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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.

Society wants music. But do they really want that music that is produced by people that would not do it unless they get promoted by big corporations? There will be music; the existance of indie bands proves it. And they can even get money, as Magnatune and CD Baby prove. Maybe they won't get rich from it. We have to decide if we want "art" that is motivated by money, or art that is a genuine artistic creation.

... at Magnatune with their membership plans.

... at Magnatune with their membership plans.

I only buy DRM-free music. Luckily, there are various sources, including:

• Jamendo
• eMusic
• Amazon MP3 (WHY can't I use this from Canada?! C'mon Amazon, get your act together.)
• Magnatune
• iTunes Plus

Yeah, and Magnatune even has all 60 of the Rock & Pop artists ever to exist!

Music is prohibitively expensive right now, thanks to declining sales, not completely the fault of piracy.

I'm currently enjoying Rhythmnbox's direct connection with Magnatune and Jamendo. There's a fair bit of rubbish, but there is certainly a fair amount of talent as well.

If you really want to hear music from this mysterious duo, then perhaps search ebay/amazon for second-hand CDs.

Nobody needs the RIAA and it's members anymore.

A friend of mine takes every chance to make a point of him not buy from RIAA companies anymore. He buys independant and small label only since a few years now. You get the stuff as download from the web, in FLAC quality if you wish, it's all non-drm and the variety is *huge*. Something for every taste. There are countless websites offering DRM free music that way. A good place to start is Magnatune. I recently bought an album from the German indie chillout/ambient crew moodorama. It's great. And those 10 Euros for an entire album go straight to the band. ... And just visiting their indie-publisher to test the link tells me I'm probably going to do some music shopping this afternoon.

Bottom line:
NOBODY needs the RIAA crew anymore - not even people like me, listening to stuff like chillout(!!). Especially not the people technically savy enough to know what a piece of crap DRM is and what dickheads the people are forcing it on to the end-users. I.E. all of us slashdotters. SO STOP F*CKING BUYING/LISTENING TO RIAA CRAP! Problem solved.

The only thing I buy from the iTunes Music Store are "iTunes Plus" tracks; they've got a higher bitrate, and no DRM at all.

If something I want isn't available DRM-free, I'll go buy a CD or something instead and rip it myself. Easy.

I've spent a lot more money at eMusic and Magnatune (my personal favourite; I download WAV files of the whole CD and encode them however I want) than at iTMS.

(Note: I'm not associated with any of these services, other than as a customer.)

Was I the only one to see the title and think music?

Big distributors get their cut, fine. But now there is less money to spend on artists directly at concerts and CD sales. It is probably not so great for artist friendly distributors like http://magnatune.com/ either - although they would have a better chance of fighting for their (and their artists) share.

I've bought a few things from there but most of the mainstream stuff is under the WMA category and therefore not of interest to me. They are also attempting to create more of an online listening site than a shop which I don't like. They keep all of the music you buy in a "locker" which you can stream from again and again. There's no way to remove it if you only want a download. Also an absolute PITA to download more than a handful of tracks as they don't offer any sort of combined download tool for Linux. After scrolling through three pages and downloading music one link at a time I gave up and decided to wait for someone who offered a more shop-style interface.

Magnatune are the best I've ever come across in terms of user experience. Of course you can't get a Basement Jaxx album off them but unlike most independent little groups there's actually stuff on there that's really good. Ehran Starks was particularly worth getting but there's a lot more, too.

Well, I prefer to buy music in a lossless format, so I buy most of it as a CD (and then immediately rip to FLAC with Grip or Sound Juicer).

I heartily recommend Magnatune. They let you download the entire album in medium-quality MP3, listen to it as much as you want, and then if you buy it you can download a WAV file, FLAC, high-quality MP3 or high-quality Ogg Vorbis. (Or more than one of those formats.)

I found several albums from Magnatune that I really love.

