magnatune is an american independent record label based in berkeley , california , founded in spring 2003 .

it originally only sold music for download through its website , but added a print-cds-on-demand service in late 2004 , and in october 2007 began selling complete albums and individual tracks through amazon.com .

in may 2008 , magnatune launched all-you-can-eat membership plans .

from march 2010 magnatune dropped the cd printing service and moved exclusively to all-you-can-eat membership plans .

magnatune was the first record label to license music online and as of may 2015 had sold over 7,000 licenses in its twelve years of existence .

magnatune

john buckman , magnatune ceo ( “jb” ) : the creative commons license , which applies to all of magnatune’s mp3s , enables a few different things .
check out the amarok post on the magnatune blog for screenshots of that integration .
browse the magnatune music catalogue , and play full - length previews through your squeezebox .
the iphone / android app called
apptui
recently added strong support for magnatune .
figure 1 . the magnatune home page ( urltoken ) answers visitors ' top eight questions .
i ' ve just finished adding https support for magnatune , which you can reach at urltoken .
creative commons today announced that magnatune records founder john buckman has joined the organization’s board of directors .
- planet erstwild - 20100305 - magnatune founder john buckman | kruu - lp 100 . 1 fm
these compilation disks unite the best songs from our artists for each of magnatune ' s musical genres .
magnatune has collected several hard to find or out of print musical pieces that they sell licensing to .
creative commons is pleased to announce that magnatune records founder john buckman has joined our board of directors .
magnatune records is an internet - based record label that uses creative commons licensing to gain wider audiences for its music . magnatune currently represents over 220 recording artists and released its 500th album in october 2006 .
to magnatune . their sound can be best described as a new take on old funk . their album ,
parts of magnatune are very image heavy , such as those that show many album covers or many artists .
all in all , it ' s a bit like apple
remote
app for itunes . it ' s not a general replacement for the magnatune iphone / android app : it fills a different need , of remote controlling your browser ' s session with magnatune . and fyi , it works both on the free and member sections of magnatune ( i . e . , http : / / download . magnatune . com )
amarok ' s most recent release ( 1 . 4 . 4 ) includes a magnatune store browser . it has always been possible to stream full songs and albums from the magnatune web site , but with amarok you can browse the entire magnatune catalog , play songs or entire albums , and even purchase albums directly through your music player .
magnatune relaunched itself today with a new business model . we ' re now in the no - limits membership business .
magnatune makes non - exclusive agreements with its artists and gives them fifty percent of any proceeds from online sales or licensing . all tracks available on magnatune come without drm and buyers can set the price they wish to pay for an album .
why should i care ? — a one - line description of what you do and , if possible , why someone should be interested . for magnatune , it ' s “internet music without the guilt” followed by “magnatune , the open music record label” .
this month we added 21 new albums to the magnatune library . here is a selection of latest additions to our downloads website .
magnatune is an internet music record label . it was born out of personal experiences from my wife releasing her cd on a british record label and some observations i ' d gathered about the music industry . magnatune is different from traditional labels in the following ways :
magnatune provides “internet music without the guilt . ” based in berkeley , california , magnatune is a record label with a 21st century business model , offering consumers a unique mix of free and paid music . one of the first for - profit companies to adopt creative commons’ copyright licenses into its strategy , magnatune has amassed both an impressive buzz and a large artist roster . we recently spoke with magnatune founder and ceo john buckman about the music company’s progress and plans , and how going “some rights reserved” can boost the bottom line .
another is the selection . like a major label , magnatune offers quite a few genres of music . but unlike a major , magnatune sells more classical music than anything else . world music , electronica and new age are also big sellers . evidently magnatune has found an audience with tastes that are not being adequately served by the old - guard labels . so , although its nontraditional business plan may get much of the press , magnatune’s concentration on high quality music in second - tier genres is also a big factor in its success .
plugins for mpris , magnatune , lastfm ( album art and scrobbling ) , lyrics fetching , notifications , ubuntu soundmenu , . . .
we are unable to find itunes on your computer . to download and subscribe to classical podcast from urltoken by magnatune , get itunes now .
anything you can ' t do with the magnatune - specific components , you do with the screen of your smartphone , which works like a remote trackpad .
listen to internet radio from spotify , grooveshark , somafm , magnatune , jamendo , urltoken , digitally imported , urltoken , soundcloud , icecast and subsonic servers .
i ' m someone who still believes in owning my music and fair compensation of musicians so i deeply appreciate magnatune . however i am looking to convert my large classical lp collection to cd / mp3 and magnatune has only a smallish selection of what i ' m looking for : maybe 10 - 15 albums total .
jb : yes , i absolutely think the magnatune “try before you buy” model would work for films and books . i’ve registered “magnatome . com” as a possible expansion of magnatune into books . most visitors see magnatune in a very simple light : they can listen to our music , the selection is really good , and the product ( when you buy ) is of high quality . where - ever there’s a glut of “content” , much of it not - so - good , a magnatune - like business that picks the best stuff , and let’s potential buyers see the value of their choice , i think there’s a viable business .
magnatune was born out of personal experiences from my wife releasing her cd on a british record label and some observations i ' d gathered about the music industry .
buckman’s appointment is a reflection of creative commons’ growing interest in commercial applications of cc’s licenses and principles . buckman’s business — magnatune records — is an internet - based record label that uses creative commons licensing to gain wider audiences for its music . magnatune currently represents over 220 recording artists and released its 500th album in october 2006 .
magnatune is a record label with the motto we are not evil . based in berkeley , california , it is the perfect antithesis of the trigger happy lawyer toting riaa label . it is a strange one , as far as record labels go , but in a very good way . some of many interesting facts about magnatune :
the only downside to buying via the amarok magnatune store is that it doesn ' t provide any way to order physical media . magnatune allows users to buy music on cd plus the digital download , but you can purchase only the digital download via the amarok store . the developers say that some of this is up to magnatune to implement in its rest protocol , but they ' ve received a few requests for the ability to buy physical media and they will be looking into supporting that .
magnatune has been a leader in implementing the cc + protocol . lisa debenedictis is a popular music on magnatune . debenedictis released an a capella version of
girl and supergirl
on ccmixter . the a capella vocals were remixed into 76 songs , and magnatune picked the best remixes at the time for
mixter one
, an compilation album where magnatune signed distribution agreements with all the chosen remixers . both the remixers and the original musician ( debenedictis get paid for sales of the compilation . one of the remixes from
mixter one
was then picked up as a commercial license by a bicycle company for a promotional cd , which they in turn sell .
and people like patronizing businesses who are good citizens , who are helping a cause they believe in . magnatune’s incorporation of creative commons helps our visitors feel good about us .
magnatune was born out of some observations i ' d gathered about the music industry , along with personal experiences from my wife releasing her cd on an indie record label .
magnatune is one of the perfect examples of what the digital entertainment industry must do . i ' m glad of your success : simplicity , quality , interesting price . . .
if you think magnatune is a worthy goal , please support it . there are powerful forces who want it to fail , so i need your help if this is going to work .
i believe that the home page of any successful company , project or organization needs to address eight issues immediately . as shown in figure 1 , magnatune ' s home pages answers all eight :
at this point i would like to do a shout out . mr . jade leary is a magnatune artist and a podcast maker user . his album the lost art of human kindness is the 9th highest valued magnatune album of all time . so if you are into alt . rock you should definitely listen to mr . leary ' s music here and check out his podcast here .
last year the linux media player amarok created a demo livecd using cc licensed music from the wired cd . in the meantime amarok developers have added many features and have now added access to magnatune within the player . ( we’ve mentioned magnatune here many times , but for new readers , it is an innovative record label that uses cc licensing , see our interview with the founder . )
jb : when we all have ipod - like devices and no one buys cds , magnatune will need to be a record label known for its absolutely amazing catalog of a half - dozen genres . if magnatune becomes known for its great music , like warp records and blue note , that’s the best i can hope for . because , in the end , it’s all about the music .
the most recent stable version of amarok doesn ' t provide information about the connection to the magnatune store , so one might wonder whether the connection is secure . i emailed the amarok developers about this , and they say that amarok does connect to magnatune over an encrypted connection . they indicated that future releases will provide more explicit information about the connection so users can see that the connection is encrypted .
things aren’t quite that cut and dried : cd baby does provide a recommendation engine and offer some promotional possibilities ; conversely , magnatune artists do have their own websites , from which they link to magnatune . but buckman’s distinction between a “boutique” store / label like his and a supermarket like cd baby is important . any artist can sell through cd baby : currently it offers cds from a staggering 112 , 000 indie musicians and bands . magnatune’s 200 or so artists , by contrast , have been selected carefully by buckman and his small staff . it so happens , for example , that magnatune has an excellent roster of early ( e . g . baroque , or pre - classical ) music , of which i am a fairly big consumer . having bought several albums and sampled numerous others there , i know that most anything magnatune offers in that genre will be something i would want to have . so , for me , magnatune has become a destination in itself . and when i buy music there , i know that 50 % of my purchase price will be going directly to the artist . hence i am getting not only music i like but the satisfaction of knowing i am truly supporting the musicians .
