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For me, that would be the perfect reason to fight. What exactly are you gonna get out of me? I have nothing. Come and get it suckers.

Free music from bands that don't suck:

• All Around You - Third Degree
• Final Battle - Ugress
• Awful - T-Cells
• This Day - Perfect Virus

Defeat the RIAA. Stop listening to what they produce.

• Anomic (I'm Not Gonna Take This Any More) - The Sleeping Prophet
• All Around You - Third Degree
• Final Battle - Ugress
• Awful - T-Cells
• This Day - Perfect Virus

If the RIAA members think they have a monopoly on creativity, they're the ones who are dreaming. Go ahead, charge $5 per track for the latest bubble gum pop. I won't even notice.

The RIAA is toast.

ONLY SOLUTION IS CRUSH X10

First of all, I'm pretty sure that while the recording industry makes lots of noise about how much revenue they're losing due to P2P, they also have good enough financial analysts that when they're being honest with themselves, they realize that the real loss is essentially zero.


It is very much the case. RTFA. The fact of the matter is this: Record sales are going down. Illegal P2P downloads are going up.


First of all, the ability to actually search and find what you want to a large extent makes the recording companies irrelevant.


You missed one minor technical detail: Musicians, producers, studio engineers, and session musicians actually like getting paid for their hard work.


Most of this derived from two things: distribution and promotion.


You forgot "paying all the people who work hard to make a great album of music".


Now, it's true that the majority of what has been distributed over P2P networks has been material copyrighted by the record labels. Frankly, I doubt that's what they really cared about though


Oh, it's very much what they care about. Case in point: Record companies did nothing to stop IUMA, who was delivering musicial content in mpeg compressed format before mp3 even existed.

I do agree record companies went too far when they tried to stop the original Diamond Rio, however.


For them, this isn't a matter of boosting sales by an extra few percent -- it's a matter of outright survival.


You are 100% correct. If everyone downloads instead of pays for music, the record companies plain simply will not be able to survive. You can't keep a company afloat when your revenues are 0.


I suspect iTunes (and its ilk) will be a large part of that.


I suspect you are right. As a practical matter, the record companies will profit from downloadable music when everything is said and done. iTunes doesn't make Apple any money, but is a very profitable revenue stream for the record companies. When push comes to shove, most people do not feel comfortable getting music without permission; the video game/software industry has always thrived even though piracy has been around since day one.

Things are changing; I agree that Sony went too far with their DRM. What annoys people is that the record companies treat all of their consumers like criminals; hopefully the backlash caused by Sony's antics will make the record companies completely rethink how they treat their customers.

When the record companies stop being so heavy-handed and back down, many people who pirate content will no longet feel comfortable doing so. I do feel guilty for getting my music from allofmp3 instead of iTunes or the like; I was planning on making my content legitimate until I found out about Sony's stunt.

One thing to keep in mind is that many, many people can make music. Very few can make music that is actually worth listening to. This is why people download the latest Gwen Stefani song instead of some garage band.

Shame he'll get his ass kicked around the playground along with that Iuma kid.

Farting on a snare drum, you say? John Wilkes Booth, is that you?

Did someone say Free Music?

• Artificial Genesis: Metamorphic(Dance Mix) -- Electronic/Techno
• T-Cells: Awful -- Metal
• UMB: In Your Head -- Alternative (Slow link, IUMA sucks...)
• Perfect Virus: This Day -- Industrial
• Third Degree: You Never Know Someone -- Punk Rock

All songs are RIAA free as far as I can tell. In short, I've already got the free music. The 'industry' hopes I haven't found it yet, so they'll trot out Shitney Beers or some other jailbait teen with more T&A than talent hoping I'll bite. The special interest groups can go f' themselves as far as I'm concerned. I don't buy, listen, or even want any of their crap, so they'd best keep their grubby hands out of my pockets.

Open Sound
http://www.opsound.org/

or maybe

Internet Underground Music Archive http://www.iuma.com/

Typical slashdot, always last with the news...

