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In an excellent recent analysis, "The Nuclear Illusion," Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh put the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant at 14 per kilowatt hour and that from a wind farm at 7 per kilowatt hour. This comparison includes the costs of fuel, capital, operations and maintenance, and transmission and distribution. It does not include the additional costs for nuclear of disposing of waste, insuring plants against an accident, and decommissioning the plants when they wear out. Given this huge gap, the so-called nuclear revival can succeed only by unloading these costs onto taxpayers. If all the costs of generating nuclear electricity are included in the price to consumers, nuclear power is dead in the water.

Personally, I like the podcasts.... they are teleconferences and cover a lot of information, all while on my morning walk!

The record companies should experiment with sponsoring free, legal download sites in good faith. These sites would feature:

1) works of expired copyright
2) works from amateurs, fledgling professionals, and "past market prime" professionals
3) promotional works from professional artists, including items such as concert tapes
4) promotional works from the record industry, which would compensate the artists for giving away certain material
5) works from professionals who believe in sharing everything
6) works from specialized pros (like many classical musicians) who couldn't make money from selling records anyway

That already happened (just a few examples):

1. http://www.trachtman.org/rollscans/RollListing.php
2. http://garageband.com/
3. http://3hive.com/
4. http://www.apple.com/itunes/freesingle
5. http://last.fm/
6. http://www.classiccat.net/

I listen to "free" internet radio stations (those which feature indie artists) and get the names of bands I like from there.

RadioTower
GarageBand
Live365

I found a company who used an image of one of my paintings in their brochure once and had to have them take it down because they didn't credit me. Didn't care about getting money just wanted the credit for my work.

And for all of those that like free music you should check out GarageBand.com. A lot of interesting music and most of it is licensed free to download. http://www.garageband.com/artist/dlanetaylor is where I keep the music I create at. There are thousands of songs on this site and a lot are worth listening to.

I use Garageband.com which is a poor (but still present) substitute for mp3.com back when it was good.

I also listen to many many many podcasts that highlight great artists and link to their websites every week. If you listen to the right shows, you can be guaranteed that the music comes from indy bands (As the RIAA music is illegal to play on a podcast without paying, which most podcasters can't afford as they do their shows for free).

Among the shows I listen to:
PMC Top 10
Accident Hash
Insomnia Radio
RubyFruit Radio
The Chillcast
XY Rocks
Eclectic Mix

And, my own show (which is currently on an unplanned hiatus, but I'll be starting it again soon)

The Good Music Show

http://www.garageband.com/
http://www.jamendo.com/
http://www.stage.fm/
http://magnatune.com/
http://www.soundclick.com/
http://www.myownmusic.de/

hand-picked from around 1000 at del.icio.us

Here, download my music. It is free!

GarageBand.com has a TON of great free music. Most allow download of the MP3 as well.

Garageband

As far as I am aware, what each of those lack (despite being useful, useable and successful, each, more or less), I think, is the big act/star power that a few bands the caliber of Radiohead would bring to such a venture.

Then it might be worth mentioning 10 Years is on Garageband.com. I don't recall their story, but I believe they won a Garageband contest to get a record deal. Though, I didn't know this until later... after I was hearing their music played on the local rock radio stations. The truth is actually exposure. Despite the public availability of Garageband (and other sites), the internet is a haystack that even if you know of a site, you still have to do a lot of digging to find your needle. It's just much easier (and probably a part of human nature) to take the path of least resistance and just turn the radio on and listen to what others think we want to listen too, which usually isn't bad, it's just not always very good.

Cheers,
Fozzy

As far as I am aware, what each of those lack (despite being useful, useable and successful, each, more or less), I think, is the big act/star power that a few bands the caliber of Radiohead would bring to such a venture.

Then it might be worth mentioning 10 Years is on Garageband.com. I don't recall their story, but I believe they won a Garageband contest to get a record deal. Though, I didn't know this until later... after I was hearing their music played on the local rock radio stations. The truth is actually exposure. Despite the public availability of Garageband (and other sites), the internet is a haystack that even if you know of a site, you still have to do a lot of digging to find your needle. It's just much easier (and probably a part of human nature) to take the path of least resistance and just turn the radio on and listen to what others think we want to listen too, which usually isn't bad, it's just not always very good.

