Slashdot Mirror

They are also one of the first bands to release an MP3 only album.
(TMBG to Release MP3 Album)
Sold through emusic.com, you could only obtain this album in MP3 format. No physical form of the album was released. So while they may not agree with the way Napster uses MP3's, they certainly aren't against the format itself.
(Long Tall Weekend)

They are also one of the first bands to release an MP3 only album.
(TMBG to Release MP3 Album)
Sold through emusic.com, you could only obtain this album in MP3 format. No physical form of the album was released. So while they may not agree with the way Napster uses MP3's, they certainly aren't against the format itself.
(Long Tall Weekend)

If you follow a link from their website to the store which is actually at emusic you can download this song free and a couple others. You can buy songs individually for $.99 a piece but then you would miss out on some gems.

If you follow a link from their website to the store which is actually at emusic you can download this song free and a couple others. You can buy songs individually for $.99 a piece but then you would miss out on some gems.

TMBG is a great band. But, they have publically decried Napster and P2P in general. Why should we help them with something that is run 1980's technology? It seems to me that they are just trying to boost their online image with this sort of stunt.

Well, I was going to reply more thoughtfully, but it looks like others have beaten me to it. What I would like to point out is that TMBG does not resort to "stunts" in order to boost its online image. What they have done is given a free concert in Irving Plaza, which was broadcast live on the Internet via EMusic.com, simply to plug their latest album, "Long Tall Weekend", which was, mind you, entirely in MP3 format. TMBG has quite an online image. If they wanted to boost it, they'd do it, and they'd do it well.

/* Steve */

Try emusic.com for no less than nine albums of theirs in MP3 format. Not free, but not horribly expensive either ($8.99 USD). The coolest thing about emusic is their subscription service, which for as little as $10 a month you can download all you want. I have it and it's great. Oh, and the URL for the TMBG page on emusic is he re.

Try emusic.com for no less than nine albums of theirs in MP3 format. Not free, but not horribly expensive either ($8.99 USD). The coolest thing about emusic is their subscription service, which for as little as $10 a month you can download all you want. I have it and it's great. Oh, and the URL for the TMBG page on emusic is he re.

If Napster went away, even thought there'd be alternatives, I think the industry would breath a big sigh of relief and then take their sweet time about implementing their own scheme.

Possibly. But you have to weigh that against the downside of as long as Napster (the most heavily publicized and easiest to use of these type of distribution technologies) is functioning, more and more people are becoming accustomed to the idea that "Music is free". Not to mention it is currently hindering those legit services that do exist and are trying to get steam. (Such as Emusic to name but one)

I think I'd rather take the risk that the large record labels won't move on their own. Especially when you think that some smaller labels are already doing their own foray's into e-publishing their collections. The majors being slow just helps those minors that are moving with the technology rather than against it.

KWiL

Hmm. That capability doesn't seem to be in the Phase 1 standard. A picture of the Phase 2 standard is beginning to emerge then. Detection of content that has been ripped from watermarked content and compressed with a perceptual encoding scheme is clearly part of it. I think we can safely assume a more detailed set of permission flags than the Phase 1 "no more copies". I wonder how companies that sell compressed content on the net like e-Music and Liquid Audio will get the "full" watermarks? Will their client software be able to watermark content? Perhaps it will have to have a different watermark. Maybe the differences will give people clues on how to hack the watermark. Interesting. And what's up with Napster? I hear Napster wants to charge a subscription fee now. If I pay money to Napster, and Napster pays the record companies for content, then I expect quality content with the "full" watermark. Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA

Any sort of subscription model for Napster will fail, both because of the lack of a quality guarantee, and because, if they aren't kicking some of that subscription back to people sharing their files online, people won't put their music up to trade. You can either sell music or trade music - you can't sell trading music.

-Cyclopatra-

emusic.com offers a (kind of) similar service here.

Betalounge has some good electronic music... and I think emusic has some free, legal MP3's as well.

"Legal" MP3 sites have some distinct benefits over pirated MP3s, too:

• Guaranteed quality: If any file you d/l from EMusic is corrupted or encoded at less than 128Kpbs, they'll replace it
• Guaranteed speed: It takes me about 3-5 mins to d/l a full album from EMusic with my cable modem. While I can sometimes get that speed off Napster, it's not consistent (duh)
• No trolls claiming to have the new U2 album when all they have is a bunch of Barry Manilow songs renamed to the track titles of the U2 album
• The songs I buy are always there to re-download. If I accidentally rm -rf * my MP3 directory, I don't have to go roaming thru Napster again, hoping that someone is online who has those songs

Other bands that are going this route include Primus, who post tons of live shows on their site (mostly from tapes that fans send in). Prince is getting into the act. They Might Be Giants has songs at their site, as well as plenty of downloads at Emusic.com. They must be doing well with it since they keep releasing new stuff there (and their the number one act on the site... I guess the technology and their fanbase is a good mix).

