OiNK Will be Missed, For Awhile at Least
Many, many years ago Napster emerged into our lives. Where we had previously relied on the radio, MTV, blindly buying CDs, or seeing a band live to become exposed to new music, a new service became available that granted us access to a boundless supply of new music that we could sample. Every song imaginable existed on Napster; owning a full album was as easy as going to Amazon.com, looking up the track list of a CD, and getting all the tracks in a matter of about fifteen minutes. The barrier to new listening experiences had been significantly reduced.
Eventually, Napster got shut down. It was a moment that we all had gradually accepted to be inevitable, but that didn't make the loss hurt any less. Even though it was blatantly obvious that new peer to peer applications would pop up all over the place, the vast Napster user community had been de-centralized and fragmented. It was not feasible for this newly eclectic group of music fanatics to all move on to the same place immediately.
As the months and years passed, none of the new music sharing programs could even come close to approaching Napster in effectiveness for reliably finding every conceivable song and album to snatch at high speeds. We went through Audiogalaxy, Morpheus, Bearshare, Kazaa, WinMX, mIRC, Soulseek, and ThePirateBay but there was never a moment where we felt that any of these new applications could even hold a candle to Napster.
Finally, OiNK came along. Here, an avid music community burgeoned. There were many aspects of OiNK's culture and ideals that caused it to thrive as the first peer-to-peer concept to actually eclipse what Napster brought us in 1999.
Firstly, music quality was mandated and enforced. A minimum bitrate of 192 kbps was demanded, and users who uploaded albums that failed to meet the quality threshold were banned. Secondly, there were ratio requirements which prevented users from leeching music without giving back to the community. This meant that if a user did not upload at least .25 (later .15) what he/she downloaded, he would no longer be welcome in the community. Most albums on OiNK also came with the option of being downloaded in FLAC, which is a music format that is as high in quality as the physical CD itself.
In OiNK's newly established community, there existed a vast selection that even eclipsed that of Napster's. Everything was on OiNK, and if it wasn't you could make a request for an album and have it filled very quickly. To test OiNK, I made a request for a Grover Dill CD. Grover Dill was a local pop punk band from Hartford which broke up sometime around 2003. Probably less than 1000 people have heard of them. Lo and behold, I received a message one day when I logged into OiNK that my request had been filled.
On top of an immeasurable selection of music, OiNK offered forums where users could recommend new music to each other and discuss almost every other imaginable facet of the music industry. The OiNK forums were intelligent, thoughtful, and widely used. OiNK was not just a means to download music, it was a medium to connect with 180,000 other music lovers who were genuinely interested in helping each other enjoy music even more.
Those who had not been invited to the OiNK community labeled us as snobs and elitists. We were. OiNK was a better place to connect with music fanatics than anywhere else on the internet. We demanded quality from our music and our users and made sure to not invite people who would not give back to the community.
Like Napster before it, OiNK became an ingrained part of our lives and at times felt like an inalienable right. We all knew that downloading was illegal, but most users did indeed spend money in the music industry, even if that money was not being allocated for album purchases. We went to concerts, bought T-shirts, and spread the word about new artists to anyone who would listen both inside and outside of OiNK. Therefore, when I awoke Tuesday to find OiNK shut down, it felt like I had been punched in the stomach. The community that 180,000 people had worked so hard to build into the best music source on the internet collapsed in a second.
As the day progressed, the loss of OiNK began to slowly seep in. We read that its creator had been taken into custody and began reading a proliferation of lies about what OiNK was all over the media. Articles said that OiNK charged users to download music, which was at best a tremendous mistake in the police report and at worst a blatant lie meant to decrease the backlash that the authorities would receive from the public. To see our community flamed all over the internet was frustrating and discouraging.
Like the collapse of Napster, the user base has been de-centralized and fragmented. There are all sorts of torrent groups claiming to be the successor to OiNK, but we will most likely go through many more insufficient groups before once again re-convening on a better program to find new music. The only glimmer of hope for us is that OiNK may one day return, preferably soon. It doesn't seem likely. We knew how special OiNK was before it got shut down and having it snatched away from us in one fell swoop still hurts.
******
Professional recording associations can not continue with their current path. It has failed. People download music. The strategies that the RIAA and other groups have enacted of shutting down the bases and suing a select few of random downloaders in order to instill fear do not have a prayer of causing the populace to buy CDs in the current market. We have heard their arguments that downloading music is stealing, have thought carefully about it, and have made conscious decisions to continue our practice. In the current market, paying fifteen--or even ten--dollars for a CD seems asinine and like a path for suckers. Going to the store to buy a CD is an inefficient process because nobody listens to physical CDs anymore. The process of putting a physical CD on an I-Pod is unnecessary and will always be circumvented by downloading.
The RIAA needs to create a community like OiNK and find a way to profit from it. Charging for individual songs or CDs would probably not work in today's current market so they would probably have to have it be based on a monthly subscription. If we were given the opportunity to pay 20 dollars a month to use OiNK legally, I feel like a vast majority of the 180,000 users would agree to, provided that a fair share of the fees went to the artists who were making the music and did not disproportionately go to the suits who were pushing it. The RIAA should create a community where every album ever thought of can be procured at fast speeds and where there are a massive selection of forums to peruse that allow users to have free-flowing, intelligent discussions about music.
If a private group of internet users can create a community as beautiful as OiNK, a major corporation could certainly succeed in making something comparable. Music entertains us and we know that we should pay for entertainment. The system that the music industry has established, and for whatever reason refuses to appropriately adapt, is outdated and will never again garner the vast profits that the RIAA became accustomed to. That does not mean that they cannot evolve and stay relevant. If they want to have any chance at success in the current market, they should be trying their hardest to effectively capitalize on the void that the fall of OiNK has created.
