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No, honestly? Hard work? You really have no idea how media distribution works now, do you? The record companies have a 80% margin on their product 95% of that stays with the record company and only 5% goes to the signed artist (and that is when you stroke a good deal).

I have every understanding how media distribution works. I make my own mobile software.

What you don't seem to understand is that you disagreeing with their content / distribution model still doesn't make taking it for free right.

I mean, regardless of the fact that there are plenty of people involved besides the artist in the distribution chain as it exists today (and I'm not saying today's model is a good one), shouldn't it die naturally as people use competing models? Let the market decide and all that?

The problem we have right now is that the market isn't being allowed to decide.

For that, blame the old guy / nepotism inherent in the corporate model, along with a vastly under-informed populace who (surprise surprise) just blindly get sucked off by marketing.

The one thing I do agree with in your post is supporting artists and sites you appreciate. I purchase and get original WAVs of the songs I like from beatport. No DRM, best quality. That's my kind of model.

http://beatport.com/ sells the original WAV files. They're a little more expensive than iTunes, but you get the raw data.

Not sure where you are so this may not apply. I haven't seen lossless in any mainstream store but boomkat is the only place I know that does flac. Also, for dancey stuff juno and beatport both do wav files (no compression).

Trance is super popular in Europe, have to check there:
http://www.juno.co.uk/trance-music/this-week/all/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=trance&x=0&y=0

DJs have to buy it somewhere too:
https://www.beatport.com/en-US/html/content/genre/detail/7/trance

I don't know where you go to buy trance videos though. You can do that?

• http://www.juno.co.uk/
• http://www.3beatdigital.com/
• http://www.beatport.com/
• http://www.necodo.com/
• http://www.psyshop.com/
• http://www.dancerecords.com/

I've never once had an mp3 delivered in anything but it's pure non drm laden form. also available are .wav and .flac, multiple bitrates, package deals etc. It stuns me that people would actually pay for such files from the likes of microsoft or apple, why?

I guess DJ specific music has to be provided this way(i would never accept any limitations on my files as a DJ such as not being able to burn or transfer them between machines, this is essential to our work), but is it really impossible to purchase something like a beatles boxed set from other sources than itunes?

Most indie artists can get on boutique sites for their specific genre and get promoted just fine.

Hell, there were even artists that got discovered on Soulseek and they actually put a label together just for them.

MySpace + SNOCAP has always been a joke (I've personally dealt with SNOCAP in the past, and actually had to drop them because they were so unbelievably bass ackwards). MySpace + Amazon = a really bad joke.

Me? I'd rather put up my user profile and put the Beatport player on there instead of the SNOCAP player. Links right to the same store, and I get 60% of $2.49 per track on a new track, $1.99 on back catalog tracks. That's a dance-specific example, but there are boutique sites out there for any genre you're into.

From my experience, sites like Beatport do over $5 million gross, so there's certainly money to be made from DRM-free music. It's just a matter of doing your research or hooking up with an indie distributor who can get you into a few hundred of these stores. Big-banking on your MySpace profile or iTunes is truly detrimental for most people and is an all-out gambit.

Or, better put: Better to have 60% of something than 0% of a goose egg.

Started 3 years ago, working with smaller labels from the outset... No DRM, 2 minute previews, WAV and MP4 files in addition to MP3s (sorry, /.- no Ogg), and a revenue split that's less favorable for the artist than iTunes...

It doesn't have anything to do with past abuses. It has to do with the majors having their heads up their asses about DRM for the first 2 years, and their fear of losing face now...

Warnings and disclaimer: Yeah, it's all in Flash... get over yourselves. I didn't build it, but I am friends with the guy who did. www.beatport.com

...and don't forget to maybe make BETTER fucking music.
C'mon, "rock and roll" is so damn stale with the same three chords and the same tired instruments and lyrics.
What ever happened to progress?
oh wait!!
There's a whole universe of modern music out there by artists who are true to themselves and make no compromise as to what will appease the masses. Artists who make electronic music which is truly at the forefront of their respective genres. Such music can be found at http://www.beatport.com/
(where the artists actually own all of the music and get profit from every download purchased)

I go to http://www.beatport.com/ and http://www.dancetracksdigital.com/ Both excellent sources for underground, cutting edge dance music (this means no crappy rock, hip hop etc).

http://www.beatport.com/ is a good place. I'm sure a few of the bigger names on the site do work with or have worked with the RIAA but most are smaller, independent artists.

