This so-called King of the Pirates is dedicated to collecting “a copy of every song every recorded.” But why? The answer will tickle you.
I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple’s iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it’s the journey not the destination.
What do you say to someone who has a digital music collection that exceeds 900,000 songs? This was the question I was pondering during my long drive to interview the man who claims he is on a quest to own a copy of ever song ever recorded. What do you say? I think the only way to begin such an interview would be to ask ‘why'”
UPDATE: As of 2005, MacNet seemed to have problems even printing the article and as of 2012 the whole site has vanished. So after the jump, I’m printing it for y’alls.
The Music Man – King Of The Pirates Has A Goal – Own It All!
“I spent the day with a guy who spends every free moment collecting music. So far his music collection rivals Apple’s iTunes Music Store, and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded. Can he do it? Maybe, but you know what they say; it’s the journey not the destination.”
What do you say to someone who has a digital music collection that exceeds 900,000 songs? This was the question I was pondering during my long drive to interview the man who claims he is on a quest to own a copy of every song ever recorded. What do you say? I think the only way to begin such an interview would be to ask “why?”…
When I pulled into the driveway of the King of the Pirates, an upper middle class neighborhood of stylish homes and SUV’s, Infiniti’s, and more Mini-Coopers than necessary, I was surprised by the normalcy of it all. His home was nothing short of spectacular, his wife a mid-30’s ex-underwear model (honest!), and his two kids well groomed, apparently intelligent, and very wired. (As in technology, not ADD) This is not the home I would have thought would be the enclave of someone out to pirate the hell out of the music industry. This was going to be very interesting…
Our man, let’s call him Doug, greeted me with a huge hug, a broad smile on his face, drink in hand (Grand Mariner of all things), and invited me in to his den. He was absolutely thrilled to finally be able to talk to someone who was actually interested in what he was doing. Seems that ‘the wife’ as he calls her, was bored to tears hearing about his latest collections, or the latest Bit Torrent site he found; a treasure trove of hard to find music all ripped at 256-bits. The wife wants to know why he doesn’t play more golf, like his friends. “Golf is the most boring game in the world, what I am doing is much more fun.”
The Pirate Room – A MacGeek’s Heaven on Earth
Doug has devoted one of his extra bedrooms ( 7 in all) into what can only be described as The War Room. He owns three Power Mac G5’s, and just added two iMac G5’s. Several external 250GB firewire drives are attached to the iMacs, and sitting in the corner are a stack of at least 6 other external drives, all 300GB, brand new, boxed, and just waiting to go online.
He has two cable modems and one DSL line. One cable modem is “for the family”, the other dedicated to his quest. His DSL line is a backup and is sometimes used when he has discovered a new site that offers a slew of new torrents he wants to mine. The wife, and the kids, are all connected to the Internet through an Airport network, with four Airport Express base stations scattered about the house. Music is constantly heard throughout the house, all different genres playing at the same time. Doug tells me that what I am hearing is unusual, most of the time the house is relatively quiet.
All the Macs in his ‘command and control’ room have JBL Creature speaker systems; some white, some blue, and a burgundy one that I have never seen before. The entire room is lit with indirect ‘rope’ lights, giving the room a feel of living in the Star Trek Universe. There are a couple of rich soft brown leather chairs and one long, very plush, baby-butt soft leather sofa that just screams comfort. I took a seat on the sofa and never felt more pampered or more comfortable. I made a mental note that once our pets’ pass on to wherever pets go this sofa was going to be the sofa in MY house. For all I cared this interview could last for days, once ensconced in this incredible piece of furniture I didn’t want to leave…ever.
The Wife bought us a pot of coffee (Jamaican Blue Mountain), two cups, cream, and a small bowl of ‘Equal’. Along the coffee was a plate of fresh (fresh!) Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon Sticks. The interaction between The Wife and Doug showed that these two seemed to be one happy couple. The seemed to really like each other; and that my friends, is more rare than you might think.