Cheers,
Fozzy

you mean like cdbaby or more like Jamendo or DMusic and of course GarageBand?

I would not be surprised to see this develop to their logical conclusion where there are distribution sites that offer a range of services to artists to distribute their work but do not "own" the distribution or copyrights to those works.

I think Garage Band has been trying to do something like this for a while. My brothers band used it for a while and I know at least one band that made it big, but did so by going through a traditional record label and having only been discovered on the site.

It's a great site to find indie artists. I've heard some good stuff and some complete crap. In general, I enjoy it for what it's worth: something I won't hear on the radio.

Cheers,
Fozzy

It's probably more effective to buy non-RIAA music than to get free non-RIAA music. Somebody else making money really sends a message to the RIAA. Music closer to the mainstream might make the point hit home better.

Of course, the best music for you to consume is the music you like best. Music is kind of like food, though: Once you get used to organic vegan health food (ick!), you can't stomach greasy mass-produced stuff anymore. Well, I still like greasy mass-produced food, but I can't tolerate Metallica or Faith Hill. Now while I eat a cheeseburger, I listen to State Of Corruption or John Prine.

I don't buy RIAA-related music; if I want to hear some, I borrow the CD from the state library system.

Links for non-RIAA music:
http://www.riaaradar.com/ -- Look up a CD you want to buy and see if it's RIAA-affiliated
http://www.emusic.com/ -- Commercial music from non-RIAA labels, cheap, in DRM-free MP3s
http://garageband.com/
http://www.stage.fm/

It's easy to find indie country music that I like; loads of it gets played on Sirius Outlaw Country. Metal, OTOH, is a littel more difficult. So...anybody want to recommend some good indie hard rock / metal for someone who like Corrosion Of Conformity, Type O Negative, Black Sabbath, Monster Magnet, Tool, Anthrax, Rammstein, Megadeth, and Faith No More?

Elton John is going to be taking down the internet.

I have far more music right now than I would have without the internet - and not all of it is pirated. There are plenty of artists who distribute their music through digital channels and can do so for very little cost, and these artists, unlike Sir Elton, are not writing to sell or writing to the masses. They are writing about whatever they like, and often this comes out for the better. Not only that, but a wide range of genres appear - the constant onslaught of "R&B", rap and music which sounds the same as everything else becomes much more diluted when you venture to sites like http://www.jamendo.com/ and http://www.garageband.com/. Artists like Josh Woodward and Kray Van Kirk offer a refreshing change from what the mass market is doing, and they offer it for nothing - for the love of music. The internet has breathed new life into a dusty old motive beyond the record labels and the lawsuits, and if Elton John can't see this then he knows nothing about the internet.

And has Elton John looked at his download sales figures recently?

boycott the mafiaa bastards
creative commons music is fine, we don't need to be pushed around just to enjoy music!
http://www.garageband.com/
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
http://ccmixter.org/
http://www.last.fm/
http://www.myownmusic.de/

and a link collection (in german)
http://netzpolitik.org/ccwiki/index.php/CC-Musik

I'm a U.S. Marine.

The distinction between sailor, soldier, and Marine is important to us.

Just thought I'd chime in.

If you think 'music nowadays sucks', then you probably haven't really seen much new music. Either that, or you've already fossilized, and your music tastes are stuck in the past. Radio sucks. Get over it, and go out there to find the new places where you can find good music.

My favorite is eMusic. Songs without DRM (straight mp3), from tens of thousands of independant artists going it alone or with smaller labels. Many of them suck (Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap), but there's definitely some cool artists out there that you won't find on any radio, or even in many stores. At less than 25 cents per song (at their lowest and least-efficient plan) you really can't go wrong trying out various artists.

Another option is Garage Band, where you can download music for free, as long as you review the music so the artist can see what you liked or hated about it. I haven't looked at it much, but I bet there's a ton of cool artists, mixed in with all the idiots too... that's what reviews are for, and you can see the artists that everyone else liked.

Music isn't getting worse... the big distributers are. Fuck 'em. Do an end run around the major labels and ClearChannel, and look at places like eMusic and GarageBand for your new music. The major labels are just gonna have to deal with the fact that they no longer have an oligopoly anymore, and they're gonna have to deal with a (*gasp!*) value and price driven market like everyone else.

