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let me introduce you to Besonic, it used to be great and full of loads of really good artists, then they lost a HDD and probably lost most of the people they promoted over to myspace.

Even though I do understand that content creators wish to protect themselves I believe that no DRM is the way to go.

The main thing is to focus on having a well working and simple delivery model, and to make sure the content isn't over-priced. DRM ultimately pretty useless, since it can always be broken eventually. If it's simpler to buy the content from a reputable store than getting it over P2P the model will work.

Tim O'Reilly wrote and excellent piece on the subject in 2002, and it still applies today: Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution

PS. I'm sure a lot of you will disagree, but at least I can claim to be a content creator myself...

Here are some more for you:

besonic
mp3.de
soundclick
garageband
france mp3
vitaminic(free + pay)
Washington Post (yup)
Online Rock
Peoplesound
Download.com from the old mp3.com's new owners
Emusic (pay)
Artistlaunch

I'm just a bit suprised to hear people actually have entire music collections in WMA format. A search of my Windows partition (no point looking for them in Linux) has discovered... three, all of which appear to be the "sample" files that come with Windows XP! I can't remember ever even seeing them on any legal indie music sites like BeSonic, or in peoples collections in any filesharing programs. I don't think I've ever listened to a WMA net radio station - all the good stuff seems to be on streaming mp3 and ogg. Where, in all honesty, are you people getting them from? I guess I'm out of the loop.

I've had material on MP3.com for several years now. Never paid for the service, so I had less to lose than those that took the Gold Membership, etc. But I still don't understand the griping.
The era of free multimedia serving is over. There's just too much overhead to justify providing that much free bandwidth.
For those of you who bitching about MP3.com, just accept this unfortunate reality.

Who's been screwed? OK, maybe the folks that signed up for Gold Membership. But it seems like it's pointless to bitch about what's happened - it's all just business.

It's not the same as being ripped off by your producer [Beach Boys and countless others], or cheated out of payment by a venue after a performance [an ever-present risk in a business rife with unscrupulous people].

There's always an element of risk, whatever endeavour you undertake. There's no guarantee that a party with whom you have entered into a contract and paid money for future services will not go out of business, or sell out to another party. That's just a fact of life.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of free and low-cost music-hosting alternatives [sorry, I haven't checked ALL these links recently, but most should still be good. I am a lazy sod.]:


AMP3.com
AmpCast
Audiogalaxy
efolk
etree.org (SHN)
Listen.com
Lycos Music Search
MP3.com
nzmp3
peoplesound
SoundClick
stationMP3
gdlive.com
FurtherNet
CD Baby
IUMA
BeSonic
My Local Bands
SoundClick
VITAMINIC
archive.org etree listing (SHN's)
emusic
listensmart


My music (if you're curious, totally bored, and looking for something to listen to).

Try Besonic instead.

I thought I'd do something more then my usual support independent (or independently minded) artist. There are a ton of artists out there not caught up in the whole piracy debate (since the rise of the net WAY more then most people imagine). CD's at the mall are no longer safe. The industry/distribution giants that have been hand feeding us are no longer (where they ever?) interested in fair practices.

But this isn't really that big a deal, because you can just type your way down to:

mp3.com
or
emusic.com
or
umbrellamusic.com
or
listen.com
or
mp3it.com
or
iuma.com
or
grageband.com
or
besonic.com
or
zebox.com

And it just keeps getting bigger and better out there. Really the only thing that needs to happen is we need to get comfortable with buying online artists. Maybe Rolling Stone will do an online section? *shrug*

How many people pay for an entire CD only to discover the like 1 song? Even if you like half the songs on a CD, that still raises the price per song above $0.99. If I like one song, I can now buy just that one song.

If you don't want to pay as much, and don't want mainstream music. Try BeSonic.com, I've been getting music from them for years, all the songs you can listen to for free, some you can download for free, others require a small monthly fee.

free indipentant music
make your own copy of someone elses music
etc.....

for real taste of random noise check this out

You can do that today if you want.
besonic
Some of the music makes a point of being 'free'

Now if only someone started that for films......

Besonic will let you pay per file or ...... or yearly if you want

You should also be looking at ampcast.com and besonic.com and so on- Ampcast and Besonic are NOT RIAA at all.

My best music was done after I left mp3.com. Anyone you know on mp3.com is being ripped off- it's good to support your friends but you might suggest to them to find a better hosting solution :)

What would be great, for people who can't afford a serious operation like Ampcast, would be for some Slashdotters to get together and offer just HUGE BANDWIDTH and storage for indie musicians, so they don't have to resort to mp3.com and giving money to the RIAA just to have a net presence. There's practically nobody doing free music hosting anymore because it is so costly.

http://www.besonic.com/ does this

besonic is a site mostly populated by obscure artists, a heap of them electronic music makers, too. if you sign up for a listening account with them, they'll email you once a week (or something?) with tracks and artists they think you'll like based on how many tracks in different genres you've listened to. it's not a very intelligent system, but it kind of fits what is being asked about.

of course, sites like besonic (and the original big one, mp3.com) are dying off. the most promising new one is electronicscene.com. any electronic musician can sign up to have their tracks on electronicscene. there are ample links between genre pages and artist pages so that if you find one artist or genre you like, you can easily find another similar one... or lists of the artists and genres that influenced them. provided you like electronic music, it's an excellent place for finding new stuff.

There's no way to guarantee that the song you just wrote doesn't happen to be similar to a song you may or may not have heard when you were 6.

Does this mean that if I don't want to go to prison for failing to have enough income to make payments on damages from a copyright infringement lawsuit, I should simply avoid composing and having published musical works that I reasonably claim to have written?

Have music publishers been asking you to make that guarantee?

Yes. Music publishers and record labels require in their contracts that all works submitted by the artist are original works that do not infringe on the rights of a third party. Here are some sample contracts:

• BeSonic terms of service (PDF) section 4
• Film Music Magazine sample video game music composition contract section 9
• Film Music Magazine sample film music composition contract section "Warranty and Certificate of Authorship"
• MP3.com New Artist Music Submission Agreement section 4.5

Are you asking because you've discovered that you've unconciously done this?

Yes. Several times, I have wrote a song that I thought was original, and then a couple weeks later, I heard it on an oldies station. I have talked to others who have had the same problem, but they provided no solution as to how to avoid the problem in the general case. Though I caught myself before publishing anything, I'm afraid that next time I won't be so lucky.

Try besonic, a guilt free way to download music.
Don't forget to select your country if your germans not upto scratch (the site's english, but quite a bit of the popular music is German!)

amost Everything you want in a downloadable music service.

Besonic is the online record-label replacement.

BeSonic no more RIAA

Just goto besonic
tracks cost between $0 and $1.2 but typically $0.25
A CD of music would probably cose $3 on adverage, but you could pay $0 or upto $12 I suppose.

Loads of good new musicians, you can stream other peoples playlists to help find new music, high bandwidth (never got less than 60k download) basicly a great site.

Just drop EMI,BMG, the RIAA &co is the hole where they belong.

For a site to be trustworthy, it really needs to be a non-profit venture run by the artists themselves.

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi who, so far, haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA (based in the USA, but international)

Besonic (based in Germany, but international)

mp3.de (based in Germany, but international)

Soundclick (based in the USA, but international)

(Garageband based in the USA, but international)

France mp3 (based in France)

Vitaminic (free + pay - based in the USA, but international)

Washington Post (yup, the newspaper)

Online Rock (based in the USA, but international)

Peoplesound based England

mp3.com Australia (not the same mp3.com - based in Australia, but international)

Emusic (pay and not really indie per se, but smaller label and re-release oriented, based in USA)

Artistlaunch (based in the USA, but international)

mp3 Poland - (Based in Poland - mostly domestic)

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, some smaller labels that have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap.

Use Google - many local newspaper sites have mp3 sections for local artists and there are many mp3 sites that are specifically for local talent.

If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. One concept they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.

I have looked for ogg sources and found precious few. Unfortunately, Ogg is still a long way from critical mass.

This utopia exists.

It is called besonic.

It has been online for over two or three years (previously known as Riffage), and has a gigantic list of music online for free, as well as albums available for download from thousands (believe me, there are a lot) of bands from all over the world.

The great part about besonic is that just to be an Artist is free (you can post your own music completely free, charge euros - 'cause that's their currency - for albums, everything.) - the only thing that costs is the albums (that can also be sent in cd form to your home address) and a full artist service, with a custom web site and everything.

Can't believe nobody's heard of it here. Then again, I'm big on music and recording and everything...

Spaceman40

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi, but so far they haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA

Besonic

mp3.de

Soundclick

Garageband

France mp3

Vitaminic (free + pay)

Washington Post (yup)

Online Rock

Peoplesound

mp3.com Australia(not the same mp3.com)

Emusic (pay)

Artistlaunch

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.

This is similar to saying "when you drive a car at 60 miles per hour, you are speeding plain and simple."