Yes, record companies are just starting to feel the hurt. And it isn't because of anything illegal going on.

-S

Also it's supported by a major online music provider e-Music.com so I think it actually has a chance of sticking arount.

subsolar

Its designed to completely supercede CDDB by providing a free and open database for information without the cumbersome album model and cumbersome license agreements. Its being sponsored by Emusic.com and Relatable.com.

The project leader is Robert Kaye. He's currently at Burning Man so he's not here to defend himself.

Jacob Everist
jeverist@fairtunes.com

Its designed to completely supercede CDDB by providing a free and open database for information without the cumbersome album model and cumbersome license agreements. Its being sponsored by Emusic.com and Relatable.com.

The project leader is Robert Kaye. He's currently at Burning Man so he's not here to defend himself.

Jacob Everist
jeverist@fairtunes.com

The more I think about it, the more I am bothered by what Napster has been doing. It's kind of bizarre because I understand and agree that it does help increase CD sales through exposure, etc.

It seems to me that others are beginning to feel the same way; I've already read several posts by users who have taken up with legitimate sources (emusic, for example) to ease their increasingly guilty consciences.
Anybody else beginning to feal this way?

Emusic.com does exactly this - $1 per track (less if you buy a whole album at once), and half goes to the artist. Selection is mostly limited to independant artists, but there's some major-label content there (albeit usually just older stuff)

I look at Jon Katz articles posted here as trial runs for articles that are going to appear in less technical publications, like maybe Rolling Stone. By putting them here, he gets technical people to look at the article and help him clean up the technical flaws.

I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but to me it sounds like you're bang on, Phil. Slashdot is Katz' unpaid coterie of technical editors, all he has to do is ignore some verbal abuse every week and he gets his article looked at by a number of technical professionals.

Getting to the article itself, obtaining music is not a "right" of anyone. Just because people have been doing it for a while doesn't mean it's a right. Tradition, okay, but right? Somehow I think "getting music free" shouldn't be anywhere near "free speech", "due process", or "jury of peers".

Also, Katz' may want to point out that there already are sites which sell songs for a buck or so, with payments split between the label/artists and the sites. The business model is out there. It's not making money yet (in large part due to Napster & similar) but everybody should show these sites support.

e-Music is the one I use. 20 bucks for a month of no limit music leeching, plus I know that the artists are still getting something. Not all the labels/bands that I'd like, but a fair number. Do a search and find one that works for you.

Kwil

I've been downloading so much I think I may single-handedly get emusic to reconsider the program ;)

Seriously subscription services are the way to go... I get to pay the artists while retaining the freedom to sample music at will without watching my budget... Emusic also sells by the track (99 cents) but, shit I'd owe them about $1500 right now if I paid that way!

I highly recommend going to emusic and browsing around a little... in my case it took about 5 minutes to decide they had enough to justify $20 (you only get the 9.99 price if you commit for 1 year... if you commit for 3 months the price is $15). Sure it's one of those lame auto-renew unless you cancel it deals... but they are very upfront about it and have cancel button right at the top of the page when you log in.

Someone's going to think I work for them but I'm just a VERY satisfied consumer who can't quite get over the wierd feeling of getting MP3's legally :)

TMBG has gone out of their way to make their MP3 hugging fans happy. They created Dial-A-Song, which plays their music (as goofy as it is, check it out, Flash required): Dial-A-Song

They even went so far as to produce an album completely on-line that can be purchased for like $7/$8 called Long Tall Weekend

I think credit should be given where credit is due. Instead of crying like a large majority of their musical counterparts, they actually went out and did something that both sides could agree to, which earned them my admiration and respect as musicians and as human being.

You mean like Emusic?
Of course, they also sell whole albums for $9, but they also sell on the song-by-song basis. They Might Be Giants have gotten into the sale of mp3's rather heavily thanks to Emusic. These places are out there, it's just that they're not as popular as Napster due to issues of price. (it's cheaper than CD's, but more expensive than free)

I see a lot of (justified) bitching on Slashdot about people who just don't get it but hardly any support for the people who do get it.

