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So, now I have to find some independents to support. Know any good sites that of course will have samples of the music to help guide me?

Two websites that I know of: Magnatune, as its been mentioned on Slashdot a few times, is a "do no evil" music label that actually does that. Their classical collection in particular is excellent, and added to the fact that they've got FLAC downloads alongside the usual lossy formats it's a must-have for any classical fan, though they've got some interesting stuff in their other genres as well. You can listen to the whole album for free (as a stream) before purchasing, and they've even got an all-you-can-eat model with monthly payments as well.

And the other is Jamendo, which contrary to Magnatune has a fairly small classical collection but the amount (and diversity) of indie rock is simply staggering, and they've got a decent catalogue of other genres as well. Free downloads in both MP3 and OGG formats with handy donation buttons and user reviews.

Outside of that, though, all I know is good ol' MySpace where pretty much *every* independant artist/band/whatever has a webpage, though that makes it kinda hard to pick the wheat from the chaff but YMMV.

Is it still my fault when the systems as a whole are engineered stupid?

Yes, because you chose non-free, engineered-stupid music instead of Free music.

So read this and get out your p2p and help kill the industry to make the world safe for music and musicians.

P2P won't kill the industry, it will only help to spread the music's popularity. P2P = Free Advertising (similar to radio music). Some free music labels even distribute via P2P to cut server costs.

Start listening to free music from free sources. Start listening to and making some donations to the artists and companies that are already achieving your goals.

Go to a few concerts, buy a t-shirt or two. Check out the local music scene. The only way to "kill the industry" (by which I hope you mean "kill evil labels") is for the majority of people to stop consuming (even via P2P) the music they produce.

Is there really? What is the difference, for sake of argument? Pirating is X while sharing mp3 files with strangers via bit torrent is Y. What are X and Y and how are they different? The majority of software pirating is exactly the same as sharing mp3s over (name your favorite technology). Are we arguing that only sales should classify as pirating, because honestly the only people that sell are those that want to sell hardcopies and typically fool their customer's into thinking the software is legit. What self respecting nerd has paid for Warez in the last ten years, or ever? Sharing mp3s (or your favorite software) is the same as any other software piracy as so long as we are using the same definition that has been used since ID Software put that huge warning on the front of Doom II.

The difference between sharing MP3 files and pirating is that MP3s are not inherently illegal to possess or share. Unfortunately, you seem to have fallen into the trap of believing that a file format is illegal. Hopefully this real-world example elucidates the difference further.

I share songs I downloaded from Jamendo, songs I am legally permitted to share, and they are in MP3 format. Does that make me a pirate? Is that "the same as any other software piracy as so long as we are using the same definition that has been used since ID Software put that huge warning on the front of Doom II"?

Perhaps the jamendo folks have some ideas on solutions to the problem you mention:

http://pro.jamendo.com/en/product/background/offer

"Get background music for your shop or business"

granted they are speaking there of background music and not of a music event.

but if not, this is an area to work on by people wanting to play new games.

here is a small start:

http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/viewer.playlist?playlistId=1184&memberId=6509
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/99982
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/113052
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/131695
http://www.joshwoodward.com/music/
http://www.bradsucks.net/music/
http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://ccmixter.org/playlist/browse/3464

enjoy

here is a small start:

http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/viewer.playlist?playlistId=1184&memberId=6509
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/99982
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/113052
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/131695
http://www.joshwoodward.com/music/
http://www.bradsucks.net/music/
http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://ccmixter.org/playlist/browse/3464

enjoy

here is a small start:

http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/viewer.playlist?playlistId=1184&memberId=6509
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/99982
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/113052
http://www.jamendo.com/en/playlist/131695
http://www.joshwoodward.com/music/
http://www.bradsucks.net/music/
http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://ccmixter.org/playlist/browse/3464

enjoy

http://www.jamendo.com/ to the rescue ;)

Do they have any website, representation or payment processing ?

I personally like http://www.jamendo.com/

Not sure why this is marked troll, without a rebuttal?

