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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)

That's not the first time they do this. They already get some money from magnatune, see http://patches.ubuntu.com/r/rhythmbox/extracted/ , patch 3. And they didn't told to rhythmbox developers. Amarok did receive their part of the money : http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2008/04/giving-money-to.html . But just ask to people working on RB if they did, and if they know this was changed on ubuntu.

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.

For folks who can't access Pandora, have a look at Spotify. It's a similar idea to Pandora, but gives you more control over which tracks you listen to. I don't like it's "artist radio" as much as I like Pandora's stations/channels, but building playlists more than makes up for it. It runs in a client rather than a browser; works perfectly for me on Mac (10.4) and Kubuntu 8.10 (running inside WINE).

The one con relative to Pandora is that Spotify has audio ads; I've never counted but it's something like one 10 second ad every 10 songs. Not perfect, but much better than listening to a real radio station. On the upside, you can pay for a day or a month of ad-free listening.

There's also Magnatune which is a good source of DRM-free independant music. Not great as a radio station, as the free streaming is very basic, but I've got some good music from them.

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.

Try Magnatune. They:

• treat their artists far better than any of the major labels
• let artists license, not sign over, music for distribution so artists keep their copyrights
• let you listen to their entire catalog without charge
• work with music player programs (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Songbird, and proprietary software including iTunes)
• offer purchasing by the track, subscription (for streaming or download), and all-you-can-hear prices
• offer downloading in multiple formats including FLAC
• offer redownloading without hassle (compare this to what Apple told Wil Wheaton after Apple's software erased purchased tracks from his iPod)
• offer all tracks without DRM

Try Magnatune. They:

• treat their artists far better than any of the major labels
• let artists license, not sign over, music for distribution so artists keep their copyrights
• let you listen to their entire catalog without charge
• work with music player programs (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Songbird, and proprietary software including iTunes)
• offer purchasing by the track, subscription (for streaming or download), and all-you-can-hear prices
• offer downloading in multiple formats including FLAC
• offer redownloading without hassle (compare this to what Apple told Wil Wheaton after Apple's software erased purchased tracks from his iPod)
• offer all tracks without DRM

Try Magnatune. They:

• treat their artists far better than any of the major labels
• let artists license, not sign over, music for distribution so artists keep their copyrights
• let you listen to their entire catalog without charge
• work with music player programs (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Songbird, and proprietary software including iTunes)
• offer purchasing by the track, subscription (for streaming or download), and all-you-can-hear prices
• offer downloading in multiple formats including FLAC
• offer redownloading without hassle (compare this to what Apple told Wil Wheaton after Apple's software erased purchased tracks from his iPod)
• offer all tracks without DRM

Try Magnatune. They:

• treat their artists far better than any of the major labels
• let artists license, not sign over, music for distribution so artists keep their copyrights
• let you listen to their entire catalog without charge
• work with music player programs (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Songbird, and proprietary software including iTunes)
• offer purchasing by the track, subscription (for streaming or download), and all-you-can-hear prices
• offer downloading in multiple formats including FLAC
• offer redownloading without hassle (compare this to what Apple told Wil Wheaton after Apple's software erased purchased tracks from his iPod)
• offer all tracks without DRM

Perhaps stop buying music from artists who sign with RIAA labels, but I see no reason to stop buying music from labels who treat artists and listeners fairly and reasonably. Quite to the contrary, those are the artists and businesses we should reward for showing that we can still enjoy commercial recorded music and help the artists we like without being called "pirates" or denying ourselves the fun of sharing stuff we like.

I don't like to repeat so much of what I recently posted, but a lot of these details are apropos in this thread as well. Magnatune is one music vendor offers a compelling deal to artists and listeners—you can get the music in multiple pre-encoded forms and/or on a physical CD (your choice), you can pay on a sliding scale (minimum of $5/disc, I believe), there are subscriptions for download and streaming available where you pay regularly or pay a large lump sum and get downloads forever (I did this), you can listen to their entire catalog online via Flash or via music players in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, and all of the freely available tracks are licensed to share. Customers are told they can share a few tracks with others as well.

