my media (except in a select few circumstances). The people who make the media do have the right to sell it in whatever messed up way they want... and people don't have some entitlement to it. That said, considering how blatenly simple it is to pirate media... and how painful it is to actually pay for it... it boggles my mind why anyone things this is a good idea. Big media should stop whining about Canadians pirating and go after the CBC/CRTC who won't le
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In short, copyright infringement is illegal and wrong no matter how you try to justify it.
You're half right, at least. I would argue that the baby-dancing-to-music videos are not wrong, despite being (arguably) copyright infringement. I would also argue that ripping my DVDs, which I've legally purchased, to my computer is not wrong. Illegal and immoral do not go hand-in-hand.
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What if none of the money ever goes back to the original artist? What if the money never can, because the artist is long dead? What if the license for the media is held by an organisation that has no purpose other than to make money and prevent media from ever entering the public domain?
Sure, you could just avoid all contact with whatever the media in q
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Where's the harm in piracy? Who is hurt by it?
Either the descendants of the creator who might collect any payments or sell the rights to a corporation, or the shareholders of a corporation who own the rights to the content. Granted, it's not easy to feel moral outrage for these kind of rightsholders, given that the actual creator of the work often does not see much, if any, remuneration after the initial creation and/or sale of the work, but if you believe in intellectual property and that it should be tr
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mod +5 lolocaust
Re:The Jews (Score:5, Informative)
The Romans killed Jesus...
Somewhat true, but it would be more accurate to say that the Roman Empire killed Jesus. (For bonus points, the government of one outpost of the Roman Empure killed Jesus)
...but the Jews condemned him.
Wrong. A few Jews in small region condemned him, perhaps even limited to one very small sect of them. All Jews didn't condemn Jesus (he was Jewish, as were many of his followers, he was basically advocating Judaism 2.0 at the time, this was changed after his death to a "revolution" by catering to the Greeks), probably most Jews of the time never even heard of him, or didn't really care one bit what he was saying since he was just one "messiah" among many at the time.
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This is not my experience at all. I get about 1 ad per album.
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It is pretty clear to see though that buying used cds isn't really sustainable if everyone does it. Demand would outstrip supply so prices would go up.
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