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Fuck you and your RIAA buddies. If you give me the choice between P2P retrieval of legitimate content and my RIAA music collection, I'll wipe my non free music in a heartbeat. It's crap like this that tightens my resolve to avoid non free music. I can get all I want from archive.org, magnatune.com, others like them, artist CDs bought at the club and etunes. You pigopolists and your old commercial shit are on the bottom of my list.

We can debate the morality of surrendering to government sponsored ownership of culture, but the practical path is to not help by sharing non free material. Government mandated broadcast monopolies and many other bogus laws lead directly to the creation of the big three music publishers. As the owners of the previous convenient means of sharing music, radio, the publishers have co-opted a large part of our culture. No one really won that one, least of all artists and those actually making the music. The best way to fight it is not to purchase or share RIAA shit.

Lack of hassle is another reason to delete it all. The accused should be presumed innocent, despite having their doors kicked in. As I pointed out, there's plenty of free content out there by people who want you to share. Much of it is easiest to get by bit torrent and other P2P services. If possesion of RIAA shit is the incriminating evidence, you might be better off without it. That way, I won't have some dickhead like you tut tuting in my face about how I'm getting what I deserved.

That's kind of what they want - RIAA only or nothing RIAA for you. They are forcing you to chose. If everyone gave them what they wanted, the world would be a better place.

You bet eMusic is looking forward to the Slashdot effect ;)

But we should also give credit where credit is due and mention that Magnatune (http://magnatune.com/) has been doing this for years. The buyer chooses what he wants to pay per album - in fact, if you're a cheap bastard, you may download a full album for as little 5$ in the format of your choice: MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC or AAC.

And I love their motto: "We are not evil." Now, where else did we hear that phrase?

I'm an Emusic subscriber and love them, but there are LOTS of legal services out there, these days, selling good ol' MP3s (or even FLAC/OGG) with no DRM

• audiolunchbox.com
• mp3tunes.com
• Many record labels like Magnatune and Bleep
• and the somewhat-legal allofmp3.com for the major-label stuff.

We keep a full list of them at cdbaby.net/dd-partners (in 10 languages!). Though that list is meant mainly for our musician clients, it's a good permalink for a constantly-updating list of digital music sellers, with a short description of each.

I'm seeing more of that... like the recent WSJ rejection of all Linux because the distro tried would not work iTunes (and a few "complex" M$Office docs). It's too bad people don't see the magic combination of:

• Amarok, the awesome free music player.
• The Internet Archive's 34,000 concert Music Archive
• A music publisher that does not suck
• Cheap USB music players from walmart, orcheap good ones or software that makes expensive ones rock like they are worth the money.

The whole DRM fiasco is so avoidable and life without it is so much better. If work forces you to use Windoze, it sucks to be you but you don't have to let that take over your entertainment and home life.

By the way, the GUI that Xine makes does all the cool stuff from keyboard shortcuts you want from a video player. If you want a real video editor, go for kino or cinerella. M$ will never give you any of that any more than M$ Word can be used for publishing.

This article goes to some length discussing the historical basis for copyrights and how those may or not still be valid for creative works in the 21st century as the cost of making and distributing copies has effectively gone to zero. The author comes to the conclusion that no matter what laws are made or desires are had by publishers (or authors) technologically, the "copy" has ceased to be acontrollable thing that revenues can be squeezed from.
  An interesting thing will be how authors and artists of the late 21st century will make their livings. Already many performing artists [musicians] are moving towarddistributing their recordings under CreativeCommons licenses that allow them to begenerally free to the public.* They then can increase their following and make a better living selling tickets to performances as well as taking donations and selling easy accessto their music.
  The 'donation' aspect of this new model is one that I find particularly interesting. It remains to be seen how it would work out, but I can imagine a day when a music group or author puts up a 'new album/book fundraiser' on their website. Fan donations could build until the cost of the production is met, at which point the group/author makes their work and provides it for download free of additional charges (as it has already been paid for). This "donations/payment upfront" model would strongly encourage increased production by artists (the purpose of copyright), while also providing a mechanism to support smaller/niche artists. I imagine that this model would not produce the huge incomes of current (<2%) superstars, but it should provide reasonable incomes for the vast majority of artists.
  As a example of this model in use is the musician "Cargo Cult". I downloaded his albums (for free in 128kbps mp3 format) and listened to them on my MP3 player for several weeks. After a while I found that I really liked his music and went back to Magnatune and gave him $8 for the CD-Quality version of the tracks. Also, I sent him an email asking about his experience giving away his music under CreativeCommons. He replied back with a short message that basically said "Before I didn't make any money with my music, now I do." Where might we (and our culture) be if this was the dominant model.
  - Adam
 
