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Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins...these guys are the godfathers of techno. Where are all the Detroit Techno fans?
Check out Strings of Life and Nude Photo by Derrick May, No UFOs or Sound of Stereo by Juan Atkins. I'm not a big fan of Kevin Saunderson, but I'm just really suprised no one has mentioned him yet.

Derrick May I just recently found out has an mp3.com page at http://mp3.com/derrickmay. If you end up enjoying Detroit Techno check out other people who were part of the Transmat Timespace Tour.
If you get really into it, come to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. You'll have a blast.

Ozma [ozmaonline.com] (who have a thing for all that is Russian) did a version of that classic folk tune

So did Gregory Chekalin. Except his version sounds a bit like "Barbie Girl" by Aqua.

There's so much already posted here .. so I will just post my top 6 deadly drum&bass and top 6 heavenly ambient tracks that I've encountered thus far. (Your forgiveness is appreciated for misapprehended genres)

If anyone has suggestions for more items along the lines of these two narrow categories, PLEASE reply and tell me! I love this shit and am always on the lookout for more of comparable quality. It can be a real chore to dig up good new stuffs in the wide wide world of electronica.

Without further ado --

Top 6 Deadly Drum & Bass Tracks:

- Exile: Bad Diet
- Exile: Fatal Exception
- Dr. Mario: Beg4Life (via mp3.com)
- Aphrodite: Ready or Not (remix of Fugees track)
- Todd Terry: Blackout
- Makai: Beneath the Mask

Top 6 Heavenly Ambient Tracks:

- Plastiq Phantom: 492 cups to china (plastiqphantom.com)
- Aphex Twin: Stone in Focus
- Ben Neill: After the Gold Rush
- Brian Eno: An Ending (Ascent)
- Brian Eno: Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960
- Terre Thaemliz: Hovering Glows

Mix these tracks alternately on a CD for a cool experience.

Again, if anyone has suggestions along these lines, do notify me immediately! My tastes tend to run to these two extremes -- crushing hard d&b vs. utterly peaceful ambience. Your response will be most appreciated, I assure you.

joel

There has been much discussion on the various webcaster lists about going "DMCA-free" - technically, to forgo the DMCA statuatory license. It's coming, thanks to the idiocy of the situation.

The SaveInternetRadio group and the International Webcasters Association have a lot more information about the situation. Good stations such as SOMA-FM have been forced from the air, and more are likely to fold.

However, there is a lot of good music out there that can be freely streamed. Some Internet stations, such as OntheI.com channel 2, have always played freely availabled music, as has MP3.com. It is important to remember that these stations are free of the CARP and DMCA restrictions and payments, much like open-source software is free of licensing restrictions.

I look for a new ecosystem to arise, akin to the open source movement, with music licensed freely to all, with returns coming from the sale of artifacts (DVD's, t-shirts, etc.), and concert tickets.

DJ Manticore is the great unknown talent of electronica and hip-hop today. I am always blown away by his inventive tracks. I shit you not.

Plaid are demi-gods. You might know of DJ Shadow. Boards of Canada is great ambient music.

Peace,
High-C/Jason Gortician

Alot of the stuff people have mentioned here is great, but here's a few that need mentioning. Prolly some repeats here, but I'm not reading through 500+ comments to make sure I'm not duping... This probably won't get read either because there's already so many comments, but what the hell...

Hybrid - Wide(r) Angle - I never ever ever get tired of this CD. The only recent work that I've completely and utterly fell in love with. You may know their song Finished Symphony from the Untracked level of SSX. Please please please, check it out. Their album has seen a couple releases, first Wide Angle, then a 2CD set called Wider Angle. I dunno which is more available, but Wide Angle is just a subset of Wider Angle. Either is fine, as most of Wider Angle is just some live stuff, though there are a couple extra studio tracks.

Plaid - P-Brane EP, Double Figure, Rest Proof Clockwork - Awesome IDM that I've just recently come to love. It's not as hardcore and much more pallatable that most IDM, so it's a great starting point for the genre. Especially check out the P-Brane EP; it's small, cheap, and 4 of their best songs.