magnatune now automatically detects retina display devices ( i . e . , ipad , hd android , and 4k monitors ) and swaps in album art and artist photos at twice the resolution in those cases .
magnatune is my project . the goal is to find a way to run a record label in the internet reality : file trading , internet radio , musicians ' rights , the whole nine - yards .
classical we ' ve added a wide selection of albums to magnatune ' s classical section recently , particularly from lute , clarinet and cello musicians including james akers , romualdo barone and alison crum and roy marks .
apptui turns your smartphone into a remote trackpad to your web browser ( that ' s a generic feature for every web site ) and then it also adds site - specific navigation and control buttons for magnatune .
amarok ' s playlist interface takes a little bit of exploration to find all of the features hidden in its nooks and crannies . the left side has several
browsers
that display amarok ' s music collection , playlists , files , media players , and the magnatune store . integration with magnatune is relatively new , so if you ' re using an older version of amarok , you may not have that option .
i had removed the link from the home page for one day , and it ' s back now . however , it ' s no longer on every artist page at magnatune , as that seemed like overkill .
we’ve added a whole host of talented musicians and djs to magnatune during april and may . the wide variety of genres and top quality musicianship demonstrates that we only add high - end music to our downloads website .
i recently added
retina image
support widely to magnatune , so that if you have a
retina monitor
( ipad , high res android , or 4k resolution monitor ) the magnatune web site automatically detects this and sends you album art and artist photos at twice the horizontal and vertical resolution . the downside to this is that the
retina
images are much larger , which is why i wanted to implement webp support .
magnatune might not be evil , but building a company takes money . buckman has invested $ 1 million into the site , and it is just now “barely turning a profit , as of august 2005… [ but ] the ‘barely’ is on purpose : the focus is on growing magnatune , not pulling cash out , because this is all about getting musicians enough money so they can keep at it , and avoid working at burger king ! ”
where am i ? — a graphic logo on the top left or top right does the trick . it ' s even better if you have a catchy line . for magnatune , it ' s “we are not evil” .
amarok is a powerful media manager that integrates well with web services like last . fm , magnatune and more . amarok comes with many features , like support for community - developed scripts , dynamic playlists , context views and more .
several unusual features can be found in magnatune ' s music - download purchasing process . buyers determine how much they want to pay , we don ' t use a shopping cart , we support paypal and anonymous visa purchases are allowed .
second , noncommercial projects ( like student films ) can use our music for free in their projects . this helps our music get wider distribution , and future filmmakers learn that magnatune is a great place to find music for their films .
magnatune is helping to prove the contrary . on the heels of its quietly revolutionary announcement that customers may share their uncompressed - audio music purchases with up to three friends , the online record label and store has seen a 40 % increase in sales . i spoke by email with magnatune founder john buckman about his new offer to “fill your ipod for $ 200” and , generally , about what he’s doing right and what the music industry on the whole is doing wrong .
i read this article by courtney love six months after starting magnatune , and was stunned by how much i have in common with her vision and understanding of the music business . and , she ' s much more eloquent than i am .
john buckman i s the founder of berkeley , california - based recording label magnatune , a pioneer in digital downloading , application of creative commons copyrights , and artist - friendly business practices , sometimes referred to as
fair trade music .
the last bullet - point is the raison d ' être for this post . it may be old news to some of you , but all of the 5487 tracks by 206 different artists under magnatune are creative commons licensed . this is a good deal for both the podcaster and the artist . magnatune is an underdog in the music industry , but it is a company that totally gets the changes coming with the digital era and this podcast loving attitude is just one example of many .
i ' ve been using ( and testing ) it these past few weeks , as their magnatune support went into beta , and i ' m pleased to say i ' m finding it quite useful . it ' s free , and downloadable here .
if you ' re one for the deeper darker side of ambient , have a taste for melody driven indie folk or perhaps veer towards traditional instruments such as the lute or cello then be sure to check out our latest additions to the magnatune music library .
fees from music licensing ( to independent filmmakers , for example ) can be a significant part of the income an artist can make , but usually it’s a much more difficult side of the business for artists to deal with – unless they’re also lawyers . but magnatune makes it unusually easy , both financially and technically , for producers to license its artists’ music . in fact , the artists who market and appeal to both consumers ( via direct downloads ) and producers ( via licensing ) do the best at magnatune .
there is an it conversations interview that i recommend with the magnatune founder john buckman here . he explains in depth how magnatune is different from traditional labels and gives us his insight on how the music industry is changing in this digital era . it was interesting for me because i am also a producer of digital content and his perspective on things is refreshing . i sincerely hope that ventures like his succeed in taking a huge chunk of the business away from the crap pushing greedy cartel of the big 5 record companies .
who are we ? bookmooch is conceived , designed , written and administered by john buckman ( pictured above ) . john also runs the online record label magnatune . the graphic identity of the site is by claudy niesen , and the illustration is by andrice arp .
john buckman is founder and owner of magnatune . com , a online record label he launched may of 2003 with the motto “we are not evil . ” since that time , he has signed over 220 artists and sells their music directly from the magnatune site through online downloads and print - on - demand cds , as well as an innovative licensing tool that allows filmmakers and other creative professionals to license music for use in commercial projects directly from the magnatune site . known for his progressive take on label operations , buckman emphasizes an anti - drm stance and a musician - friendly approach that includes forming non - exclusive agreements with recording artists , sharing profits equally with them , and allowing them to retain full rights to their own music . buckman is also a well - known figure in the open - source community and successfully applies both open source and creative commons - based principles to ensure the entire magnatune catalog is heard by the widest possible audience . john divides his time between london and berkeley , ca and is married to classical and electronic musician jan hanford buckman .
i am so glad to see magnatune going this way . and that you have not restricted us to paypal . i am a longtime fan / supporter / member , but dropped out of download membership when you did that . now jumping back on board with a smile .
magnatune , a record label founded in 2003 , is a pioneer of open music , the most successful attempt to embed creative commons ( cc ) licenses in a sustainable commercial venture , and an early adopter of variable pricing . initially conceived as part online radio station , part retailer and part licensing - suite , the business model continues to evolve in response to consumer and technology trends . magnatune uses unconventional means to create the fan base , and then monetizes it via the traditional - - though updated — methods of selling downloads and commercial licensing rights .
i ' ve been a big fan of magnatune since it debuted a few years ago . i ' m happy to pay for music , but i like to be able to listen to it first to see if it ' s something i like , and don ' t want to deal with any digital restrictions management ( drm ) crippled cds . magnatune has an interesting selection , and a no - hassle way of doing business that ' s good for customers and good for artists , since half of the sale price goes directly to the artist .
i want to steer — despite all these hints on what to do next , visitors often want to decide for themselves where to go . on magnatune , 15 % of people coming to the home page click on the artists tab . make the major site navigation options clear .
however , as one journalist observed that magnatune is “completely reinventing all aspects of the music business , becoming a fully vertically - integrated company” ( ie , doing a & r , recording , distribution , licensing , pr ) i think i have my hands full with “just” music .
magnatune runs on open - source software . five 2 . 4ghz 1u rackmount boxes run linux . disk storage is provided by hardware raid on four rackmount drive arrays , each with seven drives for a total of 28 drives . each array is configured for raid5 with one hot spare .
the minimum membership period is 3 months , but other than that , nothing prevents you from doing that . would you prefer that magnatune use drm to prevent the 3 % of members who do this ? ( and it is about 3 % , as i do track it ) . i prefer that magnatune not be evil , and not punish the 97 % who
play fair
in order to stop the 3 % who don ' t . and besides , even with that 3 % we still made $ 45 in revenue , which isn ' t shabby .
i ' m personally really excited with the change , because 4 years ago i noticed that our download sales were declining , and it wasn ' t until 2 years ago that i finally figured out what people wanted . magnatune has been going since 2003 , and the future looks rosy .
magnatune’s latest marketing idea is its new “fill your ipod” offer . noting that ipods have a lot more storage space than the average person has enough music ( and / or time ) to fill up , buckman came up with the idea of bundling its 400 or so albums into one $ 200 lump - sum purchase . yes , that’s not much money going to each artist included in the bundle , but it’s better - than - free promotion , especially considering that people who take magnatune up on the offer would not have otherwise been acquiring most of those albums at all .