I highly recommend

http://www.beatport.com/

if you're into any form of electronic music. It's a really well put together site.

iPods do have gapless playback, UMS, and they work with other music stores such as Emusic and Beatport.

Given that I can buy totally unmolested WAVs from Beatport, what's the point? I find it hard to believe that there are vinyl purists who want MP3s, or that those who would work with an MP3 wouldn't rather deal with a master-quality WAV which can be manipulated even more.

Lossy compression is just as insidious as DRM when the bandwidth for CD-quality uncompressed audio is available.

And to those who say you can't hear the difference, if you slow the track down by 50%, you can. If you don't know why you would do that, ask a DJ.

its not just the "rave" scene that like vinyl. any type of dance music (techno, house, breaks) will generally be released on 12" due to the fact that dj's just love playing on proper turntables.

although that said, you will see all the big name dj's using the pioneer cdj-1000 which work on cd's and not vinyl. it is the industry standard as you can play a burnt cd just like a record (even scratching). There are websites out there that will convert the vinyl record to digital and let you buy the mp3 as drm free, such as beatport

I love my collection of vinyl music, and although the cdj-1000's are very cool I still much prefer to mix on my old school vinyl decks.

Not to worry.

I never had any issues with paying for my music. I had issues with the DRM that was applied to that music. AllofMP3 offered that same music without DRM. If they turn out to be illegal (because the group they pay royalties to turns out not to have to license the music to AllOfMP3) then so be it.

I found an alternative, that better suits my taste of music and is completely legit, but a lot more expensive.

http://www.beatport.com/

Dave

• bleep.com
• beatport.com
• trackitdown.net/

Vinyl allows easy seeking to any point in the song by moving the needle. Experienced DJs can tell transitions in the song by looking at the shape of the grooves. Vinyl can easily be slowed (or sped up) by a few percent in order to match beats.

You can do all of these with proper CD DJing equipment like Pioneer's CDJ-1000 without really noticing the difference. The seek forward and reverse buttons behave in much the same way as picking up a needle and dropping it a few millimetres closer to the centre. The pitch control for speeding up and slowing down the track is much more consistent and predictable than it is on a turntable (in fact it's basically only Technics turntables that are consistent). And as an experienced DJ, I can look at the levels of the current track on the player's LCD display and easily tell where the good transition areas are.

The DJing community has been having the CD vs vinyl debate for several years now, so this is fairly old hat to me. The fact is that almost all well-known non-hip-hop DJs have switched to CD, and some like Sasha and Paul van Dyk have moved entirely to digital platforms like Ableton and Serrato Scratch.

I've been DJing for about five years, and I prefer by far to DJ off CDs, purely for the flexibility. I buy tracks off places like Beatport, and then burn to CD. This means I can turn up at a gig with an enormous collection of music in my bag, whereas taking a record box limits you to 50-60 records (and it's much heavier). And believe me, even on a monstrous club system (and I've played on many), it's easy to tell the difference between vinyl and CD. Vinyl tends to sound muffled, CD is much clearer and sharper (generally speaking).

For electronic music fans - everything from downtempo/chillout to drum and bass to house:

Beatport

DJ Download

Stompy

Actually, check out Design is Kinky (it's work safe despite the name) and go through some of the sites they link. Some of the designers do things with flash that are amazing. Another site, Beatport (online store for EDM labels) uses a flash interface which I prefer to use primarily because it's easy to browse and listen to samples without reloading, popups or using external apps like winamp.

Granted there is some pretty hideous uses of flash (advertising) but that's on the downside and with adblock it becomes pretty managable.

Almost all DJ-centric stores sell high-quality (sometimes uncompressed wavs) songs with no DRM, but at a premium price. They do quite well at it: http://www.beatport.com/ http://www.djdownload.com/ http://www.3beatdigital.com/ http://www.chemical-records.co.uk/ There are at least a few more.

There are thousands of indie labels flourishing in online marketplaces like CD Baby and Beatport, selling digital music without DRM. A lot of the bigger labels are just trying desparately to preserve the status quo long enough for them to get their bearings and remain competitive. I don't think it's working.