  *Some, such as theAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense that I use for mywebsiteallow free use only for non-commercial uses.
 

This article goes to some length discussing the historical basis for copyrights and how those may or not still be valid for creative works in the 21st century as the cost of making and distributing copies has effectively gone to zero. The author comes to the conclusion that no matter what laws are made or desires are had by publishers (or authors) technologically, the "copy" has ceased to be acontrollable thing that revenues can be squeezed from.
  An interesting thing will be how authors and artists of the late 21st century will make their livings. Already many performing artists [musicians] are moving towarddistributing their recordings under CreativeCommons licenses that allow them to begenerally free to the public.* They then can increase their following and make a better living selling tickets to performances as well as taking donations and selling easy accessto their music.
  The 'donation' aspect of this new model is one that I find particularly interesting. It remains to be seen how it would work out, but I can imagine a day when a music group or author puts up a 'new album/book fundraiser' on their website. Fan donations could build until the cost of the production is met, at which point the group/author makes their work and provides it for download free of additional charges (as it has already been paid for). This "donations/payment upfront" model would strongly encourage increased production by artists (the purpose of copyright), while also providing a mechanism to support smaller/niche artists. I imagine that this model would not produce the huge incomes of current (<2%) superstars, but it should provide reasonable incomes for the vast majority of artists.
  As a example of this model in use is the musician "Cargo Cult". I downloaded his albums (for free in 128kbps mp3 format) and listened to them on my MP3 player for several weeks. After a while I found that I really liked his music and went back to Magnatune and gave him $8 for the CD-Quality version of the tracks. Also, I sent him an email asking about his experience giving away his music under CreativeCommons. He replied back with a short message that basically said "Before I didn't make any money with my music, now I do." Where might we (and our culture) be if this was the dominant model.
  - Adam
 
  *Some, such as theAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense that I use for mywebsiteallow free use only for non-commercial uses.
 

This article goes to some length discussing the historical basis for copyrights and how those may or not still be valid for creative works in the 21st century as the cost of making and distributing copies has effectively gone to zero. The author comes to the conclusion that no matter what laws are made or desires are had by publishers (or authors) technologically, the "copy" has ceased to be acontrollable thing that revenues can be squeezed from.
  An interesting thing will be how authors and artists of the late 21st century will make their livings. Already many performing artists [musicians] are moving towarddistributing their recordings under CreativeCommons licenses that allow them to begenerally free to the public.* They then can increase their following and make a better living selling tickets to performances as well as taking donations and selling easy accessto their music.
  The 'donation' aspect of this new model is one that I find particularly interesting. It remains to be seen how it would work out, but I can imagine a day when a music group or author puts up a 'new album/book fundraiser' on their website. Fan donations could build until the cost of the production is met, at which point the group/author makes their work and provides it for download free of additional charges (as it has already been paid for). This "donations/payment upfront" model would strongly encourage increased production by artists (the purpose of copyright), while also providing a mechanism to support smaller/niche artists. I imagine that this model would not produce the huge incomes of current (<2%) superstars, but it should provide reasonable incomes for the vast majority of artists.
  As a example of this model in use is the musician "Cargo Cult". I downloaded his albums (for free in 128kbps mp3 format) and listened to them on my MP3 player for several weeks. After a while I found that I really liked his music and went back to Magnatune and gave him $8 for the CD-Quality version of the tracks. Also, I sent him an email asking about his experience giving away his music under CreativeCommons. He replied back with a short message that basically said "Before I didn't make any money with my music, now I do." Where might we (and our culture) be if this was the dominant model.
  - Adam
 
  *Some, such as theAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense that I use for mywebsiteallow free use only for non-commercial uses.
 

