C3's question thread

[rambomhtri]

OK, I don't feel like my questions were solved at all. At all. So we have a problem, lol.

No....you have a problem. That is clear to everyone reading your posts in this and bluzer's thread.

I promise you when i'm not replying to these posts, you're not even a minor concern in my mind. I don't give two flying....pigs...that you feel like you have a problem. More than once it has been suggested that you move on with your life, maybe that will solve your problem.

But hey, continue repeating the same thing. You're not going to get the answer you want, and evidently any other response is not an answer to you.

OK then, have a nice day. May be other user's opinion enlighten me up and I can see why master tracks are that dangerous.

[m1999]

----------

[rambomhtri]

The reason the master tracks are kept secret is the same reason why, for example, a lot of programmers keep their software closed source instead of open source: People could just steal parts of it and use it in their own projects (and make profit off of it) without the original creator knowing, because nobody will ever notice it. Just as an example, if someone took the drum sounds from a metallica song and made his own drum beat from that and sold it, people would just think he is using the same drumset as Metallica (if anyone even noticed the similarities at all), when actually the work is almost conpletely stolen from the master tracks and he is profiting off of stolen work.

Alright, well thought! I liked that.
But seriously, c'mon, no musician would ever do that. And if any musician does it, drum tracks are not as memorable as guitar tracks, but still, you can totally recognize it. I would say the code of a program is like the composition of a song, not its master tracks. The code is like the notes of a guitar. You can copy some of it, but there's a limit that if you go over it, it would be plagiarism. If you compare two different applications, there's going to be a lot of lines that are the same, and it's inevitable. In music it's more restrictive. I understand why some programmers want their code closed, cause it's their work, and you can totally rip it off, or many parts of it, for your own benefit, close your code, and no one will ever notice, cause you closed yours. With master tracks, nope, you just listen to them, and that's it. You can't use them to your own benefit. Anyways, there are many drum solos in the history, so using that logic, those isolated parts of a song should be as dangerous as master tracks, but they are not.

[m1999]

Alright, well thought! I liked that.
But seriously, c'mon, no musician would ever do that. And if any musician does it, drum tracks are not as memorable as guitar tracks, but still, you can totally recognize it.

That's why I said "took the drum sounds [...] and made his own drum beat" (I know it's a dumb example, I just needed something to back up what I am saying)

I would say the code of a program is like the composition of a song, not its master tracks. The code is like the notes of a guitar. You can copy some of it, but there's a limit that if you go over it, it would be plagiarism. If you compare two different applications, there's going to be a lot of lines that are the same, and it's inevitable. In music it's more restrictive. I understand why some programmers want their code closed, cause it's their work, and you can totally rip it off, or many parts of it, for your own benefit, close your code, and no one will ever notice, cause you closed yours.

You're right with that, it is a flawed comparison.

With master tracks, nope, you just listen to them, and that's it. You can't use them to your own benefit.

Believe it or not, there actually has been at least one case here in Germany a few years ago where a rapper stole some samples from the master tracks of a pretty unkown gothic band and used them in his own "music". People quickly noticed that, but only because that rapper is pretty well known (and hated ) here. If he wasn't as famous as he is here, nobody would have noticed.
The problem is, as soon as an album is in circulation, it is pretty difficult (nearly impossible) to get it off of the market by force, meaning that he is still profiting off of it, even though he got sued for it, and that's something labels want to prevent I think.

[rambomhtri]

Wow, that's ridiculous. Lol, and look what kind of musicians would use other's master tracks to its own benefit. OK, rappers try to sing, or some don't even try, so I have hard times calling a rapper a musician.
It's a good example, with money involved, but this only happens like 1 time each 10 years. And notice that you can actually steal a sample or isolated section in a mixed song anyways, cause many songs have break downs that have only 1 instrument playing back.

[Kueller917]

Despite being here for a while I never even heard of C3 until a couple months ago. Anyone care to explain breifly what all this conflict is about multitracks and such? I've seen it mentioned quite a bit here.