Exactly my point. It's really a whole different ball-game now. I've been playing ball with a bunch of indie labels and artists, and we're achieving some pretty stunning distribution numbers. Some of the top features on my MP3 blog have been downloaded over 60,000 times each. My own music had a quarter-million downloads last month -- and this is for electronic music, where 10,000 record sales is considered a hit.

My friends in Taxi Doll are just an indie group going it alone (as of this writing), and they've managed to got their music into films staring J-Lo and Harrison Ford. They're taking advantage of digital distribution and free downloads to help them get the word out, and they've got plans to expand the strategy in the future.

Why are people still talking about the music industry like it's 1997? Whole genres have broken off from the major outlets, and started hacking it alone. There are tons of indies on sites like Beatport and CD Baby selling digital downloads and CDs with no DRM. Imagine that -- music producers giving people what they want, rather than force feeding them crippled songs.

There's a huge undercurrent in the music industry right now, and the storm is brewing. The old industry is a sinking ship. Some of us have been saying it for years, but the day of reckoning is coming quickly, now.

If you live somewhere that doesn't have much in the way of good brick-and-mortar record stores, you should try the following links:

http://www.londonwestrecords.com/ AZ-Based record store. Great Selection.

http://www.shopsolid.com/ This is a store that's set up for a specific set of dance music labels, but don't let that fool you, their selection is good.

http://www.dancerecords.com/ Would-be best online record store, if only they'd stop using RealPlayer format for their samples.

http://www.juno.co.uk/ If you live in the states, any record from here is expensive (since it's an import), but you run a better chance of finding some really outstanding records, or records that haven't sold out in the states.

http://www.beatport.com This site specializes in REALLY HIGH quality mp3 files (at good prices) of all kinds of dance music. Unfortunately the entire site interface is built in Flash. It works well, as a Flash interface, but not if you can't run Flash.

http://www.satelliterecords.com/ Record store based out of NYC, great selection, excellent organization, POOR customer service and delivery times. If you can find it here, check DanceRecords.com first. If you can't, bummer.

Those are the goods. All of them have samples you can listen to before buying, and most have great recommendation systems built in to the store. Happy Hunting!

It costs much less than a good mixer (I use a djm-600), and only slightly more than a brand new top of the line deck (1210M5G).

After dumping TONS of cash into my vinyl collection, using FinalScratch is a breather..

You can download the same tracks from BeatPort for a fraction of the price of a record =)

If it is restricted at all, I haven't heard of it.

I feel retarded. I read TFA three times and still can't wrap my head around it. I get the old business / royalties aspect of it, but it seems they're trying to target Club / EDM DJs for playing music in clubs with music that was intented to be played in a club or bar. Maybe it's a bit different with EDM - most producers are in it to make music for DJs to play in a club (or rave) in hopes of appeasing the masses.

Contacting each individual artist to ask to play their track? If I produced a track that someone liked enough to buy it - with intention of playing it in the club, do you really think I'm going to say no? Am I going to ask for a cut of their DJ fee (which is probably $50-$100)? No, and I can't think of any artist that would - well maybe Tiesto, but he's a fuckup anyway.

I've heard about the UK doing this before with DJs having to keep track of what records they played - even before the advent of the CDJs and laptop technologies like Traktor, Final Scratch and Abelton. I'd like to know what portion of that £200 goes to the artist (or the label). Probably zilch. I would have liked TFA to also interview the artists that produce these tracks for their views.

I DJ myself in clubs and bars and granted yes, I'm playing other people's music - but again, music made with the intention of being played in a club by every DJ that wants and is able to. I stay far away from Top40 and other tripe that's usually found on MTV so the chances of me being targeted in the U.S. by say the RIAA is very slim. I'm not buying vinyl much anymore (which has gotten expensive between rising costs and exchange rates) and have gone almost completely digital over the last year. I buy single CDs for tracks when I'm able to, but mostly have been buying tracks online through sites like Beatport or EDM Digital. I then DJ out with a pair of Pioneer CDJ 1000s.

Do artists want payed for their work? Of course they do and that's usually taken care of with the label. Most artist contracts with labels I've seen make no mention of royalties of any sorts. The only exceptions I can think of might be if a track was picked up for a compliation (like the Global Underground or Renaissance series). The old style was a set fee for a set amount of vinyl being pressed. Now, potentially, the earning potential per track is unlimited.