apache 2 running php and openssl serves all the html pages . when magnatune was slashdotted , i found that apache could not keep up with the load for images . all http image requests now are off - loaded to aolserver , which had the lowest latency to serve images at high loads .
john buckman : hey , no - one ' s counting , if you want to share it with 5 people , fine , great , you introduced more people to magnatune . the point is not to put the files up on your web site as a torrent for the world to take .
for its musicians , magnatune offers more than a storefront . it employs “a full time pr agency that does nothing but send our cds out to magazines and websites for reviews . we’re constantly getting major pr . ” this week’s issue of time magazine , for example , lists magnatune among the top 20 music websites ; a full page story in the economist appeared recently ; “and those stories usually feature our artists . not to mention podcasters playing our music , our network of partner web sites ( webjay , irate , last . fm ) and others . ” buckman has a refreshingly radical view of paid advertising : “advertising is stupid , it’s only for companies that no one is naturally interested in . over 600 , 000 web sites point to urltoken today , because they think it’s a very good thing and want to spread the word . magnatune is religion . fight evil ! what could be simpler ? ”
john buckman is the founder of magnatune , an internet - based record company . he is the webmaster of piazzolla ( urltoken ) , a tango music site , runs the internet lute society ( urltoken ) and co - runs urltoken , the main web site for the classical composer j . s . bach .
the fix is included in the dev builds , so if you ' re afraid of unstable release , you can test it . but , i will probably include it into the final 1 . 0 release . once you will used a fixed release , you will need to refresh your magnatune ' s catalog .
“i’m thrilled that creative commons has asked me to contribute at this level , ” says buckman . “through magnatune i’ve been trying to show how the commons can help businesses succeed in a commercial sense . i have a lot to say about how cc principles can be applied successfully to the for - profit world . ”
magnatune customers set their own prices , paying what they feel an album is worth ( plus a fixed additional fee if they want a physical cd , including full artwork , mailed to them ) . on average , the artists receive $ 4 - $ 5 per album sale , far more than artists on major labels get . and while that may be somewhat less than the typical take from a cd sale at the revered online indie record store cd baby , and less ( percentage - wise ) than the latter pays out for download sales via its digital distribution service , buckman explains that cd baby is a very different beast : “cd baby doesn’t promote your cd , it’s a shopping cart [ and fulfillment house ] for you to send orders to , from your [ the artists’s ] web site . cargo cult , for example , one of magnatune’s best - selling artists , sees fewer than 10 sales a quarter from cd baby yet sells hundreds of copies in that same time frame on magnatune . that’s no failing of cd baby , they simply have a different mission : cd baby sells your cd to people who already want to buy it . magnatune finds people and gets them to want to buy your cd . totally different things , equally valid . ”
is gnome’s default music player . inspired by apple’s itunes , it is simple to use and meets most needs with playlist support , ipod integration , podcast playback , streaming , et cetera . in addition , users are able to browse the drm - free music stores magnatune and jamendo . for more information , see the
also new to our classical collection this month is the latest album from daniel estem . daniel is our second ' most downloaded ' artist on magnatune . we are confident that daniel ' s new release , bach harpsichord suites on guitar , won ' t disappoint and will prove to be just as popular as his previous works .
buckman had this to say : “i’m thrilled that creative commons has asked me to contribute at this level . through magnatune i’ve been trying to show how the commons can help businesses succeed in a commercial sense . i have a lot to say about how cc principles can be applied successfully to the for - profit world . ”
magnatune is the non - evil record label who gives away 128 kbps mp3s of all their artist ' s songs for free . you can then choose ( or not ) to purchase drm - free higher quality versions at a price you set and they allow you to share their purchased songs with 3 friends . the label splits revenues 50 / 50 with their ( carefully picked ) signed artists , while these artists keep all of the rights to their music with a non - exclusive contract . today , we are very happy to feature an interview with john buckman , the founder and owner of magnatune , to help us understand better their revolutionary business model .
you can listen to all our music as streaming 128k mp3s ( entire albums , not samples ) as well as on shoutcast mp3 stations . two clicks on magnatune queues a never - ending selection of our music in the genre of your choice . our assumption is you eventually will hear something you like and want to buy it .
the purpose of making music available in source code is to encourage derivative works , such as remixes , cover songs and sampling . source code also helps users understand the make - up and composition of a work . magnatune encourages all its musicians to make their tracks available in ‘source code’ , a concept imported from software production that means the software program in its original language8 . in the context of open music , the source code could be the scores , lyrics , midi files , samples or track - by - track audio files that comprise a recording . again , the cc license used by magnatune explicitly permits users to make derivative works for non - commercial purposes .
what do you want me to do ? — for first - time visitors , it should be clear what the next step is . for magnatune , i want people to listen to the music immediately , so it says “explore a music genre : classical , electronica , metal & punk , new age , rock , world , others” .
this release features tabbed playlists , playlist search , projectm visualisations , magnatune integration , replaygain volume normalisation and music transcoding . we ' ve fixed loads of bugs too - searching large libraries is now much faster , playback is much more reliable on windows , character encoding problems are fixed , and remote playlists should load correctly all the time .
in this podcast : 1 . sj pettersson , 2 . harper ' s hamper , 3 . giorgio costantini , 4 . asteria , 5 . daniel estrem , 6 . janine johnson , 7 . viva la pepa , 8 . magnatune compilation , 9 . sebastian forster , 10 . takashi matsuishi spark , 11 . phebe craig and katherine we
in this podcast : 1 . daniel estrem , 2 . the hurdy - gurdy band , 3 . steven devine , 4 . daniel estrem , 5 . magnatune compilation , 6 . colin booth , 7 . vito paternoster , 8 . daniel estrem , 9 . ensemble mirable , 10 . hanneke van proosdij , 11 . daughters of elvin , 12 . t
magnatune customers considering buying an album can listen to the whole thing online – not just samples – in high quality first . once they buy it , they can download both mp3s ( compressed ) and cd - quality audio files . although the latter are much bigger and take a lot longer to download , buckman reports that “70 % of buyers get the perfect quality files , and another 40 % download the mp3s . you can download multiple formats , or come back in a month and get the files again . the trend is clearly toward perfect quality , as well as well - tagged mp3s for your ipod . ” since most online music stores do not offer full - quality files , this is one way magnatune stands out .
what ' s new ? — give people an incentive to come back to your site by making it easy to see what ' s changed . there ' s a lot of new stuff at magnatune ( new press coverage , for example ) , but most people care only about our new artists and albums , so that ' s what ' s on the home page .
the vast majority react with # 2 , probably 60 % , with 20 % each belonging to camps # 1 and # 3 . for most of them , the business side of music is voodoo , and they trust me to be doing something good for them ( after all , with a 50 / 50 sales split , magnatune only makes money if the musician makes money ) .
let ' s say you are playing music at magnatune . com , in your apartment , and step away to make dinner . with your smartphone , you can easily use the stop / start / prev / next buttons to control the music playing . if you don ' t like a track , skip it . or use the stop / start button if you want some quiet .
well , if you download the livecd , you don ' t have to install it . it just runs off the cd , and when you reboot , nothing on your system has changed . otherwise , if you go out to the rhythmbox site , they have a section of screenshots ( urltoken ) although there ' s not much to see because the magnatune \ jamendo stuff is just integrated into the menus . when you click on jamendo on the left , you see a library that looks exactly like your library , except it ' s full of all the jamendo artists , and ditto for magnatune . a screenshot of this would be indistinguishable from any other shot of a music library . so just imagine mediamonkey doing the same thing - you click either jamendo or magnatune on the left , it populates a library with all of their artists , and clicking on one starts a music stream , much like streamcast . ( jamendo ' s music , being free and cc - licensed , can also be downloaded at will , which is a slightly higher - level functionality that would probably be a little harder to implement , although rhythmbox does that as well . )
john buckman : i love it , there ' s no better way to create an audience for magnatune than to have the majors destroy any good feelings in their audience and to be so thoroughly disgusted with the majors that people will do anything not to give them any money . it ' s gotten so bad the major labels can ' t even buy a senator , they ' re that despised .
all web pages in magnatune run php . purchases are logged to a mysql database . a perl script creates the track listings and m3u playlists . tcl scripts handle all other tasks , such as making zip , ogg vorbis and flac files and making per - album password configuration files for apache . apache http passwords are used to protect all purchasable downloads . we use rsync to distribute files among the servers .
i decided not to use a shopping cart at magnatune because of the widely discussed problem of shopping - cart abandonment . when people are excited about an album and click the buy button , that ' s the time to capture the sale . with a shopping cart in place , a user often goes looking for more things to add and that initial buying compulsion is gone if they don ' t find something .
the most distinctive of magnatune’s many unusual features is the policy of ‘open music’ , which is defined as having a catalogue that is “shareable , available in ‘source code’ form , allows derivative works and is free of cost for non - commercial use . ” magnatune advocates for
shareable music
- - a distinct forking from the standard , ‘all rights reserved’ approach , because users are permitted to — rather than prohibited from — distribute further copies of the track . these permissions are signaled to users by the cc ‘attribution non - commercial share - alike’ license . in this case , permission to share also allows users to listen to the entire catalogue for free via the website’s 128kbps streams , as well as to download the 128kbps mp3 files themselves by clicking the “license” and then “non - commercial ( creative commons ) ” button .