Artists get a good deal too which includes 50% of the take per track, licensing to Magnatune means artists keep their copyrights and enter non-exclusive deals with Magnatune instead of turning over control to a label and going into the label's debt only to get out at the label's permission ("That track isn't up to your standards! Record another track for us."),

Of course Magnatune doesn't accept everything that comes their way. There's no guarantee you'll be able to distribute through any label. But that's to be expected; part of the value of a label is their (metaphorical) discriminatory ear. I buy from Magnatune because I don't want to preview everything, I want them to filter out a bunch of junk for me. I might not share Magnatune's definition of "junk" but that's to be expected too; beauty is subjective. If you, the artist, want guaranteed distribution you should try another venue that doesn't discriminate and take the trade-off of being the gem in the pile of junk waiting for others to discover you.

The old system has too much overhead. It's just like a really old installation of Windows XP, over time the registry gets bloated, you have excess drivers, old files, corrupt files and they're all taking up system resources making the whole thing less usable. I think this is good analogy, the system they're trying to defend has too much overhead. The corrupt executives have way too much compensation for doing very little, there is way too much creative accounting going on, way too much bribery and of course then they need to spend a lot of money to keep that business going, in the end the legitimate artists suffer as well the consumer. They want a solution that will allow them to maintain their bloated business model and retain their highly excessive compensations, but that is not going to happen.

There are already plenty of alternatives to big music, recently I found this gem where you get to set your own price for what you believe the music is worth, and they give you the music in drm free formats such as mp3, flac, ogg as well as uncompressed wav... and this is at a fraction of the cost of big labels.

In any and every industry: when the small upstart who doesn't have access to mass distribution channels can afford to give you the same product for less, you got a major problem with your business model.

If Universal had a deal where the artist gets half of the take, you'd have far less reason to suspect an all-you-can-hear deal because you'd know you're helping artists and encouraging them to publish more music. As it is, there's nothing in this deal which even suggests a better arrangement for artists (the people corporate copyright holders love to trot out whenever illicit copying and distribution comes up).

The catalogs aren't the same, and neither is the history of pay-for-play, but compare the deal Universal is touting to the deal Magnatune has offered for years. Both are all-you-can-hear, but Magnatune lets you set the price (above a specified minimum), you get more choice in what types of files you want (I like FLAC, it's unencumbered, lossless, and I can transcode to something lossy if I choose), the half-goes-to-the-artist deal still stands, and artists license Magnatune which allows artists to retain their copyrights. Magnatune has no history of pay-for-play but all of the biggest music publishers do; I see no reason to reward that history with my sale. I didn't have to worry about risk: anyone can listen to Magnatune's entire catalog online at no charge. I don't have to worry about risking my Internet connection if I share Magnatune tracks either; even if Magnatune had the power to suspend my Internet connection I've got license to share. I put my money where my mouth is and I've bought an unlimited subscription from Magnatune. I'll not do the same with Universal until their deal gets a lot better for me and the artists whose interests they claim to care about.

If Universal had a deal where the artist gets half of the take, you'd have far less reason to suspect an all-you-can-hear deal because you'd know you're helping artists and encouraging them to publish more music. As it is, there's nothing in this deal which even suggests a better arrangement for artists (the people corporate copyright holders love to trot out whenever illicit copying and distribution comes up).

The catalogs aren't the same, and neither is the history of pay-for-play, but compare the deal Universal is touting to the deal Magnatune has offered for years. Both are all-you-can-hear, but Magnatune lets you set the price (above a specified minimum), you get more choice in what types of files you want (I like FLAC, it's unencumbered, lossless, and I can transcode to something lossy if I choose), the half-goes-to-the-artist deal still stands, and artists license Magnatune which allows artists to retain their copyrights. Magnatune has no history of pay-for-play but all of the biggest music publishers do; I see no reason to reward that history with my sale. I didn't have to worry about risk: anyone can listen to Magnatune's entire catalog online at no charge. I don't have to worry about risking my Internet connection if I share Magnatune tracks either; even if Magnatune had the power to suspend my Internet connection I've got license to share. I put my money where my mouth is and I've bought an unlimited subscription from Magnatune. I'll not do the same with Universal until their deal gets a lot better for me and the artists whose interests they claim to care about.

Agree in principle that the Recording Industry (Saleable Copyright model) is not working, but the "pay for creative work up-front" seems to have major drawbacks - principly that you have no idea if a creative person is any good until they've delivered the goods, creating chicken and egg.