Granted some labels are shady and have screwed artists and producers in the past (and sadly, will happen in the future). But with the advent of the digital download sites, the artists are more in control. You can start your own independent label and release the tracks yourself. Beatport pays you quarterly for the tracks you released - what the exact percentage is, I'm not certain. Aside from the time and setting up the company / label, uploading, shipping, whatever, there's hardly any overhead outside of your own time. You no longer have to spend hundreds or thousands on test pressings and then the release, you're no longer limited by quantity. Want someone to buy your track, send them an email or IM with a link to the site or sound sample.

Nah, I know a great many DJs who use MP3s, though I do still like vinyl. I primarily pick up tunes from Beatport when I want a digital copy. Though it costs a premium, they also offer WAV downloads now, apparently (320Kbps w/o DRM works fine for me). Slightly more expensive than iTunes because it's a speciality item of sorts, and not all of the labels are onboard yet, but they still have a fairly nice collection. If you haven't you might want to check them out.

The only thing I can say negatively about Beatport is the use of Flash.

On the plus side for Beatport, you can buy tracks on CD, as MP3s, or as MP4s, or supposedly as of a recent update can purchase and download the same WAV files which would be placed on the CDs (I haven't tried this). In addition they also provide all tracks in any format with no DRM. Throw on a rather strong listing of record labels, as well as low prices for what you are getting, and it's a great deal in my opinion.

charge over $1.00 per song and people will go to iTunes

Guess you never been to Beatport or DJ Downloads

-Sj53

Another one they missed is Beatport
As a warning, the site is pretty flash heavy. But it's worth it IMHO.

There are plenty of legal (and I don't mean Russian) music download sites which don't use DRM. I am a customer of several. They sell regular mp3s of commercial tunes and make good money doing so. Their catalogue is non-RIAA, but that's fine because none of the decent stuff in the dance music genre is on the major labels. The artists I can download from Beatport, for example, are the equivalents of Green Day or whoever - these are not minor league. If it can work for dance music...why not other forms?

Examples: Beatport, AudioJelly.

I've spent $00's on music downloads but don't own a single DRM file. I intend to keep it that way.

I'm going to add Beatport in here too. I have yet to buy and mp3 from them that doesn't work on my iPod....

Beatport is an un-DRMed mp3 source. It's not free, so I would consider this a legitimate source.

I have bought several Boards of Canada LPs and EPs from them.

some other stuff (some of it FOR FREE mind you)
-another mp3 store
-ANOTHER mp3 store
-unfound sound, netlabel
-thinnerism/autoplate, TWO netlabels
-Archive.org's netlabel page, more techno than you could possibly consume in a lifetime!
-313 discussion list
-who is what and who

What I would really like to see is a music store that caters to DJs. Something with DJ-friendly categories (not just mishmash of tunes thrown into "Electronica"), and with MP3, AAC, and WAV/FLAC downloads.

I still buy most of my stuff on vinyl, but it's becomming more and more common that there are CD decks or Final Scratch available when I play. It would be fantastic if I could get some great music for a buck or two instead of spending $10-$15 for a track on vinyl, especially when most of that price goes to shipping and pressing costs anyhow!

I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often! The only online DJ music store I've been able to find is BeatPort, which is a great start, but I need more selection!

You should check out BeatPort.com. New releases aer encoded at 320 kbps, and previews are a full 2 minutes long.

If you're not into "uhn-tss uhn-tss uhn-tss" there's not much there for you, but it's great for club music.

Count me in for BeatPort, non-DRM 128kbit AAC from the likes of Global Underground.

The operational costs for running a site like this entail far more than just bandwidth & servers. In case you didn't know, you don't just pop in a CD and start ripping away to sell independent or small label content. None of this stuff comes with CDDB info. All that content has to be acquired, entered into a database and then organized to be somehow useful to a user. On top of that there are also the costs related to developing and maintaining label relationships in order to keep getting that fresh content. Add on the administrative, legal, accounting, sales, marketing and the IT staff needed to maintain and improve the site and you've got to sell alot of downloads at .99 to break even, labor ain't cheap. And let's not forget that all these mp3 distributors have to pay out a fee to Thomson for each and every download.

What makes me an expert? I'm the head geek for a music download site for DJs that sells dance and electronic music (house,techno, trance etc...). www.beatport.com

After all the $$ Apple has spent on marketing iTunes they aren't making much money on the downloads (if any), only the iPods sales make up for it.