So I'd like to throw a link out to the people at emusic who do get it. Music by well known artists, at a reasonable price, in the lovely non-proprietary mp3 format. These guys rock and deserve our support. Come on Slashdotters, put your money where your mouth is!

I just put a couple MP3's up, and forgot about 'em. Last week, I got a fan letter.

I think your statements shows how weak his point about young artists is. I don't doubt that there was only 1 non-label artist download on Napster in 48 hours, because Napster is not a good forum for finding artists you haven't heard of. Try mp3.com, instead.

But his point was that young artists need record labels in order to be heard. This is so wrong. What are your chances of getting signed by a record label? From your comments, I would bet you would agree they are slim. But by circumventing classic (archaic) record labels you got heard, which is more than any record label would have done for you.

So he is wrong to think that classic labels are needed by young artists. And he said himself that as soon as they get out from under their currect contract with a record label, that they will be looking at internet distribution ideas. This obviously spells doom for classic labels.

Other than that point, however, I think he was surprisingly articulate and I can certainly understand his position. Whether or not trading music should be illegal, it currently is, and by law, Metallica should be able to seek some kind of relief. Whether or not what Napster as a company is doing is illegal or not remains to be seen...

BTW, I kept referring to 'classic' record labels, because places like mp3.com and labels like GoodNoise "get it", and fulfill some of the roles of record labels that are still needed.

So tell me, how does a band suing because they think they deserve to be paid for their (heh heh) art "put the big chill on free software?" Free software and open source are about VOLUNTARY cooperation, not piracy. Honestly. This article did make some pretty good points -- particularly "Ownership of ideas is no longer a simple, black-or-white issue," which you seem to steamroll over in your vast generalizations of big evil Metallica versus the good, free Internet, and the geeks who run it who've come to see their free music as an integral part of their lives. Hey, I stole a car, but the more I started using it the more it became an integral part of my life. I get to keep it, right? (Flawed analogy, I know. My stealing a car denies someone out there a car. No one's losing their Metallica because of me, since it's a copy.)

Don't get me wrong, I hate the music industry. I think it for the most part stomps on creativity, and (unless they happen to fit the flavor of the month in popular music) talented musicians tend to fall by the wayside. I also resent paying fifteen dollars for a CD that I know costs about two cents to produce, and that the artist is getting, easily, a dollar out of my purchase. Fifteen dollars of attractive packaging? I kinda doubt it. Remember those false promises of how real soon, CDs would be cheaper than tapes? They are -- for the music industry.

So why not touch on those areas, where the industry actually is screwing people over? Metallica is welcome to sue over their pseudo-heavy-metal crap -- they're suing the wrong people, and I think if the people they're suing have decent lawyers, the courts will agree with that. I don't find the Metallica suit to be very important. Remember, you don't have a really strong right to your university's bandwidth, either. It's theirs entirely, and frankly, if Lars Ulrich and a squad of CIA cyber ninjas kicked down my door and threatened to kill me because my students were using their Internet link to grab illegal music, I think I'd "fold" too. That bandwidth is for education in any case.

The real issue here is that the music industry is finding itself obsolete, and rather than adapt, they're attempting to plug the holes in their ship -- which isn't even close to sinking, as $15 billion in profits shows. Their loss. What ought to happen -- to your credit, you did spend about half a sentence on this -- is we ought to support the current models out there for MP3s you can pay fifty cents a pop to download -- eMusic perhaps? Please don't make this out to be a big struggle for open source software ideals. MP3 hoarding and open source hacking are two different mindsets, with some similarities.

And when it comes to "intellectual property," remember there is a huge difference between ideas -- patent #THX-1138 on Amazon affiliates or some such bosh -- and creative works-- Sir Gluffaron goes on a heroic quest to save the music industry. If an artist thinks I should pay just to see their creative work, they have a right to it -- ideas are a different thing altogether, as it can hurt technology greatly to have one big entity control an entire concept, like one-click shopping. Metallica charging for Master of Puppets is a bit less harmful.

Let me wrap this up here (thank god!): Malice or stupidity? I think it's the latter. Right now, suing people over MP3s probably costs a band much more than they lose to MP3s. A lot of them are clueless about this whole Internet thing. If we educate people on what's really going on here -- namely, we've finally found the Holy Grail of digital music distribution and no way to charge for it -- we can work out a solution. Hell, there are already some out there, it's just a matter of supporting them.