Personally i look at free music for my paid downloads, I don't mind buying actual CDs from indies either (but it is a bit tricky to know your buying from an indie and not a front, of a front, of a major record label)

I'm confused by magnatune they advertise that they give 50% to artists, but taking a 50% cut for hosting & selling music seams excessive (AFAIK they don't do brick and mortar sales)

Is there anything out there that's better than jamendo for free, legal downloads of music, i.e., music made by people who are intentionally making it free-as-in-something? What I don't like about jamendo: (1) It's European, and a lot of the music is French. Most French pop music is really bad. I'm really more of a jazz fan anyway, but despite the French people's fondly held belief that they're the saviors of jazz, there just aren't that many good jazz musicians in France. (2) Their tagging system is lame. Most of the tags are wildly inappropriate, e.g., "jazz" for music that's actually heavy metal, "progressive rock" for a faux-classical synthesized trumpet concerto a la Haydn. (3) Although their heart seems to be in the right place as far as free information, and apparently they run linux on their servers, their interface for uploading apparently doesn't work on any OS other than Windows. (Forum discussions: 1, 2, 3. I tried the web interface with multiple browsers. I tried both Linux and MacOS. I tried their standalone uploader program for linux, which is a summer of code project that hasn't been maintained properly. I emailed their tech support, and they weren't able to help me.)

Is there anything out there that's better than jamendo for free, legal downloads of music, i.e., music made by people who are intentionally making it free-as-in-something? What I don't like about jamendo: (1) It's European, and a lot of the music is French. Most French pop music is really bad. I'm really more of a jazz fan anyway, but despite the French people's fondly held belief that they're the saviors of jazz, there just aren't that many good jazz musicians in France. (2) Their tagging system is lame. Most of the tags are wildly inappropriate, e.g., "jazz" for music that's actually heavy metal, "progressive rock" for a faux-classical synthesized trumpet concerto a la Haydn. (3) Although their heart seems to be in the right place as far as free information, and apparently they run linux on their servers, their interface for uploading apparently doesn't work on any OS other than Windows. (Forum discussions: 1, 2, 3. I tried the web interface with multiple browsers. I tried both Linux and MacOS. I tried their standalone uploader program for linux, which is a summer of code project that hasn't been maintained properly. I emailed their tech support, and they weren't able to help me.)

Is there anything out there that's better than jamendo for free, legal downloads of music, i.e., music made by people who are intentionally making it free-as-in-something? What I don't like about jamendo: (1) It's European, and a lot of the music is French. Most French pop music is really bad. I'm really more of a jazz fan anyway, but despite the French people's fondly held belief that they're the saviors of jazz, there just aren't that many good jazz musicians in France. (2) Their tagging system is lame. Most of the tags are wildly inappropriate, e.g., "jazz" for music that's actually heavy metal, "progressive rock" for a faux-classical synthesized trumpet concerto a la Haydn. (3) Although their heart seems to be in the right place as far as free information, and apparently they run linux on their servers, their interface for uploading apparently doesn't work on any OS other than Windows. (Forum discussions: 1, 2, 3. I tried the web interface with multiple browsers. I tried both Linux and MacOS. I tried their standalone uploader program for linux, which is a summer of code project that hasn't been maintained properly. I emailed their tech support, and they weren't able to help me.)

Agreed. Such "free" music is just a drop in the bucket to the illegal downloads going on.

That's not going to stop Jamendo (just for example) from being pretty peeved about this. Actually, I'd go out on a limb and say that this constitutes a fairly decent basis for Jamendo suing the U.S. Federal Government. If the company line is: you can download for-pay music on government computers, but you can't use Jamendo... then there is a very serious problem, here.

I'm deterred as well. Deterred from ever buying movies and music again. I haven't in some time now - ever since this absurd crusade started - and I couldn't be happier. All one needs are public libraries and http://jamendo.com/ - there's much better music on here than any of the shit you're generally going to find on major record labels anyway. Why are people still donating money to these machines? You're subsidizing tyranny over your own population.

Or well, if you like to, stop listening to commercially produced music and go listen in the streets; they're nice sometimes and you can tip those who you think are good.

That is exactly what I intend to do. I have just discovered Jamendo, they have a metric fuckton of quality CC-licensed music there. The recording industry is obsolete.

Actually I think the shares are calculated more on the investment. Record labels sponsor more, they get more from sales

You might be right, but it still doesn't scale linearly. There are only so many opportunities each year to flash your boobs during the superbowl, y'know? There has to sweet spot from the viewpoint of the record labels, and I'd be surprised if they hadn't run their minimax spreadsheets on the numbers. I expect they're operating reasonably close to the maximum ROI. I mean you may be right to suggest they'd make a ton more money if took on more staff and promoted ten or a hundred times more acts, but you'll not persuade me that what gets on the playlists today is all that's out there that's worth a listen.

That comes to adding value to consumers, it comes in some kind of quality. Quality and "good" music is obviously easy for everyone to argue, but if you're ever listened to the bands demo tapes you know they're horrible to professionally made studio albums.