Also, I'm listening to a lot of music on Rhapsody right now. I actually don't mind DRM for a music "rental" situation; I object to DRM on tracks that I buy. Rhapsody is a great way to listen to a whole bunch of music at once, and they also have old Bill Cosby comedy albums, holiday albums, and other special things that I might like to listen to once in a while but I don't really have an urgent desire to buy. Rhapsody doesn't have lossless, so I'm not likely to buy much music from them, but it's a great way to find albums to buy on CD. It is available for Linux and Mac as well as Windows. (Disclaimer: I work for the company that owns Rhapsody, but it's not my job to try to sell it to you. I get a free Rhapsody account as a job benefit, but if I didn't, I would definitely be willing to pay $13 a month to get access to millions of songs.)

steveha

It's at a bit of a tangent to the original topic, but I don't think anyone in a position of power at any record label really listens to what they're selling.

Or rather, they do but they don't listen to it because it gives them pleasure, they listen to it to determine whether or not it's the kind of thing they can sell. It's not the kind of thing they put in the car on the way to work.

This level of attention to what you're churning out might work OK when you're WalMart (or Asda in the UK) and work to a business model which can allow this kind of thing - pile it so high and sell it so cheap that a lot of people don't much care if it only lasts 5 minutes - but the record industry's business model has always been that regardless of what else is being sold, there's a few items at the top that sell so well they can afford to bankroll everything else until the Next Big Thing.

I'm really not sure how this can work if the quality of whatever the latest Big Thing is consistently drops from one year to the next.

I've not made any mention of DRM or other distribution media. That's because I don't believe they're relevant. The Internet provides a means of distribution much more efficient than anything in the past.

This isn't to say record labels will go away any time soon. There still isn't a very efficient way to type into Google "I like this band, this band and this band. Earlier work by this other band but I don't like their latest stuff much. What else might I like? How about new talent? Any new blood playing that kind of music?". I think the future looks more like Magnatune than Warner or Sony though.

Here you go: http://magnatune.com/ , too bad it has limited catalog.

Now go FLAC yourself.

Why restrict to Europe-wide. The sites from which I download music (Magnatune, CD Baby) charge the same no matter where in you are.

Might be a good time to listen to a few tunes from a label that's not evil.

[Caveat: I don't work for them, own any part of the company, or know anyone personally who's released a CD through them. I just buy their stuff and dig Shannon Coulter's sultry voice.]

Might be a good time to listen to a few tunes from a label that's not evil.

[Caveat: I don't work for them, own any part of the company, or know anyone personally who's released a CD through them. I just buy their stuff and dig Shannon Coulter's sultry voice.]

Might be a good time to listen to a few tunes from a label that's not evil.

[Caveat: I don't work for them, own any part of the company, or know anyone personally who's released a CD through them. I just buy their stuff and dig Shannon Coulter's sultry voice.]

I have a couple major ways to get music onto my computer. The first is to buy (or steal) Compact Discs (or those old vinyl records if I had something to play them with) and copy the music onto my computer from there. The second is to download the music, which could be either legally purchased or found being given away illegally by someone. And now the music industry tells me the first option is out.

Given the trends in the way music is listened to these days, which involves a spectrum from listening to huge collections stored on a computer to listening via small portable devices, the compact disk itself, for more and more people, is nothing more than the "purchase medium" in much the same way most commercial software is legally purchased. But if the music industry says "no" to using the Compact Disc to get our music, then I guess we have to quit buying those. Of course there will be some exceptions such as those available from places like CD Baby and Magnatune.

If the music industry thinks I'm going to listen to my music by actually playing the CD on some big clunky mechanical device, they are totally out of touch. But then, we've known that for a few years, already. It seems the music industry itself will drive the CD into oblivion even before the public was going to.

Indie artists can use HTTP (and Torrent if necessary), theres plenty of willing hosts.

I could give a damned about the losses the corporations face when the music gets shared without them having to expend anything for that sharing to be achieved. We don't need their CD factories. We don't need their printing of the album liners. We don't need their marketing departments. We don't need them.