You mean like Emusic.com? $0.99 per track for some major acts. $8.99 or so for entire albums.

LetterJ

You download MP3s for $9/album and they split the revenues 50/50 (with the artist, I think/hope)

Sounds like a sane businessmodel to a) have MP3s as a medium/format and b) make money off of it. Ivo

There are plenty of places to get hosted besides mp3.com. I almost started a service myself, but didn't have the bandwidth to do so, or the resources to ship band CDs. However, there are lots of places like mp3.com which will host your music and some will sell cds.

CD Now is starting a program much like mp3.com set to open shortly.
CDuctive hosts indie artists.
eMusic may be able to help you, but they're pretty big.
Live365 will host 365mb worth of mp3s (in 56kbps encoding) and stream them 24/7 for you. Who says it can't be your own stuff..
Cruch Music is for British dance/techno musicians
Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) will definetly sign you, for a slight fee, but they can sell your music per track.
MusicMatch might sign you
WorldWideBands for those musicians around the globe.

For more info, check out a backissue of WIRED magazine, entitled "I Want My MP3". Right now it's a musicians market on the net.

No wonder Real so willingly gives away Real JukeBox in promotions like EMusic's "Buy $50 of MP3s and get a free portable mp3 player and secret behavior watcher" deal.

No wonder Real so willingly gives away Real JukeBox in promotions like EMusic's "Buy $50 of MP3s and get a free portable mp3 player and secret behavior watcher" deal.

Check out the album, Long Tall Weekend, and radio station at:

TMBG on emusic.com

Check out the album, Long Tall Weekend, and radio station at:

TMBG on emusic.com

I wrote this email to the contact listed on the press release. Hopefully someone important will read it, but probably not.

Hi, I am writing to you in response to a press release from David Bowie's official website at this address on August 30th. The Outside Org website is listed to obtain more information at the end of the release and on David Bowie's page on Outside Org, this email address is listed as the contact. Forgive me if I am directing this to the wrong place and I would appreciate it if you could forward to the right person.

While I certainly believe that digitally downloaded music is the far, if not near, future of music, I am disappointed with David Bowie's (and/or his record label's) decision to release his album in only Liquid Audio and MS Audio, encoded with SDMI. I, along with many other consumers, would have preferred the open and flexible MP3 standard, which started this digital music revolution. Because anyone is free to write an MP3 player and anyone is free to write an MP3 encoder (as long as they do not use a patented algorithm) without paying licensing fees, there is a much wider selection of MP3 players for a wide variety of computer systems. Personally, I use the open source Linux operating system, for which I believe there is no Liquid Audio or MS Audio player. A quick search on the de facto website to get Linux software (Freshmeat), reveals no matches for "SDMI" or "Liquid Audio" (I also looked at Liquid Audio's official site which only has players for Windows and Macintosh), while almost 100 matches for "MP3". This includes MP3 players, encoders, and graphical frontends which make it simple for people to create MP3's from their own purchased CDs. Without a doubt, an MP3 release would enable many more people on different hardware to have access to David Bowie's music. Not only is it wrong to force people to deal with one or two companies (in this case Microsoft and Liquid Audio) as the sole source for a certain format, it is also bad business. While the technically superior Betamax was held tight by Sony, the open VHS standard won the consumer war. I expect that formats such as Liquid Audio and MS Audio (and maybe even SDMI, though it is open) will fail in the same way.

There is a concern growing in the traditional record industry that downloadable music is more subject to piracy than normal purchased CD's and that a secure, encrypted standard that only allows play only on one device is necessary for commercially released music. This is wrong for, at least, two reasons. First, most of the music available illegally in MP3 format was not originally downloaded from a website. It was originally purchased on a CD and then encrypted to MP3 and put on the internet. There is no way to stop this from happening. If you release your album on a CD and it is popular, it is subject to being encrypted into MP3 and put onto the internet. In fact, if you ever intend for music to be listened to, then it will always be technically possible to copy it. Secondly, as fast as new "secure" formats are being created, they are being unsecured. Read this article about Microsoft's WMA format being cracked for evidence of this.

