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The problem is in fact that however you do it, the costs of making the money transaction in a reasonable reliable way (and Paypal is an example of the contrary) is still so expensive it just isn't doable. I think it is the incredible conservativeism of banks that are the problem.

But I agree with your main thesis: That we need some way to get the money directly to the artists. But the problem is that we, hackers, need to design and implement the system on our own. We can't expect any help from financial institutions, from current distributors, and only from very few artists.

And I don't think a conventional website will cut it. I think it is important that every player (or browser, or whatever), keeps track of what you like for you, and then now and then presents you with a suggestion of what you should pay. Then, the costs of actually paying must be small, which it isn't today (getting any small amount from the US to Norway through the banking system costs about $40....).

My idea would be to have a website set up where you could "donate" any amount you wished to any band/artist you wished. The website would take the donations and cut a check to the artist on a regular basis.

Already done.

Pay up.

Unfortunately, this means not listening to some of my favorite bands anymore...

There's always the option of buying used CDs, where the label (and unfortunately the artist, but there are other ways of compensating them, such as merchandise and concerts and fairness).

Just a thought, for those who really enjoy artists who happen to be slaves to the big labels...

Once a system is in place to pay money to artists directly, I'll put some money in towards the artists I like. Until then, I ain't paying squat

Time to put your money where your mouth is?

A fair question. Answer: http://www.fairtunes.com/

Aside from the actual music, there are the studio people.
Bands pay for their studio time to produce the album. And they pay a lot for it. The "studio people" got their money already.

The cover art came from somewhere, and that person should be compensated.
If I download the MP3 for a song, why exactly should I pay for cover art?

There is a way to do this. Check out these guys. They collect donations for musicians, and then pass it on.

FairTunes is what you're talking about.

First step, kazaalite.com

Then just make sure you go to fairtunes and donate directly to the artists who created the music you're listening to.

Now we can get the music and pay the artists directly, without needing a middleman. We win - pay $4-5 for a CD. The artists win - they get $3 from the CD instead of little or nothing, as well as more people listening to their music and hence coming to their gigs (where most make their money).

But RIAA? Oh, you lose. We don't need you anymore.

Bandwidth: the asymmetric nature of most home-based high-bandwith networking options is intended to make it easier for us to be consumers rather than producers of digital content. This is especially bad because it quite litereally makes it harder for indepenedent voices to be heard.

However, many of the high bandwidth providers, AOLTW for one, are also content providers, and are perfectly happy to keep the bandwidth deck stacked against independents.

Tip jars: Don't work. In the context of discussing P2P networks, the concept of tipping the artists often comes up. People don't part with their cash voluntarily. That goes for software, and it goes for music. Sure some people do, some times, but the practical percentage is so small as to be negligable.

Fairtunes is/was the leading centralized tip jar, founded by Slashdot regular Matt Goyer, now sold to Musiclink. It got lots of great press and feedback. Go there and search for tips to your favorite artist.

Personally, I think of myself (an independent programmer) as not entirely different from a independent musician. I tried for years to rely on a tip jar, but despite having tens of thousands of daily users it never paid for more than coffee.

Potential: In any case, the new infrstructures bring huge potential for positive change, but in my opinion that infrstructure also needs to do much better job of getting money to change hands, in order to garner real power, and tip jars won't cut it.

Try fairtunes. I believe the founders are no longer involved, but the organization is still up and running.

Visit Music Link and send money directly to the artist.

Every time this subject is raised, people holler about cutting out the middle man and sending money direct to the artists through FairTunes or whatever.

Tiny point: most artists signed up to the Big 5 labels have no rights to the music. They either do it as work for hire (in which case they never owned it), or they explicitely agree to sell the rights to a publisher. And that's actual artists, let alone miming meat puppets like Ms Spears who are technically committing breach of copyright if they so much as hum "their" music without prior written consent from their label.

Now, I'm not saying that's right (it's not), but artists have a choice. They can choose to self publish. And those artists deserve support. But most artists choose to take what looks like the easy, lucrative route, let a publisher take the big risk to pay up front to record and promote their music, in return for a smaller reward. And sure, a lot of them get screwed, but they're (mostly) adults, and nobody's making them sign up with the Big 5. I'm not entirely clear on why we should be rewarding them for that... although I'm quite happy with punishing the Big 5 labels for their cartel abuse of the market.

