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Seconded.

A lot of netlabels slap a Creative Commons logo on their site, but only allow you to listen to their music via Flash or some other streaming mechanism which doesn't (unless you know some tricks) permit you to save, copy, and share the music. In my view this is a violation of at least the spirit of the licenses they claim to be using, but I've had a hard time advancing that argument because of the amount of people who are of the opinion "hey, you're getting it for free, what are you whining about?". However if you do know and care about the distinction between free and free (or gratis and libre), Jamendo is the best source for music I've found.

The size of their collection is mind-boggling. Yes, there is a low signal to noise ratio, particularly if you're not a fan of electronica, but I don't think your hit rate is going to be any worse than if you started buying RIAA-produced albums at random. There is a need for an effective recommendation system, but in the meantime, here's my favourites.

Seconded.

A lot of netlabels slap a Creative Commons logo on their site, but only allow you to listen to their music via Flash or some other streaming mechanism which doesn't (unless you know some tricks) permit you to save, copy, and share the music. In my view this is a violation of at least the spirit of the licenses they claim to be using, but I've had a hard time advancing that argument because of the amount of people who are of the opinion "hey, you're getting it for free, what are you whining about?". However if you do know and care about the distinction between free and free (or gratis and libre), Jamendo is the best source for music I've found.

The size of their collection is mind-boggling. Yes, there is a low signal to noise ratio, particularly if you're not a fan of electronica, but I don't think your hit rate is going to be any worse than if you started buying RIAA-produced albums at random. There is a need for an effective recommendation system, but in the meantime, here's my favourites.

I loved allofmp3 :) It's not whitewashing! It was one of the few online shops with reasonably priced DRM free music! That not only convinced me but I am sure several others dropped P2P during the period.

Also if you break down the PRICE of a DRM-Free Itunes download and compare it to a former allofmp3 download you see a 1400% difference (1,70 to 0,12) how can Apple justify the difference? (Please do not pretend the difference really goes to the artist!!! We know it doesn't http://downhillbattle.org/itunes/ ).

Then you can argue that the extra money is needed by the majors to produce actual commercial music. So go on and digest one of Madonna CDs or Britey Hits... and compare against the perfectly free music composed without a major that is awayable here legally: http://www.jamendo.com/en/

So summing up: The price of allofmp3 was fair to me and is possibly enought to compensate the artists. The majors are unneeded because good music comes out of itself and jamendo is the proof.

I see no actual problem in backing up all of mp3: I see problems not for backing it up! The allerged economists at the WTO should think about enforcing free trade instead of blocking exports from Russian Websites. Several "institutions" as the DVD REGIONAL CSS are obviuosly devised to erode consumer suplus and stop trade, those should not be tolerated by the WTO but indeed they get enforced by the very same organization. By IP right enforcement the south of the world is incapacitated to produce cheap drugs for the population and the result is death.

So open your eyes, realize that copyright legislation is extremely bad, it is rotten to the bone by the lobbying of several pigopolist american corporations. Allofmp3 is just a indicator of the bad things to come and standing for it means standing for the rights of humanity against corporativity.

Enrico

I think that a Creative Commons release is ideal for indie bands because a release at this point in the game is more about gaining exposure/promotion than it is about making cash.

And not just software - p2p is critical to the ability of independent musicians to distribute downloads of their music. For example, Jamendo offers Creative Commons music from thousands of artists via BitTorrent and eMule.

I'm such a musician - I offer BitTorrent downloads of my music. If (Heaven forbid!) I got slashdotted, the torrents would keep me from being bankrupted by bandwidth bills, as would be the case if I only offered HTTP downloads.

I second that one about KFJC , and Spliff Skankin, their Reggae DJ.

And as a former KFJC DJ, who currently works at 3 radio stations on the Mendocino coast, I still "tune in" to KFJC on the web when I can.

Also, folks might try their local community radio stations , the low power one's in particular, as they often feature "new" music.

And by "new" I mean music that one hasn't likely ever heard before, not necessarily "new" by calendar date.

Another source of new music is on KZYX , where they have several musically "adventurous", late night shows offering some non-RIAA music.

"Up All Night" with DJ Pete, and "Sonic Attack"/"Music Out of Bounds" all feature "new" music.

And theres an exceptional Reggae show every other Friday night from 10 to Midnight called "Heavyweight Sound", hosted by DJ Larry, and he features rare, vintage 7", 10", & 12" Rock Steady, Dub, and Reggae singles.

Sorry, no Bob Marley... or Shinehead... etc., but unless you collect rare Jamaican singles, it WILL be "new" to you.

