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The "offensive or otherwise inappropriate" wording used in mp3.com's "song pull" notification is pretty much generic. It covers anything they think they have any reason, usually legal, for not wanting on their site. "Appropriate", we may assume in this case, means "appropriate in the context of mp3.com trying not to get sued any more".

I had a song called "I Don't Believe R Kelly Can Fly" pulled from mp3.com because of issues over use of a famous guy's name in the title. I got the exact same notification. Form letter, see?

I wait with interest to see whether they find my song which has just a URL as the lyrics similarly "inappropriate". That's assuming they even notice it; which I wouldn't bet on. Anyone wants to mirror it, tho', be my guest...

The DMCA, it steps on meee.

The site was /.'d

:)

My take on the thing is that any artist, no matter what, has the right to put any lyrics into their music.

Are there any sites other than mp3.com that are good for artists to post their shit?

I have a site at mp3.com here: http://www.mp3.com/djnekrull

...and I will move it, if I can find a similar service elsewhere.

Lemmie know at dolomite@planetquake.com if you know of a good site for recording artists.

/d

>>Mp3.com's business plan appears to be something akin to setting up a cd store which buys discs in in bulk and then gives them out for free.

MP3.com has more revenue streams than just ad revenue from my.mp3.com. Hundreds of radio stations nationwide are paying mp3.com to come up with "local music" shows (which they are required to provide due to FCC licensing); they've launched a Muzac competitor to provide digital music for stores and restaurants; and they're expanding their pay-to-listen music channels, which are composed of music that they've bought the rights to. My.mp3.com is and always was just a small part of their business plan.

>>Mp3.com's business plan appears to be something akin to setting up a cd store which buys discs in in bulk and then gives them out for free.

MP3.com has more revenue streams than just ad revenue from my.mp3.com. Hundreds of radio stations nationwide are paying mp3.com to come up with "local music" shows (which they are required to provide due to FCC licensing); they've launched a Muzac competitor to provide digital music for stores and restaurants; and they're expanding their pay-to-listen music channels, which are composed of music that they've bought the rights to. My.mp3.com is and always was just a small part of their business plan.

>>Mp3.com's business plan appears to be something akin to setting up a cd store which buys discs in in bulk and then gives them out for free.

MP3.com has more revenue streams than just ad revenue from my.mp3.com. Hundreds of radio stations nationwide are paying mp3.com to come up with "local music" shows (which they are required to provide due to FCC licensing); they've launched a Muzac competitor to provide digital music for stores and restaurants; and they're expanding their pay-to-listen music channels, which are composed of music that they've bought the rights to. My.mp3.com is and always was just a small part of their business plan.

Here's a way they can make money. You can now find the DeCSS song on mp3.com. When the MPAA sues, mp3.com may just have enough legal resources to win the dumb case, after which they'll sue the MPAA for [put something here]. mp3.com then uses the money awarded them in punitive damages to pay off all the copyright infringement stuff, maybe with some to spare. All us geeks who have worried for so long about these issues can just sit back and watch the ironies flow...

It's called "Dee Ee Cee Ess Ess", and it's on this page:

http://www.mp3.com/wtrem

and it's free to be copied to any other location anyone feels like, and if I ever make more than half a buck on it I promise I'll send the check to the EFF. Way things are going, I might just send them a check anyhow.

It's called "Dee Ee Cee Ess Ess", and it's on this page:

http://www.mp3.com/wtrem

and it's free to be copied to any other location anyone feels like, and if I ever make more than half a buck on it I promise I'll send the check to the EFF. Way things are going, I might just send them a check anyhow.

I'm sorry, you seem to miss the point.

If all you wanted was an encoding format, you can get that - eg here.

If what you want is the music, then fine, you can get that too.

If you want your music in MP3 format, you can by the CD and encode it, or get it here.

If you _don't_ want the music, then cool, no problem.

But, just because you have to change it from the format it's sold in, to the format you want to use it in does _not_ give you the right to steal.

Ever copied a CD to tape, to play in the car, or on a walkman? Amounts to the same thing.

By the CD, and use this.

They did. It does.

or rather let the artists and the open source community work together to create a an electronic marketplace that does not involve the riaa.

MP3.com fits every aspect of your comment except the "open source" aspect, which cannot be filled legally until one of these happens:

• MPEG audio layer 3 patents run out around 2010, at which point LAME becomes non-infringing, or
• MP3.com begins offering .ogg (Vorbis codec) format audio files (which sound as good as a 50% higher bitrate .mp3).

You need to pay a little more attention to the intellectual property implications of labels vs. mp3.com. mp3.com does many things horribly (annoying page layout, tottering servers, terrible messageboards) but if you look at their artist agreement there are some extremely important points that I sure hope potential competitors take seriously:

• Nonexclusive contract, with the artist continuing to OWN the mechanicals. Contrast this with any majors contract in which the label owns the mechanicals, the songs, even the band name and the website or the Artist's name itself (!)
• Contract is only renegotiable with the agreement and acknowledgement of the artist! If this seems obvious check out some music biz contracts- see how often the contract is unilaterally renegotiable by the label. That means 'we can change it to whatever we want, after the fact, and you already signed off on it'.
• 49.9999% royalty none of which is recoupable- compared to a tenth or hundredth of that much, already pledged to recoup recording costs mandated by the label. In other words, on mp3.com you get $40, or maybe $400 (what I'm hoping for in the mail) or even $4000 if you have a _lot_ of listens and CD sales- and on the major labels you watch a lot of money go by and keep none of it, nada.

I try to avoid obsessively posting all over mp3 threads with my little links and all ;P but I needed to open my mouth here, because even if mp3.com itself doesn't survive the next decade, as an artist I need something LIKE mp3.com, something that will strike the same terms for use of my music. I'm happy to sign over quite extensive rights to _use_ the stuff- but I'm going to keep the mechanicals, and keep ownership of myself and my name and the tunes, and I'm going to want to see that the contract doesn't get to change the rules about this without my okaying it. And mp3.com walks this line very honorably. It's almost as if they were behaving like some more honorable industry and trying to come up with a fair contract for artists. *shock!* *horror!* ;)

Because I am a lazy ass and haven't gotten around to changing anything on my site in about a million years.

you can, as you say, download them all off of mp3.com. here

I have never claimed that napster was anything more than a cool program I use to get music for free.

How is mp3.com anything like an RIAA member? Are they suing anyone?

The GPL is form of copyright, isn't it?