Right now, my only realistic approach to buy used CD's. Unfortunately, I feel bad because I really would like to support the artists out there. If there are any artists reading this article now, please... provide me with a way to pay you directly. I'll pay double what your royalty from a CD would be. At this point, I don't care about having MP3's legitimately anymore, but I do care about making sure the artists have incentive to keep doing their work.

I'm not an artist, but try fairtunes.com.
You get to support the artists directly, through donations sent to them. Fairtunes will hunt down the artist for you and pay them your donation.

// Begin beating dead horse
I find zero incentive to purchase CDs for a few reasons (most obvious first):

1.) Why spend money on something you can get for free? "Because I want to support my favorite artist/band" Well you sure as hell aren't doing it by purchasing their CD. We all know by now that the artist makes around a dollar or less from each CD purchase.

2.) Wahh, I want the album art -- almost always available in high quality on various CD cover & insert scan sites, and nice quality printers are cheap these days too.

3.) CD audio is a dying technology. Not to get all the audiophiles on my case here (most of which would probably argue that CD quality sucks to start with), but a lot of people don't even care for CDs anymore. A lot of people just turn their CDs into MP3s as soon as they get them. A lot of people prefer to simply download the album in a format that they can put on their portable players easily, in their own mix preference, without leaving their seat instead of making a special trip to a store to buy a special round disc that takes up space, or order one and wait for it to arrive, then get frustrated trying to get the plastic off of it. To hell with CDs.

4.) You're telling me that I'm supposed to go pay money for this album on a CD that comes out finally today in the real world, when I downloaded it 2-3 months ago and am tired/bored of it by now!? Yeah right.

Wasn't this whole thing supposed to be to overthrow the greedy record industry!? The digital music revolution, remember? Not "Yes RIAA, we'll buy more tangible shiny discs if you just let us keep sharing our copies of them. Now leave us alone and continue abusing your artists." I don't think it's about being cheap, I think it's about convenience, and about NOT giving more money to fat guys that sit at atop skyscrapers in suits smoking cigars that don't know the first thing about music.

I still say you're better off downloading the album and if you really like it, give the artist/band $5 at fairtunes.com

I have seen a few posts where people continue to insist that downloading a MP3 is stealing. Let's look at this from the proper perspective, shall we?

First of all, you're not stealing anything. When you download an MP3, you're transfering electrons from one source to another (and they are eventually recycled). Electrons. Bits. A CD is a thing that you can hold, touch, whatever. It costs money to produce copies of a work on CD, but nothing to send it over the Net (except bandwidth costs). If anyone is losing money, it's the RIAA and ONLY the RIAA consortium. You do not hurt the artists. In fact, you can *really* help the artists out with online donation. Every time you download an MP3, give the arist 100% of the profits instead of the 0.01% that the RIAA gives them. This is the best way to weaken the RIAA because it shows artists they they do not need a big record label to get their music sold. All they need is a cheap computer and an Internet connection.

What the RIAA is pissed off about is that this technique which some call "stealing" gives power back to the artists. Several artists have attempted to distribute music via MP3, but the RIAA has smacked them down for doing so. The RIAA is pissed because they hate these so-called "theives" because their business model is becoming outdated. To combat that, they want to make the government freeze-frame innovation.

Wake up. This greedy group of companies are the real theives. They seize ownership of the work of artists, and then pay them shit for it. Let's fight those bastards by downloading MP3's like crazy, and then giving the artists the money directly. Simple! It's cheaper for you, and more profitable for the musicians! What more do you want?

You're not stealing anything. When you download an MP3, you're transfering electrons from one source to another (and they are eventually recycled). Electrons. Bits. A CD is a thing that you can hold, touch, whatever. It costs money to produce copies of a work on CD, but nothing to send it over the Net (except bandwidth costs). If anyone is losing money, it's the RIAA and ONLY the RIAA consortium. You do not hurt the artists. In fact, you can *really* help the artists out with online donation. Every time you download an MP3, give the arist 100% of the profits instead of the 0.01% that the RIAA gives them.