The reason the master tracks are kept secret is the same reason why, for example, a lot of programmers keep their software closed source instead of open source: People could just steal parts of it and use it in their own projects (and make profit off of it) without the original creator knowing, because nobody will ever notice it. Just as an example, if someone took the drum sounds from a metallica song and made his own drum beat from that and sold it, people would just think he is using the same drumset as Metallica (if anyone even noticed the similarities at all), when actually the work is almost conpletely stolen from the master tracks and he is profiting off of stolen work.

Although, I have to say there isn't much of a difference between using an existing drum track and recording an identical (or at least seemingly identical) drum track yourself, even if the law says otherwise.

[rambomhtri]

Despite being here for a while I never even heard of C3 until a couple months ago. Anyone care to explain breifly what all this conflict is about multitracks and such? I've seen it mentioned quite a bit here.

The reason the master tracks are kept secret is the same reason why, for example, a lot of programmers keep their software closed source instead of open source: People could just steal parts of it and use it in their own projects (and make profit off of it) without the original creator knowing, because nobody will ever notice it. Just as an example, if someone took the drum sounds from a metallica song and made his own drum beat from that and sold it, people would just think he is using the same drumset as Metallica (if anyone even noticed the similarities at all), when actually the work is almost conpletely stolen from the master tracks and he is profiting off of stolen work.

Although, I have to say there isn't much of a difference between using an existing drum track and recording an identical (or at least seemingly identical) drum track yourself, even if the law says otherwise.

For what I know, no one really knows. I can't believe C3 team started to encrypt and all just because someone are downloading their content and uploading to other sites. All web pages, every single web page on the internet, face this issue.

[raynebc]

The reasons have been listed ad nauseam. It's not C3's problem if you don't believe them.

[weirdpeople]

Just something to put out there. I'm 95% sure that they use an older style song encryption, not the current methods used on new rockband DLC. So if someone really wanted the unecrypted mogg it wouldn't be impossible. Plus most of c3's stuff is written in C# and thats pretty easy to decompile...

[TrojanNemo]

:-)

[djtopcat]

This thread is funny so I thought I would chime in and drop some pro knowledge.
rambomhtri no offense brother but you clearly have never worked in the music industry like I have or you would not only understand, but respect the reason why session multitracks are not supposed to be in the hands of the public. Believe me I'm conflicted myself being a once starving musician member of the RIAA,and also a professional remixer who sometimes uses the very same sources this thread is about.

FACTS
1) They are the property of the copyright holder whether it be the original artist, or in most cases a record label, holding company etc, and the copyright holder has the final say on who or how they should be used. PERIOD!
2) Ridiculous amounts of money are spent recording these in the studio. Do you think session musicians, studio staff
, engineers work for free? Lol We're talking 10's of thousands of dollars for a relatively cheap studio session. Big artists from the 60's,70's,80's paid 10 times that and in some cases even more. So right there you can understand why they don't want rambomhtri playing around with their very expensive and hard work. You just have to respect the rules of the game.
3) I can't speak for C3, but I know Harmonix (RB/GH) and Jammit paid to legally license certain artist's tracks for their games. If someone leaks out the multitracks extracted from these games then who do you think the copyright holder is going to blame? Joe Blow remix dj on crooklynclan.com who used say an acapella? Nope! They're going to go right to the leak source.
True case example- Jammit will never publicly admit it, but at one time the legendary r&b group Earth Wind and Fire had songs on their site (September,Fantasy,Shining Star etc) Then one day poof they were GONE! Why? Well in part because a certain amateur remixer dirtbag named Burntscarr publicly posted a hack tutorial on Youtube on how to extract the Jammit stems, he also posted the extracted EWF tracks around to places like Literecords etc. Word got back to the label, and so Jammit lost the license rights and the tracks were pulled. You know what this Burntscarr dude's reply on his Youtube was? "F---- em, sue me!" smh
It's disrespectful idiots like this that are making copyright holders hesitant to license official tracks now, and I really can't blame them.