jb : we’re having a lot of success licensing our music to indie films , with between 20 and 30 indie film licenses every month . these are real films with budgets from $ 20 , 000 to $ 100 , 000 , but making films is expensive , and they need to keep costs down . the creative commons license lets filmmakers put magnatune music into their film while it’s being made . then , once the film is accepted for distribution and becomes in effect “commercial” as people then start paying to see it , the filmmaker buys a commercial use license — at a price they could determine online at the very beginning . this “free start - up , permission - not - withheld , fair - price” business that creative commons + magnatune enables is unique today , and i believe is the reason we’ve been so popular with indie filmmakers .
third , commercial projects that are in pre - production can put our music into their project mockups as a “temporary track” to show their client their ideas . when the client accepts , the agency purchases a commercial use license to the music . in this way , magnatune’s music gets used for flash - based web sites , promotional videos , and films - not - yet - in - distribution at cost to the agency .
rock we ' re thrilled to see the return of nathan mathes to magnatune . nathan ' s new album , recs is crammed full of impeccably crafted indie folk songs about life ' s struggles and how to never give up . easy weather by the bell hours is another brilliant album that we ' ve added to our rock collection . easy weather is a sentimental take on modern rock and roll . both albums are certainly worth downloading .
john buckman : a few have , but mostly we pay so much more than indie labels do ( which is typically zero ) a musician getting $ 4000 a year from us is very unlikely to do any better with an exclusive deal , except off an advance from a major indie or major label . and frankly , magnatune is radical enough that people who want to sign up with it want nothing to do with the traditional evil music business .
well , jamendo is at urltoken and magnatune is at urltoken . however , the best example is the rhythmbox player ( urltoken ) which is the default media player on the gnome desktop interface for linux . the
easiest
way to see it in action would be to go download a linux live cd ( like from ubuntu at urltoken ) and run it long enough to see how its media player works . don ' t get me wrong , incidentally . . . i think mediamonkey is a superior player to rhythmbox in every way except this one . and in that sense it ' s superior to all the players on windows since , as far as i can tell , none of them integrate magnatune and jamendo like that . so implementing that same functionality would simultaneously give some more love to independent artists who aren ' t signed to major labels and bring a new selling point to mediamonkey that no other windows player has .
although non - commercial use of the magnatune catalogue and its source code are free , users are restrained by the terms of the license from using the work for commercial purposes . users are not permitted to exploit the catalogue to make a profit . if any track in the catalogue is used with a commercial purpose , for example in a compilation or as a sample in a new track that will be for sale , then the user is required to negotiate commercial terms .
well , i certainly understand the reasons for the change . unfortunately , for some of us who live in countries where a payment of 15 usd a month is more difficult to earn back at work , i would have loved to still be able of downloading one album at a time now and then . not all the new music on magnatune is music that i would really like to own . so i will continue to listen to the new classical albums with advertisments , i guess .
i ' m not sure why it is listed as $ 10 per month for 2 years - why not $ 2 per month for ten years , or $ 1 per month for 20 years or . . . ? perhaps it is because people have short time horizons . hopefully magnatune will be around for a long long time . i guess the risk is that if most people take out the lifetime option then the revenue stream will drop unless there is a constant supply of new members . it is not in the interest of lifetime members for magnatune to not be profitable and go out of business ! i hope if that were to ever happen that we would be given plenty of notice so we could go crazy downloading . . . as it is now i have been downloading a lot of albums in mp3 format to preview on my mp3 player with the intention of later downloading my favourites in flac or wav format for burning to cd to get the full quality recording .
given all these factors , i thought , “why not build a record label that has a clue ? ” create a label that helps artists get exposure , make at least as much money as they would make at traditional labels and get fans and concerts . magnatune is my project . the goal is to find a way to run a record label in the internet reality : file trading , internet radio , musicians ' rights , the whole nine yards . these aren ' t things that can be ignored .
and npr . during these press events , we ' ve experienced huge bursts of web traffic . i run five servers at two different locations , each with 100mb feeds , and send load - balanced pages with dynamic php urls to each of them . i ' ve found this to be sufficient for the current demands . however , as magnatune has been growing by 30 % in traffic and revenue each month , i ' m seriously looking at peer - to - peer as a load balancing and scalability solution .
once a user clicks on the magnatune home page to select a genre , such as electronica ( see figure 2 ) , a web page is displayed that shows four main choices : 1 ) listen to every album in electronica , one album after another , 2 ) listen to a mix of our electronica artists , 3 ) listen to the entire album of any of our electronica artists and 4 ) click on an artist to learn more . the first three choices offer users immediate gratification by allowing them to hear music immediately .
what steps will reproduce the problem ? 1 . open magnatune overview 2 . select album or tracks with apostrophes , e . g . a ) albums by
harper ' s harper
b )
a berliner ' s hope
by
dr kuch
3 . watch clementine trying , but failing to play , displaying a greyed out song . what is the expected output ? what do you see instead ? music / a greyed out song . what version of the product are you using ? on what operating system ? 1 . 0rc1
the one feature i ' d most like to see in mediamonkey is one that is currently unavailable in any windows media player : library integration of magnatune and jamendo . both have open libraries that allow 3rd party apps to access their streams , but very few players make use of this . probably the most notable is the linux player rhythmbox , which has a nearly ideal implementation of them . integrating them means that users would always have a vast library of music at their fingertips , even if they didn ' t have a large local library . thanks !
a basic element of magnatune’s business plan is that although it sells directly to the customer , it also deals directly with the artists , who are signed to non - exclusive distribution agreements and receive 50 % of the proceeds from sales of their music . the lack of an intrusive middleman is what makes this equal partnership economically and conceptually practical . with traditional record labels , creativity in marketing is discouraged , when it’s needed now more than ever ; “every business idea [ the artists ] have needs to be approved by the record companies [ which ] control the music , ” buckman says .
i recently signed up for a 3 month download subscription at the minimum $ 10 / mo with the notion that i would use the non - download url to also buy any albums i really liked . i hesitated to commit to paying more for the subscription when i mainly use pandora and urltoken ( both for pay ) and i already have a large music collection . ( so far , i think i only listened to one magnatune download all the way through . ) i guess what would be best for me would be a subscription with download limits , larger streaming limits , and the option of upgrading to unlimited .
magnatune , how about expanding your offerings ? $ 15 is a lot for me considering that i purchase from many other sites a - la carte . for instance , dance department ( radio 538 ) went to a paid podcast which i signed up for . it is 5 . 38 euros per year . how about you think of offering a reduced price paid podcast only ? i would definitely sign up since i love your offerings but don ' t want to get locked into a cable - type bill every month . p . s i was one of the few that downloaded single albums that you offered in the past .
record label who gives away 128 kbps mp3s of all their artist ' s songs for free . you can then choose ( or not ) to purchase drm - free higher quality versions at a price you set and they allow you to share their purchased songs with 3 friends . the label splits revenues 50 / 50 with their ( carefully picked ) signed artists , while these artists keep all of the rights to their music with a non - exclusive contract . today , we are very happy to feature an interview with john buckman , the founder and owner of magnatune , to help us understand better their revolutionary business model .
the creative clearinghouse is a place where people wanting to license cc music for commercial use could come . the price is set automatically by the same online pricing engine used at magnatune , and the signed contracts are generated automatically with payment . we’ll also act as the publisher and collect performance royalties on behalf of the artist . what this means is that when a musician puts a cc license on their work , they could add “for commercial use , see urltoken so that a film - maker could easily determine ( in advance ) that this music is easy to license , they can see what the price will be , and they know that permission - to - use will not be denied .
on the magnatune buy page , we require only a customer ' s credit - card number and expiration date—that ' s all we need to complete the transaction . we do ask for a name and e - mail address , stating : “if you want to be anonymous , you can omit your e - mail and name , but we won ' t be able to e - mail you a copy of your order . ” asking for a minimal amount of data at purchase time makes it quick for people to fill out the purchase form . additionally , not requiring an e - mail address means the buyer doesn ' t need to worry about e - commerce spam resulting from the purchase .
as i ' m writing this article , magnatune has about 60 musicians and 130 albums and is growing by about 15 musicians and 30 albums per month . my top musicians should see about $ 6 , 000 us of royalties in a year . on average , musicians should see about $ 1 , 500 us each year . if the 30 % growth holds up , i ' ll be able to pay my musicians even more . more than anything , that ' s what excites me : that i ' m able to have a material impact on these musicians . they are excited by the success , people are hearing their music , and the artists have the financial wherewithal to continue recording great albums .