What the RIAA is pissed off about is that this technique which you call "stealing" gives power back to the artists. Several artists have attempted to distribute music via MP3, but the RIAA has smacked them down for doing so. The RIAA is pissed because they hate these so-called "theives", they're pissed because their business model is becoming outdated. To combat that, they want to make the government freeze-frame innovation.

Wake up. This greedy group of companies are the real theives. They seize ownership of the work of artists, and then pay them shit for it. Let's fight those bastards by downloading MP3's like crazy, and then giving the artists the money directly. Simple! It's cheaper for you, and more profitable for the musicians! What more do you want?

I guess if I really wanted to be honest, I'd send the recording company a check for the value of the album I'd downloaded -- but chances are that they'd then prosecute me for piracy -- even though I had offered to pay anyway.

Why send the recording company a check? They didn't press a CD for you. They didn't spend money on packaging for you. They didn't spend money shipping product to you, or paying for a salesman to smooze your record store. Don't worry about those creeps. They had their big lick at the trough.

Send the artist money. Here is an outfit that does that for you. (I have no association with fairtunes.com, except I saw a link to them here on slashdot a couple of months ago, and thought it was a good idea.)

The artists get what, 5% or 10% or less of the retail price you pay? According to the fairtunes FAQ, the artists typically get all kinds of things, like the cost of producing their CDs charged back against their royalties, so they get more like 2% of the retail price.

They cost too much, especially thinking of how much cd media costs, and all this copy protection talk is pretty tiresome. I always go to Cheap CD's to find the track listing and some sound samples, then go to Audiogalaxy if it sounds interesting, so I can listen to all the songs before I decide if I want to purchase it. I hate paying for filler material. I want songs that were made because the artist wanted to make it and put some heart into it, not something they had to cook up to finish the album. I'm threw with fattening up record execs just by doing(IMHO) the right thing and purchasing cd's.

I think the folks at Fairtunes have the right idea. Check out this link I got from their faq to see how much artists actually get from these cd sales.

Your wish is granted: fairtunes

Well, maybe... or perhaps we need to redefine what "ripping off" means wrt "intellectual property".

I assert that the advent of cheap PCs on the the Internet changes what "natural rights" people ought to have. I believe that rights can and sometimes should change in response to changes in technology -- the Internet's great gift to humanity is that it makes data sharing as easy as speaking; that advantage outweighs the content producer's disadvantage of having to find a new business model to adapt.

Specifically, people ought to be able to copy any data they want at any time, as long as they are not benefitting commercially from that copying. As for the artists, I think systems like OpenCulture or FairTunes may be the best answer to their problems.

Use Fairtunes to compensate artists.

These Fairtunes guys look like they are really trying do the right thing, with a lot of work, but not much (without any?) compensation for themselves.

If I find a song (e.g. via mp3.com) which I really like, I donate a few dollars to the artist. I encourage everyone to do the same.

Yes there is, its called Fairtunes

read the courtney love salon.com article. I know i've posted it before on this thread, but here it is again. mod me down if you want but dude read this and you might change your mind. use fairtunes.com. don't worry about it any more.

What happens if the Big media collapses (i know, i know, just bare with me) and you no longer have Big media paying artists to produce. How Are You Going to Pay Them, because they will need to be paid, if just to eat?

My guess is, since "making a digital copy costs almost nothing" they will *gasp* make digital copies and license music out that way. Heaven forbid the artists actually use technology. Oh wait, most of them already do.

Our ideas that We have a Right to listen or see anything, may change.
Huh? Who the hell has that idea now?

I think what may happen is that You and I are going to very IP ...
Uhh.. what?

And what You and I are going to pay for is access to what this Mind (the artist) creates.
How is that different than it is now?

Mod Totals: -1 Clueless, -1 Nonsensical, -1 Seems to be karma whoring by using a lot of buzzwords and not making much sense in relation to the article nor reality.

No, really, how many people read it and actually analysed what it said?

• What's remarkable about the new Napster is how similar it feels to the old one. [...] Napster seems to be largely bug-free [...] The music player built into the software seems good enough

Uh, why should it be remarkable that the pay service should be no worse than the old free one, or any of the many free alternatives now?