Also my two late night radio shows on KZYX where I attempt to play at least 35% or more, of "new" music every show, and as much "good" non-RIAA music as I can find.

And then there's Jamendo , with 5750 published albums, and ALL for FREE.

On jamendo, the artists distribute their music under Creative Commons licenses, and via BitTorrent or eMule to legally distribute albums at near-zero cost

There's some ripping good music on this website, and ALL of it RIAA free!

http://jamendo.com/ has a lot of creative commons licensed music. http://creativecommons.org/ has a search engine by which you can find creative commons licensed music (RIAA/DRM free), though I believe it may use the google backend.

~hakware

• Antarhes
• Brad Sucks, and
• invain There's also a ton of decent blues, though most is in French or Italian.

It's great fun to use even if the music is usually so-so. http://www.jamendo.com/

If you're interested in high-quality music, check out http://www.jamendo.com/ . Tons of new stuff everyday, free with the option of donating to the bands, and it's all 200kbps in MP3 or 300 kbps in Ogg Vorbis. There's a wonderful flash-based player if you want it to stream, with playlist capabilities as well. All music is downloaded through BitTorrent or eMule, so it's superfast. Check it out!

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

http://www.jamendo.com/ is a great ressource for all kind of music, in many different languages.

Wal-Mart sells physical items. When you steal a physical item from Wal-Mart, someone looses money. When you copy information from someone, they still have everything they did before and suffer no loss. It's your pencil, your blank piece of paper. You should certainly be allowed to write whatever you want on it. You should certainly be allowed to hand out copies of that piece of paper without worrying about a $10,000 lawsuit. Intellectual Property law does nothing but hinder the growth of the publics' intellect.

The original purpose of copyright was to motivate people to produce creative works. It was not intended for these creative works to be restricted from public use until 70 years after the death of the author of the work. We also notice all over the internet that people are creating all sorts of creative works with no compensation. Look to sites such as jamendo, YTMND, or Something Awful. Look at all of the hundreds of thousands of blogs. Look at the Free Software movement. All of these communities are built upon sharing information and media with the community. There is no form of compensation to the users of these communities, yet they still produce works. There is no need for copyright.

Radiohead don't need airplay any more. It's no accident, I'm sure, that their first hit (if not single, I wasn't paying attention) was "Creep", a song that they supposedly hate but everybody knows. If that song hadn't got the airplay it did, they wouldn't have got so big, I'm guessing.
I'm not saying they wouldn't have made it big (they're not my thing but they're good) but some, if not all, might have chosen different career paths if they hadn't made it when they did (I'm speculating - know almost nothing about them!).
Airplay is good for getting music out to people who don't have the time or inclination to go out looking for it. There are a lot of people like that: in fact, probably the majority? There's good money in that market.
I'm sure that advertising and promotion will creep into the download market but think that it will still be fairer for all. Probably radio as we know it will fade in its influence but I would expect it - or something equivalent - to stay popular in workplaces, etc.
There's tons of great music out there: Jamendo, for example. As the listening public tune in to Internet music, the chances for more people to make money increases - but I expect it to be a longer journey for them. And expect the quality of the end product to be higher :-)
That said, money will always get some further than they ought, I suspect.

Canned music is a social outlet for people also: a shared experience, so to speak. Personalised music is not so social, you're sort-of imposing it on your neighbours. Concerts demand attention ;-)

Have you tried using a site like Jamendo? (I'm not associated with the site, just a user of it.)

It seems to provide a decent framework for this sort of thing, and I've been introduced to a number of great artists through it. Plus you can receive post-purchase payments (tips) via the site.

One thing I think works with the site is that the tips are transparent, so you can see what other people are paying for an album. That's a great way of working out at a glance whether an older album is worth downloading, so your payments actually become a form of recommendation. Until now, nobody except you knew that your average payment was $6.80. So how much does anyone think to donate?

Anyway, I hope you are successful with your efforts. Dylan.

Here are some resources for you:

• Creative Commons Search
• Jamendo - CC music distributed via BitTorrent and eMule
• My own piano music - you could really help me out if you shared it on the Internet
• The Mutopia Project - CC and public domain sheet music

The concept of "authentic" products in the United State is somewhat odd. The idea of "you what you pay for" is ingrained into the US culture so much that getting something for nothing is almost a foreign concept to many consumers. American consumers also rely heavily on popular opinion for shopping choices. The more widespread an shop or product is, the more authentic it feels to the US consumer, for example, Starbuck's.