This article goes to some length discussing the historical basis for copyrights and how those may or not still be valid for creative works in the 21st century as the cost of making and distributing copies has effectively gone to zero. The author comes to the conclusion that no matter what laws are made or desires are had by publishers (or authors) technologically, the "copy" has ceased to be acontrollable thing that revenues can be squeezed from.
  An interesting thing will be how authors and artists of the late 21st century will make their livings. Already many performing artists [musicians] are moving towarddistributing their recordings under CreativeCommons licenses that allow them to begenerally free to the public.* They then can increase their following and make a better living selling tickets to performances as well as taking donations and selling easy accessto their music.
  The 'donation' aspect of this new model is one that I find particularly interesting. It remains to be seen how it would work out, but I can imagine a day when a music group or author puts up a 'new album/book fundraiser' on their website. Fan donations could build until the cost of the production is met, at which point the group/author makes their work and provides it for download free of additional charges (as it has already been paid for). This "donations/payment upfront" model would strongly encourage increased production by artists (the purpose of copyright), while also providing a mechanism to support smaller/niche artists. I imagine that this model would not produce the huge incomes of current (<2%) superstars, but it should provide reasonable incomes for the vast majority of artists.
  As a example of this model in use is the musician "Cargo Cult". I downloaded his albums (for free in 128kbps mp3 format) and listened to them on my MP3 player for several weeks. After a while I found that I really liked his music and went back to Magnatune and gave him $8 for the CD-Quality version of the tracks. Also, I sent him an email asking about his experience giving away his music under CreativeCommons. He replied back with a short message that basically said "Before I didn't make any money with my music, now I do." Where might we (and our culture) be if this was the dominant model.
  - Adam
 
  *Some, such as theAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense that I use for mywebsiteallow free use only for non-commercial uses.
 

No, I mean allowed by the fans. Typically, if its 2+ years old, its viewed as, well, old.

You speak with great authority. I can only speak for myself and those I know with certainty, but I like older music as well as newly released music. Given our respective musical tastes, I think I'd have a better handle on the scene that you do. You seem to be implying that those who like hip-hop are only doing so because when it is new. I'd like a little more credit here, please.

I'll say one thing though. If people who enjoy hip-hop do listen to a lot more modern music than they do the older stuff (and consistant high sales of Tupak et al suggest otherwise), then you should also consider that a lot more high-quality hip-hop is coming out than there is high-quality rock, classical or gregorian chanting. We're spoilt for choice, is all.

Now as you like classical, may I point you in the direction of this gentleman, who I consider to be highly talented and I am going through a phase of listening to his work a lot. Alas, he is new and therefore unlikely to achieve lasting popularity. Classical music is fixed in the minds of many as Mozart, Beethoven and the rest of the club. By your criteria therefore, he'd not be considered "quality music." I think you'll agree this is not the case, however.

And if you like his work despite it being new, I'd like you to get hold of this which I hope you will like despite it being old. Also available on iTunes. I particularly recommend Favourite Things from Nu Flow, but it's all good.

check out http://www.magnatune.com/ -- free mp3 music (you pay what you think it's worth) or you can purchase a CD. also interesting is you can download the raw unmixed tracks for some (all?) of the music and remix it yourself, if that's your thing.

I'm done with my wife, my neighbors and my four year old girl. I also help teach a class for newbies, which has plenty of Aunt Betty and I'm familiar with all the bogus issues and FUD. I can assure you that the new environment is more comfortable for them and soon becomes more familiar.

Most distros' idea of migration is a non-destructive partition sizer and Grub. Once you can boot both, you're on your own. ... I can't figure out how to work MythTV, the remote control's dead, I can't find my documents, I have to re-enter all of my e-mail settings and I can't find the cheat sheet from the ISP, and that pretty Thomas Kincade screensaver is gone. Oh, and how do I get to the iTunes store?