The kind of blanket statement that you made is misleading and makes me furious. It is repeated day after day throughout the media and it is a misconception that the RIAA has tried to propagate for years now (and has to a large extent succeeded) in order to maintain its effective monopoly on the distribution of music. Joe Sixpack thinks that downloading music from the Internet is illegal. It is not. There are numerous legal ways to download a song from the Internet and I am not referring to the murky issue of fair use.

The correct statement would be along the lines of "When you download a song off of the Internet without having previously secured the copyright holder's permission to do so, you might be contravening copyright laws."

I have downloaded hundreds of songs from the Internet in a perfectly legal fashion from sites such as mp3.com , iuma.com , besonic.com , etc.

Please say it correctly or don't say it at all. Otherwise, you are simply aiding the RIAA's anti-competitive propoganda practices.

>I believe that most musicians would feel the same way, as their best works are often written out of heart and feeling, and I don't think they'd be too keen on someone else taking it (or parts of it) and changing it to meet their motives.

Holy shit. What do you think writers do? They read, they hear, they interpret, they remix, they write. Your writings are not original. Neither are my songs. Artists _inherently_ feed on each others' emotions. Thats practically the freaking definition of culture.

This "I made it, so I own it" thing makes sense in the physical world - fixed supply of building blocks. It simply does not hold up in art. Every artist/writer you love is not 10% as original as you probably think they are. Hell, Beethoven used to steal 2 or 3 bars, verbatim, from other musicians.

If everyone has food, shelter and water and the means to make music at the end of the day, any impliciation that you should be free to set all the terms in which your creative works are used is simple greed, and is counterproductive to the system which produced you, the writer. Its 100% hypocritical to suggest that others should not be able to take your work and modify it - I agree that plagerism can be taken too far, but for the most part, start thinking about where you are getting your ideas from ... hopefully from other artists and people ... sources you might not have if everyone took your stance on the supposed ownership of your creative works. Plagerism itself is not some plague that will spread - artsits always want to be creative and to add, so the danger of 'stealing' ideas spiralling out of control runs counter to the very values that makes one an artist. If you were simply taking others work, changing a few lines here and there, would _you_ call it yours and take all the credit? If you are a true artist, I highly doubt it.

my music is not GPL'd per se, but go ahead and steal a few bars here and there. So long as you give credit where credit is due (thats just a simple case of respect, a trend which is waning thanks to the fact that artists are looking more and more greedy by the moment with every 'I own the work' stake we drive into our own coffin, so people are less likely place any importance on simple noted credit), steal it, remix it, change it, have fun with it.

Thats what culture is. If you dont like it, make sure you lock your poems up in a drawer and never publish them. If you make the ideas available, you're killing art if you think nobody should be able to take something and reinterpret it or rework it. So long as they respectfully note the influece they got from your fine work.

And again, anyone is free to take, rework, use, retinterpret my music. Go ahead. If my music is good enough, there is no way that I won't be payed in some form for my contribution to the state of the art. I refuse to contribute to scarcity in culture - why do you think TV and movies blow so badly? Because artists are simply not allowed to create first or second generation remixes without going through 20 legal forms first. Artsits are being forced to create in a vacuum, and its our own damn faults. This is why, increasingly, people are not giving credit where credit is due - think about it, there may be a kind soul out there whos dying to rework your art in a form that will launch your writing career .. somebody to fill that 'last mile' in your work that connects it to the people. Many artists have gotten famous simply because other artists connected them to the last mile of accessibility to the public at large. Lets not kill the one sure thing in culture.

I am not afraid .... artists who are scared of greed or stealing are forgetting the very axioms that make something art. So long as we can eke out a living, why must we be holding our creations increasingly tigher against our chests? Why make our own state of the art harder to advance?

>Don't agree that musicians need some control over their work? Give yours away and prove your point.

I do:

here

Guess what; I've made money from my music. Even though you can get it for free! I must know some awfully hippy people, huh?! Oh no wait, I forgot, they're humans, and they like to pay people. Not all, but I dont care. Why should I? We all scam the system where we judge it to be okay - the fact that these systems could not exist if we all, one day, scammed the same part of the system is what proves that it can never happen. Doubly so when it comes to culture, which humans will never be without. Demand for culture is intrinsic and eternal.

>I believe that artists have a moral claim on their own creations: but for their energy and vision, the creation would not exist.

Aha, but for not the music art and culture that artist injested (and no artist could *ever* afford all the art and culture they need to be exposed to to gain a sifnificant and useful context from which to create and extend the state of the art), neither would they be an artist. If you think any given musician could afford to pay every single musician for every single piece of music s/he listened to or had on personal media, you are very very very much mistaken.

Take Beethoven. He used to 'steal' (we'd call it that today) 2, 3 straight _bars_, _right_ from other composers songs. Verbatim. He was a genius. He got paid. The composers he 'stole' from got paid. Everyone lived, everyone went home happy-ish. Disney wouldn't have had their masterpieces were it not for public domain works. I've said it a million times: the information should be free. Culture, art, etc experiences absolutely amazing results during the time of the least control mechanisms over published works, and the insurgence of participation in the market that results from this allows the 'semivoluntary' purchasers to support the artists. Again, everyone goes home happy, unless you're a greey jerk who mistakenly claims its his right to make money off every single little incidence in which one's work is used/viewed/listened to/re-interpreted.

mp3.com is HORRIBLE. Plus their 'DAM' CDs are burned off of 128K mp3s- this is arguably still Red Book, but it's misleading to claim it is Red Book.

There are better options. I personally use ampcast.com for two major reasons- one, the contract is sane and fair and two, they have common sense and run a good business. I've had material up on besonic.com as well, but they're gradually deleting it because they're moving to a paid-hosting arrangement like Ampcast (only BeSonic is continuing to provide small free accounts for hobby musicians- Ampcast does not). Finally, I've heard some good things about javamusic.com, though I can't speak personally to that- I do know it's another site that hosts and can produce Red Book CDs (from Red Book masters?) like Ampcast.

Don't use mp3.com. Don't use farmclub.com. Don't use any of the major-label controlled sites. I'm not saying this over ideological reasons, though that's a good reason to avoid them. I'm saying it in terms of sheer self-defense. Farmclub offers a 'play on our national TV show!' deal to sucker people in- it's supposed to be 'exposure'. I've talked to someone who's been offered this- it is contingent upon your signing the 80 PAGE CONTRACT they present you with, a contract that flat-out fucks any hope you might have of pursuing a career in the music business by its restrictiveness and insane abusiveness. The person I talked to read the contract, refused to sign, refused to play and bailed out of the whole Farmclub scene. Of course, Farmclub still part-owns the material they'd submitted...

Be careful out there!

I have been an artist on mp3.com for about 3 years, and at first I thought it was a great place for an independant artist such as myself to promote my music, however as soon as commercial bands began having sites there I believe that mp3.com turned too much into something mtv-esque. For instance there are schlock bands such as the pre-made-on-tv O-town hosted there now. After that I decided I would add all new material to besonic.com, a great site which is populated mostly by independant artists. As for the payback for playback, I didn't really make enough money to warrent the 20$ a month it cost to stay in the program. I also believe that that program caused some artists to become greedy. Now they want visitors to pay aswell? I don't see it as being worth it. For all I know, I would say MP3.COM IS DYING. Perhaps they have suffered one suit too many.

I DON'T HAVE FUCKING TIME TO PERSONALLY AUTHORISE EVERY LITTLE DOWNLOAD!

_Apologies_ to anyone who is offended by this strong language- but I am _very_ angry here. As copyright holder it is UP TO ME how I want to license my stuff. As it happens, I use the statement "All commercial rights reserved- noncommercial copying OKAY", because I fully intend to completely permit ALL FORMS of fair use copying and EVERY sort of copying and sharing and trading that doesn't actually involve someone charging people for my stuff. That is MY RIGHT under the law. _I!_ am the one who says what people can do with it.

Even _if_ the idea of this isn't 'submit your song to the RIAA to have Napster given permission to let YOU host it on YOUR computer only', even if the idea is that Napster keeps the records, I am really angry and finding this suggestion absolutely intolerable. As copyright holder _I_ have the right to authorise every listener I have to share my stuff on Napster. I've even asked people to do just this, repeatedly- I thought it would not only help me but would also add to the argument that Napster links to lots of different kinds of content.

I am not trying to get a free ride off the RIAA, okay? I'm not even _seeking_ fame and money and record contracts that are fair. I am perfectly content to do all the work for producing my own music, to seek out places like besonic and ampcast that aren't ripping me off, to accept that I may not sell zillions of CDs even once I finish the work of making them available from Ampcast. I'm not asking for help with all this, and I'm not getting any. I have to do it all myself and that suits me fine.

But I draw the line at having to be a _fucking_ performing rights organisation too, just because OTHER PEOPLE can't deal with the idea that people can exchange their artworks without paying. I am completely offended at this to the point that I begin to understand the feelings of some slashdotters and anarcholibertarians when confronted with unions: I am more socialist myself but here's a situation where I am forbidden to license my stuff under my own rules because that would mean people could legally share it on napster without my _personal_ authorisation. And I'm looking at a possible future where, every time some new sharing program or P2P thing comes around, I have to PERSONALLY go and give them an 'it's okay to share my music' before they're permitted. Goddammit, I write that on my CDs! I do not have TIME to piddle around being a performing rights organisation. The record companies have time and resources to do this kind of crap, and I do _not_.