Necros, aka Andrew Sega, aka The Alpha Conspiracy - Started out ages ago in the tracker scene. Amazing stuff, most notable Point of Departure and Mechanism 8 (which is actually in Unreal Tournament, I've recently discovered). He now goes by The Alpha Conspiracy and has a proper CD and all which you can sample at mp3.com. Amazing artist who worked from the ground up, and definitely deserved to be checked out for that reason alone.

Air - Moon Safari - A fantastic mellow sound... this is by far their best album, but check out their other stuff for good measure. Tracks of note: Sexy Boy, All I Need, Talisman.

Chicane - Behind The Sun and Far From The Maddening Crowds - Behind The Sun is the newer and better of the two, but both are great. Looks like FFTMC might be going out of print? Doesn't show up on CDNow and has limited availability on Amazon. Get it while you can. Again, a more mellow, laid back sound, but even better than Air. Tracks of note: Saltwater, Leaving Town, Red Skies.

Ayumi Hamasaki - Ayu Trance - She's a well known pop artist in Japan, and some of her original tracks are good (Whatever, Evolution) but more appropriate to electronics are the plethora of remixes of her music, most notably the Ayu Trance collection. M (Above and Beyond Remix) is friggin awesome.

Dune - Expedicion - Again, by far their best album, but I don't see it on CDNow OR Amazon, but it's prolly the best happy hardcore I've heard, though Scooter's really good too, which leads me to... (Tracks of note: Million Miles From Home, Electric Heaven, Hardcore Vibes.)

Scooter - ...And The Beat Goes On - I really don't know how this album compares to their others, but it's pretty good. Tracks of note: Fire, Move Your Ass

Faithless - Reverence, Sunday 8pm, Outrospective - Mixed bag of stuff, but the good stuff is really good. Tracks of note: Insomnia, God Is A DJ, Evergreen.

Future Sound of London - anything... FSOL is somewhat of a classic... they've been around a while, so they have plenty to check out. Papua New Guinea, Landmass, Expander (remix).

Hooverphonic - Blue Wonder Power Milk - Not sure how to describe them, and I'm getting tired of describing groups :) but their somewhat classic too... Tracks: Battersea, Eden, 2Wicky.

Lamb - Lamb and Fear Of Fours - Kinda a mix of electronic and alternative, with a very unique sound. The vocalist has a very unusual sound which you will either like or hate, but give them a shot. Tracks: Softly, Lusty, Gorecki, B-Line.

Utah Saints - Utah Saints and Two - A rough, sample-based sound, but worth checking out. Most known for their remix of the Mortal Kombat Theme, but that is far from their best work. Tracks: Ohio, Something Good, Techknowledgy.

Sneaker Pimps, Gus Gus, Freefall, Beam and Yanou, Mr. Oizo, Technique, Etienne De Crecy.

Stuff that's been mentioned but is worth mentioning again:
DJ Shadow/UNKLE - I have a love/hate relationship with DJ Shadow... either his stuff is incredibly good or incredibly boring, but it's more than worth it for the good stuff. He actually uses drums for more than just background, constantly mixing the beats up, making any DJ Shadow piece noticable. Midnight In A Perfect World hooked me to him instantly and Fixed Income and You Can't Go Home Again from his new album The Private Press hooked my gf. Notable tracks from UNKLE (his other project with... someone whose name I can't remember right now) are Lonely Soul, Rabbit In Your Headlights.

Orbital - plenty of stuff to check out besides their well-known Halcyon + On + On. Midnight from Orbital, Lush3 and Monday from Orbital 2, The Box (check out part 2 of the 28 minute version from the single!), The Girl With The Sun In Hear Head, hell the whole album from In Sides, Know Where To Run and Style from The Middle Of Nowhere, and Funny Break and Doctor from their new The Altogether.

Aphex Twin - Windowlicker, Come To Daddy, all the ones people have mentioned.

