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You should check out this site. It's almost exactly what you describe. You can also download the stuff in non-DRM format in decent quality (128 kbps) without paying anything.

The real basic flaw in DRM is that it alienates legitimate users: it's harder for them to listen to their files, harder to play their games or use their software than for those who just get cracked copies.

Buy a song from iTune (btw, the phonetic pronoucination of "tune" in French is slang for "money", just thought I would share that) and it won't play on anything else than Apple software or Apple hardware. It means you get vendor lock-in as each publishing house devise its own rules about what is acceptable and what is not.
People can't buy from anyone else once they start with one a publising house; not because they don't have the illusion of choice, but because it becomes completely impractical to have more than a single, maybe two for those courageous enough, music suppliers.

2 out of 3 times when I buy a game with my hard-earned money, I run into issues when installing or trying to play it because of DRM.
You then have to spend hours in the user forums, publisher's knowledge bases or unofficial websites to find out that the game won't play because the plublisher doesn't like that particular CD-R/W in your machine or something equally studpid.

In the end, I often have to resort to a pirated copy or a crack to get the game to play on my machine. A game that I bought in its original form!

How do you think I feel after spending all that money, all that time, all that frustration trying to do the right thing because I understand that people who work on these products need to make a living?

I feel cheated, alienated, and I'm really not enclined any longer to buy a DRM product just to try it: ended the CD purchases of groups I don't know, ended the games that I might like.
But I won't download them for free either: I just don't play games anymore, and I get and pay my music from people who actually "get it", like http://www.magnatune.com/.

"Captain Obvious, if it was that easy, there wouldn't be a problem now would there? As long as the RIAA enjoys a distribution monopoly your scheme can't and won't work."

That is precisely why I asked. The fact that there are thousands of indie labels all selling their goods for about the same price is contractictory of a couple of facts that every Slashdotter knows: the RIAA is a monopoly, and CDs are sold at a very high margin. In a market with thousands of suppliers, price fixing can't realistically be maintained.

Just so that we're talking about the same thing, would you agree that the auto industry has a monopoly on cars?

"The RIAA is terrified of the Internet because it contains the possibility of breaking their distribution model. They will lobby legislators, get laws passed, do anything to take down any net distribution model that looks like a threat. You can thank iTunes for giving artists the ability to distribute work independently. It will eventually snowball into something more significant...as long as Apple doesn't sell out to keep the RIAA on it's good side."

I see this claim on Slashdot a lot, but I'm just not seeing the evidence. Apple and the record labels have sold tens of millions of tracks on the iTMS and are laughing all the way to the bank. Universal has recently launched their own online-only label. Meanwhile, online ventures like Magnatune, which would fit many Slashdotter's ideal of the future of online music, are flailing. I seems to me that the record labels get this Internet thing just fine.

"You need to be more clear on what exactly you mean by 'unprofitable'."

As you know, the record industry is a hugely speculative one; just one hit a year can keep the lights on and pay for all the other failures. Record companies have an obligation to their employees to stay in business, so they take the path of least resistance and make safe choices. However, I think that's their prerogative and it's certainly not "evil" at all -- in fact, it's how most businesses operate. God bless the indie labels that take chances on the fringe acts, but running a small label with no capital is an even riskier business.

This is the dynamic of any consumer good industry (make a bland, "safe" product and you'll have wider appeal) -- so it's not a point for which the record companies should be singled out as being evil.

*** Disclaimer : I'm one of the founder of Jamendo ***

Reading this /. thread, sorry about this, I can't resist explaining what we're doing here in Luxembourg.

We started jamendo beginning of 2005. The aim of Jamendo is to help artists use P2P technologies and particulary BitTorrent to get to a larger audience. We combine Creative Commons Licence with BitTorrent to have artists publish their work, and promote a legal use of BitTorrent or eMule or Shareaza or ...

Thanks to our jamloader , artists put their demo CD in their PC/Mac/Linux and automagically their work get published as a torrent on jamendo and accessible with eMule. The software rips the CD to FLAC, ask to choose one of the 6 creative commons licenses and uploads the datas to our servers. On our servers we do the rip in other various formats, Ogg, MP3, AAC, and do the creative commons watermarking. We also do some kind of community moderation, in order to avoid the ones that upload the latest Britney Spears or the ones that upload the latest neo-nazy band. Bands have to link back to our website from their official website as a control ( see godon for exemple )

Finally we use iRate as our core technology to do the rating of the music, and do intelligent propositions to our audience. Our XMLRPC-iRate server ( http://irate.jamendo.com/ ) supports the latest features of the iRate protocol but today, there's not enough client software, but we have the project to write our jamplayer that will combine iRate and BitTorrent and foxytunes.

