[HN Gopher] Rescuing songs that record labels forgot existed
___________________________________________________________________
Rescuing songs that record labels forgot existed
Author : walthamstow
Score : 147 points
Date : 2024-08-25 17:22 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| realusername wrote:
| They forgot, up until they could get money out of it of course.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's almost like piracy has a useful purpose.
| realusername wrote:
| I couldn't say it better, what's the social purpose of those
| music conglomerates in this story? They don't even know
| exactly which rights they hold.
| exe34 wrote:
| they make profits for shareholders.
| em-bee wrote:
| except that at least on torrent sites only the popular
| torrents stay alive. that's not helpful. what we really need
| is a digital library of congress, funded by taxes, where at
| least every publicly performed work should be uploaded. the
| internet archive is a good start, but they can only take
| stuff that they are allowed to. they should really be able to
| take everything and make it accessible for a fee and free
| once the copyright expires. the problem is that greed of the
| publishers prevents that, hence i think a mandatory system
| would be better.
| treyd wrote:
| Private trackers have incentives to seed poorly-seeded
| torrents, like discounted/free leeching or double seeding
| credits. Although I agree with the general sentiment.
| musicale wrote:
| Some of the more popular songs like Sting's Desert Rose etc. seem
| to be collisions or shadowing where one version of a song is
| replaced by another (different) version/mix/edit of the same song
| (e.g. single vs. album version). This certainly seems to be a
| recurring issue with Apple Music. I wonder though if some
| editions such as promo versions or radio edits simply weren't
| released to the general public to begin with.
|
| Some massive dance classics on this list; nice to see versions
| that bafflingly weren't on streaming. (Come to think of it I have
| lots of songs that sadly don't match properly on Apple Music -
| even some I purchased from the iTunes store.)
| tetris11 wrote:
| > radio edits weren't released to the general public
|
| There's one good version and one bad version of Morrissey's
| _Irish Blood, English Heart_ and for some reason only the bad
| version with added sound effects and tame ending is the one I
| keep finding on YouTube.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Several Michael Jackson songs are only on youtube in censored
| form, "They Don't Care About Us" is the one I remember.
| Tanoc wrote:
| There's a version of Space Cowboy by Jamiroquai that didn't pop
| up in any store for years. It's called Stoned Again, which in
| itself is an alteration and combination of the David Morales
| Classic Club Mix and the original music video version. For
| years until it was released on Apple Music the only versions
| you could get were the original, the Good Vibes Zone Extended
| Remix or the David Morales Classic Club Mix. I don't know if
| the shortened 3:23 long music video version's even available as
| audio only either.
|
| There's an ongoing problem that's somewhat related where the
| newest release version of a song is the only one you can
| download. It's related to music rights and royalties, thus
| storefronts get talked into carrying a version that a different
| group of people can get money from. It's becoming a real
| problem because so many of these remasters do things like tape
| noise removal or leveling compression that severely unbalance
| the original mixes. Listening to ZZ Top's 2006 Fandango!
| remaster for example is unsettling because if you're used to
| the original 1975 release you notice right away the highhats
| getting reduced or the increased volume of the bass on what
| were originally live stage recorded songs. But many services do
| not have the original 1975 recordings or their 1988 digital
| transfers. If it weren't for preservationists doing manual
| transfers of well kept but now quickly degrading physical media
| and spreading them via piracy then all we would have would be
| these new remasters for a lot of songs.
| gosub100 wrote:
| a parallel problem I'm seeing is artists re-recording their
| hits in an attempt to have a second shot at making money
| after getting screwed by the record companies in the initial
| release. I can't blame the artists, of course, but my ear is
| trained to expect a _very_ particular sequence of sounds and
| their re-recordings just don 't cut it for me, despite their
| attempts to faithfully re-create every part of the original
| (other people appreciate music differently, thats fine).
| jorvi wrote:
| > or leveling compression that severely unbalance the
| original mixes. Listening to ZZ Top's 2006 Fandango! remaster
|
| Remasters from ~2003-2013 are terrible because they were
| mastered in part for listening on shitty iPod earbuds, since
| that was going to be a large slice of the listening
| experience for a lot of people.
