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I don't think they ever cared about this site.
http://gdlive.com/

Of course, refers to The Grateful Dead.

While often simply dismissed musically as "hippie crap" and "meaningless poetic fluff," this is not what is important here.

What is important is that The Dead flies right in the face of the music industry.

You see, The Dead is often considered to be the most sucessful band in history, as they have played in front of more people then any group in musical history. Not only that, but each year the group (or whats left of them) makes millions in profits from various sales.

All the while giving away the vast majority of their music for free!

This is my favorite example of a "happy middle ground" that can be reached between bands and listeners. Sorry RIAA, your claims are false. And The Grateful Dead proves it.

There are plenty of sites and p2p network programs available that are devoted solely to downloading legally tradeable music (copyrighted but free for non-commercial downloading and trading). Examples include bt.etree.org (the etree.org community bittorent tracker site) and the Further Network. There are also ftp sites like gdlive that accept both uploads and downloads. All of this is perfectly legal and endorsed by the bands involved. This is actually a good business model for bands that tend towards improvisational music: every concert is different, fans trade shows, thus generating increased interest, and the bands derive income from live performances and related sales at their concerts. Such music genres include jazz, bluegrass and newgrass, and jam-band rock-n-roll.

A high upload to download ratio is not at all proof of any illegal activity. Personally, I listen almost exclusively to freely tradeable music.

I've had material on MP3.com for several years now. Never paid for the service, so I had less to lose than those that took the Gold Membership, etc. But I still don't understand the griping.
The era of free multimedia serving is over. There's just too much overhead to justify providing that much free bandwidth.
For those of you who bitching about MP3.com, just accept this unfortunate reality.

Who's been screwed? OK, maybe the folks that signed up for Gold Membership. But it seems like it's pointless to bitch about what's happened - it's all just business.

It's not the same as being ripped off by your producer [Beach Boys and countless others], or cheated out of payment by a venue after a performance [an ever-present risk in a business rife with unscrupulous people].

There's always an element of risk, whatever endeavour you undertake. There's no guarantee that a party with whom you have entered into a contract and paid money for future services will not go out of business, or sell out to another party. That's just a fact of life.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of free and low-cost music-hosting alternatives [sorry, I haven't checked ALL these links recently, but most should still be good. I am a lazy sod.]:


AMP3.com
AmpCast
Audiogalaxy
efolk
etree.org (SHN)
Listen.com
Lycos Music Search
MP3.com
nzmp3
peoplesound
SoundClick
stationMP3
gdlive.com
FurtherNet
CD Baby
IUMA
BeSonic
My Local Bands
SoundClick
VITAMINIC
archive.org etree listing (SHN's)
emusic
listensmart


My music (if you're curious, totally bored, and looking for something to listen to).

Trust me. There's plenty of content, especially free music.

I'm lucky, because I listen to that silly hippy music where the bands allow people to download concerts thanks to ppl like this. Also, the quality of audience (microphones on stands) recordings are amazing with good mics and a preamp.

Back on topic. However, I have a $15/month dialup connection because, as others have already pointed out, the broadband connections are asymetrical. I refuse to pay more for any connection unless I get full upload speeds. Yes, those are available. No, I cannot justify the price. I have incredibly fat pipes at work and a laptop. I can download whatever I want and transfer it at home easily.

No stupid. Unless you got oodles of bandwidth and money you don't put audio in a lossless format on a site.

Oh really? What about the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive. Not to mention all of the volunteer ftp sites found from etree or even a site like this.

If it was download mix burn they might actually have a point...

There is plenty of music that is legally and freely distributed using the
"download mix burn" model:

http://www.etree.org/

http://www.furthurnet.com/

http://gdlive.com/

http://www.sugarmegs.org/

http://www.kapoho.net/

http://www.alternativetentacles.com/mp3.php

Just to name a few. Why should my rights to enjoy this music be taken
away? Why should rights of the artists to chose a free distribution
business model be restricted?

Don't tar us all with the same brush: "download mix burn" does not mean copyright
restriction!

Ho boy... not hardly. I have acess to thousands of hours of high quality live music from musicians all over the country... plus it's legal, with the artists' consent, no ads involved, and more importantly, no damn record companies!!

Check out sites like etree, sugarmegs, and gdlive for examples of how music is thriving on the net in a noncommercial environment. But I suppose those sites, though working well for users, have actually been crushed also... as the standard for 'crushed' apparently is 'failing to make money for corporations'.

Besides... really, Napster and the like sucked from the start, interesting computer science concept and great place to download mp3's of questionable quality at 1KB/sec though... if that's what you're into.

-Jackson