What about the money ? Our business model differs from the one of magnatune for instance ( I quote magnatune because John Buckman made a very nice and cool entry in his blog, thanks again to him). We have a more ad-centric model were the service is free for the artists, is free for the audience, but the web pages are ad supported (no popup), the streamed music may be ad-supported up to 1 audio ad every 3 songs, the published archive in P2P networks are high quality archives with no ads. The idea is : bandwidth heavy is ad-supported, bandwidth friendly (i.e. BitTorrent) is ad-free ! We are not a label but rather a "community driven music hosting company" , we allow the bands to put their paypal button to receive donation on their jamendo page, jamendo takes no margin.

Sorry again /. crowd to present our project in this thread, but I really felt it was on topic ! So if you want to listen to indy music coming from Luxembourg, Belgium and North of France point your favorite BitTorrent client to jamendo.

Laurent.

*** Disclaimer : I'm one of the founder of Jamendo ***

Reading this /. thread, sorry about this, I can't resist explaining what we're doing here in Luxembourg.

We started jamendo beginning of 2005. The aim of Jamendo is to help artists use P2P technologies and particulary BitTorrent to get to a larger audience. We combine Creative Commons Licence with BitTorrent to have artists publish their work, and promote a legal use of BitTorrent or eMule or Shareaza or ...

Thanks to our jamloader , artists put their demo CD in their PC/Mac/Linux and automagically their work get published as a torrent on jamendo and accessible with eMule. The software rips the CD to FLAC, ask to choose one of the 6 creative commons licenses and uploads the datas to our servers. On our servers we do the rip in other various formats, Ogg, MP3, AAC, and do the creative commons watermarking. We also do some kind of community moderation, in order to avoid the ones that upload the latest Britney Spears or the ones that upload the latest neo-nazy band. Bands have to link back to our website from their official website as a control ( see godon for exemple )

Finally we use iRate as our core technology to do the rating of the music, and do intelligent propositions to our audience. Our XMLRPC-iRate server ( http://irate.jamendo.com/ ) supports the latest features of the iRate protocol but today, there's not enough client software, but we have the project to write our jamplayer that will combine iRate and BitTorrent and foxytunes.

What about the money ? Our business model differs from the one of magnatune for instance ( I quote magnatune because John Buckman made a very nice and cool entry in his blog, thanks again to him). We have a more ad-centric model were the service is free for the artists, is free for the audience, but the web pages are ad supported (no popup), the streamed music may be ad-supported up to 1 audio ad every 3 songs, the published archive in P2P networks are high quality archives with no ads. The idea is : bandwidth heavy is ad-supported, bandwidth friendly (i.e. BitTorrent) is ad-free ! We are not a label but rather a "community driven music hosting company" , we allow the bands to put their paypal button to receive donation on their jamendo page, jamendo takes no margin.

Sorry again /. crowd to present our project in this thread, but I really felt it was on topic ! So if you want to listen to indy music coming from Luxembourg, Belgium and North of France point your favorite BitTorrent client to jamendo.

Laurent.

"There is no technical reason we haven't been able to purchase a DVD with 4.6 gigabytes of mp3's which would pretty much cover any entire genre."

You can probably find these in China.

"The problem is they would want to charge $110 for a dvd like that and people are not going to pay that much for one disk which won't be replaced when they go bad."

Boxed sets do a steady but consistent business. Once consumer acceptance of DVD Audio has hit that point, I think we'll see collections released on one DVD, along with the requisite booklets and other goodies that come with such sets. You raise a good point about consumer fears of buying one piece of media with a lot of data.

"When you add things like magnatune.com (some darn good music there by the way and ALL legal) into the mix, I cannot see how they will be able to sustain their prices."

You raise another great point. Magnatune is a perfect example of what many Slashdotters would consider to be how music should be produced and sold -- yet it's flailing, while Apple has solds tens of millions of songs. Selling music online, rather than giving it away and relying on the honor system, still appears to be viable.

"In my view, allofmp3.com is charging a fair price for the content."

I disagree. I believe that rightsholders should be compensated for their efforts, and that we should respect their rights. That is fair. iTunes may pay $0.15 to the artist per track, but 1,000 of those tracks will pay for groceries for a month, and 10,000 will pay the rent.