This naturally leads me to wonder what differences would end up matching, and what would cause a failure to match. I think it's pretty safe to say that reducing or increasing the volume of an instrument slightly would not lose the match- the basic shape of the waveform would be the same, only the proportions would be slightly different.

MOVING an instrument, say from right to left in the stereo image, would probably obliterate the match. Both channels would be significantly different. However, a minor shift in the middle of the stereo image would _not_ lose the match.

Finally, if I had doubled instruments (for instance, I can refer you to mp3.com/chrisj for examples- "B17 Flying Fortress" has doubled basses, and "DeHavilland Mosquito" has doubled acoustic guitars) panned hard left and hard right, I could effectively obliterate a match while leaving the music 'unaltered' for a listener (sort of). This is because on the tracks I mention (and on many other tracks that exist) this doubling technique is used to thicken the mix by playing two takes of the same part, as identically as humanly possible. Musically, there's no particular reason one track should be on one side and not the other. If you swapped them, the musical effect would be basically nil, barring minor glitches that would be registered as coming from the other side now. But when you play acoustic or electric instruments the waveforms are not as predictable as synths- so for the purposes of the fingerprinting, the original track and the track with doubled instruments reversed would be _hugely_ different, even though to the listener they would be musically alike.

I agree this could be cool though I have not seen many un-tagged MP3 files.

*blink* *boggle*

Huh? Man, please tell me where you're getting all these tagged MP3 files from! The vast majority of the MP3 files I've found on Napster/OpenNap/mp3.com are untagged -- and of the rest, a significant number don't even have the "sync" (whatever that is) that mp3info wants, so I can't even add the tags myself!

I wouldn't care about napsters service if the record companies would make a GIANT database of all the music they sold in the past so I can search for out of date songs, and new songs as well, in one central place. Have this database charge for download of the mp3 files. Encrypt them so that only my signature can activate the file for playing. Keep a record of my purchase so that if for some reason I lose my signature or the rile I can download it again uncharged.

Add to this company owned shoutcast (or other streaming media) stations that play songs in all the genre's the companies sell records in, fill up the channel with adds between the songs (just like radio).

Basically sell me the services that I am looking for. If you provided this for me I wouldn't ever use napster, it would no longer have a place.

You have to admit that napster was the biggest database for different songs you will probably run into for a while. It had all the remixes and live concert stuff you could think of. It was a source of music that I had trouble getting access to in my low population state.

BTW lend me your hand in supporting companies that have gotten on the new wave of internet distribution like mp3.com. They have done a great job of providing music (with the authors consent) in a well organized manner. I really hope that alternate distribution kills big record companies so that places like mp3.com can thrive and provide music in a way that I like to find it.

Now that the big bands will cost money, the little guys can release stuff for free and get noticed.

/d

If there is one reason I did not leave MP3.com it was for the bad ass engineering office space. They have some pictures at the job pages. The only thing that sucked sometimes was that because of the massive growth you could be stuck with three people in a room that was really meant for two. But other then that the office space ruled.

Dunno how involved you are on this level, but I've made upwards of $400 on mp3.com, where most of 'my competition' struggles to make $40 or $4, and I've told people how to do that and now some of the people I've told make more than me. I would love to think that people would do it your way but I am obliged to share the information of how to really do it with slashdotters, as I've seen other slashdotten musicians :)

First, go to mp3.com/chrisj and download all of my music a lot and buy all my CDs *g* just kidding! *ducks flung boots and stuff* Seriously, I mean, please do, but that was a joke. The real point is simply this:

Free stuff beats restricted stuff for mindshare.

It's that simple. I made all my stuff available free. I know a lot of people who used to, or still are, putting up only 'sample tracks' and making full CDs available with lots more stuff. A lot of those people got trapped by their own tightfistedness- they behaved as if they did such wonderful stuff that people would _have_ to buy their CD, would be _forced_ to do business. Unfortunately mp3.com is like a microcosm of internet commerce in that there are a LOT of bands there, and every time, the listeners would listen to those few tunes, get bored and go somewhere else, to some page that had LOTS of tunes! for free! The top money-spinners of mp3.com ended up being various more or less mainstream-type artists who didn't need to force money out of people (for instance, 'Bassic') and who made very large amounts of music available free.

That's the dynamic, and there's no escaping it. This is how Microsoft killed Netscape. This is how any number of internet musicians will kill the ones who insist on full prepayment. You just click a link or search and bam, you've got 40 different bands and musicians who are just as good and who aren't insisting on any sort of payment at all. Some (such as myself) are happily getting a cut of the ad banner revenue or something- some might just be distributing freely because they want to be heard, and want the freedom to pursue their art with NO compromises whatsoever. That's a good motivation- another motivation might come from recognising this dynamic and realising, damn, the way to get enough mindshare to be _able_ to be paid at all for good work is to begin giving the work away and just don't stop- keep doing it and doing it, and count on eventually selling things like 'convenience CDs' (as I've done repeatedly, even though I supply not only mp3s for burning CDs from but even literally the cover art to print out and use for your privately burned CD- not a joke, go see for yourself) or posters or special vinyl releases or special CD mixes- any or all of those things. Tchochkes. If you can be heard you can find a niche- people manage to find niches even by playing with tacky PC software to layer pre-made trance loops. Even this can sell CDs- given a bit of mindshare- but you can't tell people 'I ought to be able to do something great, give me money and I'll do something awesome!'. This can't compete with unrestricted free stuff...

Dunno how involved you are on this level, but I've made upwards of $400 on mp3.com, where most of 'my competition' struggles to make $40 or $4, and I've told people how to do that and now some of the people I've told make more than me. I would love to think that people would do it your way but I am obliged to share the information of how to really do it with slashdotters, as I've seen other slashdotten musicians :)

First, go to mp3.com/chrisj and download all of my music a lot and buy all my CDs *g* just kidding! *ducks flung boots and stuff* Seriously, I mean, please do, but that was a joke. The real point is simply this:

Free stuff beats restricted stuff for mindshare.

It's that simple. I made all my stuff available free. I know a lot of people who used to, or still are, putting up only 'sample tracks' and making full CDs available with lots more stuff. A lot of those people got trapped by their own tightfistedness- they behaved as if they did such wonderful stuff that people would _have_ to buy their CD, would be _forced_ to do business. Unfortunately mp3.com is like a microcosm of internet commerce in that there are a LOT of bands there, and every time, the listeners would listen to those few tunes, get bored and go somewhere else, to some page that had LOTS of tunes! for free! The top money-spinners of mp3.com ended up being various more or less mainstream-type artists who didn't need to force money out of people (for instance, 'Bassic') and who made very large amounts of music available free.