And I am _pissed_ that they are even suggesting it. Sorry for all the strong language. I am _so_ pissed at this suggestion. I'm sorry, I put a great deal of effort into checking out the resources available to me (like ampcast, and for that matter CafePress) that let me offload some of the work in being an active, productive Internet artist and musician, and this ability is absolutely central to increasing the fluidity and efficiency of the Internet age and allowing people like me access to the world's commerce and media. It is _crucial_ that I am allowed to set my own terms on copyright and that this is _respected_: requiring me to authorise each new little P2P startup is refusing to honor the copyright licensing I already make that specifically authorizes noncommercial copying! I _must_ be allowed to authorise just-plain-listeners to share my stuff on P2P networks etc, do anything with it as long as it's noncommercial- because _I_ don't have the time to run around being a Publishing Rights Organisation and an IANAL and a publicist and an advertising flack and a suit. It's just not reasonable. Why the hell can't they at least let _me_ do my work and allow the random forces of the net to bring me whatever publicity or sales turn up? Why do they effectively plan to _force_ me to operate as a rights agent and individually authorize every little P2P thing that might turn up? I am so angry...

OK, that was messy and a lot of extrapolation but I've got a lot of work to do which these nice people at the RIAA are _not_ helping me do in any way shape or form, so I'd better go off and do it and hope other people can keep the RIAA from loading even _more_ compulsory work on me for the privilege of trying to distribute MY OWN music... I _so_ don't have the time to track down the relevant people and scream at them... if anyone wishes these views cleaned up for broader publication I'd be more than happy to do so and promise not to say F**K...

I'm currently in arguments^H^H^H^H^Hnegotiations ;) with Ampcast, to get the ability to produce CDs through their soon-coming CD burning service using my own usage restriction, which is 'all commercial rights reserved, noncommercial copying OKAY'. If you got into legal trouble (as you'd like to do- sounds like a good experiment) I can't speak for other artists but I would happily send you _written_ permission to host my stuff- in fact I would make helping you a priority, and would rush you whatever you needed for the court case, anything that I could do. If logistics permitted I'd even participate as a witness or something.

If anybody is in this situation and needs my help let me know, I consider it supremely important...

I don't agree with _everything_ Julian says, but being allowed (as a little struggling small player in the market) to put out 'loss leaders' is something I won't lightly give up. I can see how important it is to be able to put out open source work and develop a reputation for your free work, too. Well put.

Regarding napster or any P2P thing, all I can say is: please include my content in whatever peer-to-peer network is the latest greatest thing.

Here: www.besonic.com/chrisj

I am not essentially a consumer. I don't have time to keep in touch with the latest P2P developments- because my time is spent keeping in touch with what affects me as an artist.

It may interest you to know that as an artist using P2P as distribution, I have access to print-to-order stuff over the net, everything from T-shirts to mousepads to coffee mugs, all of which can have my GFX or whatever on it, and I can get paid for selling _real_ _tangible_ stuff... and the very latest development (ampcast.com, just the other day, announced this one) is that I can go to a _good_ hosting service with a fair contract and good artist relations and get Red Book Audio CDs burned to order over the net. This isn't ready yet but it's due by the end of March: I supply a CDR master (I can get professional quality as will quickly become apparent: this is what I do...) and they keep it on file, burn from it when a copy is ordered and keep an image of the CD for 30 days on HD in case of repeat orders to save on filing and handling hassles.

I can't begin to express how awesome this is: it's the first time I'm aware of that a musician could set up a burn-to-order fulfillment service (and not have to deal with juggling CDR blanks, inventory etc, or even taking orders) and be selling full-on, uncompressed, bit-for-bit untampered Red Book Audio CDs over the net, with color booklets and inserts! It's the epitome of the internet musician's wet dream, and should be a very nice business for Ampcast.

And it profoundly legitimises peer-to-peer: now, mp3s (or whatever) really _have_ a value. If they get into the hands of someone who wants a proper REAL CD of the music, now they can have one- and if nobody wants one, hey, nobody's out anything! Ampcast just stores one extra boring CD in the files, they're not out the cost of printing up thousands of the things, and I'm not out anything either, except the cost of the CD blank.

This year will see the final maturing of the complete product support network for the internet musician- with burn/print to order for everything from shirts to full-on audio CDs to fscking _mousepads_ we're practically at the level of 'Jackson 5' merchandising capabilities, without using the record industry. That is very, very exciting... now the only thing I'd like to see is print-to-order _posters_... that is just about the only thing left that isn't already covered!

Amazing, amazing... and P2P is the distribution network for publicising this stuff. None of it expects any sort of formal promotion efforts- it's all totally grassroots... which I think is no sort of accident, I think this is the natural reaction to increasing corporatization. People _want_ to discover their own stuff, even stuff that's 'no commercial potential' (as written on old Mothers Of Invention album covers), and having discovered it they'll buy tangible stuff to go with the free digital stuff they have, so long as the tangible stuff is good. What they won't do is be forced to pay money for totally intangible digital stuff that the corporate seller didn't have to pay anything to copy out- that's doomed, the future of making money fairly through IP is being able to offer stuff that is physical and real, that people might enjoy. (Italicisation of stuff in honor of Frank Zappa's typographical style and George Carlin)

Seriously, I always suspected but now I know that the future of being a small indie 'content producer' is to take complete advantage of everything that you can possibly give away or share for free- any digital files, etc, anything at all that you don't have to pay for actual materials, throw it out there! And then, find something that you can sell that is _tangible_ and physical, stuff to rumple and fetish as FZ put it. Shirts to wear, CDs to give nicer sounds and be hard-copy that can't be lost in HD crashes, mousepads to use (different band for every day of the week, why not?) mugs to hold COFFEE etc etc, _physical_ stuff.

Because the equalising effect of worldwide communications makes it possible... put it this way. I've been on besonic for a while, rarely if ever do any promoting, but for some reason lots of people in Sweden have listened to my music. Who knew? I have a track off an electronic album that is very warm and mellow called 'Wood Dragon': at one point it was one of the highest ranking easy listening tracks in Japan. Again, who knew? Supposing I saw that and decided to explore the easy-listening-electronic area some more for the people in Japan who enjoyed it, throwing in some woodflutes and obscure pentatonic intervals (I researched Japanese melodies for a later track and quite liked them). Supposing I made lovely high-fidelity audio CDs available, and stuff like shirts and mousepads, minimising English text and sticking to elegant graphic designs since I know that it's Japan which was showing an interest in the stuff. I could do quite well that way- not getting rich, but paying some bills and buying more synths etc- by doing _good_ _work_ and selling only tangible, real stuff. This is real. The future is now...

So support the P2P networks! This is not about greedy consumers wanting stuff for free. It's about communication and _information_ and I promise you, as an artist, I couldn't GET demographic information like that out of the record companies. The only alternative to P2P and artist independence is the record companies (and other forms of distribution controls and let me tell you a little story... I hang out on a mastering engineer list- and recently one of the top guys came out with a chilling story. He'd worked with an artist for weeks to get the ideal mastering for the artist's CD, testing it in actual clubs, working like mad to balance it just perfectly so it was the best it could possibly be. Then a new A&R guy was assigned to the artist, and against my engineer friend's AND the artist's wishes, decided to assign the mastering to another mastering guy: which is known as a 'shoot-out'. Usually the label wants 'louder, brighter, more' from such a situation, and it's gotten to the point where mastering engineers are _ruining_ the sounds of records just because the labels are _demanding_ that the new record's gotta be louder than the next guy. My friend, I believe, did a terrific job on the CD- just what the ARTIST wanted- but it is _always_ possible to make a CD louder by making it sound worse. And I think that's just what's going to happen, and I pity the artist, because all their work is going to be butchered by a mastering job that squashes it into extreme loudness and ruins the tone- it probably won't even sound as good in the clubs! All because of a new A&R guy who outranks both the original mastering guy and the artist. It's anybody's guess as to whether the artist's career can survive releasing a CD that sounds like crap- you don't get many chances in the music business, and the new mastering engineer has a vested interest in making his mastering sound as _different_ as possible from the original one that took so much painstaking work.

Now, all the mastering guys are absolutely miserable about this general state of affairs, it's hurting the industry, it's hurting the sound of modern releases, and there seems to be no way to get the record companies to stop doing it.

But now, indie content producers can put out full quality audio CDs and none of them are forced to do any such thing- they have _total_ freedom to do whatever their artistic judgement dictates, with the result succeeding or failing purely on its merits- the 'word' of it getting out primarily through word-of-mouth and P2P. THAT is why artists desperately need P2P to thrive and continue- because without it, it is less and less likely that the consumer will even be allowed to hear their art, because already if they have to go through existing channels, the consumer IS NOT allowed to hear their art until label suits have specified which songs, albums etc will be allowed to be released, until A&R guys have dictated the use of mastering engineers counter to the artist's wishes and specifically told the mastering guy to ruin the sound to make it louder louder louder, until corporate execs have decided which markets they're even going to sell the CD in and which markets they are not going to allow it to be available at all.