"We don't need them and there business model anymore, and they know it, but they don't want you to know it."

Slashdotters have been claiming that the Internet will destroy the record industry since the days of the original Napster. I typically see "the record industry is already dead" or "it will happen real soon now" but that's just not happening. Do you have an estimate of when it will happen? Next year, five years from now, ten years from now?

Unfortunately I don't think it's this simple, and Slashdotters who make this proclamation often forget a few things:

• Apple has sold millions of songs via the iTMS. The vast majority of them are from signed labels, and Apple's top tracks and top albums tend to mimic retail sales of physical CDs. In the meantime, companies like Magnatune, which fit many Slashdotters' idea of the future of music, are flailing.
• The Internet is not the exclusive domain of Slashdotters and unsigned acts. To wit, notice the record companies' jumping all over iTMS like it was the last chopper out of Saigon, and Universal's recent move to launch an online-only label. They can use the Internet, too, and they can hire smart people, too.

But perhaps most importantly, I think the "The Internet will kill the record industry" crowd tend to see the Internet as a bit of a universal panacea. Make no mistake: many acts, both signed and unsigned, have done a great job of leveraging online distribution to build a fan base or to reach out to their fans when their label dropped them -- They Might Be Giants comes to mind. But the fact remains that:

• The Internet will not front you the money to rent a recording studio, or build your own.
• The Internet will not pay for your backup singers or session musicians.
• The Internet will not pay for a talented engineer to make your music sound good. Music recorded by amateurs in a garage with a PC-based recording system generally tends to sound like... well, it was recorded in a garage.
• The Internet will not give you the money to press thousands of copies of your CD and send them to radio stations. The Internet will not call those radio stations and get them to play your song.
• The Internet will not arrange and promote your tour.
• The Internet will not give you the money for co-op ads on the iTMS and other legimate download sites. While viral marketing can be useful, it is often no match for a record label that has actual cash to spend on online advertising.
• In short, the Internet is a network. It transmits bits. It is not a substitute for talented producers, engineers, and marketers.

Now, before you say "but I don't need any of that," keep in mind that if you choose the route of avoiding the record label and taking on all the responsibilities I've covered above (and God bless you if you do), you're essentially in competition with the record labels who will be taking those steps.

As you can guess, my opinion differs from yours on the motives behind the record companies' talks of raising wholesale prices. Online distribution is a format change, nothing more. The record industry has survived a dozen format changes over the past century. Part of a format change is experimenting with the pricing model. Now, frankly, I think that their attempts to go north of $0.99 are completely fucking stupid, but they are doing what many businesses do in developing a pricing strategy: experiment.

You don't know Magnatune? But I don't think they'll rise the suggested price...

I saw nothing about rates going up here.

Sadly they don't seem to have gone very far with their lossless service; most of their music is still transcoded from ~384kbps (free-format) MP3's. I've bought a few albums from them as FLAC and been very happy to be able to do so, but most of their selection still doesn't meet my requirements for "good quality" (yeah, so I'm a bit anal and probably would never notice the difference, but that's not the only reason I want lossless).

I still vastly prefer Magnatune; if iTunes were like that, I'd probably be bankrupt.

You could try http://www.magnatune.com/.

When you buy music on Magnatune, you can download the music
in a variety of formats -- and you can download all the different
versions you want.

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.

In addition, you can download individual songs as either 128k
MP3s or WAV files.

• You can listen to every song all the way through (in streaming 128kbps mp3) as much as you want before buying
• You decide how much you want to pay for an album, and exactly half of your money goes straight to the artist

"Signing with the RIAA or MPAA is not a 'choice' in the way you're probably thinking of it. They have the entire industry by the nuts. They have distribution and radio/television advertising tied up tighter than you can possibly imagine. Their grip on clubs and tours gets tighter every day. Even with the advent of the Internet, there is still no way around them."

This is an interesting observation and a refreshing counterpart to the usual claim that the magical power of the Internet is going to put the recording industry out of business any day now.

"Anything that challenges them gets sued (whether the complaint is legitimate or not), then gets bought at a bargain basement price, and finally is euthanized or utterly declawed (Select examples: mp3.com, Napster, and now LokiTorrent)"

Napster and LokiTorrent aren't the best examples. More appropriate examples are Magnatune, CDBaby, and LegalTorrents. These three enterprises show that you can compete with the established record companies in a way that does not involve piracy of copyrighted works.