That's the dynamic, and there's no escaping it. This is how Microsoft killed Netscape. This is how any number of internet musicians will kill the ones who insist on full prepayment. You just click a link or search and bam, you've got 40 different bands and musicians who are just as good and who aren't insisting on any sort of payment at all. Some (such as myself) are happily getting a cut of the ad banner revenue or something- some might just be distributing freely because they want to be heard, and want the freedom to pursue their art with NO compromises whatsoever. That's a good motivation- another motivation might come from recognising this dynamic and realising, damn, the way to get enough mindshare to be _able_ to be paid at all for good work is to begin giving the work away and just don't stop- keep doing it and doing it, and count on eventually selling things like 'convenience CDs' (as I've done repeatedly, even though I supply not only mp3s for burning CDs from but even literally the cover art to print out and use for your privately burned CD- not a joke, go see for yourself) or posters or special vinyl releases or special CD mixes- any or all of those things. Tchochkes. If you can be heard you can find a niche- people manage to find niches even by playing with tacky PC software to layer pre-made trance loops. Even this can sell CDs- given a bit of mindshare- but you can't tell people 'I ought to be able to do something great, give me money and I'll do something awesome!'. This can't compete with unrestricted free stuff...

points of dispute

"There is absolutely no ambiguity."

You have got to be kidding me. Take a look at 3 or 4 translations of the same passage from the Upanishads, for example. There are often wide variations in interpretation. It its later years, sanskrit words were intentionally layered with multiple meanings, and authors used these to create richness of texture which is impossible to translate. Few translators catch all of the references, even in a common text such as the Bhagavad-gita.

...in a very elegant way....

Perhaps, but also with an incredible amount of irregularity. The nominal cases you are talking about are monolithic forms of what we would use combinations of connecting words for. For example, rather than having a locative case of the noun 'house', we say "in the house." There's a reason languages became more modular: modularity makes things more flexible, easier to deal with and to understand.

Note that computer languages have evolved in much the same way, especially if you view the object-oriented paradigm as an extension of modularity.

Don't get me wrong, I love sanskrit. (is it obvious?) However, I think all in all it's just as well we don't speak it much anymore.

Sanskrit is essentially a simplified form of proto-indo-european

Simplified??????

When you make generalizations about declinsions that were lost and so on, remember that there were many various periods of sanskrit, and certain cases that were more prominent earlier on got lost later on, and so forth. In this aspect, there may be more differences between early & later sanskrit than between sanskrit and another language.

what you're all missing....

Look at sanskrit, where is all the power? In the noun. Look at spanish, where is all the power? In the verb.

For example, in the entire 180-some-odd verses of the yoga sutras, there are something like 2 verbs.

Just like in computer languages, we have the Object-oriented approach, (noun) and the functional approach (verb).

I have a lot more to say about it, but this message is long enough!

check out my mp3 page

Quick clue session: there is no such thing as a defensive patent! A patent is a patent. The notion of a 'defensive' one is the intellectual property equivalent of passive-aggressive behavior. At the end of the day it's just a patent and has inevitably, unavoidably put the control in one person's hands, or one entity's, along with all the tools for abuse. There is NO such thing as a defensive patent. If people's desire to create and share their OWN INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTS is not enough to protect them legally- then we need a revolution of legal expectations, NOT 'defensive patents'. Are we not clear on the fact that the Vorbis people are doing their own work, in public, pointedly avoiding potential legal problems? Just how much credibility do we want to give potential attackers here? I'd rather be ready to scorn the potential attack and wave lots of evidence of prior art, instead. At some point that HAS to be enough. If it's not enough the system is so totally screwed that it's morally and ethically intolerable to cooperate with it in any way at all...

I've run across a few mp3 related BB where users post regular reviews of non-signed mp3 bands. A few off the top of my bookmarks are Musika (almost everyday) This BB at mp3.com (often) Artist Area at Listensmart.com (sometimes) That's a start for your quest anyway. Finkle.

One point that he touches on, which is not commonly expressed, is that motivation- love vs. consumption. If you put in some work (years of it) studying music, production, sound engineering, you gradually become more able to target the median of consumer desires, and you learn how to avoid including anything that would offend a consumer- and then you get to be mainstream, possibly a million seller, if you're properly hyped.

This is not art, but commerce.

Prince has in some ways used 'commercially popular' techniques (good production, intense vocals, high squealy notes and high squealy guitar solos etc etc etc) but he is also one of the few who's genuinely shown an experimental spirit- perhaps best illustrated by one of his monster hits, 'When Doves Cry'. The production of this remains unusual but at the time that it came out, was quite shocking- sparse, largely empty, producing more impact by virtue of the sheer bareness of the track. Prince was known to record many parts in the studio and then work by subtraction, taking out this and that track and seeing what combination of parts worked best- in "When Doves Cry" this subtractive technique was carried to an extreme. It breaks all the rules for 'popular' music production, and breaks them so well that it became a breakout monster hit.

The important thing to remember about art is that it is individual, and it's not possible to achieve artistic peaks and still avoid making enemies of your work. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin- the nearer you come to some person's love, the more another person will hate what you've done. A real artist (and I do consider Prince a real artist) will ignore this, accept the hate, refuse to water down their artistic vision.

Naturally I consider my music art ;) more significantly, _only_ since I started to accept it as art have I liked it worth a damn. I produced music for years, in an agony of trying to tailor it to what I thought people would like. (This is all pre-Internet and little remains of this stuff.) It was OK- never managed to get beyond my own idiosyncracies and never succeeded in making truly commercial music. Then I started again, and for particular reasons (access to mp3.com) I decided to do some music that was just what _I_ felt like doing- to do a lot of different music based only on what I felt like playing and composing and hearing.