The Raven

I agree with you. I've been collecting a list of links to sources of non-RIAA music which I call Liberated Music. I've added garageband.com to it (I already had Creative Commons in there). Incredible the wealth of music that's out there once you liberate yourself from the monotony of the 4 big record companies.

not even videos are allowed as evidence in courts, how do they think "I saw a screenshot" could be allowed as evidence? allowing this as evidence in court would be dictatorship!

do it like the german chaos computer club and pirate party, BOYCOTT THE MUSIC INDUSTRY! LISTEN TO CREATIVE COMMONS MUSIC! it's great music and it's free and the damn music industry can't prosecute you for listening to it for free!

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Content_Curators
http://www.garageband.com/htdb/index.html

"If big labels lowered their CD prices, their sales would ramp up and more people would be interested in their artists shows. It's called Loss leader."

Record companies get 99% of their revenue from the sale of records, so selling at a loss is not an option. As it is, many record companies end up with net margins of less than 20% (I believe the Canadian recording industry as a whole barely hit 10% last year) so they don't have a lot of room to play with on pricing, either. This will be wholly misunderstood by those who don't get the difference between gross margin and net margin, but it is correct. However, things might be totally different in Brazil.

"Moreover, I refuse to see how can one music piracy is related to software piracy after all. When you need software, you can (mostly) always set for a free/open version. When you want music (aka culture), there is no such option."

Curse those greedy musicians for refusing to let their recordings be freely distributed!

Seriously, though, there are lots of options. That old standby, radio (both terrestrial and streaming) is still a viable choice. If you want free MP3s, there's legaltorrents, and mp3.com and garageband.com have free downloads. Those are just aggregators -- many indie and unsigned artists release tracks on their web sites or via the P2P networks. MySpace and a few of the social networking sites have lots of bands online that will allow you to stream or download their stuff. But, I understand that as a Brazilian, you might be required by law to only use Orkut.

If anybody's unsure as to why it's often easier to find good open source software than it is to find good free music, it's important to understand that it's typically easier on an order of magnatude to contribute to an open source project than it is to rent a studio (or build your own), engineer and produce your own music. I've contributed to open source projects just by using my $500 Mac Mini and a few hours of my time. By comparison, a decent studio and engineer might cost you $500 a day. However, this fact does not make music piracy "different" than software piracy. We should respect others' rights, whether their tool of choice is a QWERTY keyboard or a Roland keyboard.

A frequent various music sites like Garageband and others. Whilst they do have their share of crap, there are also some good songs (and at times some fricking amazing ones) that I've found on there. In fact, some of my favorite songs are "Creative Commons" licensed, which - depending on the CC license - allows (and even encourages) copying, distribution, posting it on your webpage, or various use, personal and sometimes even commercial (though you must give credit to the artist).

I'm particularly fond of the CC-licensed stuff because I can pull up somebody's appropriately licensed song, and mix it with some homemade video clips or whatever, and post them online (with credit to the artist, like a "song by: XXXX" caption subtitle at the beginning) without the risk of getting sued.

Every time I hear about tickets to washed-up old men like the Eagles or Bob Dylan going for hundreds or thousands of dollars, it makes me cringe. In my town, at least, there are thousands of local musicians who struggle to make a living, sometimes working three or four day jobs to support their music. Yes, the quality can be hit-or-miss, but you'd be surprised how many talented local artists are out there if you go looking for them. Try visiting a site like http://www.garageband.com/ for some examples, or just go down to your local music club on a Tuesday night. I guarantee you'll find something you like, and have fun doing it. I don't understand why people cringe at a $5 or $10 cover charge, yet are willing to shell out hundreds for overproduced crap.

A phat ride for someone in Kresint Nexis?

http://www.garageband.com/artist/KNX

can be found on his garageband profile here.

• selling CDs.
  Especially, if the CD covers are of good quality and contain
  some background information about the band.
  Maybe there is a change to get one of those and signed CDs
  ("every 50th CD is singed by all band members" could do the trick)
• gigs.
  If a lot of people want to hear a band, they will definitely buy some tickets.
  There are also "music festivals" which offer chances to less famous bands.
• merchandizing.
• ...

