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This is several years old, but why don't we just take it a little further and show how they're all part of the military industrial complex?

Yup, couldn't have said it better myself.

There's plenty of great independent music available in DRM-Free Download Format out there.

Who needs the RIAA except the RIAA?

Constellation was fiercely anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalist; its mission, according to its founders, was to "enact a mode of cultural production that critiques the worst tendencies of the music industry, artistic commodification, and perhaps in some tiny way, the world at large." It also hoped to recover and rebuild an independent music ethic that it saw as commodified and corporatized.

what might be happening in genuine grassroots music

http://www.cstrecords.com/

> The reason music is dead is very simple. There is no innovation.

You are so mistaken due to a limited listening vocabulary. There's innovative music out there but for the most part you won't find it on the major labels. You have to dig for it, but it's out there, and thus the music is not dead. It's alive and well and in many forms-- new forms, old forms made anew.

Check out the records coming out from labels like Thrilljockey (Tortoise, Mouse on Mars, The Sea and Cake), Strange Attractors (Yume Bitsu, SubArachnoid Space, Kinksi, Landing, Surface of Eceyon), Constellation Records (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Do Make Say Think) and Elephant 6 and Cloud Recordings (Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System, Of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel) -- they've been doing something different with the music in the last few years.

The open horizons continue to be in music that could be classified as psychedelic, anything else ends up just being more of the same. The new musical horizons are best found at the point where music can make our brains do different things than we are used to.

If you can't find music with innovation and quality then you simply aren't looking hard enough.

This movies features music by one of my favorite post-rock bands Godspeed You Black Emperor!

Theirs cds might be a bit hard to find since they boycott the standard corporate distribution scheme.

Find their cds, buy them and prove those RIAA suckers we don't need them!

not that a right-minded label like constellation would ever go in for that sort of deal anyway.

/me starts his teac reels to make an illegal backup of 'lift your skinny fists'

not that a right-minded label like constellation would ever go in for that sort of deal anyway.

/me starts his teac reels to make an illegal backup of 'lift your skinny fists'

Or anything by Godspeed You! Black Emporer!?

1. I do not like this price
2. I will not pay it
3. there are millions of people like me
4. labels cannot profit while this is true.

you can run your mouth all you want about the ethics of it, but the fact remains that a substantial number -- a huge number -- of consumers find the price of the average CD to be beyond their acceptable price point. until the price comes down they will not buy CDs.

whether I download mp3s on the internet, or simply do not listen to any music at all, the amount of money made by the copyright holders is the same -- they make no money off me.

no, no, I understand that you *really want* to talk about how it's unethical, but that is entirely irrelevant. it can be ethical or not ethical, but if the labels want to make customers out of the people who are trading files on the internet, they will have to reduce the price of CDs.

constellation makes money selling double CDs at the price of a major label's single CD. they do this without the benefit of worldwide marketing, without benefiting from the economies of scale in conglomerate distribution, and without paying clearchannel to play the songs of their bands.

if they can get away with this then we know there's something really wrong with the price-fix^H^H^H^H^H pricing of CDs in the status quo.

See above for a diagram linking all the major music labels / just about everyone else to 'defense' contractors. Gotta love those frenchy Canadians.

Constellation Records (Montreal)
Peanuts and Corn Records (Vancouver)
G7 Welcoming Committee (Winnipeg)

Three record labels from which you can buy new, well produced and IMHO very sharp stuff for well under $20. $12 was the price I paid for the last LP I ordered from G7.

Your mileage may vary, these are just my favorites. :)

And, by the way, your point about Canadian prices for CDs being equivalent is bang on. Stay away from the pop stuff and your money will go a lot further. Hopefully your mind will too!

If it simply doesn't work, I'll be demanding a full refund (from the place of sale) and writing the label a nastygram letting them know they've lost my business over it, much the same as I write my representatives nastygrams. If it damages my equipment (as some of these "protection" (read: strongarm) methods are purported to have the ability to do), you'd better believe I'll be in touch with a lawyer.
The Gza admonished us to check the labels, and I do. When I buy new, I consciously look for indie labels' releases before I look to majors.
If copy protection is the myopic way of the future, it'll be exclusively indies and the majors that don't employ copy protection that receive my spending dollars.

I believe Kranky, Constellation and spinArt are independent and not members of the RIAA. Constellation (Canadian) has Do Make Say Think and Godspeed You Black Emperor. Kranky bands include Low and Pan American and I think they're the American distributor for GYBE. spinArt is home to the Poster Children and The Wedding Present, among others.