The author then contradicts herself by going on to list the negatives, some of which are old, some are clearly New and De-Improved:

• broken tracks, cancelled transfers
• a complete inability to stream or preview tracks
• Everything's all bunched together in various sub-windows and it's all a bit confusing
• The option to burn songs to CD or move them to a portable player is noticeably absent...
• ...As is any option to search for MP3 files alone
• It isn't possible to look for tracks under a particular genre
• it's having trouble recognizing some of the official .nap files
• Napster [doesn't] recognise the files in my MP3 music collection

And of course, the whole damn point of the thing:

• Content-wise, there's next to nothing

So, we're saying that it works fairly well, only it doesn't really, but that's to be expected because it's all new technology. But it doesn't do anything. It neither shares nor find MP3's or even .NAP's.

The fact that there's anything positive in this (fairly literate) review makes me think that it's been written by a shill. Note:

• that rabid 'pirate as much as you can' atmosphere (which was scary but fun) has disappeared

Perhaps in the early days, but what Napster really achieved was to change attitudes. Napster made it so easy to copy files that it didn't seem wrong to most people. Remember that /. is one of the few places where you'll see people even debating the legality and morality of it. Jane Sharer doesn't even consider it. If it's got a pretty, professional looking client, it must be OK, right? Otherwise The Authorities would put a stop to it, surely.

If the reviewer isn't a shill, she's someone who doesn't realise that a beta should be reviewed as though it is a release candidate, without making allowances for basic lack of functionality (sharing files!) that should have been caught in alpha. One glance at the Kazaa clients should clear that up right away. Filter and search by type, artist, content, sort by file size, bandwidth, download times, user rating, automatic multi-part download from multiple servers at once, pause and resume, search for more servers while you're downloading. My god, if New Napster launches looking like Old Napster, I might as well submit my search requests by snail mail on pieces of papyrus.

If this is the best that anyone has to say about new Napster, they might as well give up pouring more money into it and go buy some stock in manufacturers of blank CD's and flash media, because this is going to tempt nobody away from the Kazaa/Gnutella free-for-all, no matter how many "RIAA Approved!" stickers they slap on it.

Here's why Napster has no chance against Kazaa. I own a bought copy of "Dungeon Keeper 2". Last week, I fancied playing it, but the CD is hidden somewhere among my vast collection. It was - honest to god - easier for me to suck in a ripped version across Kazaa at 500kb/s than to stop what I was doing (developing software), move away from the desktop, find the CD, run the installer (as opposed to unzipping one file), and then have to swap it in and out of the drive simply because the developers assume I'm a thief until I prove otherwise. Is what I did illegal? Probably. Is it immoral? Hardly. Does it make sense? Absolutely!

The paradigm has shifted. It's all about ease of use and personal integrity. I actually do use Fairtunes, and I use it because it's easier than jumping through hoops to get crippled tracks from a label download service, or buying a CD at retail or waiting for one ordered online. Labels deliberately make it hard for us to get or use tracks, because they assume we're thieves, so they have to wrap it all up in (ahem) security. God damn it. If I am a thief, I'm going to rip their pathetic attempts at security right off, and all it'll do is piss me off and make me less inclined to play by their rules in the future. So screw them for their blind ignorance, and screw New Napster too, as it's no different.

A monitored, capped, clunky, hard to use, music-only, proprietary format service which assumes you're guilty until you prove otherwise and which you have to pay for is simply laughable.

Aside from the more scalable architecture offered by napster and fasttrack in comparison to gnutella they also had a major advantage in user/freeloader ratios.

I'd guess that 90% of napster users went with the default installations that allowed the client programs to scan their hard drives and automatically share all mp3s. Furthermore, I'd guess that a similar ration never had any siginificant cognition about the FT or napster clients continuing to run as background processes when they 'exited' the program.

Gnutella has a real reputation as a freeloaders network and it's not surprising. Many of the clients do not stay running when you close them (and even if something like LimeWire did, I'm loathe to have a huge chunk of memory taken up by a bloated JRE). Furthermore, a lot of the clients don't do a good job of making it extra work to *not* share your files. In the original gnutella client for windows as well as current incarnations of gtk-gnutella, you have to explicitly enter the config screen and tell the program which directories you want to share. For a lot of people with weak ethics or concepts of fair exchange that extra step is just enough to give them an excuse to be a leetch on the network.