Once I got through ogling the various Macs, finding the perfect position on the sofa made by God himself, and prepared a cup of delicious coffee we began the interview. But before we did, he had one request before I began throwing questions at him. He wanted me to listen to a song he downloaded the day before; a rare unreleased track by Mick Jagger that he found on a fansite dedicated to Mick. I loved it, pure Mick, and asked him if he would burn it to CD for me. “No, sorry, I can’t do that. I don’t sell or give away any music I own. That would be against the law.” A perfect opportunity to jump into the interview…
MacNET: I don’t understand. Here you are downloading pirated music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, yet you won’t burn a song to CD for me. Why?
Doug:Because, like I said, it’s illegal. I don’t distribute the music, I only download it.
MacNET: On the drive here I tried to think of a great question to start off the interview. The best I could come up with is ‘Why?’ . So, Why are you doing this?
Doug: Because I can. No, just kidding, its much more complicated than that.
MacNET: Care to explain then?
Doug: Sure. Why not? I am preserving our history. When the world goes up in flames in this jihad against all things Western, music will be one of the first casualties. I want to preserve that. No matter what it costs.
MacNET: Are you serious?
Doug: Absolutely. Look, whether you want to admit it or not, we are living through World War 3 right now. Not the exchange of thousands of nukes you and I were bought up to believe would happen, but a world war nonetheless. It won’t end nicely, it’s going to get ugly, deadly, and no one will win. And I am afraid that before it’s all over America and the other free, westernized countries will not survive in their current state. In fact, we could very well lose everything we’ve built in the last two hundred years.
MacNET: Why do you think that?
Doug: Because the people that want to destroy us love death. They live to die. We’ve never fought an enemy like this before. The Germans and the Japanese didn’t want to die, the Soviet Union didn’t want to die, and these guys do. In order to defeat these guys we’ll have to do some things we have always thought were unimaginable. I’m afraid that when it comes down to it we won’t do it. Which means we could actually lose.
MacNET: What do you mean?
Doug: Since the invention of the Atomic Bomb we’ve used it only twice, and that was during a time when we didn’t know any better. Had we really known just how dangerous the bomb was I dare say we would not have dropped them. We live in a time where if they were used now there would be mass panic. Have you ever imagined what would happen if a terrorist was able to set off a nuke in downtown Chicago?
MacNET: Yes I have, actually.
Doug: Then you know that our country would come to a stand still. Our economy would collapse, and so would many others. If you thought life in America changed after 9/11, multiply that by a thousand-fold and you begin to understand just how destructive it would be.
MacNET: Well, I’d love to discuss politics with you all day, but I’m here to talk about the music. And you are depressing me. So, what you are saying is that you are saving the music so that no matter what happens someone somewhere would be the gatekeeper of music.
Doug: Exactly.
MacNET: So, what’s the current count?
Doug: Just over 900,000. I’ve been doing this for 10 months. I started slowly and right now I’m able to get about 1000 songs a day. I would like to say that given enough time I’d have a copy of every song ever recorded. But who knows how much time we have.
MacNET: So, how do you do it? What’s you typical day like now?
Doug: Well, I still work. I’m an attorney with a rather large practice. I work 16 hours a day. So I start my day in this room and it ends in this room. I spend my weekends in this room. That’s not to say that I never do anything else. The good thing about this setup is that I can start a session and leave for several hours. But there is a lot more to this then just downloading music.
MacNET: How so?
Doug: I am very selective about the music I download. I used to download anything and everything and quickly discovered that I was getting horrible quality stuff and stuff with missing mp3 tags, or songs that just sounded awful. I was spending more time fixing tags then I wanted to or needed to. Now, most of the sites I use to collect music these days are much better at ripping at good bitrates and with all the proper tags are in place. I rarely have to fix anything now.
MacNET: What software do you use to catalog all this music?
Doug: Filemaker Pro 7. I was using several different software titles, with varying degrees of success. Filemaker 7 has been a godsend for me. It’s not only easy to use, It allows me to use a relational database approach to all this. I could never really collect every song ever recorded without Filemaker, I know that now, I didn’t when I stated this.
MacNET: So you still have to do some manual inputting then?
Doug: Yes, some, because I am adding keywords to every song. But I’ve also hired a genius programmer to write some scripts that add certain keywords automatically and all I have to do is decide which category the newly downloaded music falls into, or even which categories. I can catalog the music into more than one category now.