"The RIAA is making slaves out of artists, not the "Pirates". The RIAA was making slaves out of artists long before the first bootleg tape was ever made. Please understand, Pirates (capital P) and the RIAA are at war, and it's not about getting music without paying for it. At its core it mirrors the "free software" movement in many ways."

I disagree. Pirating music does not embody the spirit of the free software movement any more than pirating Photoshop does. The free software movement is all about giving away your work willingly.

A much, much better analog to the free software movement is the vast legion of musicians who have eschewed going the traditional label route and have instead attempted to use the Internet to get their music directly to the consumers. Like the brave souls at the forefront of the free software movement, these folks must keep their day jobs, must be willing to work late nights, and work without the net of financial security that is possible by working with a larger entity, whether it's a huge software company or a huge record label.

Check out this site. It's a nice place to find good music. You can listen as much as you want for free, and if you want, you can buy it. You decide the price yourself, and 50% goes directly to the musicians. Try it out, there really is some good music there.

I don't know exactly how mp3tunes.com is going to work, but it looks interesting.

magnatune! http://www.magnatune.com/

damn straight

It's called magnatune and I've been shopping there for months.

How long until Michael offers us "mp3 lockers" so he doesn't even have to pay his own artists for downloads anymore?

Check out magnatune. They're small, but they've got some interesting music and just the business model you're looking for. I only discovered them recently, but I've already given them much more business than I'll ever give iTunes.

"In other words the members of the RIAA have conspired to abuse their monopoly power and exclude any legal non-DRM market."

There are many legal non-DRM sites. Magnatune is one of them, and I think it fits the model of what many Slashdotters would consider to be the perfect online distribution site: no DRM, MP3 format, payment optional.

The trouble is, sites like Magnatune are flailing, and indie (non-RIAA) record companies are flocking to the iTMS in droves (in fact, I'd guess that the ratio of non-RIAA to RIAA music on the iTMS is higher than it is in most indie record stores). While there will always be outlets for unsingned musicians or indie labels to distribute their music for free or without DRM, the non-RIAA labels are largely choosing the download sites that provide DRM. For a non-DRM site to beat Apple, there has to be a critical mass of not only customers, but content providers that want a DRM-free download site, and so far that hasn't happened.

Anybody reading this can help fix this by writing to their favorite indie label (many are very small; less than a dozen employees, and they will read your letter) asking them to eschew MSN Music, iTMS and the like, and make the jump to DRM-free download sites. It won't happen until indie record labels understand that non-DRM is the way to go, and let's face it, those checks they're getting from iTMS et al will make it an uphill battle. But the power to change this starts with you.

"Fortunately now the innards of a pro recording studio can reside on your home PC or Mac, and raison d'etre of the major studios no longer exists. Musicians can go back to doing what they have always done -- making music. Once the recording industry finally dies, those who make great music will earn lots of money from live performances and direct-pay-downloads spread by viral word-of-mouth."

Your post is very astute, but it raises another question. The observation that the Internet is going to kill the music industry Any Day Now has been bandied about since the late 90's. Usually, the same arguments are made: home-built recording studios will replace the professional studios with their professionally trained engineers, and direct Internet distribution will replace the traditional sales channel.

The trouble is, although this claim has been made for nearly a decade, I just don't see it happening. Universal has launched an online-only label, Apple has sold 100 million tracks online, and Apple and the record companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, brave experiments like Magnatune, which many Slashdotters probably see as a better choice for musicians, are foundering.

I think the assertation that the Internet will kill the recording industry lies in the conceit that the Slashdot crowd has an exclusive lock on the understanding of how to use the Internet to one's advantage. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it appears that the record industry has hired smart people and tasking them with using the Internet as a sales channel.

I'm sure many will disagree with me -- and that's fine. To those of you who do, I'd like your opinion of when you expect the Internet to kill the record industry. Will it take another five years? Ten? And what will it take? From where I sit, the Slashdot crowd will need to convince musicians to stop signing contracts with major labels, and the record labels will need to be forced to stop using the Internet to their advantage. There is a tough task ahead of us.

"I'm not saying that what they do has no value. I just question a legal system that winds up giving more rights to the people behind the marketing than the people behind the creating."

FYI, that's not a product of our legal system, but of the contracts that most record companies offer: they get the rights to the recording of your work, you retain the rights to your work.

Companies like Magnatune don't try to assert rights on your recordings, because they don't spend any money or effort on creating the recordings -- they just distribute them for you.