Paul Van Dyk, BT, Crystal Method (Vegas is much better than their new album), Adam F, Carl Cox.

For mixes, go with DJ Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, and Armin Van Buuren.

That was soooo much more than I intended to write, and doesn't even scratch the surface of what's out there, but this should be a great starting point.

May I add Airbase ("Ionize", "Theme from the Rock"), Labworks ("All that I Want"), Yahel ("Waves of Sound", and most other songs he has made), Anjunabeats Records ("Anjunabeats volume 1 [radio]"), and a friend of mine's page, DJ Lefso ("Waiting for Dawn [Club mix - reedited]").

Song recommendations in brackets. If you search around mp3.com a bit, you'll find all the music you'll ever need, for free. If you want them on CD, you can buy those as well...

May I add Airbase ("Ionize", "Theme from the Rock"), Labworks ("All that I Want"), Yahel ("Waves of Sound", and most other songs he has made), Anjunabeats Records ("Anjunabeats volume 1 [radio]"), and a friend of mine's page, DJ Lefso ("Waiting for Dawn [Club mix - reedited]").

Song recommendations in brackets. If you search around mp3.com a bit, you'll find all the music you'll ever need, for free. If you want them on CD, you can buy those as well...

May I add Airbase ("Ionize", "Theme from the Rock"), Labworks ("All that I Want"), Yahel ("Waves of Sound", and most other songs he has made), Anjunabeats Records ("Anjunabeats volume 1 [radio]"), and a friend of mine's page, DJ Lefso ("Waiting for Dawn [Club mix - reedited]").

Song recommendations in brackets. If you search around mp3.com a bit, you'll find all the music you'll ever need, for free. If you want them on CD, you can buy those as well...

May I add Airbase ("Ionize", "Theme from the Rock"), Labworks ("All that I Want"), Yahel ("Waves of Sound", and most other songs he has made), Anjunabeats Records ("Anjunabeats volume 1 [radio]"), and a friend of mine's page, DJ Lefso ("Waiting for Dawn [Club mix - reedited]").

Song recommendations in brackets. If you search around mp3.com a bit, you'll find all the music you'll ever need, for free. If you want them on CD, you can buy those as well...

May I add Airbase ("Ionize", "Theme from the Rock"), Labworks ("All that I Want"), Yahel ("Waves of Sound", and most other songs he has made), Anjunabeats Records ("Anjunabeats volume 1 [radio]"), and a friend of mine's page, DJ Lefso ("Waiting for Dawn [Club mix - reedited]").

Song recommendations in brackets. If you search around mp3.com a bit, you'll find all the music you'll ever need, for free. If you want them on CD, you can buy those as well...

Having said that, I'd also like to say that I hate the term "electronica", as it really only describes the range of electronic music that MTV and MuchMusic dare to tell you about, and doesn't even hope to cover a wider range of electronic music that doesn't necessarily include techno.

Here are some electronic artists with a bit more diversity:

Genesis P. Orridge (Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV)

Kraftwerk

Brian Eno

Laibach

Nash The Slash

Coil

David Thrussel (Black Lung/Snog/Soma)

Pieter Bourke

Boards Of Canada

David Kristian

cEvin key (Skinny Puppy/Download/The Tear Garden/and more...)

Brian Eno

Merzbow

CPI/DXM

Tribes Of Neurot

Lab Report

Thighpaulsandra

Atari Teenage Riot

Now that you've got a real place to start, find out who the artists you listen to collaberate with, and who they are influenced by, and listen to their music too. You'll discover a whole new world of electronic music that mainstream music outlets will probably never even hope to tell you about.

Having said that, I'd also like to say that I hate the term "electronica", as it really only describes the range of electronic music that MTV and MuchMusic dare to tell you about, and doesn't even hope to cover a wider range of electronic music that doesn't necessarily include techno.

Here are some electronic artists with a bit more diversity:

Genesis P. Orridge (Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV)

Kraftwerk

Brian Eno

Laibach

Nash The Slash

Coil

David Thrussel (Black Lung/Snog/Soma)

Pieter Bourke

Boards Of Canada

David Kristian

cEvin key (Skinny Puppy/Download/The Tear Garden/and more...)