MacNET: Like?
Doug: Well, Soundtracks for one. Movie soundtracks are often created by a single artist, so you catalog it under the artist and the soundtrack. I can do things iTunes can’t do.
MacNET: How many downloads do you have going at any one time?
Doug: Well, my cable company just upped their speed again, so I can download about 15 albums at a time. Sometimes I’ll get an album in a matter of minutes, sometimes it can take days. And when I fire up eDonkey it can take even longer.
MacNET: You use eDonkey?
Doug: Yes, sure. I have too. Torrents are great for actively sought-after music, but not so great when you are searching for a particular album. When you use eDonkey you are searching through millions of computers, there is nothing that can’t be found. The only problem with eDonkey is that it keeps changing connections. You can get a decent download speed for a while and then it jumps to another set of servers and your download can stop for hours or days. It’s still vital to my job though.
MacNET: So you consider this a job then?
Doug: Yes, a job, a hobby, a quest, a cause. All of it, and then some. I think I am doing something important here, and it’s fun too.
MacNET: So, what are your thoughts on pirating music?
Doug: Well, I just don’t see it as that harmful. No more so then in the 80’s when you copied a CD to cassette tape for a friend. But, even more important is that 99% of all pirated music is downloaded by people who have no intention of ever wanting to own that music. I may like a certain band, like Green Day, but I would never buy one of their albums. Most people are downloading music to add to their collection but if they had to choose they would never spend the money. So all this talk about record companies losing money is nonsense. Just nonsense.
MacNET: So, should the record companies just give up and allow pirating?
Doug: No. They just shouldn’t try so hard to stop it. They might want to make it more attractive to want to buy music. CD’s cost too much, too many bad bands putting out junk. Record companies need to find better bands, better singers, put a little effort into it. I can’t blame kids for buying so few albums and pirating the rest. Why should they shell out $15 for an album that has 2 or 3 good songs? It’s stupid.
MacNET: What do you think of Apple’s iTunes Music Store?
Doug: Well, I have mixed emotions about it. My family is all about digital, but regardless of how much the press talks about the iPod there are still millions of people here in the US and the rest of the world who have not gone digital. It will take another decade before the vast majority of people around the world decide to go digital. I love iTunes, and I buy music from it, but CD’s are still the vehicle of choice for most people.
MacNET: How long have you been a Mac user?
Doug: I’ve never owned a PC. I bought my first Mac in 1992.
MacNET: Back to your mission. How are you making sure your work is secure, that if you had a hard drive failure you wouldn’t lose your music?
Doug: I back up every couple of days to DVD. I’m looking into blu-ray DVD burners because they will hold more. But right now I am backing everything up to DVD and then those DVD’s are stored in my safe, and another set is stored off site.
MacNET: When will you decide that you have secured enough music?
Doug: Oh God, I have no idea. As long as I continue to find music I don’t already have I will download it. And then there is always finding albums that are offered at higher bitrates, I download those too and replace the old ones. I will probably continue to download music for the rest of my life.
MacNET: Do you ever think about building a massive Xserve setup, with several terabytes of storage? It has to be less expensive than all these external firewire drives.
Doug: Yeah, I will do that at some point. I’ve been waiting for the right price/performance package from Apple. But, yeah, I see myself taking that plunge sometime in 2005.
MacNET: Have you ever considered offering a ‘black market’ iTMS?
Doug: Heavens NO! I don’t think there has been a single song pirated from my collection. Even my kids are not allowed to load up their iPods with any of this.
MacNET: Are you afraid of being shut down, or sued by the record companies?
Doug: Sometimes, yeah. It’s kinda hard not to think about it. I mean I have downloads going 24/7.
MacNET: Do you ever get any help?
Doug: Yeah, I do. A few people know about me, in the music underground. And there IS a music underground. Sometimes I am sent specific torrents, sometimes a link to a torrent site that is secret from the public. There are people that know about what I am doing and believe in it. I just want to be an historian, a gatekeeper, anything but a pirate. I don’t consider myself a pirate.
MacNET: Will you trade music for a link or a torrent that you need?