Also, once musicians get a few successful CDs under their belts, they get more leverage. They can strike deals with labels that state that the musicians keep the rights to the recordings.

*cough*Magnatune*cough*

No, actually I think they're called "The Bots."

http://magnatune.com/artists/thebots

"A couple of times each year, there is a story about the RIAA (mistakenly) suing folks who offer their own (unlicensed as far as RIAA members are concerned) creations on P2P networks or direct downloads. Thankfully, it does not appear the RIAA insists too much once the folks in question tell the RIAA to buzz off and have their heads examined. (At least two such stories made it to /. in 2004)"

Thanks! I do remember one instance where a professor named "Usher" had files in an FTP directory which the RIAA mistook for being the eponymous R&B star. That was around the same time that they sued the grandmother and the 12-year-old and it seems that after getting the egg on their face, recently they've gotten a little more clueful, at least with regard to reducing collateral damage.

"This simply shows the RIAA sees piracy and unauthorized distribution everywhere there are MP3s or other such format... simple cases of shoot first, ask questions later. The RIAA/MPAA's automated tools are well known to make mistakes. (At least three stories about this on slashdot last year)"

The RIAA may be making some bad choices but they're not stupid. I'd tend to chalk it up to mistakes in the automated searching rather than a fundamental lack of ability to understand the difference between a random MP3 file and music that's been released by an RIAA-affiliated label.

As for the levies' redistribution, do you seriously think air time reflects download and subsequent listening or copying patterns? No-name independents have a pretty hard time getting any air time, often having to buy it to get any, sometimes bankrupting themselves in the process."

It doesn't match up exactly, of course, but the stuff on the top of the Billboard online music chart and at the top of the "most popular" charts on the iTunes Music Store read like Clear Channel radio station playlists. At the opposite end, it may be (in fact, I'd say probably is the case) that the artists who are getting virtually *no* airplay are getting at least *some* traffic on iTMS, the P2P networks and the like, but in general, people are flocking to the download services and P2P networks to get the popular stuff, the stuff they hear on the radio. Again, this is a generalization.

"The RIAA is somewhat like the air time mafia... if you are not family, good luck getting any - the big labels RIAA represents have more than enough cash to finance air time. No air time = nobody gets to know about your stuff on air = nobody will ask to hear your stuff = no levy money if it is the only thing that counts. It becomes a chicken&egg kind of problem."

Agreed 100%. If all I had was commercial radio, I simply would not be aware of the vast breadth of great music that I enjoy listening to. Thank goodness for XM and the iTMS.

Your astute observation is, of course, in direct contrast to the many people who chant the "the Internet is going to put the record companies out of business" mantra. A record contract gets you access to people who will spend the time to send your music to the radio stations, and then pester the radio stations until they play your music. And, of course, the bigger record companies (those affiliated with the RIAA) will generally have more resources to do this than the independent record labels. This is why, for all the headaches they can cause, there are a lot more artists who want recording contracts than have recording contracts. Companies like Magnatune are taking bold steps in exploring the Internet-centric distribution model, and of course unsigned bands can always share their stuff on Kazaa, but Kazaa and Magnatune don't have the time, money or interest in firing up the promotion machine to get you airplay.

The vital difference is that what craigslist is doing is part of a healthy free market economy. Piracy is not part of a free market economy.

Examples:

• Kazaa, which exists primarily as a medium for piracy, is being sued. The iTunes Music Store, which respects people's rights, is not.
• Torrent tracker sites what deal primarily with unauthorized content, are being menaced by the MPAA. Sites like legaltorrents are not.

A much better analogy would be to compare craigslist with a company like Magnatune, an "open music record label" which I believe fits what many Slashdotters believe to be a better way to run a record company.

Because the Industry still wants to..

That is why we should whoop up to http://www.magnatune.com/ and support John in his struggle as independant and open media company!

copyleft
creative commons

" Is a flawed business model not a legitimate concept? Would you prefer different wording?"

The phrase "flawed business model" is typically used on Slashdot to refer to a company that's taking action that's contrary to Slashdotters' interests. For example, bringing civil or criminal charges against a copyright violator, or releasing closed-source software, or not supporting Linux. The trouble is that declaring said company or industry to have a "flawed business model" appears to be a universal bromide, and it's seldom that the Slashdotter follows up with a viable alternative.