Truthfully, other than the low quality video game rips and a small handful of leaked PT sessions you're never to going to find the really rare stuff on the net anyway. There's a few secret FB groups, but you basically have to know someone in the recording industry, and for obvious job security and career reasons they're not dumb enough to just give out that info to anyone. A few top producers I know foolishly leaked out some heavyweight stuff to some pretty well known dj's several years ago and it's trickled out from there, but still kept in exclusive circles for the most part. These were part of the crop of Pro Tools digital convert sessions from famous artists like Chic,George Benson,Kool & the Gang,Cyndi Lauper,Nu Shooz,Slave,Zapp and Roger etc etc. A studio producer friend showed me things on his hard drive that made my jaw drop. Stuff you 100% will not find with a Google search for sure.

Now some major artists like Peter Gabriel released condensed multitracks of some of his big hits on his own site for the public years back, but from my 20 years of pro studio experience most artists are not cool with them being messed around with unless officially licensed. As with everything in the music business it usually comes down to money,but not always. So as much as the dj/remixer side of me wants to remix some of these impossibly rare multitracks I own, I also have a healthy respect for the artists who put their heart,soul and $$$ into their music. I hope this gives you guys some perspective from both sides. :)

[farottone]

a certain amateur remixer dirtbag named Burntscarr publicly posted a hack tutorial on Youtube on how to extract the Jammit stems, he also posted the extracted EWF tracks around to places like Literecords etc. Word got back to the label, and so Jammit lost the license rights and the tracks were pulled.

If people don't understand our reasons with this example (and I'm sure some won't...), they never will. :)

[rambomhtri]

FACTS
1) They are the property of the copyright holder whether it be the original artist, or in most cases a record label, holding company etc, and the copyright holder has the final say on who or how they should be used. PERIOD!
2) Ridiculous amounts of money are spent recording these in the studio. Do you think session musicians, studio staff, engineers work for free? Lol We're talking 10's of thousands of dollars for a relatively cheap studio session. Big artists from the 60's,70's,80's paid 10 times that and in some cases even more. So right there you can understand why they don't want rambomhtri playing around with their very expensive and hard work. You just have to respect the rules of the game.

Oh, you didn't tell me something I didn't know. My point is: ALL that stuff you said is also applicable to the mp3 you can find anywhere. That very same amount of money PLUS mix PLUS master, gives you the final mp3 result. So yeah, a mp3 is way more expensive that just a part of it (like a master track), sorry. So, in terms of money, mp3/FLAC (final mix) wins.

BTW, about the EW&F topic, that's illogical. For that very same reason, they should SUE every single CD maker, cause I'm ripping right now many of my CD's library and exporting them to FLAC lossless audio files, and I can share all of them with you.

Who should labels sue now?
Me?
May be the creators of CD technology, that is the easiest technology to rip and share?
May be manufacturers of CD readers that make it so easy to insert a CD, rip it and share it to the internet?
The irresponsible guy who said to the label "let's distribute this in CD's"?

And my final point is: labels do not loss any single cent if someone share a multi track just like that. Cause they don't sell them to the public, to me, for example. I can't go to Harmonix and say "Hi, I wanna listen to the isolated drums in Michael Jackson's Beat It. Here, $30.000 for that".

I know someone can download from here multi-traccks and sell them. That's not right, it's bad, and I don't like that. Of course, I don't do that. But notice that most of the people interested in multi-tracks are musicians that wanna listen to that guitar part it's inaudible in the final mix". I believe most users that look for multi-tracks are musicians that just wanna enjoy a little more the tracks he or she loves. That's it.

[raynebc]

That very same amount of money PLUS mix PLUS master, gives you the final mp3 result. So yeah, a mp3 is way more expensive that just a part of it (like a master track), sorry. So, in terms of money, mp3/FLAC (final mix) wins.

If people don't understand our reasons with this example (and I'm sure some won't...), they never will. :)

/debate

[djtopcat]

Yeah well unfortunately Rambom you don't make the rules, or are in any kind of position to change them anyway. You're just beating a dead horse with the questions
Do you really think the record labels give a rat's azz what you think is fair or illogical in regards to how they do business? Lol

The point that has been made is that original recording sessions are far more valuable and guarded by the music industry than anything else. If you can't accept the facts then I don't know what to tell you man. :)