Eventually, Napster got shut down. It was a moment that we all had gradually accepted to be inevitable, but that didn't make the loss hurt any less. Even though it was blatantly obvious that new peer to peer applications would pop up all over the place, the vast Napster user community had been de-centralized and fragmented. It was not feasible for this newly eclectic group of music fanatics to all move on to the same place immediately.
As the months and years passed, none of the new music sharing programs could even come close to approaching Napster in effectiveness for reliably finding every conceivable song and album to snatch at high speeds. We went through Audiogalaxy, Morpheus, Bearshare, Kazaa, WinMX, mIRC, Soulseek, and ThePirateBay but there was never a moment where we felt that any of these new applications could even hold a candle to Napster.
Finally, OiNK came along. Here, an avid music community burgeoned. There were many aspects of OiNK's culture and ideals that caused it to thrive as the first peer-to-peer concept to actually eclipse what Napster brought us in 1999.
Firstly, music quality was mandated and enforced. A minimum bitrate of 192 kbps was demanded, and users who uploaded albums that failed to meet the quality threshold were banned. Secondly, there were ratio requirements which prevented users from leeching music without giving back to the community. This meant that if a user did not upload at least .25 (later .15) what he/she downloaded, he would no longer be welcome in the community. Most albums on OiNK also came with the option of being downloaded in FLAC, which is a music format that is as high in quality as the physical CD itself.
In OiNK's newly established community, there existed a vast selection that even eclipsed that of Napster's. Everything was on OiNK, and if it wasn't you could make a request for an album and have it filled very quickly. To test OiNK, I made a request for a Grover Dill CD. Grover Dill was a local pop punk band from Hartford which broke up sometime around 2003. Probably less than 1000 people have heard of them. Lo and behold, I received a message one day when I logged into OiNK that my request had been filled.
On top of an immeasurable selection of music, OiNK offered forums where users could recommend new music to each other and discuss almost every other imaginable facet of the music industry. The OiNK forums were intelligent, thoughtful, and widely used. OiNK was not just a means to download music, it was a medium to connect with 180,000 other music lovers who were genuinely interested in helping each other enjoy music even more.
Those who had not been invited to the OiNK community labeled us as snobs and elitists. We were. OiNK was a better place to connect with music fanatics than anywhere else on the internet. We demanded quality from our music and our users and made sure to not invite people who would not give back to the community.
Like Napster before it, OiNK became an ingrained part of our lives and at times felt like an inalienable right. We all knew that downloading was illegal, but most users did indeed spend money in the music industry, even if that money was not being allocated for album purchases. We went to concerts, bought T-shirts, and spread the word about new artists to anyone who would listen both inside and outside of OiNK. Therefore, when I awoke Tuesday to find OiNK shut down, it felt like I had been punched in the stomach. The community that 180,000 people had worked so hard to build into the best music source on the internet collapsed in a second.
As the day progressed, the loss of OiNK began to slowly seep in. We read that its creator had been taken into custody and began reading a proliferation of lies about what OiNK was all over the media. Articles said that OiNK charged users to download music, which was at best a tremendous mistake in the police report and at worst a blatant lie meant to decrease the backlash that the authorities would receive from the public. To see our community flamed all over the internet was frustrating and discouraging.
Like the collapse of Napster, the user base has been de-centralized and fragmented. There are all sorts of torrent groups claiming to be the successor to OiNK, but we will most likely go through many more insufficient groups before once again re-convening on a better program to find new music. The only glimmer of hope for us is that OiNK may one day return, preferably soon. It doesn't seem likely. We knew how special OiNK was before it got shut down and having it snatched away from us in one fell swoop still hurts.
******
Professional recording associations can not continue with their current path. It has failed. People download music. The strategies that the RIAA and other groups have enacted of shutting down the bases and suing a select few of random downloaders in order to instill fear do not have a prayer of causing the populace to buy CDs in the current market. We have heard their arguments that downloading music is stealing, have thought carefully about it, and have made conscious decisions to continue our practice. In the current market, paying fifteen--or even ten--dollars for a CD seems asinine and like a path for suckers. Going to the store to buy a CD is an inefficient process because nobody listens to physical CDs anymore. The process of putting a physical CD on an I-Pod is unnecessary and will always be circumvented by downloading.
The RIAA needs to create a community like OiNK and find a way to profit from it. Charging for individual songs or CDs would probably not work in today's current market so they would probably have to have it be based on a monthly subscription. If we were given the opportunity to pay 20 dollars a month to use OiNK legally, I feel like a vast majority of the 180,000 users would agree to, provided that a fair share of the fees went to the artists who were making the music and did not disproportionately go to the suits who were pushing it. The RIAA should create a community where every album ever thought of can be procured at fast speeds and where there are a massive selection of forums to peruse that allow users to have free-flowing, intelligent discussions about music.
If a private group of internet users can create a community as beautiful as OiNK, a major corporation could certainly succeed in making something comparable. Music entertains us and we know that we should pay for entertainment. The system that the music industry has established, and for whatever reason refuses to appropriately adapt, is outdated and will never again garner the vast profits that the RIAA became accustomed to. That does not mean that they cannot evolve and stay relevant. If they want to have any chance at success in the current market, they should be trying their hardest to effectively capitalize on the void that the fall of OiNK has created.
posted by ryan glasspiegel at 6:37 PM
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