[crucialfelix]

very true. I was in zimbabwe and I could go to a shop where the guy would select music for me and fill up a 1GB USB stick for $2. that's how many people distribute music there. they plug the USB stick into a TV or into a little player in their car that plugs into the cigarette lighter jack.

some music labels in that area have gone back to making cassettes because its much harder to copy those. CDs get ripped right away

[e12e]

> some music labels in that area have gone back to making cassettes because its much harder to copy those

I love the image of reverting to cassette tape as an illustration of DRM: intentionally selling an inferior product - because you buisiness model no longer fits with reality.

OTOH: I challenge the notion that it is "much harder" to copy cassettes. At least if you're doing it as part of an (illicit) distribution business. Presumably casette decks are a available (why else distribute on cassette?) -- an all you really need is a decent deck, line-out and line-in -- and then you can easily sample and encode how you please. It's easy to detect gaps between songs (silence) -- and the digital recording isn't likely to sound much worse than the same song, playing on a cassette deck.

Now, ripping and giving a copy to a friend, the overhead of the process would probably make more of a difference.

[crucialfelix]

no, its much harder to get gear set up to dup cassettes at any kind of scale. that's exactly why they are doing it.

CD dup is much much much faster, it only takes a few minutes to burn. cassettes are real time, or at best 2x. bigger tape dup machines can dup by projecting radio waves at the tape and do it 100x. but the cafes and internet shops in that are that do pirate copies don't have those. they just do USB sticks and CD rips.

its also a kind of throwback retro thing - cassettes in Africa have been a way of life for a long time and the older generation misses the joy of buying a tape. The labels doing this are real labels recording real bands in proper studios. Its expensive to record and release a record.

> I love the image of reverting to cassette tape as an illustration of DRM: intentionally selling an inferior product - because you buisiness model no longer fits with reality.

Just to be honest, as a musician I find this kind of statement rather rude.

[e12e]

I didn't consider the idea of 12/24+ ripping speed. That's a very good point.

>> I love the image of reverting to cassette tape as an illustration of DRM: intentionally selling an inferior product - because you buisiness model no longer fits with reality.

> Just to be honest, as a musician I find this kind of statement rather rude.

How's that? CDs worked fine w/o DRM. LPs work fine w/o DRM.

Regressing to lossy media in order to extort (as opposed to solicit) money from fans seems regressive to me. It's a little like banning radio plays of songs, because people can (and did/do?) tape radio... while this is all more akin to libraries:if the product is any good -- free copies/samples will lead to more sales.

[crucialfelix]

> Regressing to lossy media in order to extort (as opposed to solicit) money from fans seems regressive to me.

Small record labels in Zimbabwe are not extorting anything from their fans. This is a preposterous statement.

I've known literally thousands of musicians and labels and none of them have ever done DRM on any medium whatsoever. I'm not even sure why you are bringing up DRM. It is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

[e12e]

> I'm not even sure why you are bringing up DRM. It is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Well, technically, choosing cassette tapes as a medium over CDs, because tapes are harder to copy than CDs would be deploying "Analog Rights Management", rather than "Digital Rights Management". What they have in common, is that both DRMed distribution channels, and "ARMed" (like VHS, cassette tape) are an inferior product to the alternatives (such as CDs, non-DRMed laser disks/DVD etc).

The sub-thread was started with a comment to the effect that labels were choosing tapes over CDs, because CDs were to easy to rip (and hence were pirated). I think the point is relevant.

We can of course disagree on whether or not an industry (small or large) that needs to cripple its products in order for people to be willing to pay for it, is a sound one (no pun intended) or not.

[crucialfelix]

> an industry (small or large) that needs to cripple its products in order for people to be willing to pay for it

you are very strange. your goal appears to be primarily to annoy me. I admitted that I found your comments rude, and you still keep going. do you get pleasure from this ? do you just look for any argument on the internet about piracy and then show up to argue ?

you even purposely INCLUDE small music labels in your statement above. this comes after me pointing out to you that none of the thousands of labels and musicians that I have known and worked with have done any of this DRM stuff that you are so obsessed about. none of them.

none of them "cripple" their product.

that's sociopathic behavior. just so you know.