Only then does the consumer get to 'choose' what they want.

Free market, hell!

Someone mentioned SM57s in an earlier thread, dismissing them as 'toy' mics, colored and useless for professional use. Um. *g* apart from the fact that they're still a classic snare mic and general drumkit mic, their distinctive coloration has always been hugely popular at all levels, right up to the top: on the Division Bell Pink Floyd tour, the backing singers used SM51 condenser mics, but David Gilmour chose to sing through a SM58- described as a 'regular' SM58. Not only that- both Gary Wallis's and Nick Mason's snare drums were miked with SM57s!

It's like that all over, now. The hottest new compressor available is not a $3000 tube optoelectronic recreation of vintage compressors- it's a little 1/3 rack space unit by a little company called FMR Audio and it's named the Really Nice Compressor, or RNC- running a purely analog signal path, but digital circuitry to cascade as many as three compression staged to specify the control gain in SuperNice mode, this compressor is _the_ hot gain reduction device out there right now- and it's $199 MSRP.

Give a person one of these, a couple SM57s, impedance matching transformers and either a half-decent PC soundcard or any old Powermac, and they will be able to record an acoustic event with sound quality that is more than acceptable. They probably cannot afford _really_ good digital compression, but the RNC will easily beat any but the most top-of-the-line digital compression and feed the soundcard or powermac with the most ideal signal it could ask for, leaving little or nothing to do in the digital domain- unless you want to, of course, and then it'd provide a great launching-point for entertaining digital effects and radical sounds.

You can go the other direction as well, away from digital effects and sounds. Check "B17 Flying Fortress" or "Supermarine Spitfire" at www.besonic.com/chrisj. I happen to _like_ the big-studio sound. Some of the techniques used to get that are very clean, pure signal paths and good components inside the equipment. You can do that at home, too, and I did, including the heavy modding of my 20-bit ADAT because it sounded thin. As a result, "B17 Flying Fortress" has a bigness and spaciousness that you cannot get outside of a big studio- except, surprise! I got it in my apartment, and so can you, if you like that approach. You can have ANYTHING you want now, if you're willing to do the work, learn a lot, and push the envelope. Sometimes the guys selling the equipment aren't the most honest sources of information about what decisions you should make...

I see this as analogous to Linux itself. It is no different from saying, 'You can't have a really proper operating system unless you pay a lot of money for it and have a large company supporting it'. The truth is, such performance happens because of _reasons_: and just as a bunch of programmers can get together and cooperate working on an OS, sound engineers and audio tinkerers can get together and work on gear that will bring big-studio performance to apartments and basements. It started with the Tom Scholz 'Rockman' and the Shure SM58, is continuing with the RNC compressor, and I think the market is actually getting even _better_ what with the ability of people to find out about stuff like the RNC without having to go through a lot of industry middlemen.

You can even do _room_ treatment for super cheap, and I'm not talking about 'dead-room' stuff like putting up egg crates (useless) or covering everything with blankets (yucky dead high end, doesn't help lower room modes much). Here's what I did: stumbled across a box of furnace air filters, realised 'hey, this is a 25x16x2 cardboard box filled with fibreglass, lacking only the front and back face to make it a sort of weak bass trap!', got about $100 of foam-core art board (chosen for lightness, rigidity, and reflectiveness in the high frequencies) and made lots and lots of plain boxes, reflective at higher frequencies, moderately absorptive with resistive damping at low frequencies, and innocuous-looking- and put them up all around my studio room and miking room. The 2" spacing out from the walls did great things for flutter echo- there's a test called the 'clap test' where you clap, making the room go 'rinnng', and the difference from these cheap things is NOT subtle. I don't know or care how much better professional room treatment would be since _real_ diffusers would be hundreds of dollars for just _one_ unit smaller than the dozen I made- the point is, it's not about the money. It's about understanding the principle, the technology, and _using_ that to better your situation. And yes, you can even do proper room treatment with diffusers and real bass traps cheaply, you only have to be willing to DIY! And make more of the treatment because it'll not be fully as effective as the kilobuck stuff. No sweat...

By the way, if the guitar tones on those tracks sounded nice enough that you _want_ 'em, I'm just on the verge of dropping a big chunk of loan money on a project that will put me in the 'manufacturer' camp. I'm going to be building guitar preamps that are as good at their job as the RNC is at its- and they'll be no more expensive. I think I can really beat the crap out of the sound quality of Line 6 'POD' products, musically, at the cost of not being able to get tones quite as muddy and rumbly as the POD can. When I have prototypes built that really reflect the final product rather than (as of now) just being proof of concept for the technologies, I'll be making mp3s available that can be compared to the mp3s you can easily get of all the digital amp modelling effect devices like the POD.

Even if my tones aren't what people are madly looking for, there's going to be others out there, it'll be just a question of education. If you just go to the store and buy what they tell you, your sound will probably correlate to the amount of money you spent (including on engineering lessons, obviously!). If you use the Net and your brain and the resources of your community and are willing to work hard and DIY, you'll be able to put out sonics that compete with _anybody_ at virtually any price point. That's not going to go away, now. It's a factor of networking and accessibility of information of all types. In 2001 and beyond, _expertise_ is the key factor, because you're not confined to just what some company is willing to sell you. Ten years ago you couldn't go look at a RNC online and buy one- and they couldn't get their message to you without going through distributors who'd rather be selling Sony. Things are different now, get used to it, make use of it...

• The contract is now changeable by mp3.com at any time without consent of the artist
• The contract gives permanent rights to mp3.com even after you terminate it, which isn't a good position to be in
• You must _pay_ monthly, per 'band' (many people have a whole stable of projects) for preferred treatment in order to have your songs go live in a timely fashion. The amount, around $20 per month per band, seriously exceeds the income of 99% of the acts.
• mp3.com encourages you to get, and promote, an 'express URL' (such as the one I have at besonic, www.besonic.com/chrisj) but the thing is, mp3.com have taken to seizing people's express URLs and reassigning them to major label artists. The pages the URLs now point to do not actually have mp3s on them- they're links to online CD shopping! This makes promotion virtually impossible- at any time the URL you're promoting and printing onto materials can be seized and given to a major label act that DIDN'T EVEN ASK for it.
• They've just raised the price of the DAM CD program: instead of these burn-to-order audio CDs (burned entirely from 128K mp3s, remember) being $5.99 to $14.99 (plus a couple bucks shipping), new CDs must cost at least $6.99 not counting shipping and can be as high as $30 for a CDR burned off 128K mp3s! Most artists who were selling CDs were using the $5.99 price and getting a bit under $3 from it. Going in the direction of major-label-cartel CD pricing without even the audio quality to justify it is _not_ a win...

In addition, it can be hard specialised work being a _plumber_, or a toilet maintenance expert, or a long distance truck driver, or a pallet loader at UPS. Nobody behaves like these people are deities, but they sure are useful.

In my way I am an artist. I can honestly say that I work at it as hard as any top-of-the-line plumber, or UPS pallet loader. There's a lot that goes into it, and it costs a lot for equipment, and requires some pretty serious dedication to learn the craft. I think it is absolutely absurd to expect to be treated like Picasso just for being _an_ artist (thing about Picasso is, not only was he an absolute virtuoso but he kept it up his entire life), but I do expect to get as much respect as a UPS pallet loader or long distance trucker- and, in turn, extend it instead of getting all haughty and Mick Jagger about it ;)

The fact is, any artist who's any good either is a bit of an idiot savant or put a lot of work into their craft or both. I admit to both. But I only want the _chance_ to earn respect over my lifetime as a music creator (not 'career', music business careers are about 2 1/2 years now if you're lucky).

That isn't the same thing as saying I want the chance to earn _money_. If digital copying means almost nobody makes or is forced to spend lots of money as a musician, I can accept that. But in order to have the chance to earn respect I need to continue to be able to produce digital music myself and have people download it. That's what's at risk now- the danger is, the content controls will lock down so much that people won't be _allowed_ to listen to what I'm able to produce unless I go through channels. That's bad.

Let me put it this way: I have music at besonic.com/chrisj for free downloading. There's a lot there- put a lot of effort into it because it's what I love to do and I can't get music like what I want out of the major labels anyhow, gotta make it myself.

That said, there comes a point where I don't even care if people go listen to this music- what I am appreciating is a situation where people can go listen to it, if they like, without costing me anything. I can't maintain a distribution network that would put physical CDs in people's hands all over the world for pennies or for free- the CDs that I have made are white elephants, physical media isn't as popular as it used to be, it's a losing deal. Internet distribution is so much better because it's so much more flexible...