|
| Later on, as higher-end monitors became more popular,
| remastering flipped back to being (mostly) good.
|
| This is also why a lot of audiophiles are still confused and
| keep repeating the "vinyl masters are better" ad nauseam. For
| that period they were. But before or after that time, a
| proper digital mastering was already better than vinyl due to
| the bigger available dynamic range.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I love music archivists, and there's an active bunch of them on
| reddit.
|
| I remember this gem about a guy who had been searching for 15
| years for a song that he had recorded off of Ian Camfield's XFM
| rock show.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/NameThatSong/comments/58gt5d/ill_be...
|
| After crowd-pooling the discernible lyrics, and a brief exchange
| with Ian Camfield himself (who had since relocated to the US),
| the search petered out.
|
| Then one day, the artist themself just randomly uploaded the
| song.
|
| Apparently they made a single debut, and then the lead singer
| went off to become a dentist.
| omnibrain wrote:
| I hate it especially when Bonus Tracks for limited editions of
| Albums disappear because the streaming services only list the
| regular releases.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I figured everyone used those to upsell the CDs/vinyls. I
| suspect TV show and movie commentary is almost exclusively left
| to DVDs and BluRays for that reason.
| omnibrain wrote:
| Yes, all this bonus content is sooner or later going to be
| lost in some sort of digital limbo.
| whycome wrote:
| Similarly, I hate when the "secret song" from a CD is still a
| part of that track when on streaming -- which results in a song
| that is followed by minutes of silence before the 'hidden
| track' comes in. It makes it impossible to add it to playlists.
| (I'd assume this is an artist choice?)
| lmm wrote:
| In theory I agree, in practice I've had far more annoyance from
| wanting to listen to an album on a streaming services and it's
| the "Deluxe Edition" which has a bunch of extra filler tracks I
| didn't want.
| jakub_g wrote:
| I wonder what kind of weird contractual stuff makes Spotify have
| a totally different version of Limp Bizkit's "Getcha Groove On"
| than the one I remember from album. The one I remember can be
| found on YouTube though.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Hah, this made me check it at YT and read comments:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pvy3M5gQ_cQ
|
| A reply to top comment explains:
|
| > @AdrienArnouxComedy, 4 years ago Sample clearance issue. The
| beat is entirely lifted from here at 8:48 :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPhr1Eg7iiM However there's no
| mention of a sample in the credits. I also can't find the name
| of this track anywhere. I did hear it in a cab once. So they
| probably stole it, got caught and settled out of court for
| physical copies. Now that it's all digital they would need to
| pay whoever they jacked it from again, so they'd rather put a
| remix instead. Here's a quote from Wes Borland in an old
| Kerrang I have from 2008 : "We actually got sued over this
| piece of s**. There was some sort of sample used in it that
| someone didnt get full clearance for, so we ended up getting
| into some serious trouble for a little while."
| excalibur wrote:
| Sometimes I'll start listening to a favorite album in Spotify
| only to discover that the only version they have is censored.
| Given the option, virtually nobody would choose to listen to
| music that way.
| lmm wrote:
| Most disturbing was when I listened to what was explicitly
| (heh) marked as an explicit version of Eminem's _My Name Is_
| , but half the lines were from the "clean" version. Felt like
| being gaslighted.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I remember switching from Deezer to Spotify (paid subscriptions)
| because Deezer didn't have "Skunk Anansie - Hedonism (Just
| Because You Feel Good) (Allegedly Acoustic Mix)" which is an
| amazing song - imho one of the best "Repeat1" songs that I can
| listen for hours and hours.
|
| There are other songs I cannot seem to find anywhere though, some
| cool remixes I remember from back-in-the-day or some live
| bootleg-y versions that never made it to the streaming services
| such as "Pearl Jam - Black/We Belong Together/It's OK (Pittsburgh
| '06)" (https://)www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1pG6cWzWOQ).
|
| Another song that 'suffered' from stolen samples (seeing other
| peoples' comments), and a personal favorite is "The Orb - Fluffy
| Clouds" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Fluffy_Clouds). I
| remember hearing on an interview (many many years ago) that when
| they were discussing about clearing the stolen bits, someone said
| "say nothing and release it and we will figure it out later".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-29 23:01 UTC)