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The DMB also posted information on how to beat their copy protection to enable fair use. The CD won't read into iTunes, so it can't be listened to on an iPod. Basically the procedure is to burn a copy of the WMA files to a CD and then rip that.

However, the band makes no apologies for this complicated procedure and blame it all on Apple! (see last paragraph). Somehow I don't think they grasp the fact that Apple is standards-compliant, and that their label is selling broken cds to their fans.

Look at http://www.dmband.com/news/news_popup_iPod.asp to see what one legit band had to tell its legit customers to do to listen to their legit CDs -- the band (these are the folks DRM supposedly protects!) even asks customers to beg Apple to fix its unnecessarily restrictive DRM scheme!

Information regarding Downloading Stand Up Songs to iPods

Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod:

If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.

Which model Nano do you have, Moofie? If Apple's worked out a way to get 40 gigs of music into 4 (or even 2?!?) gigs of flash and still have it sound good I'm impressed!

As for the DRM, take your Nano to the office sometime and copy a few songs to your hard disk there so you can listen at your desk. Maybe burn a few selections from the Nano to an audio CD so you can listen at a friend's house without having to fiddle with adapters. Try adding songs to your Nano from your Linux system. Buy a few songs from anyone but Apple and put those on the Nano.

Look at http://www.dmband.com/news/news_popup_iPod.asp to see what one legit band had to tell its legit customers to do to listen to their legit CDs -- the band (these are the folks DRM supposedly protects!) even asks customers to beg Apple to fix its unnecessarily restrictive DRM scheme!

Digitally Restricted Music might be good for accounting, but it's death for art.

I have an Essentials of Marketing book that defines "branding" as "the use of a name, term, symbol, or design -- or a combination of these -- to identify a product." The record labels do use brands to identify their products, which include Britney Spears, Madonna, Dave Matthews Band and the Beetles. The labels actually sell their artists' CDs, but the labels market the CDs as a part of the artist; you get to own a piece of their work.

The promotional design of an artist's website, CD cover, and stage lighting on the Tonight Show also go towards creating an image, both visual and aural, that accentuates the artist's brand. Dave Matthews Band's site portrays earthy tones, a simpleness, with a hint of urban trendy design. These visual cues are key to speaking to customers and establishing a brand that people associate with earthy, simple, yet slightly trendy and modern music.

Branding is not just a icon on a CD or a name. It's an encapsulating image around a product and its promotion that speaks to customers to which it's targeted. The brand both speaks to people who have a need for the product and vears others away. For example, if you were looking for pop dance music, Dave Matthews Band's site would instantly not appeal to you. However, the purple disco rays, changing images, and diva-esque imagery of Britney's site probably would.

The Jamband/Grassroots scene is one viable alternative. The scene, which has its roots in bands such as the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, the jamband/grassroots scene is based on the principles of "tour lots, play well, allow tape trading".

Bands like Phish, Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer (three rather different artists) have become very popular primarily because of tape trading and putting on a good live show which varies night to night.

Some sites of particular interest are Homegrown Music Network and Jambase, the latter of which has a huge database of members interested in and willing to promote the bands it serves. Bands seeking to promote shows in certain cities pay Jambase to allow them access to all the members in certain zip codes, cities and states. These fans get promotional material to spread around their area, thus gaining more interest in the concert.

Another great site is archive.org's etree archive which has full concerts of lots of bands (from big names such as Dave Matthews to the unknowns like the Motet) in lossless SHN format.

Of course, the limitations of this scene is that it's basically all wrinkly old hippies noodling away on covers of Grateful Dead songs, but there are innovators such as the New Deal and Disco Biscuits, who play live, improvised trance/breakbeat house. Or Howie Day, a singer-songwriter playing Radiohead influenced songs using loops and samples to create a unique sound. OAR play (somewhat turgid) reggae-rock, and Illinois' Umphrey's McGee present us with an alternate universe of "What if Phish listened to Pink Floyd and Genesis rather than the Grateful Dead?". There's something for [mostly] everyone.

The Dave Matthews Band did this with the CD Busted Stuff a couple months ago. They even included a DVD with more material. All this for only $9.99 on the release date and $11.99 the rest of the week (Best Buy, Chicago).

• Never buy music. Ever. Every dollar that you pump into the RIAA is 50 cents spent suppressing free speech on the net, and 50 cents spent promoting the latest boy band. If you want to support an artist, send them money directly.
• Share all of your music. Most users on today's peer-to-peer networks take a lot, but don't want to give back to the community. This is a selfish and rude attitude to take toward the people who save you from having to pay for music. I even go as far as to download music I don't even listen to, just so that I can share it with everyone else. At work, I have access to an OC-192, and am proud to say that at any given time there are at least 75+ clients downloading from my song library. Share, and you will be rewarded tenfold.
• Encourage others to join the networks. Not only does this assist the PTP networks in achieving financial solvency, but it increases the selection of music on the networks and makes it easier on large servers like mine. ^_^ When I worked as a PC tech a few years back, I made a point of installing Napster on every single Windows client machine I serviced and making it load on startup. The clients loved me for it, and I felt great for helping the cause.
• Support the EFF. The EFF diligently defends the rights of the average citizen to make full use of the materials in his possession. Without the EFF on our side, large companies would have no problem installing DRM on all of our new PCs and making it almost impossible to share music that we have the fundamental right to listen to.

Cd.

Let's not forget about Dave Matthews Band. They had the foresight to pass on several offers from record companies because they wanted one of them to guarantee them the right to allow their fans to record concerts and swap songs. For that reason, while I have not bought a new CD in months, and don't intend to, I will make a small exception to my boycott and buy them -- assuming they don't allow copy protection to be foisted off on their CDs, in which case, I'll have to take a pass on that, too, since I almost exclusively listen to them on my box while working.

Am I bad for business? I've bought every album, some more than once because of mishap, plus their bio CD and a pair of DVDs (one was videos, one was a concert). I've also been to two of their concerts and would gladly go to another, and snap up their professionally recorded live albums eagerly.

There are billions of ways to make money at music, but everyone seems to discuss "national acts", or atleast discuss how independent musicians react to Napster with the notion of them striving to be national performers. I know for a fact that lots of unknown Las Vegas lounge acts make more money than a lot of popular national / world acts.

For instance, I write music, it's generally bland and mostly I just have fun, but I don't know anyone, and no-one knows me. I don't care, it's fun. Those people, however, striving to make wide-spread music distribution get them somewhere, are fooling themselves.

Sure, Dave Matthews Band gained popularity through tape-trading among colleges, but now we live in a world where idiots like my brother have a Napster T-Shirt. It's *solidifying* the concept of "it's who you know..."

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As a big Dave Matthews Band fan, I like to download live recordings from their latest concert. DMB allows the recording of their shows for personal use and trading, and nothings easier than trading MP3s. Read their taping policy for more details. Napster is perfect for this purpose, allowing the latest shows to be traded quicker than traditional means (tapes, CDR).

So, there is one of the legal uses of Napster that you were looking for.

Some people feel that trading for the cost of the tapes is fair. So you send me a 2-tape show, I send you $11 -- $4 / tape and $3 for shipping. Is that sales? Probably not, if you're just breaking even.

So now we have the wonderful world of MP3s. I have an MP3 website. You want MP3s. I pay $50 / month for hosting (all that storage, dontcha know), I get 50 downloads a month, so I figure that I want to show 5000 ads and get $0.01 each. That way, I break even. Just like when trading those tapes.

Oooh, but what if I show 5001 ads? Then I'm profiting. But is that wrong?

I dunno. But I've got the DMB site anyhow, complete with ads. :)