Doug: No, and believe it or not no one who knows what I am all about has ever asked. Others have asked, and they are usually surprised when I turn them down.
MacNET: What is your latest music coup?
Doug: Two weeks ago I was sent a link to the new U2 album. (How to dismantle an atomic bomb) I am beginning to get more and more prerelease albums. If you like U2 by the way, you’re going to love this one. It’s a return to their style of the 80’s. I’ve been listening to it non-stop.
MacNET: Well, that right there is an act of a pirate isn’t it?
Doug: Yeah, it is, but I couldn’t help it. I’ve heard a lot about this album so I couldn’t resist. However, I plan to buy it legally. In fact I pre-ordered it from Amazon already. AND I will buy it from iTMS too, but only because I really support Bono’s work as a good man. No politics, just good work.
MacNET: Is there anything you would like to say to our readers?
Doug: Well, to be honest, I would like to tell your readers that pirating music is a very complicated issue. I’ve thought long and hard about this, but I believe Apple and their competition are doing what they have to, but it (legal download sites) also sort of promotes pirating.
MacNET: How’s that?
Doug: Before iTMS people had to rip their CD’s in order to fill up their iPods, or download it from a pirate site. A lot of people still believed that owning the CD was important. I see a change coming. In the beginning of the iTMS revolution people would buy songs as an impulse purchase. They would still rather buy a physical CD of a band or a singer that they really liked. They were using iTMS as a supplement to their CD collection. That is changing. Lots of people are now buying ONLY the digital album. They buy the latest album from, say, Green Day, without buying the CD. They might like Green Day, consider that band their favorite, and now owning just the digital album from iTMS is enough. They don’t need the CD anymore. Because of that, owning only digital music is becoming an accepted way of owning music.
For some reason lots of people thought that the music they owned on CD and ripped with iTunes was their legitimate music, and the digital music they downloaded from Napster was not. Now, a pirate can download music from iTMS or some torrent site and both have the same value to the owner. This is a dangerous time for record companies.
MacNET: How so?
Doug: Think about it. Once people adjust to owning digital music the line between the music on CD verses owning it from a torrent site gets blurred. You pay $9.99 or so for a digital album and your friend downloads the same album from a torrent site. You no longer have a better product because you bought yours and your friend didn’t. You spent money, he didn’t, and you both now have the very same product. In fact, a lot of albums I get these days from torrents are ripped at a much higher quality than Apple’s. Now who owns the better product?
MacNET: So, you think that by making digital music legitimate, iTMS and others are also giving pirated music the same legitimacy?
Doug: Absolutely. But that has to be the way. Had it not been for Apple pirating music would be bigger than it is, and it is huge. And make no mistake, anyone who pirates music doesn’t just stop because of iTMS. When critics say that every iPod has pirated music on it they speak the truth. Not 100% of course, some people really won’t touch pirated music, but most people don’t think much about it.
MacNET: Because it is supposedly a victimless crime?
Doug: There are hard statistics that show that pirated music from the Internet has caused no more damage to record companies than taping albums to cassette. The plain truth is that no one, and I mean no one, ever buys every CD they think they might enjoy. You may love certain bands or a certain kind of music, and you will buy it. But.. wait; look at this way… If you are ever bored go over to Amazon and browse the music section. Chances are you will find dozens of albums that you think might be interesting, or you might like. When it comes to pressing that “Buy Now” button you don’t. Why? Because although you think it might be an interesting album you just don’t want to spend the money on it.
No one has that kind disposable income, well, almost no one. So you make choices about where your money gets spent. If you bought every CD you thought would be interesting you’d go broke, so you don’t buy it. You will never buy it. But if you were handed a link that downloaded the album to your desktop with no more investment that a little time a lot of people would do it. They don’t consider it stealing if they never intend to buy it. Add that to the fact that these are all digital copies, not something you actually steal in the physical sense. Stealing involves taking something and preventing someone else from owning it. Downloading a digital copy of an album takes nothing away from anyone else. Apple’s iTMS never runs out of a hot album. Again, take the new U2 album. When that album comes out you might run down to the local record store to buy it. When you get there it’s out of stock, so you run around town and visit every store that sells records. You might run around all day and not find it because it sold so well. That never happens on iTMS. No matter how strong the demand for the new album is, Apple never runs out. If you are a consumer of digital music and no longer buy CD’s then you will never again worry about the store running out. The iTMS is always fully stocked; you can’t say that about any physical store. Virtual inventory is just that…virtual. It’s the best kind of inventory, isn’t it? (Smiles broadly)
MacNET: Okay, so should people pirate music or not?