I think that's got more to do with startup bands who haven't yet learned their trade than it has with the lack of a record label. Look at Jamendo. Loads of professional quality music on there, without anyone needing a record label to make it happen. What you say may have been true in 1975, but it's not the case today.

And just to help you all to do so:

Magnatune.com
Jamendo.com
LegalTorrents.com
Archive.org

If anyone has any other link, feel free to post them as well.

https://miroguide.com/
http://www.jamendo.com/
http://bt.etree.org/

Heavy users of Bittorrent, and legal.

Jamendo maybe? http://www.jamendo.com/en/ IIRC, Jamendo is offered as a plugin for Rhythmbox in GNOME, free to stream and download, donations go direct to artists, all CC licensed works. All they need are listeners...

Creative Commons music for the people who tire of Pandora...

http://www.jamendo.com/en/

Only consume music that can be purchased directly from the artists themselves.

Well, if you are going to say that, at least provide a few places where you can either buy music from artists directly or donate to them directly.

At the moment, I mostly get my music from Jamendo, and I guess before that, I used to buy music from Magnatune, but I'm sure there are other good places as well.

I'm talking about there not being enough money around to invest in creating quality content for us in the first place.

Really? For instance there it is free music with Creative Commons licenses http://www.jamendo.com/

If anyone is looking for legal free music, it is worth surfing around Archive.org and/or LegalTorrents. There are a lot of good independent artists out there giving their music away.

There's also Jamendo.com which, IMHO, has a pretty nice selection as well.

You might like Jamendo A lot of CC licensed music for which you can contribute to the artist directly, if you wish. A lot of it is FLAC encoded, or at least high-quality MP3.

I agree with you, though. The last album I bought was The Slip, and Ghosts I-IV before that. Trent really got his act together with that licensing model.

Speaking of RIAA, anyone know the links to some good CC websites? Always a good thing to post in a DRM discussion!

http://www.jamendo.com/

It really has lots of good stuff.

Alternatively you may find out that some well known bands make some of their songs available for free on their sites. For example Coldplay ( http://www.coldplay.com/ ) currently have an album available on their website. It usually requires your email and while I'm not sure it's CC (and I'm guessing it is not) it's gratis. Of course, it doesn't happen as often with games and movies.

Point well taken. I just checked the link. It is simply not clear on the page if the FREE tracks are licensed for private home use only. Many sites do not have a way to contact the copyright owner directly to "Make a deal" for a use other than for private home use only.

About: Terms of use.

3.2.1 Use of works

Each Work is made available to Users pursuant to a Creative Commons license identified by an icon. By clicking on that icon, you will know the conditions under which the ARTIST and JAMENDO authorize you to use his Work.

Then go to any album's page, such as this one for example and look in the right column. Below album information and statistics there is a large box "Your rights on this album" which lists what you are and are not allowed to do. (In the example linked, you need to give credits to the artist and aren't allowed to use it for commercial projects or build upon it.)

You can still have music. Check out Jamendo.

A lot of the music is licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial Share-Alike, meaning you can make derivative works using the music, but must include a reference to the original author, and only for non-commercial purposes (free to access, no advertisments, no remuneration for works). Make sure to check with the applicable license for that particular artist / track, though (Six license types under CC).

links ftw
http://www.jamendo.com/en/ (integrated with amarok2)
http://www.magnatune.com/ (integrated with amarok, found brad suck's here)
http://blip.tv/ (out of office)
http://libre.fm/ (pretty meh atm, but i appreciate the fact its agpl)

Crush the music industry? Or crush all creativity? There's nothing wrong with artists producing their own music. Automating the generation of music WILL crush the creative artists, the current industry publishers will simply start churning out vocaloid tracks and continuing to control the industry.

Creative commons licensing of music I think is a better way to "crush" the industry. It's more likely to usurp the industry than crush it. People are already doing it, and some are quite good.

Check out Jamendo for cheap to license music which is actually pretty good.

Because by arbitrarily cutting people off the internet and spewing FUD such as "The internet is a den of terrorists, pedophiles, and thieves" (I'm hardly paraphrasing here), "nothing comes for free, everything of value has a monetary cost", or "OMG if you keep on pirating, artists and music will DIE and there won't be any new music made EVER !!!" (paraphrasing slightly more but not by much), they are trying to scare the general public off the internet and alternative, more "open" business-models.

This law is all about repression. The only thing that will be done by this law to develop the internet-based music business is the creation of an official website referencing legal ways of getting music on the web. Given the ties between the govt and major companies, it's not hard guessing what offers will be advertised there... On the government-funded jaimelesartistes.fr ("iloveartists.fr", yeah right), the legal offers page doesn't mention mymajorcompany or any other similar website (to their credit it does mention a couple of "open-music" websites such as jamendo). OTOH, traditional major-approved websites are heavily advertised.