This is the reason that I avoid 'buying' downloadable music. Case in point: a coworker gave me a free download the other day (won it on a bottle cap, I think it was MSN or something). So I went ahead and downloaded it at work, God help me. After several tense moments, I finally got it to play at home, after it made sure that I did indeed have the right to do that.

Even then, with the music I have purchased, I have to wait for the rights acquistion to make sure that I have not committed the unspeakable crime of moving my music around.

Ninety-nine cents per song is, IMO, a fair price. I would love to pay 99 cents, if not for the DRM baggage.

BTW, you can find some great music at garageband.com. Not big names, of course, but the downloads are MP3 with no DRM crap.

I used to roadie for an indy metal band a couple of years ago, and that experience introduced me to a few online methods of distribution.

First, here are some websites that might fit your bill:

Garage Band
Sound Click
Independent Music Online
And a list of other sites that might interest you: http://www.rmpmusic.com/

If you choose to use a third party website to promote your music, I and many others in my local music scene, still believe a web site dedicated to your band is the best idea. Offer full CD or near CD quality MP3 downloads of your best singles, demos, etc. Add a list of your gigs, news and updates relating to your band, perhaps a press kit full of print-sized logos, promo photos, and posters, in addition to a physical CD to send to record labels and credible review sites and mags. And also offer a way to buy your band's CD off the official website. Use something like PayPal for that. It's easy enough.

Good luck.

GarageBand has a wide selection and tons of samples.

We love them!

Wow! Too bad Nobody else does this!

Since when do they have rights to prevent Seattle bands from freely sharing music recorded by themselves.

Probably since the overwhelming use of P2P software is to 'trade' commercially marketed software, which was the very reason Napster and other P2P software was made in the beginning (while trying to keep the software maker/distributer out of hot water by not hosting the files itself). If the sharing of music the artists WANTED shared over P2P were a substantial portion of what gets shared, there would be a better legal argument that P2P has a legitimate use. But such files are just as well hosted on a regular webhost, unlike commercially-released music (published to be sold rather than given away).

Actually, there's NOTHING preventing Seattle bands, and other musicians worldwide from hack to pro, from making their music available over the Internet. Look for your favorite (or least favorite) bands giving their music away on these and many other music hosting sites:

http://garageband.com/
http://soundclick.com/

Every day we become more and more like Russia.

In Soviet Russia, songs share YOU!

We secured distribution online originally by getting signed by Garageband, which I admit was a stroke of luck. Next, we partnered with CDBaby and used them to sell CDs directly to consumers (which became important after Garageband withered and released us from our contract). This (as others have mentioned) led us to getting listed on iTunes and dozens of other online music outfits. After that, playing out, swapping gigs, and making mini tours was a great way to get exposure. Getting signed allowed us to get written up in zines and even Billboard, so there is indeed something tangible about "getting signed." Your press kit is forever yours to build up and sell yourself, so make sure you get as much press as possible (even local press).

Now, to stroke the gods of honesty: "making it" takes luck, talent, luck, connections, luck and luck. Take every avenue afforded to you, even - to the chagrin of all Slashdotters -- signing with a minor or major. Get a good lawyer and you won't get suckered into signing all your rights (esp. to the sound recordings) away.

For those interested who have one ear bent in the late 90s era indie pop (e.g Pavement, Superchunk), you can check us out on iTunes.

And most importantly: good luck!

I'd also like to add http://www.garageband.com/ to the list of Indie download sites. Anyone can post their own original music in exchange for reviewing other artists' songs.

Never heard of the .coc TLD, and not sure I want to go to one ;)

Fixed & linkified: http://www.garageband.com/

WooHoo... GarageBand.com it's a great site for music and has a growing number of spoken word pieces; or check out my podcast at http://www.radioMacGuys.com for a rough but growing better 10 minute or so daily podcast focusing on things Mac.

www.epitomic.com
www.garageband.com
www.iuma.com
Podcasts at iPodder.org

Just because YOUR concept of music doesn't go beyond your little RIAA world, doesn't mean that nobody else's does. And just because you can't figure out how to use the MP3 format for anything other than pirating music, doesn't mean that no one else can.