So, my primary concern here is not to get better access to major label stuff (I don't even care- it basically sucks, who wants it?) or to gain equal access for my stuff. I'm perfectly happy to have a situation where my stuff can only thrive on its own merits, always out-publicised by other stuff. What I don't want is to be outflanked- don't want to lose the distribution media (redbook CD audio, mp3, internet file distribution) that I _do_ have available at this time.

I consider that a very serious risk- after all, every single one of those taken-for-granted technologies is under attack, up to and including redbook CD audio (see BMG's attempts to introduce a copy protected version). So from my perspective, I totally, completely agree that the music industry wants to be able to force people to buy their products and only their products. As an independent musician, studio owner, recording and mastering engineer not affiliated with the RIAA, I really don't like the idea of the general public being forced _not_ to buy/use _my_ products. Call that capitalism? *spit*

It's a 'boiling the frog' problem- do it slowly and steadily enough and the general public doesn't really notice, particularly when they're not told. The general public does not, for instance, understand exactly what 'music CDRs' are, or why they are more expensive, where the money goes, why some newer players may refuse to play music off 'data CDRs'. None of this is done in daylight- it's done in scheming silence as a fait accompli. It's done through totalitarian processes rather than capitalistic processes, and the intended result resembles state socialism as practiced by the USSR rather than capitalism.

It's funny how much respect I've gained for capitalism once I figured out we Americans don't have it. I'd like to see us have more of it, in addition to the socialist tinge that moderates our government. There's no freaking point in proceeding with a corporate oligarchy totalitarian state and then grudgingly slapping a coat of social-policy socialism onto it to cover up the uglier bits. If we expect to be considered 'capitalist' by history we'd better shape up and start considering the nature of power and where it settles, and take steps to establish that we do have something at least vaguely resembling a free market.

I'm here to tell you that a world in which the only way you can distribute music content to consumers is through corporate-controlled encrypted formats backed by law is not even vaguely resembling a free market from where I'm standing. Please do everything possible to prevent things ever getting to that state, even to the point of boycotting the RIAA labels and intentionally pirating their wares to injure their profit, which is being used against capitalism and for totalitarianism.

I won't be doing that part because I have my hands full simply taking care of my side of things- upgrading my studio, producing music intended to be circulated freely, keeping informed of how things are in the music business. But because of the direction I see things going, I have to say I completely support and respect anyone who's actually trying to use music piracy as a weapon to hurt the RIAA labels. Hey, name one other weapon we have? I don't see any other defense against them, and just because it's not being fought in _your_ trenches doesn't mean it's not a war.

Why do I say this when it's not in the LAME docs? Because LAME is open source, I needed it, and I hacked it in.

It's that simple. (I've tried to interest the coders in this but they don't 'get it': I think mastering engineers will be a lot more interested.) Let me put it this way- as long as there are mastering engineers and studio types willing to struggle with the code enough to look after _their_ interests, LAME will beat whatever Fraunhofer comes up with, because Fraunhofer is all computer geek researchers- I see them going for a 'one size fits all' consumer encoder, and this is totally unacceptable and wrong for professional use.

And encoding music into mp3 or similar lossy formats _is_ a professional task: in the field of music it is so competitive that anything a band or artist can do to give themselves an edge _will_ be done. If LAME operated by a real mastering engineer using serious reference speakers and adjusted to let the soul of the song through beats the quality level of mp3pro operated by the artist... then the guy using LAME will score more downloads, get more attention and money, sell more CDs when his music _sounds_ _better_ at the same bitrate, and the guy using mp3pro and coloring his sound with a preset compressor that isn't tailored for the individual song will _lose_.

This is such an obvious development, and it is totally favoring the 'open source' side of things, because there are not enough 'mastering engineers', even wannabes, to tailor a commercial product to them- yet the work they do can outperform what you'll get from preset compressors. It's not the easiest skill to acquire but if you can do serious mastering on CDs you have the skillset to know what to do when you have your dirty little hands deep in the internals of LAME.

I'll demonstrate using my music as an example: the top album, "Marginal Theorems", and the second most recent, "Wounded Skies", are all made into mp3s using LAME with this ATH level control and extensive mastering work on the low and high frequency cutoffs. Psy model is turned off and replaced with ATH masking only, and ATH is custom set to the needs of the track to render the reverberant field with the proper weight, where necessary. The high cutoff is a great deal more gentle than you'll usually see, so that the tendency of the encoder to grab at all the HF data it can get is mollified without seriously altering the tonal balance of the HF sounds- basically the highs are eased back in volume until they take a place in the soundstage that isn't over-forward, but retain their character. The lows are set with a combination of low cutoff and slope that allows a sort of resonant area to be moved up and down according to the needs of the track- sometimes extending well below hearing, sometimes moved up to add muscle to the midbass.

Go ahead and hear for yourself. You should hear how good the _256K_ mp3s from the same settings sounded! (I'm probably going to find a site that lets me upload those for high quality buffs or those who want a CD made- probably Ampcast.com.) Any mastering engineer could do this, but at the moment it is LAME-only because I'm not aware of any other encoder that lets you meddle with the guts of the encoding parameters that way. I asked about this for almost a year now and nobody had an answer, so I finally did it myself.

Anyone wishing to roll this into the main LAME distribution will get full cooperation from me... so far I haven't seen an interest. Which, cynically, I don't mind so much: _I_ believe in the principle of free software, but if people don't _want_ the hack by which I'm able to encode ambient information properly, fine: I'll just use it myself. I happen to think it is one hell of a secret weapon. I posted on rec.audio.pro about my modified Lexicon reverb and used 'Marginal Theorems' (128K mp3) as a demo of what I do with my Lexi and people were _floored_. They didn't neccesarily figure out how much of that I owed to free software and LAME, though ;)

muahaha, free software as secret weapon!

Why do I say this when it's not in the LAME docs? Because LAME is open source, I needed it, and I hacked it in.

It's that simple. (I've tried to interest the coders in this but they don't 'get it': I think mastering engineers will be a lot more interested.) Let me put it this way- as long as there are mastering engineers and studio types willing to struggle with the code enough to look after _their_ interests, LAME will beat whatever Fraunhofer comes up with, because Fraunhofer is all computer geek researchers- I see them going for a 'one size fits all' consumer encoder, and this is totally unacceptable and wrong for professional use.

And encoding music into mp3 or similar lossy formats _is_ a professional task: in the field of music it is so competitive that anything a band or artist can do to give themselves an edge _will_ be done. If LAME operated by a real mastering engineer using serious reference speakers and adjusted to let the soul of the song through beats the quality level of mp3pro operated by the artist... then the guy using LAME will score more downloads, get more attention and money, sell more CDs when his music _sounds_ _better_ at the same bitrate, and the guy using mp3pro and coloring his sound with a preset compressor that isn't tailored for the individual song will _lose_.

This is such an obvious development, and it is totally favoring the 'open source' side of things, because there are not enough 'mastering engineers', even wannabes, to tailor a commercial product to them- yet the work they do can outperform what you'll get from preset compressors. It's not the easiest skill to acquire but if you can do serious mastering on CDs you have the skillset to know what to do when you have your dirty little hands deep in the internals of LAME.

I'll demonstrate using my music as an example: the top album, "Marginal Theorems", and the second most recent, "Wounded Skies", are all made into mp3s using LAME with this ATH level control and extensive mastering work on the low and high frequency cutoffs. Psy model is turned off and replaced with ATH masking only, and ATH is custom set to the needs of the track to render the reverberant field with the proper weight, where necessary. The high cutoff is a great deal more gentle than you'll usually see, so that the tendency of the encoder to grab at all the HF data it can get is mollified without seriously altering the tonal balance of the HF sounds- basically the highs are eased back in volume until they take a place in the soundstage that isn't over-forward, but retain their character. The lows are set with a combination of low cutoff and slope that allows a sort of resonant area to be moved up and down according to the needs of the track- sometimes extending well below hearing, sometimes moved up to add muscle to the midbass.

Go ahead and hear for yourself. You should hear how good the _256K_ mp3s from the same settings sounded! (I'm probably going to find a site that lets me upload those for high quality buffs or those who want a CD made- probably Ampcast.com.) Any mastering engineer could do this, but at the moment it is LAME-only because I'm not aware of any other encoder that lets you meddle with the guts of the encoding parameters that way. I asked about this for almost a year now and nobody had an answer, so I finally did it myself.

Anyone wishing to roll this into the main LAME distribution will get full cooperation from me... so far I haven't seen an interest. Which, cynically, I don't mind so much: _I_ believe in the principle of free software, but if people don't _want_ the hack by which I'm able to encode ambient information properly, fine: I'll just use it myself. I happen to think it is one hell of a secret weapon. I posted on rec.audio.pro about my modified Lexicon reverb and used 'Marginal Theorems' (128K mp3) as a demo of what I do with my Lexi and people were _floored_. They didn't neccesarily figure out how much of that I owed to free software and LAME, though ;)

muahaha, free software as secret weapon!

If so, you are consenting to being taxed on independent work, the money of which goes directly to my worst competitors. It effectively negates my attempts to undercut the majors via mp3, if you decide to pay this flat tax like you propose.