Well, well, well, you seem to have done some research but I can easily refute most of the above and routinely help newbies get through the troubles that Bill Gates created. MythTV is an advanced topic and not really something most computer users are interested in. Where Windoze hides user documents is a real pain, but there are lots of good GUI tools to find them, much like you would use under Windoze itself if you wanted to really know. Xandros does a particularly good job of helping the Windoze refugee and provides links in a windows familiar desktop environment. Email and contact information are easy to migrate, despite Bill's best efforts to lock them up. ISP information is something the user has to enter whenever they move to a new computer or have to wipe and reload their broken Windoze PC. The same can be said for screensavers and every other customization done to Windoze, but can not be said of GNU/Linux, which is much easier to move from machine to machine. On the media front, I'll direct you to a record store, Magnatune, the internet archive's concert collection, and other sources of non DRM'd material. All of the things you mention are flaws that GNU/Linux does not share with Windoze and more reason to migrate sooner rather than later. Free utilities are superior in every case.

But ya got Bill Gates real good, didn't ya?

I'm not out to get Bill Gates, I'm out to keep him from screwing other people. When it's all done, he can sit around with his ill gotten $40,000,000,000. So long as he quits suing public schools, and trying to lock up computing, I'm happy. There's no chair throwing here.

don't forget magnatune!

"I do see a new type of record company that would be entirely digital... with a lower cost of download, a lower cost of doing business, and higher share of the profits for the artists... the main issue that such a record company would have would be promoting newer talent effectively. This is really the main obstacle, especially with the large infrastructure and highly restrictive contracts currently in place between all the players and the central recording studios."

Agreed. Magnatune covers all of those bases. They keep their costs down by not giving their artists any production assistance. This allows them to adopt a "payment optional" model and their artists get a healthy chunk of the sale. In other words, it's many Slashdotters' idea of the perfect record label.

I'll add pimpage for Magnatune, who gives 50% of purchase price directly the musicians, and no DRM.

Ayers said. "Linux would be further relegated to use in servers and business computers, since it would not be providing the multimedia technologies demanded by consumers."

People want music and movies not some greedy pig's Digital Restrictions Management. The absolute failure of "Plays for Sure" to gain any market share is because the DRM sucks. No one wants dissapearing music and convoluted subscription plans. You can, right now, get movies and music outside of such restrictions and that's where people are going to go.

• Archive.org has more than 33,000 live concerts and 70,000 recordings.
• Magnatune has all sorts of good music.
• Star Wreck shows what kind of movie can be made with a good idea and a few junky old computers and a few hundred bucks.

That's just the beginning.

These are the new winners. Their work is excellent and they are the kind of people I want to spend my money on. Do you think for an instant that I'm going to corrupt my computer with crap that will lock them out? I'm not alone. People are already outraged by DRM'd CDs and the only people less trusted than Sony is Microsoft. When whole collections vanish they will really howl. The winners will sit pretty on their nice media and wonder what all the fuss is about. Their market share is going to go up and up.

I'm keeping my set top box for the old losers but it's going away. You can get them for $40 at the walmart and they do a nice slide show if you feed them a CD of your jpegs. I'll give the MPAA four bucks here and there to watch their little movies. That's all it takes to not feel like I live in a cave. As more content becomes available elsewhere, I'll spend less of my time and money on that set top box. I've already dropped cable TV and don't miss it.

I understand what you're saying, but it fails in practice. When one reads therads like this on Slashdot, there's the obligatory "don't forget Magnatune!" post. Magnatune embodies what many Slashdotters would consider to be the perfect music business model: no DRM, you can listen to it in entirety before you buy, Creative Commons licensing, liberal redistribution rights, and so on. Yet while Apple and the record labels are having a grand old time with the iTMS and its explosive growth, Magnatune is flailing. It's telling that somebody has to point out that Magnatune exists each time the subject of piracy comes up.