As someone who got in on the ground floor at www.mp3.com the first time (and has since had his music relegated to the basement ) because of MP3.com's sale, I find this very exciting. I remember when The Orchard was ONLY selling CDs from their own website and thinking "man that sucks, I'm better off setting up a server with my own stuff on Kazaa" but now that's all changed. If you want to market your indie music online (and get into the www.emusic.com family), The orchard is the way to go.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with, nor have I ever been affliated with www.theorchard.com, but I will be joining now that I have found this link. Thanks Slashdot. I'm also not affiliated with Emusic (yet). Now my life has meaning.

They recently announced deals with Budweiser and Klipsch where the best-rated music is syndicated in the form of top-10 lists or (in the case of Budweiser) radio players. With the size of their music library (including the former MP3.com archive ) it is a good system already, whether for musicians or consumers. Definitely something to keep an eye on!

I think the RIAA is not really concerned about online communities like this one. Things like GarageBand.com have been around for a long time and the RIAA is not sweating it. Things like this make it easier for an RIAA label to sign a band. The band will be more professional, will already have some knowledge of marketing itself, and will have some sort of proven success to show that they can create a "buzz." Right now, all a major label can do is go to live shows and watch SoundScan reports for independents to look for talent (they don't open unsolicited demo tapes mailed to them for legal purposes). This is simply another venue for them to scout.

Sure. Magnatude http://www.magnatune.com/, GarageBand.com http://www.garageband.com/, emusic http://www.emusic.com/, and others. Just because sites with over 300,000 songs don't sell mp3s doesn't mean no one is.

Besides your mixing metaphors. First your comparing hardware, the iPod, to format or software. If you have an iPod, the question is when, where, and why would it make sense to buy wma files. If the files can be converted to mp3 or aac relatively easily, then sure go ahead and purchase. If they can't, then WHY would you purchase then complain.

The iPod plays an impressive, though not extensive, array of musical formats, including: mp3, wav, aac, apple lossless, and audiobook. I think I'm missing something else, but still. The iRiver is more extensive adding ogg, and wma. But if you exclude ogg and other marginal, but up-and-coming formats from the list, you could pretty much say the iPod plays EVERYTHING except WMA.

Microsoft licensed WMA DRM, Apple hasn't licensed FairPlay, but the have essentially licensed the iPod.

While not a fan of the WMA format, I can say sure its an okay format

Personally I hope that the RIAA is successful in shutting down music file swapping.

You meant unauthorized music file swapping, I think.

There's plenty of (really good) music in the world, folks, not just the VH1 hits. Much of it are made by artists who want to share their creations at no cost (I'm one of them), and P2P is perfect for this task.

And yes, there is a huge lot of artists wanting to share. Go ahead and do a google search on MOD, S3M, IT and XM songs. Oh, the glorious days of trackers!!!

Or.... remember mp3.com? Not the new one, but the old one now renamed to GarageBand.com; damn I found there free, incredibly good music I still enjoy listening to.

Here are some more for you:

besonic
mp3.de
soundclick
garageband
france mp3
vitaminic(free + pay)
Washington Post (yup)
Online Rock
Peoplesound
Download.com from the old mp3.com's new owners
Emusic (pay)
Artistlaunch

If you want to hear what you want, it's going to cost you.

Yeah, you can listen to indie bands. Click here to listen to bands that suck.

Garage Band.com

They ask artists to listen to and rate music in order for the artist/band to upload their own stuff. I've come across some really good music thanks to this system, and in turn, got some exposure for our band.

Garage Band.com

They ask artists to listen to and rate music in order for the artist/band to upload their own stuff. I've come across some really good music thanks to this system, and in turn, got some exposure for our band.

Garage Band.com

They ask artists to listen to and rate music in order for the artist/band to upload their own stuff. I've come across some really good music thanks to this system, and in turn, got some exposure for our band.

this is why I have switched to free (amateur) music from such places as garageband.

the recording quality is for obvious reasons inferior and some of the bands actually sound like amateurs, but for the most part I find the music better to listen to than the current charts. additionally I can promote a good band by downloading their music and don't have to worry whether the newest chart wonder, who claims to have come from the gutter through a life of hardship, is actually a casted middle class nerd.

not that I cared so much about the background of performers, but I DO hate to be lied to and especially when it is done to get my sympathies!

support free music - don't prolong the rip-off-music-industry tyranny - support the artists!

Or this?