Music Group Confirms What.CD Raid, Claims Millions In Losses

Megalith

Megalith

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RIP, What.CD. The legendary private music torrent tracker, which supposedly had just about every album ever, has been terminated after a raid that saw its servers confiscated by French authorities.

The site’s staff cited “recent events” as the reason for the shutdown, but didn’t confirm that some of its servers were seized by French police, as was reported. Today the French Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers of Music (SACEM) officially confirmed the raid. The music group informs TorrentFreak that 12 servers were targeted by the police. “This is a follow up to the investigative work carried out by SACEM for more than two years, as part of its anti-piracy activities. It puts an ends to an estimated damage of €41 million to music creators,” a spokesperson said.
 
The losses will be realized when people don't learn about the music from this site that no one can experience and hence not buy.

Good job.
 
The musical artists that make money now do not do it from recorded music. They earn from their live performances. And that's the way it should be - recorded music should be the advertisement, not the product.
 
DocSavage said:
On the flip side, who would buy music when everything is free?
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Whoever is interested? Go to a concert or something. Artists get almost nothing through sales. No need to feed publishers. No more record company pimpin
 
I believe the main reason it got taken down was Martin Shkreli brought it to much attention. Another loss is the data base of all that music. What.CD had massive data base where you could have found something you might not have thought still existed. That's the part about file sharing supposed authorities seem to miss, and that it's not always about getting the latest release. There's plenty of stuff pre-internet that can only exist in digital form if someone makes a digital copy for others to enjoy.
 
DocSavage said:
On the flip side, who would buy music when everything is free?
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If everything was free music would be the last thing on my mind. I'd probably take a vacation to hawaii, rent a lamborghini and chill for a week or two.

All the music I own I learned about trough some form of piracy. Be that youtube videos, copied from a friend, or any other way. If there was no piracy it's safe to say I would never have learned about any of the artists whose CD's I own. Therefore I'd never have purchased any of them.

But the same goes for movies. The First DVD movie I purchased was because I saw a crappy svcd copy of the movie and liked it. There is not a single movie that I own that I didn't see an illegal copy of beforehand.
 
evilsofa said:
The musical artists that make money now do not do it from recorded music. They earn from their live performances. And that's the way it should be - recorded music should be the advertisement, not the product.
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Why should it be that way? I make a good deal of my income selling prepackaged web designs. That is pretty much the same thing (and they are highly pirated as well). Are you telling me I should not be able to do that?
 
Smashing Young Man said:
Why should it be that way? I make a good deal of my income selling prepackaged web designs. That is pretty much the same thing (and they are highly pirated as well). Are you telling me I should not be able to do that?
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You can do web design on stage?
 
Great Tiger said:
I believe the main reason it got taken down was Martin Shkreli brought it to much attention. Another loss is the data base of all that music. What.CD had massive data base where you could have found something you might not have thought still existed. That's the part about file sharing supposed authorities seem to miss, and that it's not always about getting the latest release. There's plenty of stuff pre-internet that can only exist in digital form if someone makes a digital copy for others to enjoy.
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maybe skreli tipped them off after not getting an invite?
 
evilsofa said:
You can do web design on stage?
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The true equivalent of live performance in a design context is doing one-off custom design projects. I do those as well as selling prepackaged themes, but your argument is that I shouldn't be able to make money doing the latter . . . because you say so.
 
buhbuhfet said:
as long as poverty exists around the world the piracy will aslo, don't kid yourself
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People just tell themselves that they pirate because they're poor. And then listen to music on their crappy beats headphones that cost 300$, played from their 600$ iphone.

If piracy wouldn't exist then the music industry wouldn't exist either. Piracy existed since the means existed to copy records for your personal use. And if there were truly absolutely no means to do that, then there would be no way to learn about any music. Apart from radio, which plays maybe 0.01% of music, and from a very narrow genre pool.

I don't know if the industry is really that stupid that they don't know that piracy actually drives sales, or if they just pretend not knowing to uphold the balance of power.
 
evilsofa said:
The musical artists that make money now do not do it from recorded music. They earn from their live performances. And that's the way it should be - recorded music should be the advertisement, not the product.
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correct but the distributors are the ones that make the money off album sales which is why they're throwing millions of dollars to stop piracy even though they'll never see a return on it because more and more artists are moving to self releasing their own albums instead of relying on companies to do it for them.. the distributors are too old fashion to realize music artists don't need them anymore.
 