If I were a record company executive, Magnatune's lack of success would not sway me from the "invest money in an artist and sell copies one at a time to recoup the expense" model. Piracy is a cost of doing business, just as retail businesses must deal with shrinkage. People will always try to get something for free, no matter what your business is. This means that it must be dealt with. I don't think it means the model is broken.

I understand what you're saying, but it fails in practice. When one reads therads like this on Slashdot, there's the obligatory "don't forget Magnatune!" post. Magnatune embodies what many Slashdotters would consider to be the perfect music business model: no DRM, you can listen to it in entirety before you buy, Creative Commons licensing, liberal redistribution rights, and so on. Yet while Apple and the record labels are having a grand old time with the iTMS and its explosive growth, Magnatune is flailing. It's telling that somebody has to point out that Magnatune exists each time the subject of piracy comes up.

If I were a record company executive, Magnatune's lack of success would not sway me from the "invest money in an artist and sell copies one at a time to recoup the expense" model. Piracy is a cost of doing business, just as retail businesses must deal with shrinkage. People will always try to get something for free, no matter what your business is. This means that it must be dealt with. I don't think it means the model is broken.

Let's just disregard the fact that you have no real perspective.

If you don't like the law and don't like the RIAA's tactics, don't buy music from publishers and recording companies that support it. Buy music only from groups and companies that are expressly not members and/or support file trading.

Jim's Big Ego (http://bigego.com/) is a great band and they release their music under the Creative Commons License. Only buy music from enlightened places like Magnatune (http://magnatune.com/). CDBaby (http://cdbaby.com/) works directly with artists and gives them most of the profits.

Once you have done all that, then tell the companies that you would normally buy from why you aren't going to buy from them until they leave the RIAA or reign it in. Until you do that, if you still download music that you haven't paid for and don't have permission to download, you're full of crap.

So I heard new music, bought dozens of albums (with *half* of the purchase price going directly to the artist), didn't break any laws, and didn't support the RIAA.

So I heard new music, bought dozens of albums (with *half* of the purchase price going directly to the artist), didn't break any laws, and didn't support the RIAA.

So I heard new music, bought dozens of albums (with *half* of the purchase price going directly to the artist), didn't break any laws, and didn't support the RIAA.

So I heard new music, bought dozens of albums (with *half* of the purchase price going directly to the artist), didn't break any laws, and didn't support the RIAA.

You are familiar with MagnaTune? No DRM there, and they have a "Why we are not evil" link on their page.

Not true at all

320bps VBR MP3s:

http://www.audiolunchbox.com/
http://www.magnatune.com/
http://www.bleep.com/, who sells FLACs as well.

There are more.

No! You got it all wrong! What we need is more consumers with brains - let them keep their protected content; don't prolong the death of the music industry unnecessarily. Instead, support fair distribution and artist compensation models! TFA would be just one more (tiny) reason to do so.

Don't forget the ever-deserving http://www.magnatune.com/. Mmm, FLAC (which play fine on an iPod with Rockbox, along with MusePack, Vorbis, WavPack, etc)

There's an installed base that will only play standard CDs, but they're also totally rippable. In other words, they can either kiss off the installed base market to bet the farm on DRM or they can keep selling standard CDs and render DRM largely pointless.

Selling non-DRM ISO images (a la MagnaTune is, of course, Not Gonna Happen. Decisions, decisions ...

It's the first time I see a service offering lossless downloads.

And if you must have major label stuff, Real Rhapsody has a beta version FireFox plugin that allows you to use the entire jukebox service. Given, you can't download and keep it, but at least you can listen to the service, and Real is doing something for us Linux users.

If there's no God, Why do people keep asking Him to bless and damn everything?

Not my life. I'm not handing control of my computers over to anyone for entertainment. I'm also not going to be buying any dissapearing files or renting music from pigopolists.

Given that people can download and upload any file free of charge, etc, it needs to be done, otherwise files get swapped around etc.

Electronic networks are the real fact of life. The phonograph and it's industry are obsolete. Those who cling to the old model will be outsold by those who move on. There's more ways to make money than selling physical coppies of crap hyped on ancient, and equally obsolete, broadcast networks.