Around the time that MP3 was getting on its feet, I remember tinkering with MP1 and MP2 files... Websites like the Internet Underground Music Archive had them available for download. The thing I remember was that MP1 files played fine on a 486 50 MHz, while high-bitrate MP2 files were too choppy to play back properly. MP3s were out of the question on a 486 (until many years later when highly optimized MP3 player software emerged). I remember that even 192 kbps MP2s still had numerous audible defects in them, so 128 kbps MP3s seemed amazing in comparison. Of course, I had to decode the MP3 file to WAV before playing it. Those were the days...

If all you anti-**AA and anti-broadcast flag folks are correct in the notion that the relatively unhindered movement of media actually benefits artists, actors, recording companies and movie studios, then these Draconian measures should have a detrimental effect on both the producers and gatekeepers.

I, on the other hand, couldn't care any less about some silly Broadcast flag. As for the EFF assertion that it... "Limits Fair Use: As the May 11, 2005 Congressional Research Service report noted, the flag will prevent important fair uses, like the ability of teachers to engage in distance learning..." Yawn. The day that teachers can't play video because of some stupid broadcast flag is the day that students start to learn something worthwhile, because the teacher can't opt out of teaching by turning on some stupid "educational" show.

And as far as art goes, I will continue to vote with my wallet. I will vote not to see the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster, because it does not add to my well being or increase my enjoyment out of life and I don't approve of the prominence that he brings a stupid UFO cult. That's right, I'm prejudiced, sue me.

Furthermore, I vote not to buy most CDs because I'd rather download from some of the vast empire of highly innovative independent music coming from artists who don't have corporations manipulating overused harmony hooks on their behalf... Though I must admit, from time to time I watch with mild amusement (and arousal?) at the latest pair of tits that Viacom parades across MTV.

As for the rest of you, enjoy decrypting a digital clip of the latest piece of hollywood fart humor to be targetted at you by the corporations. At least you'll have something to talk about with your friends.

We Must Destroy X10

Like hell you say. I only buy non-RIAA affiliated music from CD Baby, or download free tracks with iRate. You know what? I like this stuff a lot better than most of the crap that passes for music on the advertising clogged radio and TV stations.

Want some? Here's a small sample:

• Metal - Celldweller (CD Baby)
• Electronic/Industrial - More Machine Than Man (CD Baby)
• Acoustic - Okkervil ("Westfall" via iRate)
• Rap - Poverty ("I'm Hatin'" via iRate)
• New Age - Circle of Mansions ("Sky Machine" and "Number Nine" via iRate though I cannot google a link for either ATM. Try "Left Me." That's good too)
• Electronic - Atari Baby ("Share your love (Aspect Mix)" via iRate)
• Easy Listening - Sheryl Clapton ("Magic Door" via iRate)
• Hard Rock/Metal - Dazychain ("Too Much God" via iRate)
• Industrial - Firewerk (CD Baby)
• Punk Rock - Limit ("Mr. DJ" via iRate)

The same will happen to the MPAA. It's only a matter of time. The MPAA fears bandwidth and BitTorrent. They say it's because of piracy. Either they are really stupid, or they think we are. They just don't like competition.

I found out that I'll never make it in the business, as I am a 30-something musician in the midwest.

My brother in law is in a band. A buddy of mine who's an agent wanted to play some of their stuff to a friend in the recording industry. They industry guy's first question? "How old are they?". When he found out they were mid-30s, he said to forget it.

All that the record companies want is pliable lookalike boybandz.

Many unsigned and independent artists provide free downloads of their music as a way to promote themselves. Of course the hard part for you is to find this music at all, let alone find the music that you're going to like without actually downloading and listening to it all.

iRATE Radio solves this problem for you. It is a collaborative filtering MP3 downloader and player. It is Free Software, licensed under the GNU GPL.

iRATE's central server has a database of about 50,000 MP3 tracks available from a number of music hosting services such as the Internet Underground Music Archives. The iRATE client fetches a few URLs from the server, downloads the tracks, and then plays them for you.