While there will always be some people who insist on pirating music, the majority of consumers simply don't have the time for it. It usually takes more than $15 worth of effort to find a CD that you would pay $15 for in MP3 format illegally on the web, especially if you want a certain CD in particular. When given the choice between affordable, easy-to-use, downloadable music in a popular format from reputable companies and illegal, hard-to-find from who-knows-where, _most_ consumers will pick the former. By using non-open standards to release digital music, such as Liquid Audio and MS Audio, and using encryption such as SDMI, you are simply making it harder for consumers to get and enjoy legal music.

There are also some interesting "facts" about David Bowie's involvement with digital music and how he is the "first" to do this and the "first" to do that. He is most certainly _not_ the first major recording artist to release an entire album online (some have even made some albums available _only_ online). Check out Emusic for this. Some of the more notable artists are Frank Black (former lead singer of the Pixies and a guest at Bowie's 50th birthday bash, where he performed with Bowie on stage at Madison Square Garden) and They Might Be Giants. But press hype is what it is. I suppose I should expect it.

Despite of this, I am a very big fan of David Bowie. I will buy his new album, though not online, because I couldn't listen to it even if I did. I will wait for the CD and encode it myself into MP3 format so that I can listen to it through my computer and on a portable MP3 player. I hope that in the future he will realize the demands of market and use an open standard that is available to everyone.

However, it seems to me as OSCAR streches that line.
It is made specificly to copy other artists work.
The reason is that it is devided into subdirectories as CDs.
Normally non copyrighted material does not come in CDs, rather it comes as seperate mp3 files.
This is because there is no need to sell it, thus usualy it is no contained in normal media.
(but rather on mp3s, and unsorted tape cassettes).

I think it is wrong to make such a device for the purpose of pirating copyrighter material,
which is the clear purpose of this device.
(that may be the purpose of RIO as well, but it's not "specificly designed for pirated music").

Mmmm, quality crack.

Certainly, if it's organized by album, it must be pirated. And certainly, if it's just a bunch of random songs, it must not be pirated.

So I guess the gigs of MP3s available on college campus networks are completely legal, since there are almost never complete albums, just random tracks.

And I suppose I must be delusional, thinking that I just bought the new They Might Be Giants album from emusic.com for $9, and thinking that I'll buy more stuff from them in the future. Emusic.com must really be a front for professional music pirates, since they distribute whole albums.

Guess what?

Just to spite you, I'll organize the MP3 albums that I have bought in the format /artist/album/song

What a pirate I am!

You may have seen the story posted several months ago about the band They Might Be Giants releasing an album in MP3 format only. This release, Long Tall Weekend, will finally be available tonight at EMusic (formerly GoodNoise). Apparently, they've decided to make an event out of it, with a web chat and a live-broadcast concert. TMBG is one of my favorite bands, and I want to support them, but I also want to support the idea that people will pay a reasonable price for good digital music, even if it isn't copy protected.

You may have seen the story posted several months ago about the band They Might Be Giants releasing an album in MP3 format only. This release, Long Tall Weekend, will finally be available tonight at EMusic (formerly GoodNoise). Apparently, they've decided to make an event out of it, with a web chat and a live-broadcast concert. TMBG is one of my favorite bands, and I want to support them, but I also want to support the idea that people will pay a reasonable price for good digital music, even if it isn't copy protected.

There's no link from the article, but it's talking about this .

The laws were put in place for the musicians. If I'm a professional songwriter, I'd like to be paid for my work. Without the copyright laws, I don't get paid, and I end up flipping burgers for a living. If I'm a musician, I'd like to at least choose whether or not to get a cut of the money that others make from my work. If a musician wants to give away CDs but charge for radio play (a bad idea, IMO), they should be allowed to try. Some people seem to be proposing that all music be free, regardless of the wishes of the author or performer. This seems shortsighted to me.

As I see it, these are the major problems with the current situation:

1. Most musicians don't want to deal with business crap, and the record companies offer a "package deal": we take care of everything, in exchange for most of your profits.
2. When you're busting your ass playing dive bars for gas money, an advance of several thousand dollars sounds really, really good, even if the per-album profit is disgustingly small.
3. While there are indie labels that treat bands with more respect, they don't have the international reach of the major labels, and $.50 each on 10,000 records is still more money than $5 each on 100 records.

Like anyone else with a fat net feed, I could get this stuff for free, but I don't. There's a lot of music out there that I'd really like to have, but if the only legal way to get it is to buy the CD, I buy it or do without. The musicians deserve a cut of my money, in whatever method they choose (traditional CD sales, pay-per-listen, or mp3 sales). If I don't like it, I don't listen.