I think you're missing a trick though: live performances.

I've read up on the subject as a former MP3.com artist myself, from talking to upcoming bands like Silverman and from the widespread public writings of established artists. All say that recording artists rarely make any money from sales though their record company; in fact they normally end up heavily in debt (the famous record label "tab").

Let me say that again: most artists do not profit from music sales. Only the record labels (and industry quangos like the RIAA) profit from music sales. Instead, most current artists make their money from live gigs, merchandise, appearance fees, etc - the good old fashioned "goods/services for cash" model.

As soon as you appreciate this, you realise you can ditch the record label altogether, "open source" your music (allow to be freely distributed on a non-profit basis, with distribution channels allowed to charge a small fee to cover their costs if they wish) and make money from gigs, etc, instead as your popularity grows.

This is not a new idea: numerous bug names in music are advocating the idea. Here's a quote from an excellent 2007 Wired feature by former label boss David Byrne:

"What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists."

"The fact that Radiohead debuted its latest album online and Madonna defected from Warner Bros. to Live Nation, a concert promoter, is held to signal the end of the music business as we know it. Actually, these are just two examples of how musicians are increasingly able to work outside of the traditional label relationship. There is no one single way of doing business these days. There are, in fact, six viable models by my count. That variety is good for artists; it gives them more ways to get paid and make a living. And it's good for audiences, too, who will have more - and more interesting - music to listen to. Let's step back and get some perspective."

Wise words. Full article (well worth a read):

    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne

If that's not enough for you, plenty of similar reading at:

    http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/record-label.htm/printable
    http://www.sourban.net/The-Future-Of-Music-How-Real-Artists-Will-Save-Music-From-The-Music-Industry
    http://www.magnatune.com/info/musicians
    http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=music+artists+make+money+live+performances+record+label

Cheers, Ben

I don't recall Major League Baseball refunding accounts for their subscribers when MLB left their subscribers out in the cold. Maybe they restarted their on-demand recorded baseball viewing service with another DRM provider, but I'm referring to the people who did not continue doing business with MLB. Did they get a prorated refund for the service they were not able to use? I'm guessing that DRM-riddled services nowadays include language in the contract that says when the service dies the customer agrees to forfeit the remainder of their subscription fee, so it will be up to consumers to organize and make state/federal law that forces providers to give prorated refunds.

I saw this kind of thing coming when I thought about the implications of copy prevention ("copy protection" is pro-publisher propaganda) back in the 1980s, as I'm sure many posters here did. Without the freedoms of free software (one can only really implement digital restrictions management in user-subjugating/proprietary software) the implications of DRM are even more important (librarians take note!). Today I still think about the implications of DRM (1,2). As a result I only do business with media distributors that don't screw me or the people they work with (Magnatune, for example, has far better policies than any of the other more well-advertised media distributors). I mention this because /. posters all too often believe that one "votes" with their money and should spend accordingly. I don't agree that money should constitute votes, but I do think our spending reflects our values. Yet I don't see many posters on this discussion forum actually talking about spending their money wisely.

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)

Have you tried something like Magnatune?

I have no clue, the operation of Windows Media Player. iTunes offers to do a scan and add your music to your iTunes library - however, nothing is converted and nothing is uploaded to Apple or anyone else - and - you can skip it, I always do.

I wasn't being sarcastic - does SiriusXM do that?

And this evil may not be new to you - but it kinda is to me. Maybe it's because I prefer http://www.magnatune.com/ and I have a low threshold for evil - I don't even use LastFM any more.

At least for music, something like magnatune is a good example. Tv shows could be distributed via bittorrent as normal avi files with comercials embedded, you know, a bit like tv but without the tv.

Use a little imagination and you will find many ways of making money from selling something else than the actual copies, which cost nothing.

... buy music that comes with clear permission to use the music you buy on places like YouTube.

Disclaimer: My only association with Magnatune is being a happy customer.

... buy music that comes with clear permission to use the music you buy on places like YouTube.

Disclaimer: My only association with Magnatune is being a happy customer.

