Listen Like Thieves

With the recent court ruling against TPB/The Pirate Bay (C'mon they had to lose one one day!) I thought Id take a look at some of the articles floating around blog-land and catch peoples takes on the whole situation.

Most say the same thing: The record labels need a wake-up, take off your blinkers and accept that legal or illegal downloads aren't going away. True enough, but this blogger thinks that people will try anything before a dime leaves their wallet, even if they only needed 1!

Choices are very good and really couldn't be better for anyone considering starting a digital music collection. There are also a few dominant worldwide providers that will legally stream music to you on-demand for pocket change. Ive been checking out Spotify today and they offer an unlimited service for 10 Euro a month! Think about that for a second.... that's less $$ than 1 CD per month and you have access to an enormous auto-updating database. Clearly they aren't going to have every random song in the world but if you are that into music you would be spending much more that that anyway. The only catch is you need open access to a decent broadband connection wherever you want to listen so its fine at home but what about the car/shed/office/mp3 player? Every rose has its thorn!

From my reading, sites like TPB and squillions of others avoid legal issues as they aren't actually hosting any of the illegal media themselves. They are just a filesharing hub who link seeders together who do all the dirty stuff. Its alot like the case against Mod-Shops that will 'chip' your gaming machine - THEY aren't playing illegal games, they're just helping. Its the old case of people NOT being made responsible for themselves. I'm fat because of McDonalds, I murdered that dude cos of my X-Box, I downloaded 1TB of music because of torrents - how was I to know it was wrong? Whatever!

Don't get me wrong I'm not being hypocritical here but I think there is still something to be said for owning physical media containing music, namely CDs, LPs even Cassettes. I'm sure this goes way over the heads of Gen-Y but there was a time where your music collection showed a piece of your personality and flicking through someones collection gave you a little insight into who they were. I'm under no illusion that my CDs show I listen to what the guy next to me was listening too! But, that's me, I go hot and cold on things faster than a chinese phonebook, that's right isn't it? With the age of digital and everyone having every song on the planet, this is all but gone. Ooh you have every song ever I can see your a.....a.....NERD.

Anyway enough of a rant today, hope your coffee didn't go cold reading this!

Big shout out to my blog partner today - Happy 30th Brother Wal! Cant wait to chink your alcopop bottle on Sunday mate.

Soundtrack of the Day: My Bucks Drive Uber Compilation.
Quote of the Day: If all teenagers are geniuses, who's that guy serving at Burger King?