It is the musicians that suffer. This might include the artists for the album cover, too. I wish there was a way for them to be paid for the music we enjoy (in proper proportion to how much their particular music gets enjoyed).

However, the ones that sign with the big corporations that take 92% off the top have apparently already accepted that they are going to get shafted by the man. Then when together they get shafted by the public, it's the corporations that lose the most, as it should be since we don't need what they contribute to the process.

But we do have a start to this in places like CD Baby and Magnatune. People who listen to music should shift to these business models as much as they can.

As for movies, that's a bit harder, since there is a larger production model involved, with lots of people whose only connection is being employed by one or more businesses involved in the production. Still, we should look carefully at how much the real artists and workers make compared to the investors (who deserve a fair share for investing, but absolutely never the right to gouge).

Don't forget Magnatune. Large selection of music, very inexpensive, plenty of download formats, and 50% of what you pay goes directly to the artist.

creative commons has a search built into their site.
http://www.creativecommons.org/

magnatune has music you can pay for or not.
http://www.magnatune.com/

opsound has creative commons licensed music
http://www.opsound.org/

and, of course, my favorite, Binary Beats has non-RIAA music
http://www.binarybeats.com/

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

I like magnatune, lets you listen to the music with descent quality befor buying it (in vorbis/mp3/flac/wav) for a custom price of which 50% goes to the artist. You're also allowed to share the music with a couple of friends.

All the music I've bought recently has been from Magnatune and Boomkat. The selection's limited, and Boomkat is uncomfortably overpriced, but at least they're trying; not only do both lack DRM, but both sell FLAC too.

Such an emerging band should sign up with something like Magnatune. They do the "promotion" and promote a "mentorship" attribute to the commercial transaction. I think they should merge with last.fm but the latter were bought out by a major so I donìt see it happening... e

The correlation here is that the more you download via P2P the more you buy CDs or legal downloads to the tune of 100 (more) downloads to 44 (more) CDs. But does that mean that the act of P2P downloading causes, or enables, buying more CDs? NO! The data does NOT show this at all. It MAY be that a particular segment of the population that would have purchased 72 CDs and done no P2P downloading at all, had P2P downloading never happened, has reduced their number to 44. My choice of 72 here is fictional for the purpose of illustration.

What the data COULD be showing is that the segment of the population that buys more CDs and legal downloads than the rest of the population has gravitated to doing P2P downloading and buying less music, but still buys more music than the rest of the population.

And that is not necessarily an indication of theft.

One plausible explanation is that this segment of the population is using P2P downloading as a means to sample music so they can be more selective about what music they buy. So, using my fictional number of 72, this explanation says that without P2P downloading, they would have bought 72 CDs and found they did not really like 28 which they would sell, store, or maybe even dispose of, and kept the 44 they found they do like. But with P2P downloading, they can discover better what they do like and dislike, and avoid buying those 28 CDs they know in advance they don't like.

And this will result in a decline of CD sales ... not because theft in the form of illegal downloading is replacing those sales ... but instead, because the buyers are no longer doing speculative buying in the hope that they might like it based on things like the cover art or the descriptions of the music or the say-so of some friends.

I'd also like to think that P2P downloading could include the ability to discover music that one does like, that they would never have purchased speculatively, but just started grabbing more and more tracks in a particular genre category because it was free. Then they buy a CD they would never have considered buying had they not sampled the track. So the number 44 may consist of some quantity that would not have been purchased without download sampling of 100 tracks.

BTW, I also count the free samples of most of the music you can get under the above term "P2P downloading" from sites like Magnatune and CD Baby. And maybe it is the case that more and more people are buying their music from these places, too.

... and magnatune

Ask Jonathan Coulton if the model works.

Or maybe the guys at Magnatune.

They still seem pretty sold on it.

"Advanced users" using FLAC don't need you to provide some crappy tool.

Magnatune already does what you suggest, including the optional FLAC downloads. Presumably the typical musician isn't impressed with the concept, or it would have conquered the market by now.