More than that, other evidence typically shows otherwise. Let's take the movie and music industries. Sure, it's relatively easy to pirate their stuff, and sure, they must allocate money toward stopping losses -- but so must just about any business. Adversity is part of running a business, and successful companies address problems directly. You don't simply give up, and you don't capitulate to others simply because they'd like to have your product for free.

The record and film industries with their "flawed business models" are largely doing just fine. Apple just sold its 20 millionth download, Universal has launched an online-only label, and the record companies and Apple are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, Magnatune, a worthwhile experiment in exploring the "capitulate to piracy and just give away stuff for free" business model, is struggling.

Magnatune.com and eclassical.com have all the music I care to download. They also offer free titles and the option to preview samples of the work. Magnatune provides flac and ogg files in addition to the usual mp3s.

" It has never really been about music being freely traded. These attacks on p2p is purely a way to stop minor labels from growing and up and coming musicians from doing it on their own."

I think that's too much of a generalization. I've met owners of indie labels who are anti-piracy. If a major loses 10% of their business to piracy, it's just a few layoffs or salary freezes here and there. If you run an indie label, you're paying yourself $20,000 a year, and your income drops 10% due to piracy, it might mean firing one of the six people who work for you, somebody whom you know very well. And from what I've read on the web sites of the various indie record label trade groups, their goal is to have better representation on iTunes, not Kazaa.

Either way, there are tons of outlets on the web for unsigned bands and small labels to get the their stuff out. The traffic of pirated MP3s on the P2P networks tends to mirror the sales in stores. Most people who use Kazaa are there for the latest Eminem or Usher, not some unsigned garage deathcore band from Wisconsin.

"If the cost of production approachs zero, then musicians will not need labels. As it is, the major labels are making as much money as ever before."

Slashdotters have been saying, in effect, "the big labels are history once all the bands discover that the mighty power of the Internet is all they need" for five years now. Meanwhile, companies like Magnatune (which many Slashdotters see as the right way to sell music online) are struggling, while iTunes just hit its 200 millionth download, Universal has launched a digital only label, and Apple and the record companies are having the last laugh. Slashdotters often claim that the record companies just don't get this whole Internet thing, but it seems to me that they get it just fine. Perhaps all it will take is another five years for the Internet to put the record labels out of business, but before that will happen, somebody will need to tell the record labels to stop using the Internet to their advantage.

While many bands who can't get, or don't want a recording contract have used the Internet as a promotional and distribution vehicle, finding success is much, much more than getting the cost of production to zero. The Internet and the P2P will not:

• pay for your studio time, or pay for the gear for you to build your own studio
• pay for an engineer who can make you sound good
• pay for session musicians
• pay for the cost of encoding your music and going through the hurdles of getting it onto iTMS
• send a copy of your song to every radio station in the country, and follow up with phone calls to pester them to play your track
• make the phone calls and pay the costs necessary for your tour
• pay to get you featured on the home page of Amazon.com and the download sites

Meanwhile, a record label will.

The Internet is great, but it's not the universal panacea.

AllofMP3
eMusic
Magnatune
Warp Records Bleep Store
Audio Lunchbox
I don't speak German so I don't know about this one
Creative Commons has plenty about DRM-free open music sources

The paranoia about them evil russians is really absurd. Unless you're a bank I doubt you have anything to dread from "russian hackers" and if you are a bank geography isn't a defense. allofmp3.com isn't some get rich quick kiddie porn site; they've been there quite a while and are always trying to improve their service - how would it be in their interest to rip people off or to associate with those who do?

I use my mastercard. Been a year now, never had a problem.

BTW there is a US service that offers even higher quality and far better service. See this site.

That's what I just did! ;)

(but don't forget http://www.magnatune.com/, they have the widest range of music IMHO)

Magnatune

Also worth noting: RIAA Radar

The service appears to be similar to what Magnatune offers. Magnatune is a record label that signs artists and offers an honest preview. Files are available for purchase in various formats, mp3, wav, ogg, vbr and also (from memory) flac. You can download one format or all, it's your choice.

I may be different but I don't really want famous artists. I want to be able to discover new stuff. The problem is: I have to download their closed-source player in order to listen to previews and demos. I wished there was something more like Magnatune, or a 30 seconds low-quality mp3 version for example.

OTOH they don't believe a CD copied to a friend is a lost sale, they think it's one future customer! They deserve respect for that.

Yup, that's basically useless to me; if I can't rip my music to my HD in *my* format of choice and play it in *my* player of choice, I really don't want to know.

Big labels would do well to make it easier to get what I want, because if they don't someone else* surely will.