Since then, it's been freaking awesome! :) I've talked with a lot of other musicians, made a lot of really rabid fans, a lot of really rabid enemies, and a kinda-lot of money (to me, a couple hundred bucks is a lot). I've seen people fixate on the strangest things and be delighted, and I've had people take GREAT PAINS to convince me and anyone else reading that I'm a complete loser who's not good enough to be commercial. And I love every bit of it. My artist side was long suppressed and restrained, but now when I see someone come off all negative and totally scorn my music, I'll laugh at them and tell them to listen to stuff like the 'Hard Vacuum' noise album, or 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' from the Dragons album which are downright weird, or I'll just sneer back at them and go off and produce some more music that they'd hate even worse. Because I do what _I_ like- I do what I think is good, and I like a lot of truly peculiar music :)

I've tried to arrange my mp3.com page so that it explains to people a little better what they're getting into- but what I'm about is not being 'the Microsoft of music' or pinning down the widest possible range of consumers. What illustrates me best is the picture of me running a roaring shortwave radio through homebrewed multiband compression and screwing with the controls to produce a definitive Noise track (White Dwarf), something which most of the world might think is just crap! But there are Noise fans out there, protesting at the tendency for industrial techno to genre-trespass into Noise charts, people who understand _immediately_ just what's being attempted in 'White Dwarf' and instantly recognise it as canonical Noise, from a hitherto unheard source. Or the image might be the composing of 'Water Dragon', spending _days_ painstakingly filling in the froth of flickering piano notes around the spacey lead piano theme, and composing a drum part that is so relentlessly experimental that it seems to stretch and contract in a peculiar disjointed rhythm- which evokes the unforgiving wasteland of the sea. You can't dance to the sea. You could drown in it. You can't understand it. It's not necessarily pretty- but there's a validity to trying to express it in sound and music- and when Prince talks about people listening to music for love of it and teaching themselves to understand it, he's not talking about making more crappy manufactured hits, he's talking about the forces that eventually got me onto my own artistic path- of people exchanging and learning from stuff that's beyond what the major labels feed 'the consumer'.

How many of you have used Napster or something like it to try and find something really _obscure_ or weird or unpopular? Never mind if you found it- that'll come. Have you searched for something that Warner Bros. would not sell you, because there's 'no market' for it? This is what Prince is really talking about. This is the reason I've so often asked for my music to be openly traded on Napster This is the only way towards cultural education now that there's no market for culturally educating people in school...

My guess is that they wouldn't get much (if any) of the money even if there are minimal (or no) administration charges.

The record companies have them tied in to such horrible deals that I would be highly surprised if they are even allowed to accept money gathered from this website. Though I'm sure Joe Blow, Record Exec would be happy to handle the check and make sure that it gets to the right place (ie. the record company's bank).

------
IanO

At least that still gives you Napster users 35 years of the "The record companies are ripping off the artists so it's OK for me to steal their music" excuse.

Why use Napster? All it has is crappy artists from the RIAA. There are only a few songs I've actualy liked and are worth my time to download that have been made over the past ten years. Otherwise, I go to much better places, where music is allways free and more likely to be worth listening to.

They should make their money selling T-shirts

They already do. That and concert tickets. No artists ever made money off their CD. Remeber TLC? A top-ten band a few years back? They went bankrupt because they couldn't get enough money off their CD (namely, "Crazy Sexy Cool") sales because the RIAA screwed them over so bad.

"If I could program, I'd write open source software so how dare they copyright their music?"

I can program, and I do write free (speach) software (better then just plain old open source). In fact, I'm starting to grok at this one.

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This article at MP3.com details exactly what hoops an up and coming band has to go through to get on with a major label.

You would think some established bands that are now successful but were screwed over early on would come out against the record companies.

------
IanO

This article at MP3.com details exactly what hoops an up and coming band has to go through to get on with a major label.

You would think some established bands that are now successful but were screwed over early on would come out against the record companies.

------
IanO

I read Love's speech and I don't find it at all convincing, sure whoever wrote it made some interesting points, but I'm skeptical about rock stars talking about backend code and VC's. Love also bitches about digital music, not just MP3s, yet only a couple of Hole releases are available on vinyl.

Hole is a mainstream alterna-girl band, backed by a big record company and is marketed as being "rebellious." Its their job to keep stirring the pot. To keep teenagers paying $18 a cd to listen music that does its best to diss the "man", while very obviously and ironically lining the the pockets of big business.

I'm sure anyone in the music industry has critical opinions about the way things are running, but its one thing to express your opinion and another to have an insincere, carefully worded speech perfectly suited for internet distribution to keep the kiddies convinced that though Love's been in many mainstream movies and a media gatabout, she's still queen of the subculture.

>your servers can't handle the current demand so you put a link to it
>on Slashdot!?

Okay, good point... =) Seriously, though, our servers were fine (the "crushed" was metaphorical, and meant to show how I thought it was nifty-neato that the unwashed masses can still act of their own volition, without an actual /. link). The main thing was bandwidth, and the people here did a great job getting the connection upped. I wasn't really involved in that, but I did get to look at pretty network load graphs.

Do you really think this guy or his employer has anything to do with the "Main Gnutella site?" Want to lay odds this guy is really a RIAA/MPAA Stooge?

I have nothing to do with Gnutella. My employer has nothing to do with it, either, except that we host it. And most of the employees know the people involved (I don't really, since I'm kinda new there).

I hate this sort of thing, but I might as well point out that I am speaking personally and not as an agent of my employer, that my employer is merely hosting the data and not supporting it, cigarettes cause cancer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Why would anyone involved with the Gnutella site pose such a question to Cliff, especially worded in this rather odd fashion?

See above. And I posted it because I am genuinely interested... The only MP3s I have are ripped from my own CDs or from MP3.com, and I have never used Napster or Gnutella. But it's interesting, and I think the social effects could be far-reaching. Or not.

All that it will take for opinion to turn against the free music crowd is for them to be seen as criminalistic freeloaders. Considering that a.) MP3.com has settled with most of the RIAA and will soon reopen it's My.mp3.com service (with paid options to offset the million$ in settlement options) b.) The major RIAA labels are all rushing to create flat rate music subscription services and c.) Napster will eventually need to make money to recoup all that VC funding and the according to Webnoize's survey over half of current Napster users would willingly pay $15 a month to use the service.

Eventually there will be several different ways to get music online and pay for it. Similar to the way that the MPAA fought VCRs and now there are many places we can rent videos. Currently people who watch movies for free (i.e. movie pirates, har har har) are considered freeloaders and criminals. It is not hard to conceive then that Gnutella users will become the w4rez d00ds of the music industry.

Kosmic Free Music Foundation is group of artists. Their music can be downloaded from WWW-site of KFMF and MP3.com and you can buy their CDs and CD-ROMs. And of cause, you can copy their music to all your friends. I am sure, they have nothing to do with RIAA.