It is intriguing to see what happens as more and more clients are punishing freeloaders in even the most rudimentary fashion. For instance, Limewire now has an option that will allow you to set preferences against those sharing less than a specific number of files. This in theory should encorage people to share their directories especially as the controls become more fine-grained and reward those sharing large collections/bandwidth with preferred access in exchange for offering their services to the network.

It's a little less cumbersome, if also a little less elegant and perfect, than the mojo nation system of a credit based economy. However, as in the curren tstate of most p2p, it is potentially missing the bigger picture by concentrating only on the health of the community qua community and ignoring the potential problems of freeloading within the scope of society. Namely, rewarding artists for their work.

P2P gains some respect if you accept the arguments that it encourages more CDs or concert tickets to be purchased, and thus greater rewards to the artists. This is no doubt true for many, however there are also plenty of people who haven't bought an album since they got broadband,a nd these people are gaining unfairly on the goodwill of thsoe who do have a sense of ethics on fair exchange with artists.

What I'd like to see is a similar system to the idea of giving preferential bandwidth to those who share that is integrated with sites like fairtunes. It seems possible that a p2p protocol could be developed or extended to check a user who is requesting a download for tokens representing 'tips' that they have made at fairtunes in exchange for the pleasure they have received for downloaded music. It would definitely add some overhead to the protocol to authenticate the tokens against a fairtunes server and/or public key, however offering perferential performance on the network would serve as a gentle pressure to encourage a more ethical, and arguably a more sustainable, system which artists would have less trepidation of participating in and may very well be able to earn reasonable incomes from if their music is enjoyed by enough people.

To adapt an apropos headline from another site:

Attention Universal: There is a Fat Lady at the door who wants to sing for you.

This is more gasping from a great giant that is slowly falling. It may take them years to do so, and they won't cease to exist when they fall apart, but the core of this industry is collapsing.

Why? Just my opinion. I and many of my friends are in a significant target demographic group for the music industry. But I bought my last cd more than a year and a half ago, with the sole exception of a $20 gift certificate I got from work. I don't see anyone at work under the age of 30 buying cds. I've spent somewhere between $500-800 on Xmas gifts for family and friends this year, and I have bought precisely -zero- music items. Why not? The question would be better posed as "why?" When there are so many avenues of free access to music on the internet, as well as ways to appease one's conscience, why would I or anyone else choose to buy a unit of music that is grossly overpriced, physically limited, contains material I don't want, and benefits the artist only minimally? And frankly, my friends and family don't want to get the damn things for Xmas.

Music cds are quickly approaching irrelevance. Most folks I know have some easy way of accessing MP3s. Even my Luddite relatives from central Washington get one of their friends to burn a cd full of mp3s and pop it into their dvd player. The receptionist at work (the one who opens all of the email trojans) gets her Tony Bennett fix from a friend in AZ who mails her a new recorded cd every month. And me? I vote with my dollars -- I'm spending my former-recorded-music budget on seeing live stuff locally.

Give it up, folks. The Fat Lady is already into the Imbroglio, and quickly approaching the Finale Ultimo.

Jon

OK, I'll take the bait.

People don't want easy accessible music; they want free music.

Of course we do. Who wouldn't want free stuff?

But there's more to it than that. A lot more.

First of all, we want to be able to hear the music in the first place. Have you tried listening to commercial radio lately? For how long? The simple fact is that if we want to hear something that's been mentioned by a friend (either in "real life" or online), we can't get it from the radio. Radio doesn't play anything that anyone would ever recommend to anyone else. It's simply a marketing arm of the record companies trying to increase sales of the Pop-Star-of-The-Month.

Let's say I tell you how much I loved Tori Amos's third album Boys For Pele. Are you going to rush to the store and buy it based on that recommendation? Probably not. You'll at least want to hear it for yourself first.

So what choices does that give you?