* Anyone else? These are the only two places I'm aware of where I can buy FLAC's for download.

Gee that's too bad. I know how it feels: I recently lost about 60GB of music (and lots of other stuff too) when the mandrake 10 installer decided that it should reformat that windows partition without bothering to ask first.

Funny thing is, the stuff I bought online I just went and downlaoded again. All I had to do was put my email address in a form and Magnatune sent me a list of every selection I bought from them and provided a link and password for me to grab them again.

Huh. Maybe the problem isn't that the music is fragile, only that your rights are. Maybe the solution isn't worrying so much about "backups," but making sure that you give your money to someone who respects their customers.

It was their choice to sign over the copyright...

The choice is between signing over the copyright or not getting published at all (I am talking about traditional record companies, not internet-based ones like Magnatune)

if I want to buy music online, I am locked into iTMS

No, there's at least one other place you can buy AAC files online.

And of course, it can also play MP3 files, Audible files, WAVs, &c. There are many places you can buy MP3s online too. Hardly a lock-in.

"Back in the day artists needed the record companies because they provided a medium for distribution of the artists product, in the form of LPs, tapes, CDs, etc."

"The Internet is going to put the record companies out of business as soon as all the artists discover that they can distribute stuff on their own" is a bromide that's been recited on Slashdot and elsewhere for five years. The reality is that iTunes (which is a reseller of the output of the record companies) is doing gangbuster business, and "payment optional" services like Magnatune, while probably the embodiment of many Slashdotters' idea of the future of Internet music distribution, are flailing. How much longer will it be?

"Artists income is primarilly from live performance"

With the huge exception of artists who can't, don't or won't perform live, for whatever reason. But you can add to that public performance, which includes radio airplay, jukeboxes, and the like. The public performance royalties go to the composers and lyricists.

"Now, a medium for distribution (Free P2P networks) exists, and it isn't the recording industry so they're going nuts about it because they don't want to die off. What irks me is that they're winning now! Somehow, artists didn't choose to leave record companies..."

It would be great if more artists eschewed record contracts and instead gave away their stuff for free. It would also be great if more hot women were willing to sleep with me. It would also be great if my job paid me more. But the big factor here is the artists' own free will and self interest. And in the case of those hot women and that employer, they too have their own self-interest in mind, which might not include me. It's easy for us to say "the artists should just be less hung up about money" but artists have the same aspirations that we do: to have a family, to have a nice house, and to enjoy a high quality of life. There are many more musicians who want recording contracts than have recording contracts because many musicians want that quality of life that you do (and -- please -- save the "if they're in it for the money, they're not really artists" line -- Shakespeare and Mozart were in it for the money, too).

If anybody's not sure what I mean, put yourself in the place of the member of a band that's talented and has a great sound. A record company wants to give you a contract which means that they will pay for your studio time, the hiring of a producer and engineer, and market your music, and recoup their investment in you by getting the exclusive rights to sell the recordings that they've paid to have produced. Or, you can go it alone: come up with the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to get that recording studio, find that engineer and producer, and spend your own time trying to market your music and hoping that people find it on P2P. Meanwhile, your car is breaking down and you and your wife would like to have a baby. What would you do?

To be sure, many musicians have done well for themselves through self-distribution online, and it remains a good venue for the majority of musicians who can't get recording contracts -- provided they have the cash to fund the recording, engineering, producing, and marketing of their music. But it's not a universal solution.

"I'm glad more musicians are seeing the benefit of online distribution. I just hope more of them release songs in lossless form, without DRM. Magnatune.com works this way (and artists get %50 of sale price) and I hope more artists choose to follow this model."

You bring up a good point. Magnatune is the epitomy of what many Slashdotters want from a record label, yet their catalog and sales are virtually non-existent compared to enterprises like the iTunes Music Store that eschew the "payment optional" model.

"Once big-name musicians disover the mighty power of Internet distribution, the record labels will be finished" is a bromide that's been uttered for five years now. Yet the record labels are making tons of money via iTMS, companies like Magnatune barely register, and even in 2004, when a somewhat-well known band like Wilco leverages the Internet for distribution, it's still news.

"P2P should be banned because there is no potential legal use for it, therefore anyone using it is intending to break the law."

Straw man. Not even the record companies are claiming "no potential legal use." They are (correctly) claiming that the vast majority of traffic on the big P2P networks is of pirated material.