The less money going to pigopolist, the more money there will be for content creators. Witness Magnatune and recording friendly bands on the internet archive. More money will make more content and everyone will win.

People with bad attitudes make bad product. The alternative publishers are already just as good or better than the pigopolists. The difference is going to become more obvious.

Bullshit, it's my decision. When the "music industry" makes something I don't want, I don't buy it. It's easy enough to get good quality music from artists and publishers who are not pigs. See Magnatune and Internet Archive Live Music.

Microsoft, Apple and others who make hardware that sucks will see similar results. OK, Apple sucks less but it's not good enough to only be a small pain in the ass. My next music player will have random playlists, ogg playback and standard data exchange so that free software can write to it. Here that? It's the sound my wallet makes when I keep it in my pocket.

DRM is stupid. Treating your customers like criminals is bad business. It won't work and no one's going to buy it.

In some ways I hope we will be able to do with DRM what we hope to accomplish with our streaming hosting platform. People come to us and ask for WMA or MP3 streaming, and we are able to give them that, but we also give them Ogg streaming as part of the package. In that way we help make sure more and more content is available as Ogg streams and through that help solve part of the chicken-egg problem that is there in regards to widespread adoption of Ogg.

Most places don't have that, thanks to the FCC engineered duopoly and that's very bad for the US economy. The local Bell wants that much for dial up and won't give you DSL for less. The local cable company want's it's fifty bucks a month, just like the phone company gets when you add the price of a land line. "Broadband" will remain expensive and I predict some people will quit using it and the US will fall further behind the rest of the world, at great cost of US businesses.

The only people who win in this situation are Holywood and the telco monopolies. People will continue sucking up movies and "consuming" other content through their choiceless and "pay per view" entertainment channels. As Holywood jacks up their rates more people will drop their cable modem costs. There's great entertainment at the Internet Archive and Magnatune, but it's not enough yet to replace the cable for most people. The losers will be anyone who wants to eliminate paper and the US post from their lives. Combined with M$ mal and spyware, dial up is unusable for business forms even the most efficient web forms LAMP can provide. The cost of business as usual is staggering.

That's exactly the conclusion the RIAA wants you to draw. P2P is dirty, they tell you, because so many people use it to steal bread from the mouths of artists children. Because all material is copyright and there's no easy way to tell the publisher's intentions, ALL SHARING MUST INVOLVE SAID "PIRACY". So give up, only the pigopolists can legally distribute music and keep all the bread from ever reaching an artist.

Share music? Why would I want to do that? Next thing you know, I'll be playing it to my friends and singing it without permission. Dirty me.

That old story is so over:

• Magnatune
• Internet Archive

Go to concerts, buy music and share it. As you have noticed, not everyone is a pig and there's more than enough to go around without choke points in Holywood. I don't have to give my money to a pig when I could give it to an artist.

Yes and it did. That is a brief history of the 90s.

If it has, in fact, stayed flat that would indicate something is creating downward pressure.

What you see is market destruction and saturation. The big publishers wiped out their competition, so their primary market is left with bad choices and continues to make them at the same rate as always.

Don't confuse broadband adoption with internet access and don't think that you need broadband to swap music. Internet access itself has remained constant in the developed world. Everyone who wants it has had it for years. Broadband is needed for other activities that require instant feedback but music is not one of them.

Music sharing was big before broadband became common because songs are only a few megabytes in size. Back in the day, people would set their favorite client to download their music while they did other things. There's only so much free music a person wants in a given night and dial up worked just fine. A person using the old Napster was exposed to more new music than any commercial radio station can provide and often collected more songs than the average station carries in inventory. Having your requests met in minutes is not much more satisfying than your computer getting it over an hour or so. The thing that mattered was variety and price.

It's not surprising that "piracy" is still rampant because the greedheads turned everything else off. Legitimate providers like MP3.com were all shut down and replaced by greedy nonsense like ITunes and horrid clients like WMP. After years of stagnation, other legitimate services are finally coming back on line. Places like Magnatune are finally going to put money in artist's pockets and new music at your fingertips. In the mean time, anyone who really wants music will find a way. The tools only get better and the difference between what you can get on music sharing services and what's offered by the big publishers and broadcasters is still staggering.