1. Turn on the local alternative radio station and wait for them to play Tori. Hah! The last time I heard anything I'd describe as "alternative" on the radio was about 5 years ago. There aren't any "alternative" format stations in Cleveland now. There's one station that plays Limp Bizkit rap/metal, but nothing that plays "adult alternative" like Tori or REM. Nothing.
2. Turn on MTV and wait for them to play Tori. A-HAHAHA! See above. And below.
3. Turn on M2. What M2? Where is it on my cable channel list? Oh yeah, it's not there. If MTV wanted me to hear music, they'd play some fucking music instead of "reality shows". They wouldn't have moved all the music to a different channel that nobody actually gets. They'd just play music on MTV, and then put all the crap TV on the other station. But that's not what they want to do -- they don't want to play music any more. They want to show crap, because they think crap generates more money for them. Maybe it does -- but it's sure as hell not my money that they're pulling in.
4. Find samples on CDNOW or some other online vendor. This is sometimes feasible, but your chances of getting a sample of decent length (e.g., a whole song) are pretty low. The samples also tend to be low quality recordings. But the worst problem here is that they tend to be shackled in one or more ways. They may require you to submit an email address so they can spam you. Or they may require you to turn on Javascript and cookies. Or they may disallow access from non-Microsoft web browsers. Or they may release samples only in Microsoft/Real media formats (Real Audio, WMA, etc.). So you can't play them on Linux, even if you can download them in the first place, which is problematic.
5. You could buy a CD, listen to it a few times, and then return it to the store. Most stores don't let you do this. And even if you did, you're costing the store money for your own convenience. It's basically dishonest, and real people will be hurt by your actions. That makes it wrong.
6. You could find a copy of the song on an independent promotional site (what you're calling "pirate") and download it and listen to it. The problem here is that you might not find the song, and you might not be able to get it quickly (independent music promoters tend to have low-bandwidth upstream Internet links, like cable modems) or reliably (cable modems, dial-up). The ripping or the encoding (or both) might be flawed, or low-quality.
7. You could find a friend in meatspace who has the CD, and ask him or her to let you borrow it, or to make a copy for you. This has the obvious drawback that it only works if you happen to know someone who has the CD.

Which of these have the greatest likelihood of letting you hear the music? Probably the last two. Which have the greatest likelihood of leading to a monetary transaction between you and the artist? Well, none of them, so let me rephrase. Which of them have the greatest chance of getting you to send money to the record company who, in theory, passes money on to the artist? Probably #5: if you buy a CD from the store, all you have to do to "make a purchase" is keep it instead of returning it. But #6 is also good: if you like that Ogg file you downloaded, you might decide to buy a CD.

You sure as hell aren't going to be enriching the artist or the record company if you follow any of the first 3 models. And #4 is potluck, and your odds have gotten worse over time. #7 will depend on whether you got a cassette copy from your friend, or a burned CD, or whether you just borrowed his CD with the intention of returning it. If you got a burned CD copy, you may just keep that instead of buying your own.

So by my reckoning, downloading "pirate" music is at least the second-best money-making promotional model there is (or possibly the best) for the type of music that isn't played on commercial radio and MTV.

And that's at least 99% of all the music in the world.

If you're going to pirate something, at least admit to yourself that you're ripping off someone, not a victimized consumer standing up his rights.

If you're going to troll slashdot users, at least admit to yourself that you're a tool of the record companies and their hired public relations psychologists. And that you're helping them rip off 99% of the musicians in the world by systematically destroying all but the 1% who achieve "Star" status and therefore simply die poor instead of flat broke.

If you'd rather help artists, then donate money directly to them, or buy CDs straight from the artists instead of through the record companies (for the artists who are able to do that).

Hillary Rosen says,

The question is whether they're [peer-to-peer networks] going to be used - whether they'll respect what artists create just like we in the recording business respect what the business sponsors and software developers in this audience create.

Are the works of artists valuable? The answer, in my view, is a resounding YES.

The language in the speech is emotive, as is to be expected. But the kiddie porn quote is surely beyond the pale,

The fact that I was invited means that someone out there knows that peer-to-peer technology is getting bad rap. ... The fact that it is also used as a transmitter of child pornography has not gone unnoticed by many federal and law enforcement agencies.

We also have the old chestnut of referring to illegal copying as theft. Repeatedly. This should be plain enough, but many people seem to have bought the lie. Illegal copying is just that. It may well be damaging to the creators of the material (which is probably wrong) as well as to the distributors (which is not necessarily wrong - people don't have a right to make a profit, remember!). What it is not though, is theft. Let alone piracy. The debate on intellectual property is muddied enough as it is, without resorting to misleading language.