Here is relevant URLs:

http://www.kosmic.org/

http://www.kosmic.org/music.php3

http://www.mp3.com/kosmic

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/126/kosmic_art.htm l

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/67/kosmic_free_mus ic_foundati.html

There are many sources out there to get good independent music. I would recommend going to: Artist Shop in order to get a better idea of what is out there. There is a company called Discipline Global Mobile that produces outstanding music and operates under a philosophy of *true* respect and cooperation with artists. They don't have contracts with their artists and they don't own the copyrights to their work so that the artist maintains their right to their work instead of some label owning it. While they make mainly terrible punk music, Epitaph records is an independent label that has some good artists on it...Tom Waits and Wayne Kramer (of the mc5) namely. For better punk music check out: Dischord Records. The owner of this label is in the band Fugazi and they're a truely amazing band that I would recommend to one and all.

It's nice to see that independent artists are getting some attention from a more mainstream audience in the wake of the general disgust the world seems to feel towards the RIAA. Independent labels have helped nuture less commerical bands that have often changed the way that music is defined. Bands like the velvet underground, king crimson, and joy division were all able to make an amazing contribution to music without the aid of a large record label.

In case you haven't already been;mp3.com is a good source of outstanding independent music. Anyway, I hope this helps someone find independent music that they enjoy...music is my passion in life and I love to help people find stuff that they might like :-) In all seriousness though, people should have been looking into this stuff *WAY* before the RIAA decided to go after Napster and for some reason started a boycott (one company sues another one and we side with the one because we honestly believe that they're 100% right in what they are doing or because they are giving us something we want...hm I wonder)...independent music was always there for you to hear if you were interested...or if you cared...

Best wishes,

Jon Swinghammer

May I humbly suggest Sutur as a band to check out there. They are put out by Elemental Media, who have a bunch of other no-big-label bands to choose from.
And of course, you could always support humble little me.

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

-Superb0wl

ps - i did it with linux

If you're into punk rock, the majority of punk rock bands are on indie labels (not affiliated with the RIAA). A few are:

Nitro Records - AFI, Guttermouth, TSOL, One Hit Wonder, old Offspring, Vandals, etc.

Fat Wreck Chords - some NOFX, Bracket, Propagandhi, others

Epitaph - Rancid, NOFX, older Bad Religion, some Offspring, Ten Foot Pole, Pennywise, and a ton of others

Alternative Tentacles - Dead Kennedys, SNFU, random other bands

If you're into industrial, TVT Records has KMFDM, some old Nine Inch Nails, and an assortment of lesser-known bands

And of course there's always mp3.com - they sell cds of most of the bands featured there. Some are actually pretty good.

I create different sorts of music because there are sounds I want to hear that I'm not hearing from anybody else. This can be as direct as having a little analog synthesizer with a resonant filter that I hacked so it can feed back and overload, and wanting to hear an album based on that sound ('Cirrus'), or wanting to hear synthesisers playing in rhythms you normally don't get to hear ('Dragons') or what a dog would sound like as music ('anima').

I could try to find somebody to sell me music like this, and in fact often I have (for instance, I have a big King Crimson record collection bought largely because of my fascination with the unusual time signatures Krimso often uses). But now I do have the capacity, often, to produce the sort of music I'd want to hear- myself. I've found that when I do that, some people simply don't like the result, but then some other people like it a whole lot- or fixate on some small element of what I do, and like that a whole lot.

I feel I'm better off sharing my music for free, and allowing people to show enthusiasm in a direct fashion by downloading more, or by picking up a $5.99 CD, because I am entirely unwilling to 'summarise' my musical interests into one clearly labelled category so people can know what they're buying. You _don't_ know what I'm going to release next. I might do a new age piano album (got new tech- Kurzweil Micropiano and Lexicon Reverb) or a deep reverby 'ambient' album or an album of very well-tuned drum 'n bass. If I need to be able to do that, people need to be able to audition what I'm doing for free so they can _be_ warned how different all the CDs are, and go listen to _everything_ in case they might really connect with some of it.

And of course they can, mp3.com/chrisj is for just that purpose. I just redesigned it to explain better what each of the albums are like, it's no longer necessary to sit there lo-fiing or downloading track after track just to get a sense of what the music is like- or to try just 4 tracks and mistakenly think the whole catalog is like that ;) And all of it is still free- my expectation is that _some_ people will want CDs too, and those that don't are at least giving it a listen. I swear, there is a 'business model' in that- it just doesn't include _guilt_ of giving out 'shareware' music. Imagine it like this- my mp3.com page is the ultimate radio, one I'm very proud of. By using it I can convey broadcast music anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night- anytime someone listens to one of the mp3s, that magic super radio is going 'bzzzzt' and broadcasting it out to be listened to, at no cost to me- in fact, I get a little bit of money for the initial download! It's not much- the total over all the months I've been doing it is about $300, but that's nearly enough to get a Yamaha DX7, and some music that I do would be much better if I got to program a whole Yamaha DX7- it's a six operator FM synth and the one I've got is only a two output 4 operator FM synth. So it does help me make better music, pretty directly...

I conceed that Napster is making money off of others. I also conceed, that most people on there are for copyrighted material. The point however is, that napster can and has been used to distribute non-RIAA (however unsuccesfully) material, mine included. Now with nothing more than corporate power and money, they have shut off an avenue of MY right to free speech. I am a napster user and an artist. Did I ever use napster to download copyrighted material? It matters not, as I also used it for non-copyrighted material.

I an analogy to FedEx in this thread or Katz's about if 90% of FedEx's business was transporting bootleg movies, FedEx would be in the clear because they are the courier.

Well, Napster is the courier here, people use it how they choose. Without Napster (or FedEx) people will still find ways of getting the good's because the roads (the internet) are still there.


www.mp3.com/Undocumented

Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways

OK Jon, I'll bite... I'm an avid user of the net, I'm a music lover, I'm an artist not under contract to anyone, and I'm an individual consumer. I don't feel I've lost anything (yet). If the internet ends up restricted to the point where all filesharing is eliminated, then I'll have lost something. Sharing files containing something that other have created and hold rights to without compensating those other people IS WRONG. Maybe Napster shouldn't be the one sued, but I'm sick of your anti-IP rantings. IP is valid property - if I don't own my thoughts, then what do I own?

"...now have a chance to offer consumers music downloads on their own terms. This displays their current lack of understanding of the real problems that users are seeking to remedy with Napster and the other music/file trading options."