She should simply stop. Get a buttload of dirt cheap CDs in the bargain basement bin for $0.99 each, or better yet, get a lot more stuff off a site such as Magnatune or an Internet radio station, and let the PRS rot in hell in total irrelevance. I think they've completely lost the concept that they need this woman, in actually having an avid listener, a hell of a lot more than she needs them.

I don't pirate it either. I just do without. Why? Because I can't bring myself to give my hard earned money to the thieving cocksuckers that comprise the RIAA and contribute to their program of turning the internet into a police state.

Why don't you try to use the internet against the RIAA? You can legally download music from a number of websites. Some of them are:

• Creative Commons
• Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
• Magnatune
• Podsafe music network
• 7digital

Now you may not find music you like but you might.

Falcon

Now I know it's unpopular on here to go against TPB guys here on slashdot, but they could be considered accessories.

Please do tell us how you come to this conclusion with regard to Swedish copyright law. Nothing you described is a legal analysis, let alone a legal analysis that takes into account Swedish copyright law. Also, nothing you said accounts for another seizure that occurred before the conclusion of TPB's trial.

As for the analysis you did give, you don't account for how we would simply have different art. Even if we have "No Star Wars, No Star Trek, No Family Guy, No Indiana Jones, No DailyShow, No SNL" and so on, we would have other art to enjoy. Perhaps we'd have other things to do that can be exploited commercially. The question is whether Star Wars, Star Trek, Family Guy, and other shows are worth an increasingly oppressive copyright regime and remarkably uneven commercial benefit even for those that participate in that system.

In any forseeable future commercial art can still exist but the particular commercial exploitative systems we have today might not exist (perhaps replaced by others no more ethical than what we have now, perhaps replaced by others which are far more reasonable like Magnatune). In other words, arguing that the current art goes away is not a serious argument for the status quo.

It is good to boycott all the RIAA labels and artists to help send the right message. But we don't know what the grandparent poster really buys. But we do know that even if the grandparent poster is being hypocritical here they don't have anywhere near the publicity or market power Metallica does. It isn't news to learn that some otherwise unknown /. poster isn't acting in accordance with their stated dislike. It's quite a convenient PR blow to learn that a long-standing opponent of file sharing has likely committed copyright infringement. That admission poses a threat to the image record labels try to perpetuate when they have artists like Ulrich tell their tales of woe to the US Congress, the public, or continue to engage in propagandistic hyperbole like calling file sharers "pirates".

I'd rather give my money to distributors that treat their customers and the artists well. So I do just that.

Um, I use Linux, where would I buy digital music that plays on my system and has any value?

Magnatune.com, their collection of Classical music is huge and excellent, and as far as I'm concerned that's the only kind of music that has any value ;) though their Rock section has some pretty nice gems, too.

I concur. And it's even worse than you describe. As I understand it, not all iTunes is DRM-free. Some tracks that Apple distributes still have DRM and there are plenty of other reasons to reject doing business with Apple including:

• the presence of DRM in their other products,
• funding the large corporate labels means helping the RIAA further attack the public, not getting as many restores of lost songs as you need
• not get in the way of your first-sale rights
• and not getting your music under a license that allows sharing even when you pay for the tracks

I'd rather reward distributors that treat me well, like Magnatune.com which never had DRM (and therefore had no two-faced explanation about how they'd like to get away from DRM). Magnatune lets me play and share all tracks from their catalog (they're all under the CC By-NC-SA 1.0 license and I don't have to buy anything to get copies of tracks under this license). Magnatune doesn't treat their artists differently by letting them buy better promotion on Magnatune's website. Magnatune earns my lifetime subscription fee. Apple earns the outrage of my non-technical friends who bought various Apple products and later discovered the lock-in, proprietary, and expensive loss of their rights.

Who wants to pay a fee each and every month to listen to music, only to lose all their music should they stop paying?

That would be me.

I have an account with the Rhapsody online music service. For about $12 a month, I have access to over five million audio tracks. Five. Million.

Now, I would be the last person to claim that they are five million good audio tracks; there are plenty of lame covers and there is plenty of just music I hate. But that still leaves a vast amount of stuff I like, and I'm having fun exploring my way around. Recently I have been listening to the entire back catalog of Alan Parsons Project music; I found a few gems and a bunch of stuff I don't care about. Without buying anything, I figured out which songs I actually would want to get on a best-of compilation album.