philosophical presentism is the view that neither the future nor the past exist .

in some versions of presentism , this view is extended to timeless objects or ideas ( such as numbers ) .

according to presentism , events and entities that are wholly past or wholly future do not exist at all .

presentism contrasts with eternalism and the growing block theory of time which hold that past events , like the battle of waterloo , and past entities , like alexander the great 's warhorse bucephalus , really do exist , although not in the present .

eternalism extends to future events as well .

saint augustine proposed that the present is analogous to a knife edge placed exactly between the perceived past and the imaginary future and does not include the concept of time .

this should be self-evident because , if the present is extended , it must have separate parts – but these must be simultaneous if they are truly a part of the present .

according to early philosophers , time can not be simultaneously past and present and hence not extended .

contrary to saint augustine , some philosophers propose that conscious experience is extended in time .

for instance , william james said that time is " the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible " .

other early presentist philosophers include the indian buddhist tradition .

fyodor shcherbatskoy , a leading scholar of the modern era on buddhist philosophy , has written extensively on buddhist presentism : " everything past is unreal , everything future is unreal , everything imagined , absent , mental ... is unreal .

ultimately , real is only the present moment of physical efficiency [ i.e. , causation ] . "

according to j. m. e. mctaggart 's , the unreality of time , there are two ways of referring to events : the ' a series ' ( or ' tensed time ' : yesterday , today , tomorrow ) and the ' b series ' ( or ' untensed time ' : monday , tuesday , wednesday ) .

presentism posits that the a series is fundamental and that the b series alone is not sufficient .

presentists maintain that temporal discourse requires the use of tenses , whereas the " old b-theorists " argued that tensed language could be reduced to tenseless facts ( dyke , 2004 ) .

arthur prior has argued against un-tensed theories with the following ideas : the meaning of statements such as " thank goodness that 's over " is much easier to see in a tensed theory with a distinguished , present now .

similar arguments can be made to support the theory of egocentric presentism ( or perspectival realism ) , which holds that there is a distinguished , present self .

in modern theory of relativity , the conceptual observer is at a geometric point in both space and time at the apex of the ' light cone ' which observes the events laid out in time as well as space .

different observers may disagree on whether two events at different locations occurred simultaneously depending on whether the observers are in relative motion ( see relativity of simultaneity ) .

this theory depends upon the idea of time as an extended thing and has been confirmed by experiment , thus giving rise to a philosophical viewpoint known as four dimensionalism .

although the contents of an observation are time-extended , the conceptual observer , being a geometric point at the origin of the light cone , is not extended in time or space .

this analysis contains a paradox in which the conceptual observer contains nothing , even though any real observer would need to be the extended contents of an observation to exist .

this paradox is partially resolved in relativity theory by defining a ' frame of reference ' to encompass the measuring instruments used by an observer .

this reduces the time separation between instruments to a set of constant intervals .

some of the difficulties and paradoxes of presentism can be resolved by changing the normal view of time as a container or thing unto itself and seeing time as a measure of changing spatial relationships among objects .

thus , observers need not be extended in time to exist and to be aware , but they rather exist and the changes in internal relationships within the observer can be measured by stable countable events .