Doug: I can’t answer yes or no about this, I wish I could. Is it really stealing is you are taking nothing from no one, and if you honestly never intended to spend your money on it is it a crime? I just don’t know. If you consider yourself a moral person than you won’t do it, or you won’t do it a lot. But it is easy to rationalize that downloading music from a torrent site is not stealing. You’re not denying anyone else the product; you aren’t taking money away from the artist because the artist was never going to get your money. That said, the worst thing I’ve done was enjoy the new U2 album before I bought it. I feel guilty about it, I really do. But I’m no saint, I have weaknesses like everyone else. That doesn’t justify it, I know, but…
MacNET: So, if you place the same value on the physical CD and the iTMS version, pirating creates value?
Doug: Let me think about that for a second. (several seconds pass) Because some people are buying music on iTMS and others are pirating the same album it becomes harder and harder for young people to resist pirating music. If you bought an album from iTMS and burned it onto a CD and take it to a party and while you are there someone else has the very same album but instead of buying it on iTMS he got his from a torrent site. Your ten bucks was spent on music, his was spent elsewhere, but you both have the same product. How do kids resist that?
MacNET: But surely some kids do resist it.
Doug: Yes, sure. My kids buy their music, they don’t pirate it. Some of their friends do pirate. They are convinced downloading it illegally hurts no one. And they might be right.
MacNET: Is there a solution to all this?
Doug: Well, maybe there is. I wonder what would happen if record companies simply decided not to even try and stop it. There might come a time when it either destroys the music business or makes it stronger. But the success of iTMS is a double-edged sword.
MacNET: Do you think the music business will survive?
Doug: Whether they survive or not it won’t be pirating that does them in. Record companies need to sign better bands, demand better music from the bands they have already signed. And they should lower the price of music to a point where most people can afford all the music they want. Put a kid in a candy store and let them eat all they want and at some point they will stop. Perhaps the record companies will someday realize this. Survival depends on the quality of the product and the price they ask for that product.
MacNET: Wrapping this up, do you have any advice to offer Apple and the record companies about the future of music?
Doug: Hmm… not really. I’m not doing anything that warrants any kind of rebellion or respect or anything else. I’m just trying to make sure that no matter what happens the music will be saved. I suppose the most important thing I’ve learned since starting this project is that there is an awful lot of junk out there trying to be sold as good music. People are paying way too much for albums that contain 2-3 good songs and the rest just awful junk. Apple can’t lower the price for their digital library because the record companies control that aspect of it. Record companies need a wakeup call, a call to make better products.
Just about everybody owns some pirated music, whether they got it from a friend or on the Internet. That won’t ever stop, nor should it really. If prices come way down more and more people will buy more and more music. The record companies should concentrate on the customers they have and will have, and ignore the music underground. You know, most software companies look at pirating as a nuisance, nothing more. If someone needs Photoshop they will buy it eventually. Most people who have downloaded Photoshop from a torrent never intended to buy it anyway. Hell, some people download software illegally and wind up being so impressed with it they buy it, if for nothing else then to be able to call for support, or to get the whole package. Record companies might want to take their queue from software makers. Adobe allows people to download their products for free for 30 days. They understand that doing that cuts down on pirating.
If you like certain bands or certain performers support them by purchasing their music. It’s that simple. And if you do decide to add music to your library through downloading from torrents just remember that if you like it enough to own it, then own it by buying your own copy.
MacNET: Thank you for meeting with me.
Doug: My pleasure.
—end—
Note* 11/12/04 – Because of the intense interest in this interview Doug has agreed to sit for another session in about a week or so. If anyone would like to something specific just email us as you have been and we’ll take the best questions to him and try to get an answer. – Lisa
This article was originally posted on Nov 11, 04 | 9:37 am |