As you listen to each track, you rate it according to your preferences. The client then uploads your ratings to the server, which then correlates them with ratings submitted by other users. Future track recommendations will be based on these correllations. Basically what that means is that if you and I like the same music, then iRATE will download for you all the same music that I rated highly.

iRATE Radio is very close to its 0.4 release, which offers many improvements over the current 0.3 release. We can use your help in testing the upcoming release. If you want to help, please download one of the unstable builds. Subscribe to the mailing list and submit bug reports via the sourceforge bug report form.

There is a new distribution page at www.irateradio.com that is aimed at the non-technical user. Downloading from there gets you the 0.3 release right now, but soon the 0.4 release will be available there.

iRATE Radio is written in Java and welcomes contributions from new developers.

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.

http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/kompressormusic /

Notice "WE MUST DESTROY X10"... listen to it. heh

My post was supposed to be funny, but no one seems to even recognize my allusion to this song... :\

X10 MUST BE DESTROYED!

In case anyone hasn't heard it before: Pirate This Song by God Ate My Homework at Berkley should do nicely.

The easiest way to do it is with iRATE radio. It downloads tracks from music hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive, using a collaborative filtering system to select the tracks you're most likely to enjoy.

The client fetches the URLs of a few tracks from iRATE's central database server, then downloads them directly from the servers where the musicians have them hosted. When you listen to the new tracks, you rate them according to how much you like and dislike them. The next time iRATE contacts the server, it submits your ratings, which are then correllated with the ratings of other users to find the best tracks for you.

Basically, if you and I enjoy the same kind of music, iRATE will fetch for you all the same music I like. If we disagree on our taste in music, iRATE will avoid downloading for you the music I enjoy.

iRATE radio is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL. A new version, 0.4, is expected to be released within a couple weeks. You can help with testing if you try out the unstable builds and report bugs using SourceForge's bug tracking system.

I discuss iRATE and many other ways to download music free and legally in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

I want every p2p network user to read my article. If you also feel that more people should read it, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog, or from message boards.

Thank you for your attention.

By a techno tune you mean something like this?
Composed by Digital Droo. Here's his page about the song.

iRATE radio is a collaborative filtering system for music. You rate the tracks it downloads and the server uses your ratings and other people's to guess what you'll like. The tracks are downloaded from websites which allow free and legal downloads of their music.

I've been using iRATE for a little over a year now, and have downloaded about a thousand tracks with it. If I were a typical user, then that would suggest that iRATE users all together have downloaded about fifteen million songs, thus far surpassing iTunes' puny one million download total.

Now, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Some of iRATE's downloads were existing users fetching updates, and not everyone who uses it keeps using it. But it clearly shows that free, legal downloads are potentially dwarfing the paid downloads being tracked by the BBC.

Note that the RIAA doesn't get a penny from iRATE's downloads. They can't complain either, because the copyright holders - the musicians themselved - give permission to us to download their tracks when they post them on MP3 hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive.

I discuss not only iRATE but a lot of other places to get free music downloads in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads. Share the link with all your buddies who use p2p.

Thank you for your attention.

iRATE's database is basically a big list of URLs, one for each available MP3 file. I think there are something like a hundred thousand tracks available. The database also has each user's ratings, that it used for its collaborative filtering calculation.

At least when iRATE started out, most of the tracks came from the Internet Underground Music Archive, which hosts thousands of bands. It was a popular site long before iRATE came around. So you can imagine that IUMA is heavily loaded, so whenever iRATE gets a track from a heavily loaded server, the download can be slow.

Fortunately a lot of work has been put into recovering from failed downloads. When I first used iRATE, way back during 0.1, I downloaded over a 56k modem and many of my downloads failed. But the developers made it work much better even for modems.