I bought some creative-commons-licensed music directly from the artist (Jonathan Coulton).

I have also bought music through Magnatune and Emusic, but I don't know if those count.

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.

As far as I know, they've never released stats about how much people decide to pay.

Really?

You do know that MagnaTune has requested donations for albums for years and done quite well for themselves and their artists? Admittedly they do ask for a minimum of $5 (most likely because for very small amounts it really isn't worth the trouble to process), but routinely get paid much more than that. Artists get a 50% cut of all sales (far better than any normal record company). But you can download 128k mp3's for free, and even use them in non-commercial podcasts.

I've bought a couple albums from them in the past couple of years, and just now I see I need to go back and give them more money since I see some more stuff I want.

The Residents have also had an online store for the past couple of years funded entirely by the honor system: if you need a track, download it and pay them: they only request that you pay more than $3 so that they don't get eaten by billing costs. And, of course, they have also had the "extra special cd" available for most of their works in the past few years (package with bonus CD, book, numbered edition, etc).

They seem to be doing very well despite being the most obscure successful band.

Sure, Radiohead may "lose" some sales... some people will download their music and not pay: most of these would be people who would have never listened to their music anyway. People who were willing to pay cash money for a CD will appreciate being able to pay less online (and not finance MegaMart Music Stores) and even appreciate the convenience of getting the music from their home. Completists will appreciate the bonus edition and will gladly buy it: possession is a major part of being a Completist.

I see no reason why this won't work for known bands with dedicated fans. It would be harder for the little obscure bar band to survive like this, but, then, most of them aren't making much from CD sales either, so it isn't clear that they would actually lose money.

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.

They are offering two very unique methods of purchase for their new music, the ability to name your own price for a digital download or the ability to purchase a special "discbox" which will contain the album on CD and vinyl in addition to a horde of goodies.

It seems to work for Magnatune ( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/28/018247 ) :

http://www.magnatune.com/info/press/coverage/usa_today

Name your own price on any music you buy at Magnatune.

Right on!

iTunes came out around the time I had bought an mp3 player. I was ready to jump into buying digital music (yes, I know vinyl is the best and mp3 is the last, forgive me) when I saw iTunes. But no - Apple just rejected me as a customer by their businessmindedness when they included DRM, and also tried to force me buying iPod.

For all these years, I have been buying CDs when I wanted the music, ripping it off to mp3 (and later ogg when I learned about it) and putting it to my jukebox (iRiver H320) - while waiting for an alternate to iTunes. Yes, I have tried eMusic, I have tried Magnatune with Amarok, and I have bought songs from them. Pretty decent services - coz I was getting off the high horse of mainstream music and was discovering wonderful world of underground/secondary music scene - no complaints there. But I never found some of the mainstream music (and some not-so) anywhere.

Amazone comes and fills the gap so nicely. If at all I want to buy a Pink Floyd again, nothing prevents me now. If at all I want to buy Asian Underground, nothing prevents me anymore. Same is true for (east) Indian classical music, for which I never had any option whatsover, and now I have at least 500 albums to choose from. And guess what, as long as I have a browser on my system, I have the music - no matter if its Ubuntu or Windows or anything else.

http://www.magnatune.com are another very good site. Their selection is mostly classical, electronica and foreign stuff (i.e. not much Amy Winehouse) but their service is excellent along with the very best quality FLAC files you could ask for, though of course there are high quality MP3s and Oggs for those that want them. Extensive try before you buy as well. Now if only there were a similar service in the UK for more mainstream music. The Amazon beta is US only, enforced by needing a US credit card.

There are 5 major formats availabe to buyers:

• 44k/16bit WAV: zip file of perfect quality WAV files.
• FLAC: zip file of perfect quality FLAC files.
• OGG: zip file of high quality OGG files.
• 128kb MP3: zip file of 128kb MP3 files.
• MP3 VBR: zip of high quality MP3 VBR files.