The greedheads are losing.

I have an Archos GMini400. My charging lead is next to the hifi so I can plug it in there and use it instead of a CD player. The good part is that when it's on charge it has an AC power profile that keeps the backlight on all the time and the HDD spinning for longer.

I use SynchronizeIt to update the library, EAC / Lame for ripping. I have never bought music from an online store except a non-DRMed album from Magnatune

I don't have an iPod simply because they're much more expensive than the Archos.

Sounds like you're looking for emusic... There's a monthly fee for a set number of downloads (number depends on which plan you choose) that are yours permanently. It's DRM-free MP3 format, as you requested....

Are you familiar with MagnaTune?

The reason it won't work on iPods is because Apple won't let it work on iPods.

Nonsense. If Microsoft wish to sell music that will play on iPods, they're free to provide music in unencumbered MP3 format, as online stores such as eMusic and Magnatune currently do. What you're suggesting is that Apple should specifically support a proprietary format designed solely to be used by competing stores on a competing operating system.

Surely the onus here should be on Microsoft, not Apple? What you're asking is about as realistic as expecting Microsoft to provide a fully-featured Windows Media Player for Linux.

"I guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money."

I'd much rather the labels leave us alone and let the artists make some money. Check out http://www.magnatune.com/

Especially interesting for me is this page.

MagnaTune: returning guilt to life.

I know what you mean i use http://magnatune.com/ they have a wonderful service and good music at good prices.. and you can download in just about any worth while format including flac... I wonder if the "Industry" even considers that there is "other" stuff out there that we might be listening too and not just the pre-programed crap that they have been putting out..

FLAC is overkill unless you want to rebuild your audio CDs in their pristine state. If your are going strictly for archival purposes, FLAC is the way to go.

And format changes. MP3? OGG? WMA? AAC? not-yet-released-format X? FLAC is definately the most future-proof format, and the cost of a 250GB HDD is nothing like the time spent ripping. Even within a format there are many different encoders and qualities. FLAC is a way to be able to always change your mind.

But you are basically saying the same thing I am. If you are going for archival purposes then FLAC is the way to go--whether you are rebuilding CD Audio or new Vorbis or MP3 files. Same difference...

I like buying on-line music in FLAC format, for example when I purchase from places like Magnatune or Live Metallica. I keep those FLAC files and then covert them into whatever I need. Perfect quality files to start with since I am not getting a physical CD with my purchase...

I see your point though, if you dump to FLAC first you can easily batch convert those files into whatever other codec you wish. A really quick way to media shift your entire collection in one easy CLI command. Moving metadata with the media shift is the real trick though, eh? Also, it's going to be a while before portable players have the kind of storage your taking about. There again, FLAC for archiving is great, but you have to consider other formats for more general usages...

Long post short(er), I agree--FLAC is the ideal to use to archive your CD collection as media shifting from that point is a snap. Still, Vorbis at q=6 is pretty good too and not going away either, since it's a patent-free open codec. Not lossless of course, but good enough for my purposes...

"I would be fine sending other corparte people to jail, but how about we start with the Recording industry people that have been caught red handed and admitted guilt in price fixing multiple times, and pay for play radio..."

Price fixing multiple times? I'm aware of the thing a few years ago where Best Buy and Wal-Mart nailed Universal... have there been other times?

At any rate, price fixing is not an offense for which one can go to jail. Contempt of court, however, is. This is what we are discussing today: a possible jail term for contempt of court.

"Not to mention the price guaging they have been doing forever... CDS ALWAYS should have been cheaper than tapes, CDS always cost most than tapes...send em to jail..."

Virtually every other industry -- including the one you probably work in -- sets their pricing according to supply and demand; why can't the record industry? I wouldn't take a cassette tape for free; if somebody gave me a new release in cassette form, I would be sorely disapointed. Consumers simply value CDs more than cassettes.

"We need to stop proping up dinosaur businesses just let them fail and competitors take over..."