Lots of new or independent artists spoke up against this law, saying that there were ways of taking advantage of piracy and free music ; they were consistently ignored by the governement. But when popular, major-backed artists spoke in favor of the law, it was heavily advertised by the ministry and govt-friendly medias. They could have laid ground to a new way of (legally) distributing music, but they chose to try and hammer into our collective skull that the current way of producing and distributing music is the only possible way.

Well fuck them, their friends at the **AA and their sockpuppet "artists". I'll continue buying my music on emusic.com (not mentionned on jaimelesartistes BTW) and pirating the majors.

</rant>

Since we're both into Creative Commons licensed mp3s, and in the event that others who may not know are following this thread, in addition to Magnatune, check out http://www.jamendo.com/ - for those interested in Creative Commons and what it mean to their music, see
http://www.jamendo.com/en/creativecommons/
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8518
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/03/jamendo-adds-licensing.html

Since we're both into Creative Commons licensed mp3s, and in the event that others who may not know are following this thread, in addition to Magnatune, check out http://www.jamendo.com/ - for those interested in Creative Commons and what it mean to their music, see
http://www.jamendo.com/en/creativecommons/
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8518
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/03/jamendo-adds-licensing.html

*warning* boycotting the dominant culture may contribute to social alienation *warning*

There is plenty of free, good non-RIAA audio nowadays, too!

I wish people to add some more to these messages, it could be more funny for the casual reader to look for websites of interest in the discussion. For instance:

http://www.jamendo.com/ Free Creative Commons Music (No RIAA)

There is an answer to this: lots of free music in one place. I didn't change my listening preferences, but I don't listen to buyed music anymore, I only use Jamendo now. Sometimes I still pay artists on jamendo, if I find really good music.

I only see *large, traditional* music in decline, and organizations built on the assumption those organizations are the only ones with talent - but not the "industry". Such is the effect of rapid change.

See collections, for example:
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
http://bt.etree.org/
http://beta.legaltorrents.com/netlabel-music
http://uaradio.net/

and others, going strong and growing

plus *lots* of great, independent net labels and organizations building up to use the Internet the way it works, and an emerging set of well-known artists breaking free from these old organizations to embrace new methods.

Metallica has made the very best album (Ride the Lightning) and the worst (St. Anger). As far as the Napster issue, I can see their point. Basically, when getting ready to release an album back in about 2000, they discovered all of their new songs were available on Napster. Before they even released them! I can imagine the WTF factor for them when they discovered this. So I will give them a pass on this. What I can't give them a pass on is St. Anger which is a total POS.

It seems they have learned both lessons. Death Magnetic was released on Amazon MP3 and it rocks! It is the best Metallica album I have hear in at least 15 years. Pure old-school.

If you like good Metal like Ride the Lightning, Checkout Holy Pain.

People like me?

I listen to music on YouTube posted by record companies (example) or from Jamendo. I buy music I like from a record store.
Movies are rented from my local Blockbuster, but I might start using a postal service like Netflix to save some cash. I watch iPlayer for TV shows; Commercial interrupted programs don't interest me.
I bought Windows XP and all of the games I play on it. I use a lot of F/OSS for the rest of it (OpenOffice, Paint.NET, AVG).

You entirely missed my point. You can't STEAL something without a loss being incurred. "... the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent." That person still has the property. Nothing was stolen.

Get off your high horse and discuss the topic instead of ranting like an imbecile.

Like http://www.jamendo.com/en/

Worse, it's an outright lie. The record companies are freaking out about uncontrolled downloads, not because their music is being copied around (it is), but because of Free Albums Galore, headphonica, Jamendo, Internet Archive Audio and so on.... There are dozens of places to get completely free music and this is the single most terrifying use the Internet can be put to, from the big label perspective. It has the potential to break the spine of the industry's decades-cultivated promotional and sales lock-in.

Yes, there's sharing of big-label music, but I share a half dozen freely distributable albums and no big-label music at all. I'm sure that bothers them a lot more than if I were serving up the manufactured pop of the week.

It seems they're getting it slowly, though. More and more songs are distributed for free as a loss-leader on iTunes and Amazon every day. If they keep that up, they might even figure out a business plan that treats their customers like people... but I'm not holding my breath.

Good grief. "Sharing" copyrighted music files on a P2P network was always an extremely bad idea.

What a wild, stupid, ignorant claim. It's the same thinking as the *AA propaganda "BitTorrent is an illegal filesharing program", which is a bold-faced lie.

