MP3 raers - do they exist?

whatwhat

I`m in school these days, studying to become an archivist, hoping to land a job archiving digital curtural media.
i was wondering, are there rare MP3s? I don`t mean stuff that was originally issued on another format and is hard to find digitally, but stuff that was originally issued digitally and is now hard to find. I`m imagining a scenario like an artist puts up a demo, and then takes it down when they score a record deal, or when the site goes down or something like that.

Got any MP3 grails? What`s the story?

SIRUS

there's going to be a lot of that from the last three, four years. demos, different mixes of songs from current artists. promo stuff like those good friday songs, the ones that didn't make the album, etc.

ppadilha

there's a comp that was put out a few years ago called "Cellphone music from the Sahara" or something like that, it's all music this guy found in discarded cellphones in North Africa. There are mp3 markets in developing countries where people pay someone with a computer to put songs on their phones, since it's the only device they have that will play the files. I'm sure some of that music is ubiquitous, while other songs just live on a few people's cellphones and then disappear when those phones crap out.

Bel??m do Par??, in northern Brazil, has the technobrega scene that's all based around sharing mp3s and remixing. Bands see their music as advertising for their shows more than anything else, so they make everything available. Gaby Amarantos, the biggest singer in that scene, posts not just her albums, but also vocals and instrumentals, to be downloaded for free. You can end up with endless versions of some songs, in various DJ mixes, and that stuff is impossible to track down, maybe existing only in a mixtape. No one claims ownership to anything, sometimes because samples haven't been cleared, but usually because all they care about is having the mix out there with the name of the band, DJ or sound system that put it out.

I'm sure there's a lot of rare mp3s that came from bands that set up on myspace or something and then took it down later, but there's also a lot of local music scenes now that do their file sharing more locally - not just those I mentioned, but baile funk in Rio & S??o Paulo, cumbia villera in Buenos Aires, cumbia tribal in Monterrey/northern Mexico, shangaan electro in South Africa, etc...

I'm sure in a couple of decades there will be hard drive diggers scavenging around for old music on broken computers, since small bands nowadays rarely put out anything on physical media...



somewhat related: I once had a roommate who used to make not-so-good synth pop in his bedroom. He would work on a few songs for several months and then delete them once they were done, only to start again on some new material, and he never played out anywhere. I'm sure there's a friend of his somewhere with the only existing copies of the music he used to make.

Oligee

How bout the MP3s from the Best of Band X record that I found here probably 7 years ago?

Electrode

To me they do. Several years back, I found an acetate LP and single of a band, fronted by a man who turned out to be the (former?) husband of a substitute teacher I knew since elementary school, where her daughter attended as well. The mom worked the counter of the school-affiliated thrift store where I found the records. They were cased in a corroded record mailer and I didn't know what was on them before she rang them up and I took them home. To my surprise, they turned out to be quite good; happy good time pop psych folk with weird ocean-themed lyrics. Nothing 'must be reissued now' good, but something the Waxidermy people would devour. I remember there were the lyrics, "He's Nemo of the nautilus, a ____ of the sea, ______, but he's a superman to meeeeeeeee!". Some Deep Purple like organ, too. I noticed that box was addressed from a record pressing plant here in L.A. to this guy, who obviously shared his last name with her. I called the mom up and asked her about it. She confirmed that he was in a band and this was his demo from the mid-70s which never went anywhere. However, she was really intent on having the records returned to her, which I probably foolishly did the next day. I thought, "why not? It's not like I won't see her again and it's more hers than mine, anyway". I posted an MP3, which since has been lost after my old laptop was destroyed, on either here or Waxi to some good response. A month later, I visited the store where another lady was working. I asked about moms during some idle checkout chit chat and found out that her and her daughter moved out of state. Damn...

volumen

Does the European version of NERD In Search Of count? I haven't looked too hard but haven't found it when I did look.

beezerholmes

A lot of the early grime instrumentals never made it beyond a few cdrs to pirate djs and their own hard drives. I read about a few producers losing huge amounts of priceless beats due to hard drive failures. That would make the low quality mp3s that circulated on soulseek in the early 00s pretty rare nowadays.

I am guessing most of that 'Jerkin' rap music only existed on mp3 too, i contacted an artist to get a track from him and it turned out he had only ever saved it as a 128kbps mp3 after making it.

Mjukis

volumen said:

Does the European version of NERD In Search Of count? I haven't looked too hard but haven't found it when I did look.

The CD is cheap and easy to find though. BTW, if there ever was something that epitomized "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!", the Spymob version of In search of is it.

