A positive MP3 story..

July 31, 2000 7:17 PM

A positive MP3 story.. Yeah I know you're all sick and tired of hearing about the controversy, but this time let's try talking about the positive side to mp3 technology... [more]
posted by ZachsMind (4 comments total)

I point this out now to show anyone who is interested a snapshot of what it's like when an mp3c artist gets a hopeful hint at something really big on their future. Granted, The Touch hasn't seen this happen yet, and Zeeza's already gone past the $2,000.00 mark. Here, you can see it happening before your own eyes.

Dawson Cowals is a fine acoustic guitarist. He does have a message, but unlike most spiritual artists, he doesn't bang one over the head with his stuff, most of the time. I really dig what he does with a guitar.

The other day he emailed me. Hadn't heard from him in awhile. He asked me how I been and all that.. and by the way by any chance do ya know why in the past month my mp3c downloads have gone from an average of 25 to over a thousand?

Uh.. no Dawson. I guess I... WOW!

Every mp3c artist page has a link where you can check their "payback earnings." Dawson's has skyrocketed in the last couple weeks. He doesn't think he's been doing anything different. It's just somebody found him. Liked him. Told their friends. They told their friends... Voila!

This can and does happen. Okay, maybe Napster sucks maybe it doesn't, but mp3 technology has so much potential! I'd hate to see it crippled before it has a chance to really learn how to walk.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:34 PM on July 31, 2000

The problem with this is that very few people search for unknowns on Napster, and only those with high bandwidth connections can afford to try out things in others' music libraries. While the concept of Napster isn't illegal in my opinion, its pretty useless besides as a way to pirate music.

I think that it would be great if it was possible to more easily add descriptions to mp3s, and search these descriptions... as it is, downloading mp3s from napster is like following a badly described link. You don't know what it is until you're finished loading it. Something like the TITLE attribute would be useful.

I wish someone would post a topic about blogging so I could demonstrate how little interest I have in that. Ummm... I'm really one to be talking about ineffective link descriptions, aren't I ;)?
posted by kidsplateusa at 8:02 PM on July 31, 2000

Except that with the chatting functions that were added to Napster, you CAN talk to the people who are downloading stuff from your collection and say things like "Hey, if you like (X music you're getting from me), you'd like this independent artist on MP3.com." For example I did this when someone got J-pop (Japanese music) tunes from me, recommending to them the MP3.com band Strange Advertise (a band that cutely parodies J-pop).
posted by wiremommy at 10:52 AM on August 1, 2000

The chats I've had in Napster usually include some cretin who just figured out how to spell profanity. I've only run into one artist soliciting downloads for his own material. And when there's less than fifty people in a given chatroom, you're lucky to see any actual chat at all. Most people are too busy for the community aspects of the service.

Mp3.com's message boards have more intelligent and thought provoking chatter, but there are also some flame baiters and the usual chemistry for wordwars.

Actually if we could have mp3 sharing combined with a community as intelligent as MF, there'd be a great combination.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:25 PM on August 1, 2000