I still buy CDs and I still buy music from Magnatune. But there is a place for music exploration using Rhapsody and Pandora.

If I wanted to be snide, I could comment that ITMS is vastly inferior to Rhapsody because you must pay a buck just to hear the whole song to find out whether it's worth buying or not. But why should we bash each others' preferences? There is plenty of room for both types of music service.

The worst thing about Rhapsody: buggy software. Really buggy. Maybe the Windows client is better, but I never use that.

The best thing about Rhapsody: Five. Million. Audio tracks.

steveha

Until now, the only DRM-free option with a comprehensive catalog was Amazon.

There are other sources of DRM-free music. Some of them are:

• Magnatune
• 7digital
• Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
• podsafe music network

Those are just ones I have bookmarked.

Falcon

If only Amazon would sell MP3s to people who don't live in the US. Are the Canadian arms of the American music companies really that different?

I buy my music online from the likes of Magnatune and the "iTunes Plus" store (DRM-free, and higher-quality files than the regular iTunes store). When I can, I buy directly from the artists online.

Sure Apple is enabling idiotic behaviour from the music companies, but I'm not sure we should blame them; would the music companies have even allowed them to sell music without the DRM? You could show your "appreciation" for the DRM'd music by buying something from the iTunes Plus store...

Which cost more, I would buy from iTunes but amazon is cheaper for drm free music.

If only Amazon would sell MP3s to people who don't live in the US. Are the Canadian arms of the American music companies really that different?

I buy my music online from the likes of Magnatune and the "iTunes Plus" store (DRM-free, and higher-quality files than the regular iTunes store). When I can, I buy directly from the artists online.

Sure Apple is enabling idiotic behaviour from the music companies, but I'm not sure we should blame them; would the music companies have even allowed them to sell music without the DRM? You could show your "appreciation" for the DRM'd music by buying something from the iTunes Plus store...

Jamendo
Magnatune
Amazon
Napster
iTunes Store ... blech.

Thanks for reminding me about Magnatunes:

The list I have purchased so far:

1. Spinecar
2. Mandrake Root

Any more, anyone??

Thanks for reminding me about Magnatunes:

The list I have purchased so far:

1. Spinecar
2. Mandrake Root

Any more, anyone??

I bought an album from them from Amarok, but they need more Metal!

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.

When you have been famous for years, to the extend just your name is known to almost everybody, abandoning the classical publishers not only ie easy: it gives you MORE advertisement (e. g. a paper hree on /.)

OTOH, when you are a completely unknown new band, then you must be courageous. I for one will be happy when there'll be a post here listing the last ten courageous little groups trying http://magnatune.com/ .

And in case you were among the happy few knowing Magnatune, let's mention a foreign, minuscule one for classics mainly: Zig-Zag

Yeah. I was having a bad day. Please see later comments, this thread - TIA. The webpage I did for some pals googles & yahoos okey dokey. I've put it as my homepage if anyone cares. It has all of the evil - JS, CSS and Flash (the latter to accommodate embedded http://www.magnatune.com/ music.

I haven't purchased a first-hand CD from a major label in years. Right now, my music comes from Free sources, or my unlimited download membership at magnatune.com. I really don't feel that I'm missing anything at this point.

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.

Clearly you failed at reading the bit where I wrote that "American spends something like $50/yr on copies of movies/music"

Clearly, I did not miss that at all. There's a diff between RIAA and MPAA. The rest of your post discussed music. Your fault for any diff between what you say you meant by artist tax and what you wrote.

And your source of the info that Americans spend about $50/yr on COPIES of music/movies is from...? The same people using our courts nefariously? The same people screwing the artists? And those of us who spend $0/yr on COPIES of music/movies and download nothing illegally and share nothing illegally should pay your proposed tax because....??

Talking about $50/yr puts some metrics so that we can discuss how we can support artists, preferably through voluntary schemes.

Try http://www.magnatune.com/ or http://www.jamendo.com/ and give the artists the $50 directly. Companies that Are Not Evil and support Creative Commons licensing are way ahead on the metrics of which you speak.

Wow, you're just plain obnoxious.

Now you're talking about taxing all sorts of countries. I'm obnoxious, AC? You fucking bet.