I think the most poignant quote though is,

But as long as you're looking for whom piracy really hurts, ask the guitarist in the coffee shop, or the group scratching out a living touring in a beat-up van.

If you have an interest in the music industry and not yet read the Salon article linked above, you really ought. It's very educational.

PS: If you do want to support artists, there is always Fairtunes.

you can view a list of all the donations, some have messages to the artists, thanking them, or why they are sending the money.

Fairtunes.com

Fans: Fairtunes allows (music) fans to voluntarily send money, compensate or tip, any artist for their work.
Artists: Fairtunes empowers any artist to receive money online in the form of a voluntary payment. Start searching by using the box on the left or you can jump into the discussion on digital music and voluntary payments below.

what I Should have done, >> is not shut down napster. . cuz it was a very centralized type orginzation, that had many loya people that would have loved to pay 10.99 a moth for that service (and that just soungs), now>> we have lost control of the masses, all napsters "loyal" followers have fleed to other services which carry much more then songs.

Affter wollowing in the defet that I did not do that .. I would then realize that I should not make the same mistake again. and act quick in trying to set up a system where any p2p service would be forced to give me money at some point.

1) I would want to work with the file sharing services, perhaps set up something similar to what freenet clones have set up in relation to fairtunes, but naturaly charge more and force p2p people to use the standard or be legaly procecuted to the full extent of the law. you could make the sound files have some sort of propriatary encryption and include some videos with the file as to dellay the cracking of the file. . for a few weeks and it would be considered premium content, the content where you would make most of your money, then
also charge a failry high monthly fee for a all you can eat, advertise it as the best P2p network because it would be if it had the most users, . . and then just pay a percentage of the monthly subscription to the to copyright holders based on transactions, and swallow your pride in the sence that it is uncontrolable that certain files are going to be cirulating, the second you try to remove a file from the system is the second people stat jumping ship then you have no control and no control over your consumers would be horrible.

furthermore your service will not be popular if it does not provide the unlimiated access to every possible file that other service provide. By making thouse other services harder to maintain (making them illegal) and making sure your service has a good set of content .. or at least the apperance of such, you might stand a chance.

ofcousre even then .. we have problems, ownership of things is sooo built into our sociaty, the idea of owning something without paying for it and not physically steeling it/ taking it away from any praticular person, rather a big evial corrperation, is not considred a bad thing by many people. I mean I don't know. . when ever you really think about one of these thing you find that your doomed to info anarchy or a totalitarian state, which we know neither will happen.

• recent figures prove that file-sharing services actually generate sales and put more money in artists' pockets.

And there's the problem. If you're getting your music through KazaNapTella, and paying for it through FairTunes, where does that leave the corporate weasels at OmniGlobalMegaHyperLabel?

They don't care about the artists, they don't care about you or me. I honestly believe that they will buy as many politicians as it takes to ensure that the law keeps changing so that if you get music through any method other than by paying money to a big label, you will be made a criminal, and you will be threatened, harassed and denied access until you knuckle under.

Until then though, let's keep supporting FairTunes and highlighting that the "all sharing is piracy" argument is bunk.

Another way to do it is to accept voluntary contributions

If you decide you do give a damn about the artist, check out the FairTunes. There you can send money to the artist without any of it being siphoned off by a record label.

I think this is an excellent idea, and one of the best things about it is that we can do this, legally. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't fight the DMCA.)

How? When you're spending the your money on music, make sure you get it into the hands of real people (via Fairtunes, for example). There's loads of great stuff out there being created by individuals in their garages (or whatever). The kids at Assembly completely blow me away.

If you must listen to Brittany (ugh), tape it off the radio.

--Mike

there's no better way to say it than that.

There's been a huge shift in public attitude towards the music industry. More people are aware of how much artists are often ripped off by their own labels. More people want artists to get more money. More people are not happy with the music industry in it's present form. More people are buying and listening to more music.

There are people who are also abusing the power of mp3s, there are always people who abuse the system. But right now, there's not a lot of alternatives. There will be in the future. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow... but it's coming...

Until then, put some support into places like Fairtunes.com, they're one of (surely not the only) the stepping stones to the future.

Revolutions like this don't happen overnight, but when there's a market for something, eventually someone will pick up the ball and run with it...