The first time I downloaded an album from Jamendo (Rob Costlow's Woods of Chaos ) it still felt somewhat like piracy. I was getting good music for free, from a site most people had never heard of. However the more I used the site, the more familiar it became and the more authentic it feels. As sites like Jamendo become more popular and a Radiohead's ditribution model becomes more pervasive, authenticity will take root.

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

Parent was a joke... but I think it's true.

If you truly disagree with the ridiculous statements of the RIAA and its constituent labels (including Sony), then stop buying their music. Even buying it second-hand is encouraging those artists, and hence those labels.

There's no excuse (in my opinion) for buying music from the "big labels" in this day and age. Don't do it. Instead, get your music from Jamendo, Magnatune, directly from the artist, or other "reasonable" sources--where the majority of the profits go to the artists, and where none of the profits go to maintaining a cartel.

I'm serious, here. We need to all stop supporting the big labels... which may mean not buying music from groups that you otherwise enjoy. But, from my own experience, there is plenty of top-quality music available when you meander off the beaten track. Give it a try.

These artists make far more than they would be able to make with a standard record deal. They might not be able to live solely off the income from their music, but if every person I knew who could sing or play an instrument could make a decent income on that alone, then the rest of the workforce would be a great deal smaller.

Many artistic people would rather die than be prevented from using their talents. If there was even a slight chance of getting money to buy a cup of coffee, or even just get appreciated, that could be enough for them to put it out on the net. A lot of that stuff would be terrible of course, just like videos on Youtube or drawings on Deviantart can be horrible, but as long as a search will lead you to the good stuff, then the traditional businesses will die out slowly.

That being said, I wonder if this is some kind of strange social experiment to see if anyone actually puts more than $0 in the price box.

I probably won't.

That being said, I wonder if this is some kind of strange social experiment to see if anyone actually puts more than $0 in the price box.

I probably won't.

EldavoJohn I agree with your comment regarding the fact that un-signed musicians are now able to advertise their content via Amazon.Com's Online Store however there are also many other vectors which are able to be used to promote un-signed artists, of which include Jamendo.Com; although the file format used is primarily an OGG file format, a format which multiple multimedia applications, of which include Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 and Apple iTunes are unable to process without the installation of an additional codec. Amazon.Com has become a serious consideration however it's a pity that that Online Store is only available to residents of the United States Of America, and, being a resident of the United Kingdom, I'm unable to use it. Until the Online Store is available in the United Kingdom, I will continue to perouse Jamendo.Com. http://www.jamendo.com/ - Jamendo.Com - Open Your Ears

Also many Free and Open Source software projects distribute installers via BitTorrent, notably Ubuntu Linux and OpenOffice.org.

All of these torrents are completely legal. Yet many ISPs block BitTorrent traffic - that happened to me with Eastlink back in Nova Scotia. I was therefore unable to check that my own torrents were operating properly! One can try to work around such blockage by using non-standard port numbers, but I understand that it's possible for ISPs to filter based on the content of packets, and not just the port numbers.

I can see the day coming when all peer-to-peer traffic, whether legal or not, is blocked either due to new laws or record and movie industry lawsuits. All of us who have free content and software to distribute will lose out.

Those of us who offer legal files via peer-to-peer networks - not just BitTorrent, as Jamendo also offers eMule - need to work together to lobby both national governments and local ISPs to do away with this filtering. There are many ways to download both music and software that are perfectly legal; we need to dispel the myth that free downloads are somehow necessarily violating the law.

I'm pleased to see that the Europeans are again taking a jump ahead of the colonials.
These days I pretty much exclusively get my music from http://www.jamendo.com/ where all the music is free (and much of it is pretty terrible, by the way, but there is also some excellent stuff.)
After observing the *AA fiasco, I've decided to vote with my wallet. Nowadays all my financial contributions are volutary. Jamendo provides me with a way to pay however much I like for the music I like, and just about all of it goes to the artist (for a change.)
Go the French!

Phnglui Mglwnafh Cthulhu R'lyeh Wgah Nagl F'htagn!

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?

I wonder if this will be good or bad for Creative Commons music like that I get from Jamendo http://www.jamendo.com/ which is distributed via BitTorrent?
If colleges are being asked to prove that they are investing in technology to prevent illegal downloads, I think it is only fair that they also invest some in allowing legal downloads too. I think I could support this sort of legislation if it provided that sort of sweetener.

Look into

cdbaby

magnatunes

jamendo

I've found some great music from all of the above. I'm sure that there are others.

