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And yet, every radio DJ in the country shouts out their myspace address and the sheeple have a collective orgasm over the site.

<smack>I think that may be because their tastes in web design are reflective of their poor musical choices </smack>

I think we're in the midst of a widespread epidemic of tone-deafness among radio DJs and high-schoolers over the past 5 years. We've seen some of the best damn music ever produced in the past few years, and it gets hardly any airplay on the radio. Thanks to the internet, however, these bands are actually able to enjoy a huge degree of commercial success. File sharing may hurt the top 40 artists, but it gives a huge advantage to artists that would have never otherwise had a chance to succeed.

• The Decemberists {VERY highly recommended)
• Bloc Party
• Iron & Wine
• The Postal Service
• Fruit Bats
• Andrew Bird
• Los Straitjackets
• Neko Case
• Astaire
• Damien Rice
• Harvey Danger (in case you missed the story on them here a couple days back about them releasing their latest CD as a completely free download... OGG format and all!)

• The Decemberists
• Bloc Party
• Iron & Wine
• The Postal Service
• Fruit Bats
• Andrew Bird
• Los Straitjackets
• Neko Case
• Astaire
• Damien Rice

I think this has been covered on /. before but,

The Deceberists released a music video via BitTorrent awhile ago. http://decemberists.com/16mw-torrent.html

It was covered in Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66969,00 .html

Here's the torrent.

Well we really thought it would be a good way to share a video that was made with their fans in mind. The band couldn't afford to host it. MTV2 botched the airing in ways I don't care to ennumerate. Their persistent logo is pretty big, by the way. So we figured hey their fans are smart, if we can convince them to use bittorrent the least we can do with this thing is let them share it amongst themselves. Why have them wait for an MTV2 airing to capture, encode, and distribute themselves. Give them the highest quality we can directly instead. We thought a few hundred people would do that. So far we've had a number of downloads equal to half the people who bought their last album. Here's a direct link to the torrent. If the video offends you, I apologize. And recommend you check out this as an alternative.

I directed a video recently for a band called The Decemberists who aren't on a major label. They have, however, drummed up a lot of mainstream press notice and attention and good sales for a true indie label band. Once the video was done, however, I got my obligatory MTV2 airings at weird times of the night. So how were we going to share it? There'd be a cruddy low res version which is barely what the band could afford to host. So we distributed via bittorrent directly. We literally gave their fans as high quality file as we could. In one week using only bittorrent and not including the low res Quicktime, we've had over 5000 downloads. This is in the same week that Universal Music Group (one of the titans) has declared that music videos will no longer be streamed for free. Wired ran an article with all the details here: Wired article on how to get around MTV And now? The band is at number 7 on the iTunes music store and 19 at amazon. That is with the marketing budget of a small indepdendent label. Rewards come to those artists who embrace and understand how to use this tech. BTW i kept trying to submit this story but to no avail.

avoid riaa stuff at all costs. here's some amazing music to check out via p2p or via what few links i've bothered to dig up. what follows is a nice selection of pop and rock from some outstanding bands on some very fine record labels. support these artists, or artists like them--unencumbered by the riaa. support these labels. they do wonderful things. these are great songs from great albums.


aislers set, the - mission bells from (suicide squeeze/slumberland) aislers set on epitonic

ballboy - donald in the bushes with a bag of glue from silver suits for astronauts ep (sl)

barcelona - i have the password to your shell account from moshi moshi: pop international style (march) barcelona on epitonic

beulah - popular mechanics for lovers from the coast is never clear (velocette records) beulah on epitonic

boyracer - tell me where my hands should go from to get a better hold you've got to loosen your grip (555 recordings) boyracer on epitonic

bugs in amber - roller coaster ride from rocketship letters (sign language)

camera obscura - suspended from class from underachievers please try harder (merge)

can i be she-ra? - pizzacato

carissa's wierd - sofsticated fuck princess please leave me alone from songs about leaving (sad robot) more songs

catch, the - empty your pockets

cinerama - your charms from the flirt compilation

currituck county - the collision from unpacking my library (teenbeat)

decemberists - red right ankle from her majesty the decemberists (kill rock stars)

east river pipe - my life is wrong from (merge/sarah) east river pipe on epitonic

evening lights, the - in a day from landscape cdep (shelflife) more songs

faint, the -