It's kind of like 'music CDRs': as an indy guy I would kind of like to see people outright boycott that stuff: all it's doing is adding X amount of surcharge, which goes straight to the RIAA as if it were some government authority, which then turns about and uses that money to try and shut me down or impose taxes any way they can. Please don't give them _more_ ideas :P :)

besonic.com/chrisj ...so pay me!

Or, acknowledge that in some fields the competition is so completely brutal that authors, musicians, artists customarily need to prove their dedication and tenacity by continuing to produce, spending their own money on their art and working and working until they are good enough that they _deserve_ to be paid anything.

Or, indeed, consider that 'listen to me' is in some ways even a more powerful call than 'pay me'. Note that both phrases end with ME! A lot of art is about Me, Me... it's "look at the art _I_ did! Listen to the song about _my_ feelings!" Is it any wonder that, for example, musicians in the brutally competitive music market of LA customarily PAY to play gigs? Does this free-market development fit nicely with your notion that under capitalism artists get paid to make art- if it wasn't for those dastardly intellectual property criminals- and those pesky kids! ;P

Let me put it this way. (the same link) Is that free music? Just because you can download it?

I prefer to see it as over 100M of web hosting for which I pay nothing. Priced out well-connected web hosting of that size lately?

The bottom line is, people who really love what they do will do it for not-money. This does not mean the same people will turn down money if it's offered- hey, I wouldn't! *g* Do please throw money! Or book studio time with me and travel to Vermont and cut a killer album. It's not just about the artistic expression. But that artistic expression is going to be there whether the money is or not...

And that's what I am not seeing in so many of these arguments- people who have no idea from 'pay to play', no clue what the entertainment business is _really_ like, are rabid to defend the 'rights' of a few 'winners' who are milking the hell out of the system. Rather than saying "OK, you're not signed so you don't _deserve_ to have money, but Britney is a great artist because she's signed so she deserves to earn fifty billion times what you could possibly earn, and keep a millionth of that if she has a smart manager!", what is so wrong with asking "What could happen to even the odds a bit? What could technology bring that would make artists compete more on the merits, rather than politics, money and the ability to be chosen by a power elite which controls the mass media completely?"

I would humbly suggest that 'cutting back intellectual property rights' would go quite a ways toward accomplishing the latter. I don't think it would be necessary to obliterate it so much that, for example, I could claim I wrote "Oops I Did It Again" (pop quiz: who _did_ write that? Prove it wasn't me. Were they paid? As much as Britney? As much as the producer? Did they get points? A royalty?). However, it is reasonable to expect I could sing "Oops I Did It Again" while walking down the street and suffer no worse than physical attacks by music lovers. I could tell a friend the words to it, or hum them the tune. In a digital world I could beam the digital audio to their wristband mp3 player so they could hear what I was talking about. I could make a "I Love Britney Spears!" page at ilovebritneyspears.com and put the digital audio and lyrics on the webpage, at as high a quality as possible since I love it so much and want everyone to agree how wonderful it is. And everyone who visits the page would have a chance for me to do everything I possibly could do to _persuade_ them that "Oops I Did It Again" was the most phenomenal audio art the world has ever known...

Intellectual property, as it's currently practiced, is tremendously biased against this behavior, in a frankly classist sense. I cannot be the scout, the evangelist, the fanatic- it isn't my place. That which I am so passionate about is not 'my property': I must keep my place, I must be subservient. "Um, I know this wonderful song- I can't give it to you, I'm not allowed to, in fact I wasn't allowed to make a web domain about it either, but you should go to BigRecordCompany.com and search for 'Britney'..."

That's obscene. It's behavior like the art, the product, is some sort of oxygen indispensable to life. The Merry Pranksters of the 60s had a catchphrase that remains relevant to this day: Art is not eternal!

I don't think Britney's 'right' to snatch a tiny percentage of unthinkable sums of CD gross sales is any more important than any other artist's 'right' to produce some income, no matter how small, just for having tried to produce art. I don't see this as a right at all. If you have something to say, say it- if you have a sound you want to make, make it- the way things are, it's virtually impossible for you to earn any sort of money on that anyhow, and although this is the result of a very sick business, intrinsically that's not wrong.

What is wrong is stepping on the fans, the enthusiasts and evangelists who give that _praise_ and appreciation that is _really_ the coin of the artist's realm. What's wrong is shutting those people off, making them go "Um, I could give you a copy of this art I really love (without me having to go without) but I'm not allowed to...", stifling them, damping their fires. Their place is not 'subservient passive consumers'. They are the freaking _lifeblood_ of any entertainment industry, and the only reason they can be so lightly suppressed and stamped on and trodden into the dirt is that the music industry genuinely does not believe in them anymore- it's all 'push' media now. Except for the Net, and the rest of the world- except for the same 'consumers' who are thought to be nothing more than passive buckets into which you can dump any old slop, given a hot mix and a big marketing budget.

That's where money has led: do the homework, work it out for yourself. That has been the result of intellectual property, in practice.

There have been examples, in history, of un-IP: situations where there was great artistic work being done without it being primarily considered intellectual property. An example would be: blues. What did blues produce? Rock and roll, R+B, the Beatles etc. The 'floating phrases' of blues, too general to belong to anyone, became a universal language open to anyone with a voice and a personality to express. Access to this pool of ideas allowed new forms of music to burgeon and arise.

I more than suspect that if we wish to ever have another artistic reinassance as significant as the birth of rock and roll, we will have to do it in _spite_ of Intellectual Property: or as if IP did not exist.

But the most important prerequisite would be a feeling from the people that they too can create, rap, sample, whatever: that they are not subservient consumer nonentities, that they have a voice. And we may get it.

The revolution is not Napster. The revolution is 1,000,000 people making their _own_ music getting _ideas_ from Napster. Getting total access to all forms of music as freely as breathing. Stifling access to culture and putting up toll booths is akin to stifling art.

besonic.com/chrisj ...so pay me!

Or, acknowledge that in some fields the competition is so completely brutal that authors, musicians, artists customarily need to prove their dedication and tenacity by continuing to produce, spending their own money on their art and working and working until they are good enough that they _deserve_ to be paid anything.

Or, indeed, consider that 'listen to me' is in some ways even a more powerful call than 'pay me'. Note that both phrases end with ME! A lot of art is about Me, Me... it's "look at the art _I_ did! Listen to the song about _my_ feelings!" Is it any wonder that, for example, musicians in the brutally competitive music market of LA customarily PAY to play gigs? Does this free-market development fit nicely with your notion that under capitalism artists get paid to make art- if it wasn't for those dastardly intellectual property criminals- and those pesky kids! ;P

Let me put it this way. (the same link) Is that free music? Just because you can download it?

I prefer to see it as over 100M of web hosting for which I pay nothing. Priced out well-connected web hosting of that size lately?

The bottom line is, people who really love what they do will do it for not-money. This does not mean the same people will turn down money if it's offered- hey, I wouldn't! *g* Do please throw money! Or book studio time with me and travel to Vermont and cut a killer album. It's not just about the artistic expression. But that artistic expression is going to be there whether the money is or not...

And that's what I am not seeing in so many of these arguments- people who have no idea from 'pay to play', no clue what the entertainment business is _really_ like, are rabid to defend the 'rights' of a few 'winners' who are milking the hell out of the system. Rather than saying "OK, you're not signed so you don't _deserve_ to have money, but Britney is a great artist because she's signed so she deserves to earn fifty billion times what you could possibly earn, and keep a millionth of that if she has a smart manager!", what is so wrong with asking "What could happen to even the odds a bit? What could technology bring that would make artists compete more on the merits, rather than politics, money and the ability to be chosen by a power elite which controls the mass media completely?"

I would humbly suggest that 'cutting back intellectual property rights' would go quite a ways toward accomplishing the latter. I don't think it would be necessary to obliterate it so much that, for example, I could claim I wrote "Oops I Did It Again" (pop quiz: who _did_ write that? Prove it wasn't me. Were they paid? As much as Britney? As much as the producer? Did they get points? A royalty?). However, it is reasonable to expect I could sing "Oops I Did It Again" while walking down the street and suffer no worse than physical attacks by music lovers. I could tell a friend the words to it, or hum them the tune. In a digital world I could beam the digital audio to their wristband mp3 player so they could hear what I was talking about. I could make a "I Love Britney Spears!" page at ilovebritneyspears.com and put the digital audio and lyrics on the webpage, at as high a quality as possible since I love it so much and want everyone to agree how wonderful it is. And everyone who visits the page would have a chance for me to do everything I possibly could do to _persuade_ them that "Oops I Did It Again" was the most phenomenal audio art the world has ever known...

Intellectual property, as it's currently practiced, is tremendously biased against this behavior, in a frankly classist sense. I cannot be the scout, the evangelist, the fanatic- it isn't my place. That which I am so passionate about is not 'my property': I must keep my place, I must be subservient. "Um, I know this wonderful song- I can't give it to you, I'm not allowed to, in fact I wasn't allowed to make a web domain about it either, but you should go to BigRecordCompany.com and search for 'Britney'..."