That's an interesting take on things. Apple's iTMS has been a runaway success. The original Napster is gone. Kazaa is on the ropes. Things don't look good for eDonkey. The open-source, "payment optional" record labels like Magnatune are barely making a blip. Looks to me like the record industry is doing fine.

Audio Lunchbox

EMusic

Both offer regular old MP3s (and AL offers .ogg). No Britney Spears, but a decent (not perfect, but decent) selection of good music. For less commercial music, there's also Magnatune, but I've not had much success finding stuff I really want there (other people seem to enjoy it, though).

True, there are a number of people with the "gimme" mentality. However, there are a few other factors to consider:

1) Would these misers have been willing to splash out for the product anyway? Probably not. For example, a copyright infringer with 1,000 albums on his/her hard drive would never have been able to afford more than a couple of percent of that. In fact, being miserly, they probably wouldn't have bought more than five albums, if that, coming to a grand total of $15*5 = $75 lost sales at absolute maximum. Of course, the RIAA would count this as $15*1,000 = £15,000 of lost sales.

2) To what extent is this countered by the increased exposure of the target demographic to the product? Say the above miserly copyright infringer uploads 2,000 copies of assorted albums to other people. Now say just 5% of recipients are honest (probably a low figure), and go out and buy just 5% of the albums they receive. The money spent is then $15*2,000*0.05*0.05 = $75 - cancelling out the original "loss" to the copyright holder. (No I didn't fudge my numbers, it was just a flukey estimate)

3) (This one applies to music) How much of this actually goes to the artist? Since the misers who are forced to buy albums if the filesharing networks close aren't exactly publically-minded citizens, they'll just get their albums from the stores. By Courtney Love's arithmetic, the record label gets about $50 profit from the $75 spent, whilst the artists get a total of $2.38 profit. Now, if the albums are downloaded and then paid for, the recipients are likely to be individuals who are sympathetic to the plight of musicians, and hence will often donate via a band's site or buy from an ethical label, as I did just last night (despite being a poor student). Result: the artist is likely to get at least 1/2 the loot, a 1500% increase over the other system

4) (This one applies to software) What happens when people want to use a superb tool like Lightwave in a professional context? They have to license it, or recommend that it be licensed. So, by not shooting down the bored teenage downloader who'd never be able to afford this $800 software, Newtek is able to sell several copies to the company he/she ends up working for. It's like farming only not.

In conclusion, the positive side-effects of wide-ranging copyright infringement will often outweigh the negative side-effects, especially in industries where the content producers are getting shafted or where the product is most lucratively licensed in a professional context. There's probably an equivalent argument for films but my brain's dead.

Speaking of ruptured braincells, there's at least two errors in the above calculations. I'm too tired to figure out how to correct them, so I'll just say: please give bonus points to anyone who finds three mistakes :)

Competition can come in many forms. Other labels is one solution, as evidenced by the success of groups like Magnatune, which is experimenting with a "shareware-like" business model. Individuals dealing directly with e.g. iTMS, or distributing through their own web sites, is another form of competition. Even piracy is competition in a real sense, whether or not the industry regards it as such, and despite its nature as a black market. The industry has been forced to find ways to make their services more appealing than P2P downloads, either by increasing the risks of using P2P (through lawsuits) or by finding ways to make their own services more valuable (which they're still working on). Piracy, of course, is far from an optimal solution, because it clashes with the models on which the artists' compensation is currently based. However, it may eventually lead to the adoptance of business models whose successes do not depend on draconian copyright laws, and I would consider that a positive outcome.

One nice thing about my iPod is that it can play MP3 and WAV. One bad thing about my iPod is that it doesn't support any DRM other than Apple's... (But, I have never had the problem where something I wanted to listen to wouldn't play on my iPod. In part that's just because my music sources tend to be either Apple DRM, or have no DRM at all...)

dave

You mean like these guys?

I purchased a CD, and have unlimited access to WAV files, FLAC, Ogg, vbr and 128k and 256k mp3s, and aac (drm-less). Unfortunately, if you order a physical CD from them, it comes with the label's cover etc, rather than album art.