S.O.U.- minimal drum 'n' bass from Sense, who is a passionate defender of real dnb (been talking to this cat by email, which is why he's the first one I think of)

Rally! cool Britpop trio from Glasgow who just rock like crazy- I particularly liked 'Shoot You Down'. Alec from Rally says that on the original master tapes you can hear the drummer smash his hand on the ride cymbal and yell 'fuck!' :) The whole track rages on the brink of punkish anarchy and ultraviolence, I loved it :)

Corruptdata- weird techno from Vegas. Geek tie-in: these guys are fanatics over 'Pulse' soundcards! When I first heard them they had only a few tunes on the page, some of 'em not for download, but the cold techie feel of their stuff appealed to me- sort of 'Mr Data on slightly too much CPU supply voltage' music :) I am proud to say that I'm the guy who talked them into putting more stuff up for download (at mp3.com, that earns you more listens- more $) and damn, look at 'em now :) you can get _hours_ of corruptdata off that page for free, and help them out too by doing it.

Bassic. This guy's perhaps the #1 big mp3.com success story- that 50 grand on his page is from _listens_ alone, doesn't count CD sales. A lot of people want to be like him and a lot of people get upset at the amount of money he's earned off his music (any salaried day job would earn more tho) but the fact is he earned it fairly- his stuff is like electronic easy listening. He likes Mike Oldfield and you can hear some of that translated to synths- there's a relaxed, spacious quality about a lot of his music that makes it great to just unwind you. It's original enough to not be real derivative, and familiar enough to not be gratitiously original like, er, a lot of my stuff ;) (see 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' for examples!). Bassic's music is very Zen and sits effortlessly in a peaceful zone of making enjoyable sounds. To top it off, Martin Lindhe ('Bassic') himself is genuinely a really nice guy. Always worth a listen :) Regular Size Monster: And now for something _completely_ different... if you ever wanted to hear genuinely innovative rap look no farther than here. Gentle Jones is capable of diving into polysyllabic polyrhythmic utterances that charm and surprise, all with a signature effortless light delivery that's perfectly timed- over a wide variety of backing music. I particularly liked 'Gentle' and 'Pinky The Kid', but there's much more- and it does fit well with the traditional rap approach, isn't just a tangent from it. Gentle is well respected among mp3.com rappers for his brilliance and the skill of his delivery, and he's tried hard to get people who would normally refuse to listen to any rap to check his stuff out- often with very positive results. He's very worth hearing.

Preacher- OK, Rolling Stone called this 'guilty pleasures' :) What that means is that this guy got himself a guitar, turned it up to about 12, and ever since then he's just been loving it :) as another competitive lil' guitar player I think I can cut this guy if we got in a guitar duel (I offer my 'Alleycat' or 'Horse' or especially 'Coyote' as arguments in this) but I dunno if I could enjoy wailing on the guitar half as much as Preacher. He's not always on time, bends not always in tune, but by God you do _feel_ the sheer guitarization of it all- unlike a lot of guitar players this guy is more than happy to go straight over the top without even thinking about it, all in a blues-rock classic style, but grungier and hairier and stinkier :) To top it off he gets a great fluid tone that rips and snorts. I realise some slashdotters will think this is garbage, but I don't care- Preacher's cool :)

Kaden. Can we say 'completely different' again? This guy, working at the moment in dark ambient, is relentlessly intellectual, rigorous, deadly competent, ruthlessly critical of both others and himself without fear or favor. Very professional work- he's been working in the music business for many, many years- this is adult music. mp3.com is not just a bunch of kids...

Roger McGuinn: Yes, this is the leader of the Byrds! He's not on mp3.com as a cynical ploy- he's playing the folk songs he loves, and he spoke before Congress about how the RIAA-controlled music business didn't make him enough money to feed his family (guess you have to be _bigger_ than The Byrds and write songs that last _longer_ than 'Eight Miles High' and do covers more successful than 'Mr. Tamborine Man' o_O )- so he went to mp3.com and was delighted with how the contract was actually (gasp!) _fair_. Who could imagine? So, here's one guy who made music you listened to growing up- who is _not_ a rich fat bastard siding with the RIAA. You can listen to his folk songs and help him feed his family, which is more than the RIAA ever did for him- and help further convince him how much better the new way of doing things is. He's definitely on our side...

Chris J/The Room Full Of Windows: um, modesty prevents... ;) well, this is the dude who just gave a lot of props to other mp3.com artists above :)

S.O.U.- minimal drum 'n' bass from Sense, who is a passionate defender of real dnb (been talking to this cat by email, which is why he's the first one I think of)

Rally! cool Britpop trio from Glasgow who just rock like crazy- I particularly liked 'Shoot You Down'. Alec from Rally says that on the original master tapes you can hear the drummer smash his hand on the ride cymbal and yell 'fuck!' :) The whole track rages on the brink of punkish anarchy and ultraviolence, I loved it :)

Corruptdata- weird techno from Vegas. Geek tie-in: these guys are fanatics over 'Pulse' soundcards! When I first heard them they had only a few tunes on the page, some of 'em not for download, but the cold techie feel of their stuff appealed to me- sort of 'Mr Data on slightly too much CPU supply voltage' music :) I am proud to say that I'm the guy who talked them into putting more stuff up for download (at mp3.com, that earns you more listens- more $) and damn, look at 'em now :) you can get _hours_ of corruptdata off that page for free, and help them out too by doing it.

Bassic. This guy's perhaps the #1 big mp3.com success story- that 50 grand on his page is from _listens_ alone, doesn't count CD sales. A lot of people want to be like him and a lot of people get upset at the amount of money he's earned off his music (any salaried day job would earn more tho) but the fact is he earned it fairly- his stuff is like electronic easy listening. He likes Mike Oldfield and you can hear some of that translated to synths- there's a relaxed, spacious quality about a lot of his music that makes it great to just unwind you. It's original enough to not be real derivative, and familiar enough to not be gratitiously original like, er, a lot of my stuff ;) (see 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' for examples!). Bassic's music is very Zen and sits effortlessly in a peaceful zone of making enjoyable sounds. To top it off, Martin Lindhe ('Bassic') himself is genuinely a really nice guy. Always worth a listen :) Regular Size Monster: And now for something _completely_ different... if you ever wanted to hear genuinely innovative rap look no farther than here. Gentle Jones is capable of diving into polysyllabic polyrhythmic utterances that charm and surprise, all with a signature effortless light delivery that's perfectly timed- over a wide variety of backing music. I particularly liked 'Gentle' and 'Pinky The Kid', but there's much more- and it does fit well with the traditional rap approach, isn't just a tangent from it. Gentle is well respected among mp3.com rappers for his brilliance and the skill of his delivery, and he's tried hard to get people who would normally refuse to listen to any rap to check his stuff out- often with very positive results. He's very worth hearing.