philosophical presentism

zimmerman , dean , 1996 , “persistence and presentism , ” philosophical papers , 25 : 115–126 .
here are a variety of brief philosophical arguments against past - directed time travel .
––– , 1995 , “the open past , ” philosophical studies , 79 : 95–105 .
presentism is opposed by non - presentism , which is the view that there are some non - present objects . more precisely , non - presentism is the view that , possibly , it is sometimes true that there are some non - present objects .
bourne , craig , 2006 , a future for presentism , oxford : oxford university press .
bigelow , john , 1996 , “presentism and properties , ” in james tomberlin ( ed . ) , philosophical perspectives ( volume 10 : metaphysics ) , oxford : blackwell , pp . 35–52 .
––– , 1999 , “presentism and ontological commitment , ” journal of philosophy , 96 : 325–347 .
a brief defense of presentism , the view that the past and the future are not real .
––– , 1989b , “persistence , change , and explanation , ” philosophical studies , 56 : 1–28 .
vihvelin , kadri , 1996 , “what time travelers cannot do , ” philosophical studies , 81 : 315–330 .
despite the fact that presentism has the firm backing of common sense and eternalism revolts against it , eternalism is widely regarded as almost the default view in contemporary debates , and presentism as a highly problematic view .
rea , michael c . , 1998 , “temporal parts unmotivated , ” the philosophical review , 107 : 225–260 .
besson , corine and hattiangadi , anandi , forthcoming , “the open future , bivalence and assertion , ” philosophical studies .
godfrey - smith , william , 1979 , “special relativity and the present , ” philosophical studies , 36 : 233–244 .
sullivan , meghan , 2012a , “the minimal a - theory , ” philosophical studies , 158 : 149 - 174 .
––– , 1994 , “the 3d / 4d controversy and non - present objects , ” philosophical papers , 23 : 243–249 .
to put the matter in the modal language , worlds that include closed timelike curves have no place for presentism and tense .
a series of popular lectures about time by a renowned physicist with an interest in philosophical issues , but emphasizing the arrow of time .
––– , 2011 , “on the meaning of the question ‘how fast does time pass ? ’ , ” philosophical studies , 155 : 325–344 .
the entirety of part ii of the book is devoted to the hard task of defending presentism in the face of special and general relativity .
these defects are somewhat mitigated in bourne ' s more helpful discussion of presentism ' s standing vis - à - vis general relativity and cosmology .
meiland , jack w . , 1974 , “a two - dimensional passage model of time for time travel , ” philosophical studies , 26 : 153–173 .
philosophical presentism philosophical presents is the philosophical doctrine that recognizes only the events and entities that occur in the present or past . in some versions of presentism , this is extended to timeless objects or ideas such as numbers . = = = = = = = image - copyright - info = = = = = = = = license : creative commons attribution - share alike 3 . 0 ( cc - by - sa - 3 . 0 ) licenselink : urltoken author - info : user : s sepp image source : urltoken = = = = = = = image - copyright - info = = = = = = = = - video is targeted to blind users attribution : article text available under cc - by - sa image source in video urltoken
another argument that might be raised against the possibility of time travel depends on the claim that presentism is true . for if presentism is true , then neither past nor future objects exist . and in that case , it is hard to see how anyone could travel to the past or the future .
craig bourne , a future for presentism , oxford university press , 2006 , 242pp . , $ 55 . 00 ( hbk ) , isbn : 9780199212804
reviews the arguments for and against the claim that , since the present in the theory of relativity is relative to reference frame , presentism must be incorrect .
eternalism contrasts to presentism and is thought of as its opposite . eternalism is the philosophical theory which says that all points in time are equally real . the past , the present , and the future are all real . in this sense , socrates and tomorrow’s events exist right now , even if i cannot see them or interact with them . many philosophers have adopted eternalism because they argue that presentism is contradicted by einstein’s special and general theory of relativity , whereas eternalism agrees with it . as the philosopher of science , dean rickles puts it : “the consensus among philosophers seems to be that special and general relativity are incompatible with presentism . ”
lewis , david , 1986a , “the paradoxes of time travel , ” in lewis , david , philosophical papers ( volume 2 ) , oxford : oxford university press .
for a review of the argument from relativity against presentism , and for some criticisms of the block theory , see ( putnam 1967 ) and ( saunders 2002 ) .
savitt , steven ( ed . ) , 1995 , time ' s arrows today : recent physical and philosophical work on the direction of time , cambridge : cambridge university press .
––– , 2003 , “a defense of presentism , ” in dean zimmerman ( ed . ) , oxford studies in metaphysics ( volume 1 ) , oxford : oxford university press .
markosian , ned , “a defense of presentism , ” in zimmerman , dean ( ed . ) , oxford studies in metaphysics , vol . 1 , oxford university press , 2003 .
more importantly , it is utterly unclear what relation , if any , the cosmological time may bear to the phenomenological local time , which is the real source of many issues surrounding presentism .
hinchliff , mark , 1996 , “the puzzle of change , ” in james tomberlin ( ed . ) , philosophical perspectives ( volume 10 : metaphysics ) , oxford : blackwell , pp . 119–136 .
––– , 1998 , “temporary intrinsics and presentism , ” in peter van inwagen and dean zimmerman ( eds . ) , metaphysics : the big questions , oxford : blackwell , pp . 206–219 .
the three answers just given to the question ,
what is time ?
are informative . however , when philosophers ask the question , they normally do not want such a succinct answer . they want to be told more about the nature of time . they complain that the full nature of physical time can be revealed only by adding a philosophical theory of time that addresses the many philosophical issues that scientists do not concern themselves with .
the philosophical dispute about presentism , the growing - past theory , and the block theory or eternalism has taken a linguistic turn by focusing upon a question about language : “are predictions true or false at the time they are uttered ? ” those who believe in the block - universe ( and thus in the determinate reality of the future ) will answer “yes , ” while a “no” will be given by presentists and advocates of the growing - past .
unlike some other presentists , he does not think eternalism is utterly untenable ; instead he thinks it is a theory to beat , and he takes up the formidable challenge of defending a version of presentism against all the odds .
earman , john , 1995 , “recent work on time travel , ” in steven savitt ( ed . ) , time ' s arrows today : recent physical and philosophical work on the direction of time , cambridge : cambridge university press , pp . 268–310 .
philosophers of time would like to resolve as many issues as they can from the list of philosophical issues mentioned in the opening summary . some issues are intimately related to others so that it is reasonable to expect a resolution of one to have deep implications for another . for example , there is an important subset of related philosophical issues about time that cause many philosophers of time to divide into two broad camps , the a - camp and the b - camp , because they are on the opposite sides of those issues .
one philosophical implication of the relativity of time is that it seems to be more difficult to defend mctaggart ' s a - theory that says temporal properties of events such as
is happening now
or
happened in the past
are frame - free properties of those events .
presentism is the view that only present objects exist . more precisely , it is the view that , necessarily , it is always true that only present objects exist . ( at least , that is how the name ‘presentism’ will be used here . some writers have used the name differently . note that , unless otherwise indicated , what is meant here by ‘present’ is temporally present , as opposed to spatially present . ) according to presentism , if we were to make an accurate list of all the things that exist — i . e . , a list of all the things that our most unrestricted quantifiers range over — there would be not a single non - present object on the list . thus , you and the taj mahal would be on the list , but neither socrates nor any future martian outposts would be included . ( assuming , that is , both ( i ) that each person is identical to his or her body , and ( ii ) that socrates ' s body ceased to be present — thereby going out of existence , according to presentism — shortly after he died . those who reject the first of these assumptions should simply replace the examples in this article involving allegedly non - present people with appropriate examples involving the non - present bodies of those people . ) and it ' s not just socrates and future martian outposts , either — the same goes for any other putative object that lacks the property of being present . all such objects are unreal , according to presentism .
despite the claim by some presentists that theirs is the common sense view , it is pretty clear that there are some major problems facing presentism ( and , to a lesser extent , the growing universe theory ; but in what follows we will focus on the problems facing presentism ) . one problem has to do with what appears to be perfectly meaningful talk about non - present objects , such as socrates and the year 3000 . if there really are no non - present objects , then it is hard to see what we are referring to when we use expressions such as ‘socrates’ and ‘the year 3000’ .
the likely philosophical implications of eternal inflation are that ( i ) everything that can happen will happen , ( ii ) future time is countably infinite , ( iii ) the universe has no maximum entropy , and ( iv ) there are no poincaré cycles requiring the universe to return infinitesimally close to every one of its earlier states .
‘non - presentism’ is an umbrella term that covers several different , more specific versions of the view . one version of non - presentism is eternalism , which says that objects from both the past and the future exist just as much as present objects . according to eternalism , non - present objects like socrates and future martian outposts exist right now , even though they are not currently present . we may not be able to see them at the moment , on this view , and they may not be in the same space - time vicinity that we find ourselves in right now , but they should nevertheless be on the list of all existing things .
- -
ersatzer presentism ,
systematically developed in chapter 2 - - is similar to some others in that it takes times to be abstract entities : maximally consistent sets of propositions of a certain type , which represent , in a relevant way , past , present and future states of affairs and their cross - temporal relations .
a third major issue for the presentist is to account for the special theory of relativity ' s treatment of the present , given that it implies there is no common global present , but only different presents for each of us . relativity theory allows event a to be simultaneous with event b in some reference frame , and it allows be to be simultaneous with event c in some other reference frame . so , if a is real , then shouldn’t the presentist allow c to be real also ? yet , according to relativity theory , in the first frame , c might be in the future of a . this argument against presentism presupposes the transitivity of co - existence . ( stein 1991 ) says presentism can be retained by rejecting transitivity and saying what is present and thus real is different depending on your spacetime location . the implication of this is that , for event a , the only events that are real are those with a zero spacetime interval from a , and many of stein ' s opponents do not like this implication . a survey of defenses of presentism can be found in ( markosian 2003 ) .
you can participate in that future , not just view it . a relevant philosophical controversy is whether there can be time travel that changes the future . this is impossible , according to david lewis ( lewis 1976 , 150 ) . if you were to do that , then it would not have been the future . no action changes the future , regardless of whether time travel is involved .
a look at the brain structures involved in how our mind organizes our experiences into the proper temporal order . includes a discussion of benjamin libet’s claim to have discovered in the 1970s that the brain events involved in initiating a free choice occur about a third of a second before we are aware of our making the choice . this claim has radical implications for the philosophical issue of free will .
there is another important respect in which some ( but not all ) a theorists believe time to be unlike the dimensions of space . some a theorists believe that there are crucial ontological differences between time and the dimensions of space . for some a theorists also endorse a view known as “presentism , ” and others endorse a view that we will call “the growing universe theory . ”
proponents of the tensed theory of time do not agree with this conclusion . quentin smith says , the
new tenseless theory of time is faced with insurmountable problems , and that it ought to be abandoned in favor of the tensed theory .
so , the philosophical debate continues over whether tensed concepts have semantical priority over untensed concepts , and whether tensed facts have ontological priority over untensed facts .
the advocates of the block - universe attack both presentism and the growing - past theory by claiming that only the block - universe can make sense of the special theory of relativity’s implication that , if persons a and b are separated but in relative motion , an event in person a’s present can be in person b’s future . advocates of presentism and the growing - past theories must suppose that this event is both real and unreal because it is real for a but not real for b . surely that conclusion is unacceptable , claim the eternalists . two key assumptions of this argument are , first , that relativity does provide an accurate account of the spatiotemporal relations among events , and , second , that if there is some frame of reference in which two events are simultaneous , then if one of the events is real , so is the other .
assuming that the subject of admiration is plato himself ( and not his achievements , as the case might be : that case constitutes no problem whatsoever for the presentist ) , bourne notes that , pace some critics of presentism , the problem here lies not in the spurious relation of admiration , but in the need to talk about , or refer to , plato and other past objects , and that problem has already been dealt with .