There are plenty of download sites and even P2P networks where strict adherence to creators' rights is observed and nothing is made available without the creators' permission -- in fact, the creators themselves use these systems to distribute these works. But there's two fundamental differences between these sites and Kazaa, eDonkey, etc.: their popularity is far, far lower, and the record industry is not trying to drive them out of existence. You'll not likely see "Sony Music vs. Magnatune" any time soon.

• Audio Lunchbox
• Magnatune
• Audioscrobbler
• tokyo dawn records

... it's because more people are geting sick of the same BS the RIAA is churning out (both in the musical and legal sense), and routing around them.

Dance music and major-label electronica isn't any good (for listening to, at least). Etherine, for example, is doing musically interesting things with the instrumentation. There's a lot of possibilities which open up when you can use arbitrary instruments as needed, and can actually play them with feeling.

"With CDs, you're (mostly) paying for the nice cars and houses of a bunch of executives."

Interesting... do you have a cite for that? I've met a few people in the music industry, including the owner of a small indie label. They most certainly did not fit into the "nice house and car" category. They were ordinary working people. If the people you've met in the music industry were all rich executives, then your experience has certainly been different from mine.

As I mentioned above, net margins for CDs are around 30%, which is the starting point for many products in the computer peripheral industry, in which I make my money. It's equally accurate to say that when you're buying a mouse, or a monitor, or a keyboard, or a webcam, that your money is going "for the nice cars and houses of a bunch of executives." While it's true that the president or CEO of any sufficiently large company makes much more money than most people, the music industry doesn't strike me as any more top-heavy than any other industry. Do you disagree?

"he record companies originally existed as pretty much the only method of advertising and distributing music. We have better ways now."

There's an old joke that used to go around on Usenet: "Immenent death of Usenet predicted, film at 11." For years people have been saying that about the record industry, as well. The record industry has been in some tough spots as a result of increased piracy, but I don't see them going away. Some record labels have consolidated and there have been some layoffs (but I'm sure they were all those executives with nice houses ;-) ). The Internet is a new medium that record companies are starting to use (too slowly for many people's tastes), but the Internet is not a record company and won't replace record companies. The Internet may eventually replace those old-fashioned brick-and-mortar retailers as people flock more and more to Amazon or the iTunes Music Store -- but that's a sales channel, not the record industry.

There are new record labels popping up that embrace the business model that many Slashdotters think is the right way to do it: online distribution, payment optional, and no DRM. I speak specifically of Magnatune. As successful as they might eventually be, they are still a record label. Here, the difference is the business model, not the industry.

Perhaps you should take a look at magnatune
Album prices start at $5, and you can pay up to $18, knowing that 50% of the sale price will go directly to the artist. You can get the music in any form, from mp3 to ogg to flac, and even the perfect quality wav! Best of all, once you've paid for the music, you can re-download it whenever you like! I've bought some albums myself, and while they may not have the artists you'll see on MTV (no big loss there), they've got some pretty good stuff available. They've even got a business plan that doesn't include pissing off their customer base. You really should check them out if you're looking for a resonable alternative to the RIAA's music.

Perhaps you should take a look at magnatune
Album prices start at $5, and you can pay up to $18, knowing that 50% of the sale price will go directly to the artist. You can get the music in any form, from mp3 to ogg to flac, and even the perfect quality wav! Best of all, once you've paid for the music, you can re-download it whenever you like! I've bought some albums myself, and while they may not have the artists you'll see on MTV (no big loss there), they've got some pretty good stuff available. They've even got a business plan that doesn't include pissing off their customer base. You really should check them out if you're looking for a resonable alternative to the RIAA's music.

also:

"They can't seem to understand that it's possible to protect the artist's rights without draconion measures or royalties that would put a robber baron to shame."

Do you think the royalties earned by artists on musical works are too high? Are the artists being too -- there's that word again -- greedy?

FWIW, royalties typically top out at not much more than a buck for most CDs (for some it's more, and for some it's less). If Slashdotters could convince all those artists currently making a dollar per CD to reduce their royalties to zero (ie. by making money instead by voluntary donations, live performances, t-shirt sales, etc.) the total retail price of the CD would go down by about two bucks at most.

In general, if you don't like DRM and you don't like artists who insist they get paid first, check out Magnatune. It's an "open source" record label where payment is optional and there's no DRM. Apple has sold 1.5 million tracks since their launch and has a catalog of about a million songs; Magnatune, far less so. Given this, it may be a tough sell to convince Apple and the rest that they're just going about it the wrong way.