Preacher- OK, Rolling Stone called this 'guilty pleasures' :) What that means is that this guy got himself a guitar, turned it up to about 12, and ever since then he's just been loving it :) as another competitive lil' guitar player I think I can cut this guy if we got in a guitar duel (I offer my 'Alleycat' or 'Horse' or especially 'Coyote' as arguments in this) but I dunno if I could enjoy wailing on the guitar half as much as Preacher. He's not always on time, bends not always in tune, but by God you do _feel_ the sheer guitarization of it all- unlike a lot of guitar players this guy is more than happy to go straight over the top without even thinking about it, all in a blues-rock classic style, but grungier and hairier and stinkier :) To top it off he gets a great fluid tone that rips and snorts. I realise some slashdotters will think this is garbage, but I don't care- Preacher's cool :)

Kaden. Can we say 'completely different' again? This guy, working at the moment in dark ambient, is relentlessly intellectual, rigorous, deadly competent, ruthlessly critical of both others and himself without fear or favor. Very professional work- he's been working in the music business for many, many years- this is adult music. mp3.com is not just a bunch of kids...

Roger McGuinn: Yes, this is the leader of the Byrds! He's not on mp3.com as a cynical ploy- he's playing the folk songs he loves, and he spoke before Congress about how the RIAA-controlled music business didn't make him enough money to feed his family (guess you have to be _bigger_ than The Byrds and write songs that last _longer_ than 'Eight Miles High' and do covers more successful than 'Mr. Tamborine Man' o_O )- so he went to mp3.com and was delighted with how the contract was actually (gasp!) _fair_. Who could imagine? So, here's one guy who made music you listened to growing up- who is _not_ a rich fat bastard siding with the RIAA. You can listen to his folk songs and help him feed his family, which is more than the RIAA ever did for him- and help further convince him how much better the new way of doing things is. He's definitely on our side...

Chris J/The Room Full Of Windows: um, modesty prevents... ;) well, this is the dude who just gave a lot of props to other mp3.com artists above :)

S.O.U.- minimal drum 'n' bass from Sense, who is a passionate defender of real dnb (been talking to this cat by email, which is why he's the first one I think of)

Rally! cool Britpop trio from Glasgow who just rock like crazy- I particularly liked 'Shoot You Down'. Alec from Rally says that on the original master tapes you can hear the drummer smash his hand on the ride cymbal and yell 'fuck!' :) The whole track rages on the brink of punkish anarchy and ultraviolence, I loved it :)

Corruptdata- weird techno from Vegas. Geek tie-in: these guys are fanatics over 'Pulse' soundcards! When I first heard them they had only a few tunes on the page, some of 'em not for download, but the cold techie feel of their stuff appealed to me- sort of 'Mr Data on slightly too much CPU supply voltage' music :) I am proud to say that I'm the guy who talked them into putting more stuff up for download (at mp3.com, that earns you more listens- more $) and damn, look at 'em now :) you can get _hours_ of corruptdata off that page for free, and help them out too by doing it.

Bassic. This guy's perhaps the #1 big mp3.com success story- that 50 grand on his page is from _listens_ alone, doesn't count CD sales. A lot of people want to be like him and a lot of people get upset at the amount of money he's earned off his music (any salaried day job would earn more tho) but the fact is he earned it fairly- his stuff is like electronic easy listening. He likes Mike Oldfield and you can hear some of that translated to synths- there's a relaxed, spacious quality about a lot of his music that makes it great to just unwind you. It's original enough to not be real derivative, and familiar enough to not be gratitiously original like, er, a lot of my stuff ;) (see 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' for examples!). Bassic's music is very Zen and sits effortlessly in a peaceful zone of making enjoyable sounds. To top it off, Martin Lindhe ('Bassic') himself is genuinely a really nice guy. Always worth a listen :) Regular Size Monster: And now for something _completely_ different... if you ever wanted to hear genuinely innovative rap look no farther than here. Gentle Jones is capable of diving into polysyllabic polyrhythmic utterances that charm and surprise, all with a signature effortless light delivery that's perfectly timed- over a wide variety of backing music. I particularly liked 'Gentle' and 'Pinky The Kid', but there's much more- and it does fit well with the traditional rap approach, isn't just a tangent from it. Gentle is well respected among mp3.com rappers for his brilliance and the skill of his delivery, and he's tried hard to get people who would normally refuse to listen to any rap to check his stuff out- often with very positive results. He's very worth hearing.

Preacher- OK, Rolling Stone called this 'guilty pleasures' :) What that means is that this guy got himself a guitar, turned it up to about 12, and ever since then he's just been loving it :) as another competitive lil' guitar player I think I can cut this guy if we got in a guitar duel (I offer my 'Alleycat' or 'Horse' or especially 'Coyote' as arguments in this) but I dunno if I could enjoy wailing on the guitar half as much as Preacher. He's not always on time, bends not always in tune, but by God you do _feel_ the sheer guitarization of it all- unlike a lot of guitar players this guy is more than happy to go straight over the top without even thinking about it, all in a blues-rock classic style, but grungier and hairier and stinkier :) To top it off he gets a great fluid tone that rips and snorts. I realise some slashdotters will think this is garbage, but I don't care- Preacher's cool :)

Kaden. Can we say 'completely different' again? This guy, working at the moment in dark ambient, is relentlessly intellectual, rigorous, deadly competent, ruthlessly critical of both others and himself without fear or favor. Very professional work- he's been working in the music business for many, many years- this is adult music. mp3.com is not just a bunch of kids...

Roger McGuinn: Yes, this is the leader of the Byrds! He's not on mp3.com as a cynical ploy- he's playing the folk songs he loves, and he spoke before Congress about how the RIAA-controlled music business didn't make him enough money to feed his family (guess you have to be _bigger_ than The Byrds and write songs that last _longer_ than 'Eight Miles High' and do covers more successful than 'Mr. Tamborine Man' o_O )- so he went to mp3.com and was delighted with how the contract was actually (gasp!) _fair_. Who could imagine? So, here's one guy who made music you listened to growing up- who is _not_ a rich fat bastard siding with the RIAA. You can listen to his folk songs and help him feed his family, which is more than the RIAA ever did for him- and help further convince him how much better the new way of doing things is. He's definitely on our side...