That's obscene. It's behavior like the art, the product, is some sort of oxygen indispensable to life. The Merry Pranksters of the 60s had a catchphrase that remains relevant to this day: Art is not eternal!

I don't think Britney's 'right' to snatch a tiny percentage of unthinkable sums of CD gross sales is any more important than any other artist's 'right' to produce some income, no matter how small, just for having tried to produce art. I don't see this as a right at all. If you have something to say, say it- if you have a sound you want to make, make it- the way things are, it's virtually impossible for you to earn any sort of money on that anyhow, and although this is the result of a very sick business, intrinsically that's not wrong.

What is wrong is stepping on the fans, the enthusiasts and evangelists who give that _praise_ and appreciation that is _really_ the coin of the artist's realm. What's wrong is shutting those people off, making them go "Um, I could give you a copy of this art I really love (without me having to go without) but I'm not allowed to...", stifling them, damping their fires. Their place is not 'subservient passive consumers'. They are the freaking _lifeblood_ of any entertainment industry, and the only reason they can be so lightly suppressed and stamped on and trodden into the dirt is that the music industry genuinely does not believe in them anymore- it's all 'push' media now. Except for the Net, and the rest of the world- except for the same 'consumers' who are thought to be nothing more than passive buckets into which you can dump any old slop, given a hot mix and a big marketing budget.

That's where money has led: do the homework, work it out for yourself. That has been the result of intellectual property, in practice.

There have been examples, in history, of un-IP: situations where there was great artistic work being done without it being primarily considered intellectual property. An example would be: blues. What did blues produce? Rock and roll, R+B, the Beatles etc. The 'floating phrases' of blues, too general to belong to anyone, became a universal language open to anyone with a voice and a personality to express. Access to this pool of ideas allowed new forms of music to burgeon and arise.

I more than suspect that if we wish to ever have another artistic reinassance as significant as the birth of rock and roll, we will have to do it in _spite_ of Intellectual Property: or as if IP did not exist.

But the most important prerequisite would be a feeling from the people that they too can create, rap, sample, whatever: that they are not subservient consumer nonentities, that they have a voice. And we may get it.

The revolution is not Napster. The revolution is 1,000,000 people making their _own_ music getting _ideas_ from Napster. Getting total access to all forms of music as freely as breathing. Stifling access to culture and putting up toll booths is akin to stifling art.

I do recommend Digi, though I don't actually use it- I use hardware analog mixing and limiting (heard on my most recent album, the tracks named after airplanes). I do think that with enough skill and dedicated analog gear you can top the quality level Pro Tools will give you (though if I had Pro Tools- I could use _that_ as well and do even better. So even then, Pro Tools is desirable). However, I have to seriously confirm all that Funkwater says here: you don't want a Linux cluster for DSP. Maybe you want Linux support _for_ the hardware DSP you can already get, so you don't have to run a Mac or Windows. But you don't want a Linux cluster, unless you have some sort of non-realtime arrangement that can make use of insanely demanding 128-bit calculations to slowly 'render' a final track far better than even modern DSP allows. However, we're talking audio- that's hard to even imagine, and the DSP _is_ out there and very capable.

The fact is, such communities are constantly being born and dying. I've been a part of a major one easily as big and 'personal' as the WELL was, and am right now involved with another one that hasn't died off yet, that came from still another one that's currently a wasteland.

How is this possible? It's very simple: virtual online communities are formed by collections of people who share interests that are not necessarily interests you'll find a community for in your _physical_ neighborhood. The first example I gave was alt.lifestyle.furry, perhaps a weird group but one dedicated to 'spiritual therianthropy'- quick precis is, I personally have always been a 'cat person' in a pretty deep sense, and turns out there are loads of people all over the world who similarly identify that closely with some form of nonhuman creature. A community sprang up and thrived for quite a while until increasing popularity effectively dissolved it. The second example is a music bulletin board, "MusikaBoard" that's a haven for a bunch of electronic musicians. In this one I'm more of an outsider (sure I do music but my latest album has lots of loud guitars on it which makes me an outsider to the electronic crowd in a sense) but it's plain to see the community there, and so far it hasn't succumbed to disinterest, overpopularity or some other condition that would break up the community. It originally came from a community at mp3.com that was disrupted by a social behavior- at mp3.com people were paid by the download (in theory) so all social behavior became conditioned by this and all social interaction became the outright demand to be downloaded, and trust based schemes for exchanging downloads. This killed the community by lowering signal-to-noise ratio so dramatically that nobody who was left were behaving socially- "give me" is not inherently a community behavior.

There are some interesting lessons in this- assuming you can give up the notion that "The WELL was a unique situation in human history!". Really now- get a grip, it was not special. That situation happens all the time, and it would be good to consider ways to preserve it when it happens, because it's both valuable and fragile.

I'd love to see a /. Radio. I always liked 'Geeks In Space', plus I'm a serious musician and audio techie who is a longtime slashdotter and has plenty of unusual music to offer (besonic.com/chrisj) and just finished recording and mixing a new album just for the love of doing the art. I am getting interest from internet radio 'streamcasters' and my answer is always 'go to it my friend! with my blessing!' It's not even about being 'discovered': that makes it sound like the point is to win the fight to be noticed by the BIG media. To me, doing the art and allowing it to flow out in natural ways like individuals doing streams of the stuff they like- that IS the point, that IS the whole purpose of the exercise. When one person listens to music I did and finds something they really like, that's what I'm doing it for...

I'm trying to get a recording studio off the ground (obMusicLink), and putting a lot of effort into it. I _have_ to keep airwindows.com out there publically and I get all its email, every dictionary-attack spam on the domain- and I need a solid memorable unsurprising email address to give people if they want one- chrisj@airwindows.com.

It's like some of the mp3-fan reactions to the threat of the format being suppressed- I don't care if you can hide mp3s in zips, or hide email addresses in geeky obfuscation or ever-changing 'stale address discard' rules. I don't have that luxury and never will have it- I'm stuck operating on the outside with my domain and my fledgling business (for which I keep all records of income and expense- not gonna hide from IRS either). I have no option but to use email and web resources straightforwardly and unobfuscatedly- and I won't be able to keep up with the load of spam forever unless the spammers are cracked down on. The spamload could easily just keep accelerating exponentially if nothing is done to stop it- as it seems more mainstream, more will do it, and so on.

(random side note- remember how mp3.com changed its agreement and made it evil? Well, a new music site called ampcast.com recently changed their agreement- and, get this, changed it to be MORE favorable to the artists! Color me flabbergasted. I'm still happy with besonic, myself, but who knew? Kudos to ampcast, just found out about this today :) )

That's a major problem- mp3.com is not dealing with it, instead mp3.com is adding 'name' artists to the same pool, tightening the screws even farther and provoking even worse behavior. I recently saw the first email download scam chain letter pyramid scheme- originated by 'artists' on mp3.com desperate for a slice of the pie. I don't think anyone anticipated things would get quite this ugly and embarrassing when PFP started.

Others, like myself, bailed when mp3.com changed their contract- it now gives mp3.com rights _perpetually_ that survive termination, and it is changeable without confirmation by the artist on only 5 days notice, and it's on the artist to keep checking that nothing changed, and then get a competent opinion if terms are changed. Only recourse is to quit. Many people are.

Me? *g* I am finding that I'm happier _without_ the financial interest (naturally, being known is great). Some mp3.commers moved to ampcast.com but I ended up on BeSonic, so my page (with a couple songs still being sorted out) is at...

http://www.besonic.com/chrisj (hooray!)

...and there is one big change- on BeSonic I do not get paid off downloads. I prefer it that way! Read the Salon article linked above to get some idea of why. I did OK at mp3.com, made some money, but it goddamn ate my soul- I could not communicate with other musicians about fun music-geeky compositional stuff because the money got in the way- there was always someone to get _angry_ because I was too hungry for attention and obviously only out to get PFP money by boasting. *spit*

Well, a little of that goes a long way. Since I left it's kept getting worse until now mp3.com is a cesspool. If you care AT ALL about being an artist and doing good work, be somewhere else. I learned from mp3.com how linking downloads (listens) with money corrupts the motivations- the fact that I was OK with not getting rich was NOT ENOUGH, I got treated as if I was just out for greed. Well, now I'm on BeSonic- anyone who wanted to listen to any of my stuff but felt it was mercenary should go filch away as I do not get paid off BeSonic downloads. Anyone who liked what I had on mp3.com should go redownload it from besonic as all the mp3.com stuff was BladeEnc and the besonic stuff is all new mixes and encoded with Frau and LAME, so it sounds way better now :)

Anyway- forget the mp3.com unsigned artist community. It's the walking dead, and you can't make it on the merits of your music on mp3.com at this point. It's a very useful lesson about capitalism mixing with art: there's always a better way to make money than by making the best product you can. mp3.com means spam, marketing, gaming and total vacuity now- ironically, every bit as bad as the _mainstream_ industry that's taking it over- but the indie community killed itself. Over money.