The download speed becomes less annoying after you've downloaded a couple dozen songs, because you then have a variety of tracks to listen to while new tracks download.

BTW, iRATE's homepage is Google's #1 hit for the query irate.

Wrong.

Very UPLIFTING!

The SuperDrive on my PowerBook couldn't handle the copy protection on a CD I bought a while back, so I simply stopped buying CD's because I use my computer as my stereo, and some stores don't take returns. I have an iPod too. If it won't go on my iPod, I don't want it. I didn't have a problem with buying CD's before. I used to buy tons of them. I'd even buy a whole album just for one song, rather than just getting a single. I'm the kind of customer they are alienating. I've decided to just boycott buying music because of this. There's always radio anyway, internet or free-to-air.

What I'd like to see are stores that specifically sell CD's without this kind of crap. These "copy protection" labels are usually hidden very obscurely in the fine print. I'd like to see CD's with huge "NO COPY PROTECTION" labels on them that you could see from across the music store. And I'd like online MP3 download music services for independent music getting together. I can't access the iTunes Music Store. It is taking too slow to get to different countries, and they sell music from the record companies I want to boycott anyway.

Here are a list of the MP3 sites I've come up with. If other people know of other sites, please post them. And if I'm mistaken about any on this list, please say so.

• Magnatune
• MP3.com.au
• ALLOFMP3
• IUMA

It's all becoming 80's remakes now.

If you like specific music styles, then go to http://www.iuma.com.

In most cases, you can try the whole song in high quality and decide if you like it. If you do, then you can pay the artist directly if they have albums to sell.

I haven't been to a music store in ages because I'd rather support the independents.

BRUSH YOUR TEETH (song by KOMPRESSOR)

• Slow Steamboat Song
• Pyro Tango

• Slow Steamboat Song
• Pyro Tango

Maybe I'm a fanatic about these things but...

What's wrong with mp3's/oggs? The premise on which iTunes is based (that here is a method that allows you to download legally) is wrong; in fact, lots of musicians are putting mp3's out there for free. Look at dmusic.com , IUMA, irate radio and netlabels . Some of the stuff is eclectic, experimental, not mass market, but it's not that far off.

I stopped listening to commercial music 6 months ago (although I still donate to artists with tipjar links). For "open content" listeners like me, all this talk of proprietary locked content only encourages musicians to put their content in locked formats. That is bad for everyone.

Share the Music day ; sharethemusic weblog

I think you're thinking of IUMA.

There's the Internet Underground Music Archive. The site has had a bit of a troubled past of it's own, but it seems like it has some staying power.

-Wombat

What does/did mp3.com offer to artists that cannot be found anywhere else?

I know it's amazingly slow these days (and actually, always has been) but consider IUMA as an alternative. If more people used IUMA, maybe they would be able to get money for servers and bandwidth. At least one bands which is significant today (or would be if the lead didn't OD) got a lot of their early exposure from IUMA: Sublime. I met the IUMA guys back in the day when they were on Pacific St. in Santa Cruz (hell for all I know they still are, but given the rents around there, I doubt it) and did some volunteer work for them that could have been done by a shell script (but I didn't yet know how) and they're all pretty cool dudes. IUMA has been around since the day when SGI workstations were cool and fast, I'm sure if their site wasn't so dog slow they'd be a big part of our lives today :D

M$ has even less going for it than AOL did. That merger between a huge new media company and an old one failed. The old one keeps it's content locked up regardless of it's own new best interest. Time Warner STILL only squezes it's content out through the tightest of bungholes at $1.00/pop-tune. Apple makes no money from the music itself. Do you think that the same big dumb music companies will let M$ screw them around or have any of the money? Sooner or later, music companies are going to realize DRM is a huge boondogle and M$ will be hosed away. Kerfloop - there goes another billion or two of M$'s big fat bankroll.