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've never personally neither shared nor downloaded music .. ever

That they be denied the ability to obtain, free of charge, the latest pop music in a format that not only plays on any conceivable device but was also developed by people who share their particular political and philosophical leanings with regard to software....that is truly misery for them.

I'm a 17 year old kid, I listen to classical music. I'm actually right with all of you guys complaining about the crappy music being pumped out. It all sounds the same, it all sounds bad, the lyrics lack meaning, there is no variety. I do not go to the stores and buy music, but at the same time I don't pirate music. I get better quality music by downloading works freely available under Creative Commons than any of the stuff they want me to buy. There is a wonderful selection of Electronic music freely available at this website, I listen to this most of the time: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/index.html and this: http://www.jamendo.com/en/

Thanks for the information. I've added Jamendo.com to my list of links to non-RIAA music, "Liberated Music".

Try Jamendo. All music on the site is entirely free to listen to and download.

I have a friend that got an email from our University saying that some movie industry threatened them because he downloaded Babel. He also said that it included instructions. He didn't tell me what these instructions were, but I seriously doubt that they could be followed by any OS other than Windows or OSX....

Fortunately, however, I've discovered Jamendo, and now I'm listening to music that never gets on the radio, and all of the music on there is protected by Creative Commons. I much prefer their philosophy over the RIAA's and the MPAA's.

"...listen to 100 bad tunes to find one good one."

I put it to you that this is no different than radio, with the difference that it seems to me that 100 songs is the entire live catalog of a pop station at any given time.

May I recommend
http://www.jamendo.com/

They have an embeddable player, ratings, everything you need. No DRM anywhere in sight; in fact most of the music is free to share

I for one and tired of getting upset about this crap. Fact is, the US and the current powers-that-be in the "content industry" are just going to get smoked over the next decade. They're trying t o sell horses and buggies to people who already own free fusion-powered rocket cars. Have you guys seen Jamendo? Thousands of records; download as you please. Stream 'em. Only 20 or so from the U.S. last time I counted. Good music, though.

I stopped buying music years ago when I had a really busy time studying. After that period of withdrawal I heard about some free music labels, got curious and never looked back again.
In the beginning I was impressed by programs that automatically download free music, based on ratings you give.
Today I have a quite large collection of free tracks and albums. From time to time I visit, some, of those. All that is 100% annoyance-, tool-, ad-, DRM- and RIAA-free.

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information.

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

1. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE - Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2. libdvdcss - Copyright (C) 1999-2003 VideoLAN
3. dvdbackup - Copyright (C) 2002 Olaf Beck
4. Linux - Copyright (c) 1991 Linus Torvalds
5. FreeBSD - Copyright (C) 1992-2006 The FreeBSD Project.

1. Go to the location where the copyrighted materials are stored, create a diversion, and run off with the copyrighted materials when no one is looking.
2. Go to the owner of the copyrighted materials, make statments that might suggest his or her life is in danger if you do not have the copyrighted materals, then run off once the person gives them to you.
3. Run in to the location where the copyrighted materials are used, screeming, and waving a bag over your head. Then, grab the copyrighted material and speed off in your car.

I visited Jamendo. All the material is copyrighted.

For hosting your podcasts if you're a musician you might want to check out http://www.jamendo.com/

They do RSS, Podcasts, Bittorrent, reviews, etc... Pretty good, even if you just want to listen to some nice free music

But the government is going after Internet service providers; it's a criminal offense for ISPs to facilitate unauthorized downloading

In all other countries that I'm aware of (and that by no means is a definitive list!) the service provider has some kind of "safe harbour" provision.

Give me something that's better than the (illegal) p2p-nets out there and I'll use it.

Go jamendo.

Jamendo is hunderds of Creative Commons licensed music albums available on BitTorrent and eMule/kad/ed2k networks, OGG and MP3 no DRM. The system is free for artists, free for music fans and ad supported. Very popular in french speaking countries.

Download, listen, share legally, pay if you wish.

Que veux-tu de plus ?

Give a try to jamendo.

jamendo is cool !

it's more than 1100 complete albums : CC licenced, BitTorrent distributed, MP3 and OGG encoded, you pay if you want to thank great artists.

It's growing by 10 new albums per day, mainly european music, sad to see that /. crowd is not aware.

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

Those of us who want to clear the good name of Bittorrent should do things like seed our favorite Linux flavor, and get our music from places where artists share freely under the Creative Commons license.

Content creators and content consumers are becoming one and the same. You can see this every day on sites like Jamendo and Flickr.