That said- why did Katz, who is familiar with television, miss this potentially embarrassing detail?

• X-Files: 504,000 hits
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 235,000 hits
• Battlestar Galactica: 35,800 hits

Not only that, I can _demonstrate_ the Regulon. Watch closely:

• Woohoo, go download my nifty music at www.besonic.com/chrisj right away! Click here!!!

I post to a musician web board, and a common topic has been, "Ack, get a load of these clowns email spamming all of us to get downloaded!" This gets great contempt. Well, just recently everyone got spammed by a _new_ twist- a person sending 'a fan has sent you an email!' mail, who expressed great appreciation, said they downloaded all your songs and if you check it turns out they _did_, and asks only, "Will you put me on your band's mailing list so I can be informed when new material comes out?"

The consensus was: it was a very determined attempt to harvest addresses- which would then be spammed to hell. Many people got this treatment, and some of them had bought in to similar approaches and ended up getting spammed like mad from bands they had not even heard of.

So at this point in this musician community, the 'fan has sent you an email' mechanism (operated from a web page) has become utterly worthless because there is no perceptible difference between a genuine fan and attempts to harvest emails. You can't even go by 'does the mail display someone else's URL or is it just a letter' because it can be seemingly a totally sincere letter and _still_ be a baited hook!

That situation would seemingly be immune to 'regulons' and yet in practice the mechanism can end up ignored due to abuses.

I've said before that we're looking at an economy of _attention_, and this is precisely the regulating factor. Much advertising, not to mention web advertising, is useless- some actually un-sells products by being too annoying (this can be measured...) and the more advertising screams for attention the less it's noticed.

Know who Victor Kiam is? You've probably seen his face. People recognise him on the street because he is the guy who 'liked the shaver so much, he bought the company'. He sells electric razors in those advertisements.

Quick- what is the brand name of razor he's selling? People recognise this guy's face on the street and remember the 'I bought the company' tagline. When he then asks them what is the name of the company, more than half of the people don't know.

Quick, what sport is Michael Jordan known for? You'll find many people recognise the name but haven't a clue what the guy does.

Regulon, meet Katz. Katz, meet Regulon. ...but you already know each other, don't you? Because Regulon has been causing people to tune _you_ out, Katz, for years. Just as it does to _everybody_.

That said- why did Katz, who is familiar with television, miss this potentially embarrassing detail?

• X-Files: 504,000 hits
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 235,000 hits
• Battlestar Galactica: 35,800 hits

Not only that, I can _demonstrate_ the Regulon. Watch closely:

• Woohoo, go download my nifty music at www.besonic.com/chrisj right away! Click here!!!

I post to a musician web board, and a common topic has been, "Ack, get a load of these clowns email spamming all of us to get downloaded!" This gets great contempt. Well, just recently everyone got spammed by a _new_ twist- a person sending 'a fan has sent you an email!' mail, who expressed great appreciation, said they downloaded all your songs and if you check it turns out they _did_, and asks only, "Will you put me on your band's mailing list so I can be informed when new material comes out?"

The consensus was: it was a very determined attempt to harvest addresses- which would then be spammed to hell. Many people got this treatment, and some of them had bought in to similar approaches and ended up getting spammed like mad from bands they had not even heard of.

So at this point in this musician community, the 'fan has sent you an email' mechanism (operated from a web page) has become utterly worthless because there is no perceptible difference between a genuine fan and attempts to harvest emails. You can't even go by 'does the mail display someone else's URL or is it just a letter' because it can be seemingly a totally sincere letter and _still_ be a baited hook!

That situation would seemingly be immune to 'regulons' and yet in practice the mechanism can end up ignored due to abuses.

I've said before that we're looking at an economy of _attention_, and this is precisely the regulating factor. Much advertising, not to mention web advertising, is useless- some actually un-sells products by being too annoying (this can be measured...) and the more advertising screams for attention the less it's noticed.

Know who Victor Kiam is? You've probably seen his face. People recognise him on the street because he is the guy who 'liked the shaver so much, he bought the company'. He sells electric razors in those advertisements.

Quick- what is the brand name of razor he's selling? People recognise this guy's face on the street and remember the 'I bought the company' tagline. When he then asks them what is the name of the company, more than half of the people don't know.

Quick, what sport is Michael Jordan known for? You'll find many people recognise the name but haven't a clue what the guy does.

Regulon, meet Katz. Katz, meet Regulon. ...but you already know each other, don't you? Because Regulon has been causing people to tune _you_ out, Katz, for years. Just as it does to _everybody_.

That said- why did Katz, who is familiar with television, miss this potentially embarrassing detail?

• X-Files: 504,000 hits
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 235,000 hits
• Battlestar Galactica: 35,800 hits

Not only that, I can _demonstrate_ the Regulon. Watch closely:

• Woohoo, go download my nifty music at www.besonic.com/chrisj right away! Click here!!!

I post to a musician web board, and a common topic has been, "Ack, get a load of these clowns email spamming all of us to get downloaded!" This gets great contempt. Well, just recently everyone got spammed by a _new_ twist- a person sending 'a fan has sent you an email!' mail, who expressed great appreciation, said they downloaded all your songs and if you check it turns out they _did_, and asks only, "Will you put me on your band's mailing list so I can be informed when new material comes out?"

The consensus was: it was a very determined attempt to harvest addresses- which would then be spammed to hell. Many people got this treatment, and some of them had bought in to similar approaches and ended up getting spammed like mad from bands they had not even heard of.

So at this point in this musician community, the 'fan has sent you an email' mechanism (operated from a web page) has become utterly worthless because there is no perceptible difference between a genuine fan and attempts to harvest emails. You can't even go by 'does the mail display someone else's URL or is it just a letter' because it can be seemingly a totally sincere letter and _still_ be a baited hook!

That situation would seemingly be immune to 'regulons' and yet in practice the mechanism can end up ignored due to abuses.

I've said before that we're looking at an economy of _attention_, and this is precisely the regulating factor. Much advertising, not to mention web advertising, is useless- some actually un-sells products by being too annoying (this can be measured...) and the more advertising screams for attention the less it's noticed.

Know who Victor Kiam is? You've probably seen his face. People recognise him on the street because he is the guy who 'liked the shaver so much, he bought the company'. He sells electric razors in those advertisements.

Quick- what is the brand name of razor he's selling? People recognise this guy's face on the street and remember the 'I bought the company' tagline. When he then asks them what is the name of the company, more than half of the people don't know.

Quick, what sport is Michael Jordan known for? You'll find many people recognise the name but haven't a clue what the guy does.

Regulon, meet Katz. Katz, meet Regulon. ...but you already know each other, don't you? Because Regulon has been causing people to tune _you_ out, Katz, for years. Just as it does to _everybody_.

That said- why did Katz, who is familiar with television, miss this potentially embarrassing detail?

• X-Files: 504,000 hits
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 235,000 hits
• Battlestar Galactica: 35,800 hits

Not only that, I can _demonstrate_ the Regulon. Watch closely:

• Woohoo, go download my nifty music at www.besonic.com/chrisj right away! Click here!!!

I post to a musician web board, and a common topic has been, "Ack, get a load of these clowns email spamming all of us to get downloaded!" This gets great contempt. Well, just recently everyone got spammed by a _new_ twist- a person sending 'a fan has sent you an email!' mail, who expressed great appreciation, said they downloaded all your songs and if you check it turns out they _did_, and asks only, "Will you put me on your band's mailing list so I can be informed when new material comes out?"

The consensus was: it was a very determined attempt to harvest addresses- which would then be spammed to hell. Many people got this treatment, and some of them had bought in to similar approaches and ended up getting spammed like mad from bands they had not even heard of.

So at this point in this musician community, the 'fan has sent you an email' mechanism (operated from a web page) has become utterly worthless because there is no perceptible difference between a genuine fan and attempts to harvest emails. You can't even go by 'does the mail display someone else's URL or is it just a letter' because it can be seemingly a totally sincere letter and _still_ be a baited hook!

That situation would seemingly be immune to 'regulons' and yet in practice the mechanism can end up ignored due to abuses.

I've said before that we're looking at an economy of _attention_, and this is precisely the regulating factor. Much advertising, not to mention web advertising, is useless- some actually un-sells products by being too annoying (this can be measured...) and the more advertising screams for attention the less it's noticed.

Know who Victor Kiam is? You've probably seen his face. People recognise him on the street because he is the guy who 'liked the shaver so much, he bought the company'. He sells electric razors in those advertisements.

Quick- what is the brand name of razor he's selling? People recognise this guy's face on the street and remember the 'I bought the company' tagline. When he then asks them what is the name of the company, more than half of the people don't know.

Quick, what sport is Michael Jordan known for? You'll find many people recognise the name but haven't a clue what the guy does.

Regulon, meet Katz. Katz, meet Regulon. ...but you already know each other, don't you? Because Regulon has been causing people to tune _you_ out, Katz, for years. Just as it does to _everybody_.