a small number of philosophers question whether time seems to us to flow , and claim we are mistaken in describing how things seem to us to be . the vast majority , though , will agree that that time seems to flow , but there is significant philosophical disagreement among these philosophers about whether it really does . this controversial issue is about physical time , and it is directly related to whether mctaggart ' s a - theory or b - theory is more fundamental .
there is a philosophical problem about eddington ' s claim that entropy causes the arrow . it is not controversial that there is a correlation between time ' s arrow and the direction of entropy change . what is controversial is whether there ' s an identity or even a causal connection between the two . an alternative suggestion is that there is an intrinsic asymmetry in the geometry of spacetime that produces time ' s arrow , and the arrow is merely highly correlated with entropy change .
the philosopher ted sider says , “presentism is the doctrine that only the present is real… a presentist thinks that everything is present ; more generally , that , necessarily , it is always true that everything is ( then ) present . ” with this definition , the past and future do not exist – they are not real ! that is why presentism is so mind - boggling because we are constantly thinking about the past and planning for the future . but according to this theory , the past and future only exist subjectively – it is only the present which exists objectively ( outside of our minds ) . also , if we take a statement like “newton exists” , then this statement could only be true if it was said when newton existed in the present , say in 1666 . if we say that statement now , then it is false . when making statements about what exists , the truth of the statement depends on the context ( when the statement was made ) .
ok , i’m not going to argue the philosophical against the physics because i’ve learned that philosophy is inferior to physics . why ? because philosophy isn’t about solving anything . it’s about arguing a psosition and not giving a damn about whether it’s ever resolved or not because that would bring the argument to an end . physics isn’t like that . in physics , we want to known the answers because the answers determine whether our theories are correct so that we can make accurate predictions about them . not at all the same goals of philosophy .
according to the eternalist , temporal location matters not at all when it comes to ontology . but according to a somewhat less popular version of non - presentism , temporal location does matter when it comes to ontology , because only objects that are either past or present — but not objects that are future — exist . on this view , which we can call “the growing universe theory , ” the universe is always increasing in size , as more and more things are added on to the front end ( temporally speaking ) .
( 1 ) according to the ontological theory called presentism , necessarily only present physical objects exist . stated another way : necessarily , if something is physically real , then it exists now . the presentist maintains that , unlike the present , both the past and the future are not real , so if a statement about the past is true , such as
dinosaurs once existed ,
this must be because some present facts make it true . heraclitus , duns scotus , thomas hobbes , and a . n . prior are presentists .
the philosophical disagreement about tenses is not so much about tenses in the grammatical sense , but rather about the significance of the distinctions of past , present , and future which those tenses are used to mark . the main metaphysical disagreement is about whether times and events have non - relational properties of pastness , presentness , and futurity . does an event have or not have the property of , say , prresentness independent of the event ' s relation to us and our temporal location ? the a - camp says it does ; the b - camp disagrees .
there are problems with presentism , however , such as , how the theory relates to the flow of time . if time passes , then does every event not exist in the past , present , and future ? if there are no events which are in the past or in the future , then how does time pass ? also , if past events are unreal , then what do photographs actually show ? and what are we referring to when we talk about past events ? these issues have led some to prefer the eternalist theory of time .
one question that is relevant here is whether time travel is permitted by the prevailing laws of nature . this is presumably a matter of empirical science ( or perhaps the correct philosophical interpretation of our best theories from the empirical sciences ) . but a further question , and one that falls squarely under the heading of philosophy , is whether time travel is permitted by the laws of logic and metaphysics . for it has been argued that various absurdities follow from the supposition that time travel is ( logically and metaphysically ) possible . here is an example of such an argument .
if the word
time
were a member of this large class , then by drawing attention to use , to ordinary ways of using the word
time ,
wittgenstein would expect that we will be able to dissolve rather than answer most of our philosophical questions . unfortunately , the word
time
probably is not a member of the large class that wittgenstein is speaking of , and even if it were , most philosophers want to know much more than what
time
means . philosophers of time are usually not interested in precisely defining the word but rather are interested in what time ' s important characteristics are and in resolving philosophical disputes about time that do not seem to turn on what the word means . for one example , they want to know about the relationship between the manifest image and the scientific image of time . for a second example , when newton discovered that the fall of an apple and the circular orbit of the moon were both caused by gravity , this was not a discovery about the meaning of
gravity ,
but rather about what gravity is . do we not want some advance like this for time ?
buddhism also teaches that the present reality is the only reality , and attaches supreme importance to it . as the buddha says in the bhaddekaratta sutta : “you shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future . what is past is left behind . the future is as yet unreached . whatever quality is present you clearly see right there , right there . ” there are also buddhist philosophers who have formulated a kind of buddhist presentism . one of them , fyodor shcherbatskoy wrote : “everything past is unreal , everything future is unreal , everything imagined , absent , mental… is unreal… ultimately real is only the present moment…”
discussions of the nature of time , and of various issues related to time , have always featured prominently in philosophy , but they have been especially important since the beginning of the 20th century . this article contains a brief overview of some of the main topics in the philosophy of time — fatalism ; reductionism and platonism with respect to time ; the topology of time ; mctaggart ' s arguments ; the a theory and the b theory ; presentism , eternalism , and the growing universe theory ; time travel ; and the 3d / 4d controversy — together with some suggestions for further reading on each topic , and a bibliography .
the first answer is that tenses represent objective features of reality that are not captured by eternalism and the block - universe approach . this philosophical theory is said to
take tense seriously
and is called the tensed theory of time . the theory claims that when we learn the truth - values of certain tensed sentences we obtain knowledge that tenseless sentences do not and cannot provide , for example , that such and such a time is the present time—that it is now noon . tenses are almost the same as what is represented by positions in mctaggart ' s a - series , so the theory is commonly called the a - theory of tense .
( 2 ) advocates of a growing - past agree with the presentists that the present is special ontologically , but they argue that , in addition to the present , the past is also real and is growing bigger all the time . c . d . broad , george ellis , richard jeffrey , and michael tooley defend the growing - past theory . william james famously remarked that the future is so unreal that even god cannot anticipate it . it is not clear whether aristotle accepted the growing - past theory or accepted a form of presentism ; see hilary putnam ( 1967 , p . 244 ) for commentary on this issue .
the special theory of relativity ( str ) doe not assume that all frame of reference are equally ontologically privileged , rather it cannot assess a privileged frame . this is an important distinction as an eternal block conception of time does not follow from str ! rather , str is agnostic on eternalism or presentism or growing block , as it cannot know if all frames are ontologically privileged , or if there is a single frame that is absolute . it is an epistemic problem , and one should not assume that str means
all frames are equally ontologically privileged
, as that claim would be an argument from ignorance fallacy right from the get - go .
a philosophical introduction to conceptual questions involving space and time . suitable for use as an undergraduate textbook without presupposing any other course in philosophy . there is a de - emphasis on teaching the scientific theories , and an emphasis on elementary introductions to the relationship of time to change , the implications that different structures for time have for our understanding of causation , difficulties with zeno’s paradoxes , whether time passes , the nature of the present , and why time has an arrow . the treatment of time travel says , rather oddly , that time machines “disappear” and that when a “time machine leaves for 2101 , it simply does not exist in the intervening times , ” as measured from an external reference frame .
all three ontologies [ namely , presentism , the growing - past , and eternalism ] imply that , at the present moment , we only ever experience a part of the present and that we do not have direct access to the past . they all agree that nothing exists now that is not present . they all need to show somehow that there is an important difference between never existing ( santa claus ) and not still existing ( abraham lincoln ) . members of all three camps will understand an ordinary speaker who says , “there will be a storm tomorrow so it’s a good thing we fixed the roof last week , ” but they will have different treatments of this at a metaphysical level .
members of the a - camp often say that mctaggart ' s a - theory is the fundamental way to view time ; events are always changing as they move farther away from the present , the now is objectively real and so is time ' s flow ; ontologically we should accept either presentism or the growing - past theory ; predictions are not true or false at the time they are uttered ; tensed facts are ontologically fundamental rather than untensed facts ; and the ontologically fundamental objects are 3 - dimensional , not 4 - dimensional . [ all these ideas will be explained in more detail later . ] persons are considered members of the a - camp if they accept a majority of the above claims .
the more classical approach to temporal logic , however , does not add implicit premises to arguments formalized in classical predicate logic as we have just been doing . the classical approach is via tense logic , a formalism that adds tense operators on propositions of propositional logic or predicate logic . a . n . prior was the pioneer in the late 1950s . michael dummett and e . j . lemmon also made major , early contributions to tense logic . prior created this new logic to describe our reasoning involving time phrases such as “now , ” “happens before , ” “twenty - three minutes afterwards , ” “at all times , ” and “sometimes . ” he hoped that a precise , formal treatment of these concepts could lead to resolution of some of the controversial philosophical issues about time .
presentism is a theory in philosophy which says that the only events and objects which exist are those that exist in the present . so , only things which exist now , right now , really exist . it is a theory which focuses on the temporal present ; that is , things existing in the present moment . it is not a theory concerned with whether things exist somewhere else . so long as that object or event which is spatially distant from us exists in the present moment , then it exists . if we were to make a list of all the things that a presentist believes exists and does not exist ; in the list of things that do exist we would have : the grand canyon and the taj mahal ; whereas in the list of things that do not exist we would have : socrates and tomorrow’s events .
the counter from the defenders of eternalism and the block - universe is that , regarding ( i ) , the vividness of here does not imply the unreality of there . regarding ( ii ) and the open future , the block theory allows determinism and fatalism but does not require either one . eventually there will be one future , regardless of whether that future is now open or closed , and that is what constitutes the future portion of the block . finally , don ' t we all fear impending doom ? but according to presentism and the growing - block theory , why should we have this fear if the doom is known not to exist , as these two kinds of theorists evidently believe ? the best philosophy of time will not make our different attitudes toward future danger and past danger be so mysterious , says the eternalist .
some objects last longer than others . they persist longer . but there is philosophical disagreement about how to understand persistence . objects considered four - dimensionally are said to persist by perduring rather than enduring . think of events and processes as being four - dimensional . the familiar three - dimensional objects such as chairs and people are usually considered to exist wholly at a single time and are said to persist by enduring through time . advocates of four - dimensionalism endorse perduring objects rather than enduring objects as the metaphysically basic entities . all events and processes are four - dimensional sub - blocks of the block - universe . the perduring object persists by being the sum or “fusion” of a series of its temporal parts ( also called its temporal stages and temporal slices and time slices ) . for example , a thirty - five - year old man can be considered to be a four - dimensional perduring object consisting of his childhood , his middle age and his future old age . these are three of his infinitely many temporal parts .
one suggestion from proponents of the multiverse theory is that the reason why our universe exists with time and with the particular laws it has is that every kind of physically possible universe exists . our single universe exists by means of a random selection process , by a process in which any physically possible universe inevitably arises as an actual universe , in analogy to how continual re - shuffling a deck of cards inevitably produces any possible ordering of the cards . to improve the analogy , one should suppose that there is no supernatural shuffler involved . there are related issues of philosophical interest . one is what it means to be physically possible if the laws of a multiverse can be different from ours since the term