That is the system I want to see for music. One where I am able to hear an artist's music before I spend money, and then vote with my dollars who I think is the best.

I humbly suggest Magnatune

If you want even more quality you're someone who thinks 5000 bucks is not too much to spend on a new sound system and thus aren't representative for the average listener.

But on the other hand, you're part of the market segment that spends the most money per capita in music, so you're still pretty f'in important to the music industry.

I've seen Magnatune.com being recommended plenty of times in not-techy sites just because of their huge classical collection available in FLAC (though it's also available on MP3s and OGGs if you care). It's kinda like Apple: you can do quite well catering to a niche, if it also happens to be the richest one.

Assuming for a moment that you're the lone AC in this thread - can you at least keep straight whom it is that you're trying to insult? A little cadence in your retorts, please - or perhaps - what's that other word? - oh yeah, rhythm.

If you're lacking rhythm, here are some really great aids for you to consider:

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/itunes.html

and of course, just about everything in the http://www.magnatune.com/ catalogue.

You are completely welcome in advance!

Yes, they're starting to have some services which will sell you an unencumbered MP3. But, go buy a real, physical CD. You can turn that into unencumbered MP3 all you like.

Then I'd have to put the CD drive back in my computer. And I'd have to take a hard drive out to do that, or buy a USB CD drive. I don't have to do any of these things with Magnatune, which lets me simply do normal downloads in the browser of the music in raw, flac, ogg, or mp3 formats.

Oh, in case you are wondering how I might do a system rescue without a CD drive? I have USB ports for USB sticks, and slots for CF and SDHC cards connected via USB, all bootable. 16GB of flash can hold a lot of rescue software. I removed floppy drives from my computers years ago. I removed CD drives last year. They are so 2nd millennium technology.

... buy music, download it to my unencumbered computer system using open source software I compiled myself, play it directly using open source software I compiled myself, or transfer it to my portable player (and have it play there) using open source software I compiled myself ... then it's truly DRM free.

I don't want the ads. I am willing to pay for music. I'm even willing to pay the greedy fat cat businessmen a part of that for their effort at spewing other junk music all over the TV and radio. But it has to work on my computer if they are considering me to be a part of their market. Otherwise I stick with Magnatune.

FTFA: "The root cause is not the labels - chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it."

Unless, of course, you didn't. The law also permits playing a guitar exclusively in a soundproof booth in the middle of nowhere so that no one will ever be able to hear your music, much less consider purchasing it, which seems like the business model the major labels are moving towards.

You could, for instance, start your own label specifically to avoid this, avoid DRM, allow anyone to stream your catalog as much as they want, offer a variety of formats and purchase options, etc. I think the law permits that too.

As for viability, it might have some issues, but Magnatune has been doing that for five years now and doesn't seem about to stop.

http://www.magnatune.com/

It sounds like Magnatune is for you. I can't speak to item #5 ("Quality sound. Not this poorly-engineered stuff that's merely designed to be "louder" on radio, but instead music that is designed to sound great and which faithfully reproduces the art."). But Magnatune is merely a licensee; the artist licenses Magnatune to distribute their works. So I think it's a pretty good bet that the artist has mixed the recording so that you'll get what the artist considers good enough to represent their work.

I'd also add:

• I can preview the entire catalog online with my favorite music player(s) in free formats (so I don't have to give up my software freedom).
• I can get copies of the tracks I buy from the distributor forever, not a pre-determined limited number of restores.
• I can pay in accordance with the license I'm paying for—commercial use licenses can cost more.
• I can share verbatim non-commercial copies with my friends as friends do.

The "Download Membership" subscription plan Magnatune now has allows you to keep whatever you downloaded, even after you end the subscription. There is a limit of one (1) copy that you may give away to a friend from what you downloaded. Check out the FAQ. If you want to sign up, go here and scroll down to "Download Membership" (like I did). Or maybe the "Streaming Membership" is all you need.

The "Download Membership" subscription plan Magnatune now has allows you to keep whatever you downloaded, even after you end the subscription. There is a limit of one (1) copy that you may give away to a friend from what you downloaded. Check out the FAQ. If you want to sign up, go here and scroll down to "Download Membership" (like I did). Or maybe the "Streaming Membership" is all you need.