MIXES and the CD-ARRR: At Some Point We Were ALL PIRATES | MUSIC is not a GENRE - Season 4 Episode #29

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON

WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE

FEATURED SONG: REC – “Gold” (from Parts and Labour)

What I’m about to discuss is highly illegal. Some of it. Maybe. Among other things, it’s a primer on what music piracy is & isn’t, and who the real pirates are. But before that, let me tell you why I’m getting into this.

As I’ve said a dozen or more times, I’ve been a DJ since I was a teen. I started making mixes by bouncing songs from one cassette player to another. Then I used a mixing board & two turntables to record my mixes with crossfades & other fun punch-ins – again on cassette. I took it live in high school & college. After that, I’d create a mix for our annual Halloween party, and a mega mix every two years. Plus a BUNCH of specialty mixes for friends, lovers & other occasions.

There were several technological developments that converged to change everything.

· The internet. Sure, it’s actually been around for like 50 years, but most of us know it really took hold in the early-mid 1990s – the days of the AOL disc.

· The CD-R (or CD-RW). Introduced in the late 1980s, the tech became affordable about a decade later. That allowed me to record a higher quality live mix than on cassette, using the best songs from two years of my purchases.

· The mp3 (and wav). Again, look to the late 1980s for this innovation, and the 1990s for its wider dissemination. What you might recall is that computers & the internet were too slow & weak to handle lots of higher quality files (like wavs), which is why the mp3 was so important. Especially when it came to…

· File sharing. Documents & other very small files have been shared over the internet since the 1970s, but again it was the 1990s when this took hold. And it was the early-mid 2000s when it blew sky high – in more ways than one. Remember Napster? MP3.com? LimeWire & FrostWire? Kazaa? The BitTorrent protocol?

Once all those came together, I was like a diabetic in a candy store, gobbling up everything I could get my hands on even if it was ultimately a bad idea. Yep, like most of us, I was a music pirate and happy to be one. I created several collections of music that I’d never have been able to afford otherwise, and loved every minute. Fun as hell and incredibly educational, but again, a bad thing to do.

But was it? Yes and no – and that “no” is qualified by what came after. Music piracy didn’t die because it was outlawed. (In fact, it’s alive and well with things like free online software that lets you rip songs from YouTube.) It died because music & tech companies got wise. They saw an opportunity to cash in in a big way. They made it hella easier to acquire nearly unlimited music legally – first with Rhapsody/Listen, then iTunes, then everything else we know and lo- … tolerate.

Now things are better for everyone, right? Wrong. These companies have made music consumption super convenient, improving the experience for both the listener & the companies themselves. But make no mistake: the music creators themselves are still being pirated.

For the FULL TEXT AND MORE visit the NEW MUSIC is not a GENRE home at: https://www.nickdematteo.com/podcast

This episode is sponsored by
· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/musicisnotagenre/support

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.