physically possible
means
allowed by the laws of nature .
a second is whether every universe that can exist really does . a third is how the multiverse theory is related to modal realism in which every universe that is logically possible actually exists . for an introduction to the various multiverse theories without considering the related issues just mentioned , see ( krauss , 2012 , pp . 170 and 206 ) .
one of the major issues for presentism is how to ground true propositions about the past . what makes it true that u . s . president abraham lincoln was assassinated in 1865 ? in technical - ease , we are asking what are the
truthmakers
of the true propositions and the
falsemakers
of the false propositions . many presentists say past - tensed truths lack truthmakers in the past but are nevertheless true because their truthmakers are in the present . they say what makes a tensed proposition true are only features of the present way things are , perhaps traces of the past in pages of present books . the eternalist disagrees . when someone says truly that abraham lincoln was assassinated , the eternalist and the growing - past theorist believe this is to say something true of a real abraham lincoln who is not present . the block theorist and the growing - block theorist might add that lincoln is real but far away from us along the time dimension just as the moon is real but far away from us along a spatial dimension . why not treat these distant realities in the same manner , they ask ?
there is an ongoing philosophical dispute about the extent to which there is an element of conventionality in einstein’s notion of two separated events happening at the same time , an issue discussed a few paragraphs ago . the philosopher hans reichenbach said that to define simultaneity in a single reference frame in special relativity you must adopt a convention about how fast light travels going one way as opposed to coming back ( or going any other direction ) . he recommended adopting the convention that light travels the same speed in all directions ( in a vacuum free of the influence of gravity ) . he claimed it must be a convention because there is no way to measure whether the speed is really the same in opposite directions since any measurement of the two speeds between two locations requires first having synchronized clocks at those two locations , yet the synchronization process will presuppose whether the speed is the same in both directions . the philosophers b . ellis and p . bowman in 1967 , and d . malament in 1977 , gave different reasons why reichenbach is mistaken . once again , this discussion presumes special relativity and not general relativity . for an introduction to this dispute , see the frequently asked questions . for more discussion , see ( callender and hoefer 2002 ) .
based on what you pointed out as problems for the theory , i think you dont quite fully grasp the concept of presentism .
if time passes
, you say , but that time does not
pass
is the basis of the theory in the first place . first , remember you shouldn ' t favor either one of these theories just realize that neither can be distinguished or
proven
. okay , before i move on to a presentist point of view , i want to make some objective statements : what you call past are memories created in your head in the present . what you call future are dreams created in your head in the present . what you call experience is based on what you have created in your head as a model of
reality
. so if you are incredulous , you acknowledge that whether the past existed or not ( also whether the future will exist or not ) , it is based on a thought in your head . now i think it is easy to see the difference in the two theories : one , the past really happen or two , its an imagination in the eternal present . impossible to distinguish these theories with any tests or logic , thus the existence of the two theories .
note : this entry does not discuss the consciousness , perception , experience , or phenomenology of time . an historical overview and general presentation of the various views is available in the entry on temporal consciousness . further coverage can be found in the sep entry on the experience and perception of time . for those interested specifically in phenomenological views , see the entries on husserl ( section 6 ) , and heidegger ( section 2 : being and time ) .
a good deal of work in the philosophy of time has been produced by people worried about fatalism , which can be understood as the thesis that whatever will happen in the future is already unavoidable ( where to say that an event is unavoidable is to say that no human is able to prevent it from occurring ) . here is a typical argument for fatalism .
there exist now propositions about everything that might happen in the future . [ 1 ]
if ( 1 ) and ( 2 ) , then there exists now a set of true propositions that , taken together , correctly predict everything that will happen in the future .
if there exists now a set of true propositions that , taken together , correctly predict everything that will happen in the future , then whatever will happen in the future is already unavoidable .
the main objections to arguments like this have been to premises ( 2 ) and ( 4 ) . the rationale for premise ( 2 ) is that it appears to be a fundamental principle of semantics , sometimes referred to as the principle of bivalence . the rationale for premise ( 4 ) is the claim that no one is able to make a true prediction turn out false .
a proper discussion of fatalism would include a lengthy consideration of premise ( 4 ) , and that would take us beyond the scope of this article . for our purposes it is important to note that many writers have been motivated by this kind of argument to deny bivalence . according to this line , there are many propositions — namely , propositions about matters that are both future and contingent — that are neither true nor false right now . take , for example , the proposition that you will have lunch tomorrow . on this view , that proposition either has no truth value right now , or else has the value indeterminate . when the relevant time comes , and you either have lunch or don ' t , then , on the view in question , the proposition that you have lunch on the relevant day will come to be either true or false ( as the case may be ) , and from then on that proposition will forever retain its truth value . [ 2 ]
the view that bivalence is false , and that , in particular , there are sometimes propositions about the future that are neither true nor false , is sometimes referred to as the “open future” response to arguments for fatalism . one important presupposition of the open future response is that it makes sense to talk about a proposition ' s having a truth value at a time , and that , moreover , it is possible for a proposition to have different truth values at different times . thus , the open future response to arguments for fatalism entails the following semantical thesis .
the fundamental semantical locution is ‘ p is v at t ’ ( where the expression in place of ‘ p ’ refers to a proposition , the expression in place of ‘ v ’ refers to a truth value , and the expression in place of ‘ t ’ refers to a time ) .
it is possible for a proposition to have different truth values at different times .
the fundamental semantical locution is ‘ p is v ’ ( where the expression in place of ‘ p ’ refers to a proposition and the expression in place of ‘ v ’ refers to a truth value ) .
it is not possible for a proposition to have different truth values at different times .
other views that have ( at least sometimes ) been associated with the open future response to fatalism include taking tense seriously and the growing universe theory , which will be discussed below .
suggestions for further reading : aristotle , de interpretatione , ch . 9 ; besson and hattiangadi forthcoming ; lewis 1986a ; markosian 1995 ; mccall 1994 ; miller 2005 ; sullivan forthcoming ; taylor 1992 , ch . 6 ; torre 2011 ; van inwagen 1983 , ch . 2 .
if the answer to this last question is yes — if it is possible for there to be a period of time during which nothing changes , anywhere ( except , perhaps , for the pure passage of time itself , if there is such a thing ) — then it is possible that a worldwide “freeze” will occur between the time you finish reading this sentence and the time you start the next sentence . in fact , if it ' s possible for there to be a period of time without change , then it may well be that a million years have passed since you finished reading the last sentence .
the question of whether there could be time without change has traditionally been thought to be closely tied to the question of whether time exists independently of the events that occur in time . for , the thinking goes , if there could be a period of time without change , then it follows that time could exist without any events to fill it ; but if , on the other hand , there could not be a period of time without change , then it must be that time exists only if there are some events to fill it .
aristotle and others ( including , especially , leibniz ) have argued that time does not exist independently of the events that occur in time . this view is typically called either “reductionism with respect to time” or “relationism with respect to time , ” since according to this view , all talk that appears to be about time can somehow be reduced to talk about temporal relations among things and events . the opposing view , normally referred to either as “platonism with respect to time” or as “substantivalism with respect to time” or as “absolutism with respect to time , ” has been defended by plato , newton , and others . on this view , time is like an empty container into which things and events may be placed ; but it is a container that exists independently of what ( if anything ) is placed in it .
why would someone endorse the reductionist view about time ? historically , two main arguments have played the biggest roles in convincing people . one is conceptual : time , according to this argument , is by definition nothing more than a system of temporal relations among things and events , so that the idea of a period of time without change turns out to be incoherent . the other main argument for reductionism is epistemological : we could never have any reason , according to this argument , to posit a period of empty time ; and , moreover , even if there were such a period , we would not have any way of knowing about either its existence or its length .
what about platonism with respect to time — why would someone endorse that view ? one reason is that the empty container metaphor has a lot of intuitive appeal . ( this is no doubt true of both the temporal and spatial versions of platonism . ) and another reason is that some people do not find the main arguments against platonism with respect to time compelling . for example , it has been suggested by sydney shoemaker that there are possible circumstances in which it would make perfect sense to posit periods of empty time , and even to claim to know just how long those periods are .
here is a simplified version of shoemaker ' s argument . consider a small , spatially finite possible world that is divided into three zones , a , b , and c . in zone a , there is a complete freeze — a cessation of all change — for one hour every 2 years . these local freezes in zone a are preceded by a short period in which every object in a takes on a reddish glow ( observable to the occupants of all three zones ) , while at the same time a temporary force field develops at the boundary of zone a , preventing anything from entering or exiting that zone during the freeze . while the freeze in zone a is taking place , zone a appears to those in zones b and c to be pitch black , since no light can enter or exit the frozen zone ; but as soon as the local freeze in zone a is over , the people in the other two zones can again see everything in zone a , and can in fact see those things resuming their normal behaviors without missing a beat . to those who remain in zone a for the freeze , it appears that the reddish glowing and the development of the force field are immediately followed , not by any cessation of change , but , instead , by a large number of sudden and discontinuous changes in the other two zones .
meanwhile , in zone b there is a similar freeze for one hour every 3 years , and in zone c there is a freeze for one hour every 5 years . the inhabitants of this strange world quickly become aware of the local freezes , and they have no trouble calculating the “freeze function” for each of the three zones . what ' s more , they also calculate that there is a global freeze — a period during which each one of the three zones undergoes a local freeze — exactly once every 30 years . whenever a global freeze occurs , of course , no one is able to see any frozen objects or blacked - out zones , since everyone and everything is frozen at the same time . but the reddish glowing and the development of temporary force fields that precede each world - wide freeze are observable to everyone ; and so the global freeze times come to be celebrated by “empty time parties” all over the world .
no doubt the inhabitants of this unusual world could come up with a theory that explains the local freezes in a way that doesn ' t posit any empty time . for they could theorize that in zone a there is a local freeze every two years , except for the 30th year , when there is no freeze ; and similarly for the other zones . but such a theory would involve freezing functions that are more complicated than those that entail a global freeze every 30 years .
what is this thought experiment supposed to show ? well , it can ' t be taken to show that global freezes are possible , because ( at least the way the story has been told here ) they are simply a stipulated detail of the story , and we can ' t show that something is possible merely by stipulating that it is the case in some possible world . what the thought experiment does seem to show , however , is that it is possible for rational beings to have at least some evidence for the existence of periods of empty time in their world . for we can describe the possible world of the thought experiment in a neutral way that specifies how things in the world appear to its denizens , without specifying whether the real freeze functions for zones a , b , and c are the simpler ones described above that entail a global freeze every 30 years or the more complicated ones that do not have that entailment . and a possible world that appears this way to its inhabitants is surely a world in which those inhabitants have some reason to take seriously the possibility that there are periods of empty time in their world , that they know when those periods occur , and even that they know exactly how long the periods of empty time last .