Mjukis

I also think it's kind of crazy that a lot of great rap songs only exist as mp3s off mixtapes with DJ shouts on top, false starts etc... The afterworld will judge us harshly for this. Especially if the song will never see release because of samples that everyone knows is impossible to clear, you'd think the artist would just want to leak it in good quality as promotion, but nope.

Okem

Not exactly mp3 rares, but in the realms of digital rares. There's also the relatively new phenomenon of dance music producers making their bank by touring as djs. So they now deliberately don't release tracks to give themselves something exclusive to play and make themselves more marketable. A few months down the line and they give the track to a select few dj friends, who may have something similar to offer in return, on the guarantee they won't play it on the radio. The hype surrounding the track increases, but despite people clamouring for a release, the only way you can hear it is by going to see the artist Dj, or play live. Someone then records the song being played in the club on their phone and post it to YouTube and the hype rises. But a year down the line when it starts to get played out and it looses it's value to the Dj, it may finally get released but interest has dwindled, there's new stuff to get hyped about and it's sole purpose was as a club track, so it may well just get forgotten about. All this with only a few digital copies ever in existence.

JectWon

Okem said:

...they now deliberately don't release tracks to give themselves something exclusive to play and make themselves more marketable. A few months down the line and they give the track to a select few dj friends, who may have something similar to offer in return, on the guarantee they won't play it on the radio. The hype surrounding the track increases, but despite people clamouring for a release, the only way you can hear it is by going to see the artist Dj, or play live.

I must admit, that is pretty smart. Anyone can sound the exact same now a'days...with or without skill; it's easier than ever to fake it. Having some 'sclusive shit is probably the only thing that separates certain circles of DJ's.

I feel like this could happen more and more since it is almost impossible to keep music out of the free torrent buffet once it becomes digital.

kala

the arc of stupidity and irony.
go to any thrift store or swap meet in america and you will find dvd's and cd's for sale.
these forms of media are one step away from digital but can be sold.???

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2013/04/02/u-s-court-says-no-garage-sales-for-digital-content/

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Sullivan delivered a ruling that favored Capitol Records in a case against MP3 digital music re-seller ReDigi. The case may be used as precedent in the future for other digital contents, including e-books, digital magazines, digital movies, digital TV shows, and apps. In his ruling Judge Sullivan says that it is illegal to re-sell digital MP3s???as the case pertains???and that in doing so, ReDigi is violating current copyright laws.
ReDigi is a startup service that had attempted to create a second-hand marketplace for unwanted digital MP3s that users may have purchased through services like iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Rhapsody, and others. The idea is that if the license owner bought the song or digital album and no longer wants it, those tracks can be re-sold to another party and the original MP3 copy must be deleted.

Citing the ???first sale doctrine,??? ReDigi says that it is entirely within its legal rights for people to re-sell what they don???t want, use, or need. It???s the same principle that Netflix uses to stream and rent content, and it???s the same doctrine that allows people to buy and re-sale physical albums and songs in the forms of records, cassettes, CDs, and DVDs.

However, the court disagreed. ???The court grants Capitol???s motion for summary judgment on its claims for ReDigi???s direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement of its distribution and reproduction rights,??? Sullivan wrote in his decision. ???The court also denies ReDigi???s motion in its entirety.???

The problem with ReDigi???s business model is that there is no way to tell that the original MP3 track or album was deleted from the original purchaser???s computer or storage drive after that same song has been re-sold on ReDigi???s marketplace. According to the company, the ruling affects mostly the ReDigi 1.0 business model and the company intends on keeping ReDigi 2.0 going.

Various other players are beginning to broach the idea of the second-hand digital marketplace. Most recently, Amazon and Apple, both with large digital storefronts, have explored the idea through various patent filings with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, that attaches a type of DRM to help control and thwart unauthorized access to the content by the original purchaser once it has been re-sold to a secondary buyer.

And aside from the secondary market, there are other implications to the legal precedent set in this case. As our needs and use for technology has shifted to the cloud, there have been questions on how to bequeath one???s digital possessions to a surviving relative or friend after death. With a physical DVD or CD, that???s easy, but laws surrounding digital licenses and ownership are often more complex.

JectWon

kala said:

the arc of stupidity and irony.
go to any thrift store or swap meet in america and you will find dvd's and cd's for sale.
these forms of media are one step away from digital but can be sold.???

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2013/04/02/u-s-court-says-no-garage-sales-for-digital-content/

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Sullivan delivered a ruling that favored Capitol Records in a case against MP3 digital music re-seller ReDigi. The case may be used as precedent in the future for other digital contents, including e-books, digital magazines, digital movies, digital TV shows, and apps. In his ruling Judge Sullivan says that it is illegal to re-sell digital MP3s???as the case pertains???and that in doing so, ReDigi is violating current copyright laws.
ReDigi is a startup service that had attempted to create a second-hand marketplace for unwanted digital MP3s that users may have purchased through services like iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Rhapsody, and others. The idea is that if the license owner bought the song or digital album and no longer wants it, those tracks can be re-sold to another party and the original MP3 copy must be deleted.