Chris J/The Room Full Of Windows: um, modesty prevents... ;) well, this is the dude who just gave a lot of props to other mp3.com artists above :)

S.O.U.- minimal drum 'n' bass from Sense, who is a passionate defender of real dnb (been talking to this cat by email, which is why he's the first one I think of)

Rally! cool Britpop trio from Glasgow who just rock like crazy- I particularly liked 'Shoot You Down'. Alec from Rally says that on the original master tapes you can hear the drummer smash his hand on the ride cymbal and yell 'fuck!' :) The whole track rages on the brink of punkish anarchy and ultraviolence, I loved it :)

Corruptdata- weird techno from Vegas. Geek tie-in: these guys are fanatics over 'Pulse' soundcards! When I first heard them they had only a few tunes on the page, some of 'em not for download, but the cold techie feel of their stuff appealed to me- sort of 'Mr Data on slightly too much CPU supply voltage' music :) I am proud to say that I'm the guy who talked them into putting more stuff up for download (at mp3.com, that earns you more listens- more $) and damn, look at 'em now :) you can get _hours_ of corruptdata off that page for free, and help them out too by doing it.

Bassic. This guy's perhaps the #1 big mp3.com success story- that 50 grand on his page is from _listens_ alone, doesn't count CD sales. A lot of people want to be like him and a lot of people get upset at the amount of money he's earned off his music (any salaried day job would earn more tho) but the fact is he earned it fairly- his stuff is like electronic easy listening. He likes Mike Oldfield and you can hear some of that translated to synths- there's a relaxed, spacious quality about a lot of his music that makes it great to just unwind you. It's original enough to not be real derivative, and familiar enough to not be gratitiously original like, er, a lot of my stuff ;) (see 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' for examples!). Bassic's music is very Zen and sits effortlessly in a peaceful zone of making enjoyable sounds. To top it off, Martin Lindhe ('Bassic') himself is genuinely a really nice guy. Always worth a listen :) Regular Size Monster: And now for something _completely_ different... if you ever wanted to hear genuinely innovative rap look no farther than here. Gentle Jones is capable of diving into polysyllabic polyrhythmic utterances that charm and surprise, all with a signature effortless light delivery that's perfectly timed- over a wide variety of backing music. I particularly liked 'Gentle' and 'Pinky The Kid', but there's much more- and it does fit well with the traditional rap approach, isn't just a tangent from it. Gentle is well respected among mp3.com rappers for his brilliance and the skill of his delivery, and he's tried hard to get people who would normally refuse to listen to any rap to check his stuff out- often with very positive results. He's very worth hearing.

Preacher- OK, Rolling Stone called this 'guilty pleasures' :) What that means is that this guy got himself a guitar, turned it up to about 12, and ever since then he's just been loving it :) as another competitive lil' guitar player I think I can cut this guy if we got in a guitar duel (I offer my 'Alleycat' or 'Horse' or especially 'Coyote' as arguments in this) but I dunno if I could enjoy wailing on the guitar half as much as Preacher. He's not always on time, bends not always in tune, but by God you do _feel_ the sheer guitarization of it all- unlike a lot of guitar players this guy is more than happy to go straight over the top without even thinking about it, all in a blues-rock classic style, but grungier and hairier and stinkier :) To top it off he gets a great fluid tone that rips and snorts. I realise some slashdotters will think this is garbage, but I don't care- Preacher's cool :)

Kaden. Can we say 'completely different' again? This guy, working at the moment in dark ambient, is relentlessly intellectual, rigorous, deadly competent, ruthlessly critical of both others and himself without fear or favor. Very professional work- he's been working in the music business for many, many years- this is adult music. mp3.com is not just a bunch of kids...

Roger McGuinn: Yes, this is the leader of the Byrds! He's not on mp3.com as a cynical ploy- he's playing the folk songs he loves, and he spoke before Congress about how the RIAA-controlled music business didn't make him enough money to feed his family (guess you have to be _bigger_ than The Byrds and write songs that last _longer_ than 'Eight Miles High' and do covers more successful than 'Mr. Tamborine Man' o_O )- so he went to mp3.com and was delighted with how the contract was actually (gasp!) _fair_. Who could imagine? So, here's one guy who made music you listened to growing up- who is _not_ a rich fat bastard siding with the RIAA. You can listen to his folk songs and help him feed his family, which is more than the RIAA ever did for him- and help further convince him how much better the new way of doing things is. He's definitely on our side...

Chris J/The Room Full Of Windows: um, modesty prevents... ;) well, this is the dude who just gave a lot of props to other mp3.com artists above :)

Control is definately an issue. As I look over my mp3 directory, I am seeing more and more independant artists. I discovered t r a n c e [] c o n t r o l from Mp3.com -- I had never heard of them before, and now I have all of their songs.

The RIAA is just out to make money. Bah. =)

Gnutella, on the other hand, has "one central server" in the way that if every Napster user opened up Gnutella and would log in through the same GnutellaNet, the searchable directory would be bigger. Result: Gnutella has the ability to have a MUCH larger user base searching MORE files.

I remember a few months ago, I had both Napster and Gnutella open at the same time (logged into the Gnutella net a Wego.com). Napster was offering a terabyte of songs, Gnutella was offering over 8 terabytes of files. Now, given the possibility that Gnutella's content is at least 25% MP3s, you've got a larger searchable base of music in Gnutella, given in MBs, not unique songs.

To reiterate, search for Chris's music several times on Napster at different times of day. Or search for it in Gnutella. Then come back to us.

(Off-topic): My favorite band on MP3.com is De Vil, who combine film music with techno beats.

Hey I went to this guy's page, and it's fucking good shit!

I've been playing music for more than twenty years, bought all my recording equipment one painful bit at a time (sometimes I have to choose strings over food, dear), spent uncountable hours learning everything from soldering to dual-integrator EQ networks so I could reconstruct that which I wasn't able to afford for gear, and I choose to give my music away, selling only to enthusiastic fans who want to help me get more gear, strings and food ;) which is also my best shot at the most expensive musician cost of all- attention. I rely upon new media such as Napster to provide distribution at no cost to me. I've asked publically for my tunes to be put on Napster by anyone who can spare the time to download them and put 'em up for sharing. I remember having to physically transport cassette tapes around in order for anyone to hear my music, not so many years ago. Now I don't have to pay anything to get my music into someone's hands, thanks to Napster and other services like it, and thanks to mp3. You talk like I ought to be selling individual CDs to every single listener 'to make profit' on my music- like I should want no more mp3, that I should want only purchasable, accountable physical media.

I should have to buy _trucks_ for my distribution because people like you want to prop up the RIAA?