And you want to bypass the RIAA's preferred subscription services & support the artists directly (good music isn't free) and voluntarily, then you want a system where you can tip artists; either directly with our currency (blatant plug!) or others, or just something like Fairtunes.

The problem I see is that plenty of people (I'm not singling you out, this is a general rant) spend a lot of time *saying* that they don't want to steal from artists, but folks don't seem to go out of their way -- even a little-bit -- to try to pay for the music that they get now for free, since they "haven't had to before." This is unfortunate (and it's a lousy excuse, IMO) but now there's no 'tipping culture' in online music. Obviously, I think that needs to change (preferably with a wide variety of payment choices). Perhaps someone more-eloquent than I can cause the change, I don't know.
JMR
(speaking only for myself, as always)

There is an article about it here, as well as his own words here.

I have started to use PayPal to send a few bucks to people who's freeware I use or who's causes I like. I keep about $20 in my PayPal account that I have generated from ebay sales of thinks like junk-to-me books or electronic bits, and occasionally send $5 to someone for GPL software or things like that.

I think that this model for content payment is workable, but maybe not at the corporate level.

Maybe I'll send fairtunes a few bucks...

Er...this will probably get me modded down (Score:-1, greedy) and e-gold isn't just a currency for micropayments, since big payments work better too....but there's a company with what's been called an "offbeat scheme" by the clue-impaired and "just a currency" by me, which has been in the black for more than a year, and has been around since 1996. From the looks of things, we're doing ok, despite very little hype. We store plenty of metal for our customers (of all sorts, in many nations) these days.

Of course, the filthy yellow metal occupies the most emotional spot on the periodic table (see some past replies to my rants) and so far major artists haven't yet set up tipjars, but I'm not giving up. Fairtunes has the right idea, if artists insist on someone else doing it for them, but I think that by using the internet artists should connect more-directly to fans. Some of them already do (I'm thinking of Ted Nugent and Todd Rundgren, among others). Scott Adams gets plenty of great ideas for Dilbert by reading his email, and the same is probably possible for songs.

I think the key is to make payments preferably-voluntary and small, and I think there's certainly space for more than one payment system and more than one currency-flavor. Of course, what do I know? I also think Slashdot-like sites should try to sell mod-points.
JMR

Speaking ONLY for me!

hello, this is reality calling. I like pink floyd. Who should I make the check out to? Roger? David? Or maybe I should send it to the funny farm, care of ol' pink.

• The company does not know you are boycotting their product.
• The company does not why you are boycotting their product.
• The public is not aware that you are boycotting a product and so cannot decide to boycott for the same reason. Likewise, you are only aware of a fraction of the products you might want to boycott if you knew the gory details.
• You (and the public) are often not aware of an good alternative product (good means a product that satisfies your requirements and hopefully competes directly in the market with the boycotted product)

You might want to check out Fairtunes, which is a free voluntary payment service: they contact artists (and others) and send them a cheque ("check" in American) when enough money has accumulated. There's no fee except the unavoidable percentage/transaction fee charged by the credit card companies.

I say "and others" because many non-musicians have received donations. Linus Torvalds is near the top of the list in terms of total payments.

why not use fairtunes?

projects like fairtunes could use your support.. They don't disturbute a lot of money, but it's exactly what you're looking for.

---

Where is the business plan for paying the artists anything for their hard work

Right here: www.fairtunes.com

Solution: fairtunes.com

The RIAA realized that they could make a lot of money if they could control the electronic distribution of music. Many hard working citizens already developed the technology making this possible, the RIAA was to late, but they have allot of money. Now the RIAA is using its big money to push the hard working Americans out of the way so they can take back what they never had.

Its really sick if you start to think about it. How much of that $16.99 you spent for that last CD you bought really goes to the artist? How much of that is going towards legal teams destroying the hard work and dreams of American citizens? I'm a big supporter of a voluntary contribution system such as www.fairtunes.com. At least you know your money is going.

Feel free to add your favorite kernel hacker and we'll be sure to get the money to them.

Matt.

Feel free to add your favorite kernel hacker and we'll be sure to get the money to them.

Matt.

Feel free to add your favorite kernel hacker and we'll be sure to get the money to them.

Matt.