First of all, music under free distribution licenses, like all of the Creative Commons licenses, is still under copyright, but the license grants permission for anyone to share the music with anyone they like. Websites like Jamendo use BitTorrent to distribute CC music -- all legally. Sharing these is in no way a "bad idea", especially since the author is encouraging it. This fact alone makes this statement dead wrong.

Second, why can't I share music that was written, oh, 40 years ago? Copyright is supposed to serve me the reader/listener/viewer, not some artists or authors, and especially not some middle-men record labels! It is supposed to provide incentive for artists and authors to paint/sing/record/write works so that the public domain, our cultures realm of free works, will grow. They get absolute control of their work for a short period and we get to access it as public domain thereafter. That's how the deal is supposed to work.

Sharing our culture is our natural right. We, as a society, decide to temporarily grant exclusive copying rights, hence "copyright", to artists and authors to encourage them, which temporarily waives our copying right. That's right: it is granted to them by us. Many people get confused and think it is the other way around, that authors naturally have these exclusive rights. Don't make this mistake. They don't.

It's ridiculous that music from 20, 30, 40 years ago, and more, would not be in the public domain. This is a breach of that copying contract between the public and the artist. The artists, or really the distributors of the works, are not holding up their part of the bargain here by allowing works into the public domain, and therefore we don't have to uphold our end (i.e. not sharing/copying).

Also, just because something is against the law doesn't make it wrong or a bad idea. 20 years ago, most forms of sex were illegal in half of the United States. And these weren't invalidated until just 6 years ago. There are all kinds of stupid laws like this everywhere. In my state a person can't legally sit on a jury, among other things, unless he believes in an invisible sky wizard (no jury duty for me, woo!!!).

So, was engaging in oral sex with your spouse in the 2002 in the state of Virginia -- literally a crime -- an "extremely bad idea"? I think not. I don't think sharing decades old music that belongs in the public domain is either.

Here in Korea, they go one step beyond that. "Loaning a disk to a friend is stealing." People at work probably think I'm stealing since I install my own OS and Free software.

I also download music at work. Shock! It's legal because it's CC'ed (Jamendo). When I tried to help a coworker out with some teaching material, she said she needed a license for it. I tried to point out the author's license allowed non-commercial use, but she refused to believe it.

They have these giant publicity campaigns but don't bother to mention "may or may not be illegal depending on the license." It's all just illegal to them. The "re-education" is working, too.

Legal Torrents:
http://www.jamendo.com/ -CC music
http://bt.etree.org/ -Live music archive
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ -Fan made movies (allowed by trademark owners)
http://www.getmiro.com/ -Free video downloader/player with Free content.
http://azureuswiki.com/index.php/Legal_torrent_sites -List of many more

Plenty of Legal uses for the technology.

Jamendo
Magnatune
Amazon
Napster
iTunes Store ... blech.

Anyone know good sources of legal free downloadable music?

The best "one stop shop" for legally downloadable music (everything Creative Commons licensed) is Jamendo. 14,000 albums covering just about every genre I can think of, all free to grab. The Jamendo site has a decent interface for tracking favorites, getting recommendations, and so forth. Overall the quality is quite high. Many bands accept donations, but they never nag you about it.

Another to look into is Magnatune. It's not free--but all the albums can be previewed on the site (flash player), and are licensed under Creative Commons. You can buy albums with a "pay what you want" system (there is a minimum amount, $5/album or something), and can thereafter share these downloads with friends. They recently introduced a "all you can eat" option, where with a monthly fee you can download as much music as you want (again, you set the price; I think the minimum is $10/month). All the music is DRM free, your choice of format, no hassles. Unlike Jamendo, Magnatune albums are selected and vetted; the overall quality of music is very high.

With these excellent sources of high-quality music (in terms of both musical aesthetics and encoding), in totally unencumbered formats, available free (or at very reasonable cost), I have a really hard time understanding why people still buy "big name" music. I guess marketing really works. In which case, we really need to spread the word about the availability of Creative Commons music.

On Jamendo artists allow anyone to download and share their music. It's free, legal and unlimited.

No, but he's going to start, and very soon. And he's going to do while listening to music purchased from http://www.magnatune.com/ and http://www.jamendo.com/ - and I'm pretty sure that neither those organizations nor the fine artists they represent would condone any use of any mind altering substance at all. Unless you do and they do. Anything to get people to go to those sites and support them.

And if that means drinking away the pain of having to tote the barge of talking to you (et al?), going uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow, with the RIAA shills nipping and snarling, well - I'll do it.