M76 said:
If everything was free music would be the last thing on my mind.
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Not me. I have music playing pretty much every waking moment.
M76 said:
People just tell themselves that they pirate because they're poor.
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Not really. I pirate because they screwed the customer for so many years. We'd hear a nice song on the radio, try to buy it, and then find out if you wanted that song, you had to buy an additional 11 crappy ones.
If piracy wouldn't exist then the music industry wouldn't exist either. Piracy existed since the means existed to copy records for your personal use. And if there were truly absolutely no means to do that, then there would be no way to learn about any music. Apart from radio, which plays maybe 0.01% of music, and from a very narrow genre pool.
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Radio used to play all kinds of stuff. Then the idiot gov't got rid of the law that only allowed one radio station to a company. Now everything's owned by clearchannel, infinity broadcasting, and a few others. How many top 40 stations do we need? Apparently dozens. How many rap stations? Lots. Talk radio? Too many to count, most with maybe a hundred, dedicated crack pot listeners. NYC does not have one, single country music station, nor a lot of other music styles. Jazz? ONE part time station. In the biggest market in America.
Let's not pretend that piracy drives sales. Once someone has it, they usually aren't inclined to buy it. Sure, some with lots of spare cash will spend $25 for a blu ray once they've seen a 240p vid on the net, or a CD if they like the 128 bit mp3, but the vast majority won't. I know some who like to have the box with the inserts for their media. But we're moving to a point where it all will be kept on a thumb drive, eliminating the storage of all that stuff.
Eventually, they will crack down on everyone. Windows 10 is the perfect example. There will be constant monitoring of everything everyone watches and listens to, and they will be nickled and dimed for every single thing. And most won't mind, until they realize the total of what they wind up paying: Like the cable bill. Most people have cable tv, internet, and a landline. Why? Because they bought into the 'triple play' package for $79.99. But they want the dvr; another $29. Oh, and a few more set top boxes. $40. Wait, the kids want HBO. Quickly it's $200 a month. Then add the cell phone bills, and the family's paying $500 a month.

With all that money going out, they all figure a little piracy is no big deal; they deserve some free stuff.
 
I pay monthly for music streaming. I probably pay more for this service than I've ever historically bought music, but it's nice to be able to just play damn near anything from a large collection of artists all on the up-and-up. I do wish they had *all music* instead of most music though.
 
M76 said:
People just tell themselves that they pirate because they're poor. And then listen to music on their crappy beats headphones that cost 300$, played from their 600$ iphone.
...
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have you ever been outside the US? I doubt it cause you just dont know how poor people are in many countries
 
M76 said:
People just tell themselves that they pirate because they're poor. And then listen to music on their crappy beats headphones that cost 300$, played from their 600$ iphone.
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I think his analogy was too close to each other in subject, he should have said something more like

"as long as the Sun exists the piracy will also, don't kid yourself"
 
I don't see how the recording industry could still need money after that 1.6 Trillion lawsuit again AllofMP3. Was it not enough?? What more do you want from us?!?!?
 
I currently subscribe to Spotify for it's convenience (can play it in my car too by downloading it for offline playback).
Only issue for me is that not every song I listen to are available on Spotify. Some artist only have certain albums available, while some are no where to be found.

I think the music industry needs to take a look at itself first. If a pirate site can have a more complete collection of music than legit services, something is wrong.
 
Hornet said:
I currently subscribe to Spotify for it's convenience (can play it in my car too by downloading it for offline playback).
Only issue for me is that not every song I listen to are available on Spotify. Some artist only have certain albums available, while some are no where to be found.

I think the music industry needs to take a look at itself first. If a pirate site can have a more complete collection of music than legit services, something is wrong.
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I couldn't have said it better myself.

People resort to P2P networks and other forms of unauthorized copies of digital media not because they are ingrates who don't want to pay for anything but because of the availability and convenience which often doesn't exist when it comes to the legitimate means.
 
buhbuhfet said:
have you ever been outside the US? I doubt it cause you just dont know how poor people are in many countries
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I never even set foot in the US in my life. But I can one up that. I never even set foot on continental America.
I live in an ex communist block country, which the occupying soviet troops left a mere 25 years ago. So I don't just know I lived in it. My salary for my first full time job was $180 / month when adjusted for inflation in today's dollars.
 
DocSavage said:
I pay monthly for music streaming. I probably pay more for this service than I've ever historically bought music, but it's nice to be able to just play damn near anything from a large collection of artists all on the up-and-up. I do wish they had *all music* instead of most music though.
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I subscribed to spotify but their library has giant holes in it. I can't justify paying for it if I have to go back to my regular library for all the missing albums / songs.
I just terminated my subscription a few days ago. It runs out in two weeks. I already tried it once about a 18 months ago, but almost none of the holes were plugged since then.
 
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