Oh well, back to ripping the old LPs to ogg. Between my old music and new free music services, I don't need iTunes and other DRM gimped junk. Go get you some new music:

• Ampcast
• Electronic Scene
• the dude who sent me to the above

Then go spend the money you saved on a live concert or on an ablum by people who get paid by their publisher.

Don't you mean the Internet Underground Music Archive? (since 1993)

Yes, plenty.

Ampcast
IUMA
Electronicscene

Perhaps you could start with me and my band's free 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).

IUMA

Kompressor has succeeded!

We Must Destroy X10

What about IUMA? Not only do they seem to provide everything EMusic states. They do it for free

Lol, people won't stop making music just because they can't make money at it anymore. There will always be the people who make music because they enjoy making music, much like the people who write software because they enjoy writing software.

Look at websites like IUMA, tons of free, legal music from independant and unsigned artists.

(Good) musicians can still make a living off of live tours, ever heard of the Grateful Dead?

If you're interested in making NES music (the Game Boy is more powerful, actually, but I personally feel more nostalgia for the NES), check out MCK:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Denei/9628/mak edata_e.html

You can even use my MIDI converter MIDIMML so that you aren't stuck typing numbers into a text-based sequencer.

Also, my Tom 7 Entertainment System project has a bunch of original NES-ish songs for you.

I thought I'd do something more then my usual support independent (or independently minded) artist. There are a ton of artists out there not caught up in the whole piracy debate (since the rise of the net WAY more then most people imagine). CD's at the mall are no longer safe. The industry/distribution giants that have been hand feeding us are no longer (where they ever?) interested in fair practices.

But this isn't really that big a deal, because you can just type your way down to:

mp3.com
or
emusic.com
or
umbrellamusic.com
or
listen.com
or
mp3it.com
or
iuma.com
or
grageband.com
or
besonic.com
or
zebox.com

And it just keeps getting bigger and better out there. Really the only thing that needs to happen is we need to get comfortable with buying online artists. Maybe Rolling Stone will do an online section? *shrug*

But there's still an MP3 of There's a Girl at the Deli on Oliver Brown's IUMA page. It's one of my favorite pieces of his, actually.

Yes, you make excellent points.

But at this point, it doesn't even matter that what these people are doing is illegal!

EFF said it best, but I'll paraphrase:

Enjoying music is not wrong! Technology has enabled music lovers to build the largest collections of music ever! With a large harddrive and a fast internet connection, it is painfully easy to develop a collection of music that would take months to listen to end-to-end.

Instead of providing users with a legitimate way of doing this, the RIAA has set out on a path to criminalise music lovers everywhere.

What I mean is, it's become apparent that CDs are just not convenient enough for people to buy lots of them; people want to pay for single-song downloads, and then only have exactly what songs they like. Instead of enabling this and making life good for consumers and artists alike, the RIAA is alienating EVERYBODY.

I suggest everybody go out and discover independant music. I've been surfing on iuma.com (Internet Underground Music Archive), and I've found lots of great music that the artists want you to download for free. It's free, it's legit, and it's not the cookie-cutter shite that the RIAA has been pushing lately.

So I say, fuck the RIAA. If they want to put all of their potential customers in jail, they can go out of business for all I care.

And finally, check out Downhill Battle, and Don't Buy CDs , two good sites advocating the downfall of the RIAA.

RIAA free music. I mean its funny they complain about their numbers dropping while attacking some of their most devoted fans.

On the other hand there are lots of musicians begging for exposure that are even willing to give their music away for free.

1sound.com
www.mp3.com
iuma.com

And it just goes on.

I U M A

this is the place you need to start.

I think over the long haul the point is the RIAA controls the distribution of music. Not their current catalog. Check out IUMA or your favorite garage band's website. There is a large and growing body of good, legal and free music on the web. At some point this will destroy the people who are trying to control the music industry with or without P2P.

Where did all the Bob Dylans go, the Janis Joplins, the Stevie Ray Vaughns and B.B. Kings?

I U M A

This is where they all have been hiding. Inside the Indie Music.

I support inde's.