Citing the ???first sale doctrine,??? ReDigi says that it is entirely within its legal rights for people to re-sell what they don???t want, use, or need. It???s the same principle that Netflix uses to stream and rent content, and it???s the same doctrine that allows people to buy and re-sale physical albums and songs in the forms of records, cassettes, CDs, and DVDs.

However, the court disagreed. ???The court grants Capitol???s motion for summary judgment on its claims for ReDigi???s direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement of its distribution and reproduction rights,??? Sullivan wrote in his decision. ???The court also denies ReDigi???s motion in its entirety.???

The problem with ReDigi???s business model is that there is no way to tell that the original MP3 track or album was deleted from the original purchaser???s computer or storage drive after that same song has been re-sold on ReDigi???s marketplace. According to the company, the ruling affects mostly the ReDigi 1.0 business model and the company intends on keeping ReDigi 2.0 going.

Various other players are beginning to broach the idea of the second-hand digital marketplace. Most recently, Amazon and Apple, both with large digital storefronts, have explored the idea through various patent filings with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, that attaches a type of DRM to help control and thwart unauthorized access to the content by the original purchaser once it has been re-sold to a secondary buyer.

And aside from the secondary market, there are other implications to the legal precedent set in this case. As our needs and use for technology has shifted to the cloud, there have been questions on how to bequeath one???s digital possessions to a surviving relative or friend after death. With a physical DVD or CD, that???s easy, but laws surrounding digital licenses and ownership are often more complex.

Maybe mp3's with ReDigi metadata attached will be the new raer!

It's funny to watch knee jerk attempts to stop the unavoidable fact that once anything can be converted to 1's and 0's (digitized) there really is no stopping it from going wherever the fuck people want it to.

I wonder if ReDigi has a way to prevent multiple sales of the same track via the same user. They seem to admit that they can't ensure that the track is deleted from the users' computer...but they could create some type of list for each user that details each sale they've made and prevent a user from selling the same track more than once. Sure, all of that could be circumvented multiple times by people who want to scam it but I wonder if ReDigi ever thought about posing that as a solution to avoid the ruling...or, if they already claim to do something like that.

ppadilha

how much does an OG mp3 of The Grey Album go for these days?

Mjukis

Okem said:

Not exactly mp3 rares, but in the realms of digital rares. There's also the relatively new phenomenon of dance music producers making their bank by touring as djs. So they now deliberately don't release tracks to give themselves something exclusive to play and make themselves more marketable. A few months down the line and they give the track to a select few dj friends, who may have something similar to offer in return, on the guarantee they won't play it on the radio. The hype surrounding the track increases, but despite people clamouring for a release, the only way you can hear it is by going to see the artist Dj, or play live. Someone then records the song being played in the club on their phone and post it to YouTube and the hype rises. But a year down the line when it starts to get played out and it looses it's value to the Dj, it may finally get released but interest has dwindled, there's new stuff to get hyped about and it's sole purpose was as a club track, so it may well just get forgotten about. All this with only a few digital copies ever in existence.

Certain producers also never release some of their best tracks. Zomby is a prime example of this, people managed to rip stuff off his soundcloud and post it on youtube. Then he shut down his soundcloud page, and has since released a few of them, but most of them will probably only be available on youtube, or as soundcloud rips...
There was an interview that I knew I wanted to sample, but never got around to it, on youtube. Once I actually got around to record it, I found the youtube account had been shut down! I actually found it on a myspace page (!) but it got me thinking that certain things may be lost forever if the youtube page is deleted. Might have to hook some kind of download plugin up and start archiving my favourite youtubes...

skullsnaps

In answer to the original question: no

skullsnaps

In answer to the original question: no

whatwhat

ppadilha said:

how much does an OG mp3 of The Grey Album go for these days?

Funny you mention this. A big part of what we discuss in archiving is how to determine what`s the OG.
Things get way more problematic when it comes to digital.
it seems rediculous now to talk about OG MP3s, but I`m sure it won`t seem so crazy a few years from now.
Peeps will be checking the digital signature of their MP3s, just like we check the pressing for vinyl.

Lots of good stuff in this thread! Looks like the answer to the question is yes, or probably yes.
Once the legal issues of re-selling MP3s get sorted, I would not be surprised to see MP3 raers sellers start popping up.

Got any more digital grails?