Brian Eno

Merzbow

CPI/DXM

Tribes Of Neurot

Lab Report

Thighpaulsandra

Atari Teenage Riot

Now that you've got a real place to start, find out who the artists you listen to collaberate with, and who they are influenced by, and listen to their music too. You'll discover a whole new world of electronic music that mainstream music outlets will probably never even hope to tell you about.

1) Epitonic good selection of well known artists and lots of information about each artist so you can read up before you decide to download.

2) ArtistDirect a small selection of electronic artists

3) Amazon has a number of MP3s to download.

4) IUMA has many lesser known acts

5) MP3.COM for the really adventurous with lots of time and patience you might find some gems mixed among the numerous less-inspired artists...

First I'd like to apologise, although I read your post the music I am going to suggest is a bit darker then the selections you have mentioned. That said, this music is some of the best of its kind, it's electronic and tends to be "isolationist" or "paraniod". Who know's, maybe you'll like it?

Terminal Sound System
Twine (ambient, glitchy, experimental)
horchata (dub, glitch, experimental)
S.E.T.I. (glitch, experimental)
Rapoon (ambient, experimental)
Mick Harris (aka Scorn, founder Illbent, dub, experimental)
Sara Ayers (ambient, experimental)
Dead Voices On Air (ambient, experimental)
Muslimgauze (ethnic, found sound, dub, experimental)


A good place to look would be emusic.com if you've got the bandwidth (and $9.99;) you could download I lot of music and probably find a good deal of if suits you. They even have some Sasha And John Digweed.

I also like finding artists I like on mp3.com (suprise) and checking the links they provide to artist they like! Great way to accidentally pull an all nighter.

Now I know this is getting alittle long, so I'll make this my last comment: if you do like ambient (perfect, cerebral, moody ambient) and literature try Paul Bowles spoken word album Baptism Of Solitude , the only thing more amazing then his stories is his voice.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

is mp3.com. It allows you to get a feel for a tone of bands. Some of them are really good, some are ok, some of them suck. But it's try before you buy, just like music should be. Plus, with the connection I've got at work (isp ;), I get to listen to a new band every day =) Also, pick and choose what kind of techno you really like. Most bands do several kinds, and you may find that you like some types much better than others. I found I like trance much better, but that's just me.

Infected Mushroom is my favorite goa trance group. Their tracks are available on mp3.com.

• Minister
• Kahr
• Bassic

• Minister
• Kahr
• Bassic

• Minister
• Kahr
• Bassic

• Minister
• Kahr
• Bassic

Somewhere I have written on scrap of paper, "Design a keyboard based on most commonly used letter combinations". I guess that's what Dvorak and this variant are, eh?

Music for Trolls

on that note, RIAA email me here, for my new home address. come and get me motherfuckers!

The music studios are not taking advantage of technology. They could set up a system for selling songs, where their cost would be very close to zero, and then charge a small amount per song and still make money.

Instead of doing that they continue to sell CDs, and they try to sabotage any new way to sell music that comes along. They are doing what they can to prop up the price of CDs, even though they are now much cheaper to produce than they were when they first came out.

It used to be that all the most popular songs were released on "singles" (small records) for a couple of bucks; these days if you want the popular song you must buy a CD with many other songs. The best way to make money is to give people what they want; this isn't giving people what they want. It is not surprising that people would rather download the one song they want than pay $18 for a CD.

If the music studios aren't careful, they will become irrelevant. It used to be that the only way to make any money in the music business was to sign up with a big studio; but now, with the Internet, it is possible to make music, advertise the music, and sell the music, all on your own and without signing your life away. Go to mp3.com and look around. There is a ton of music there you can listen to, and a ton of CDs you can buy, and all without the music studios being involved. CDs there go for around $8 or so!

The amount of action in the music world is not getting smaller; just the amount of dollars the big music studios are seeing. The Net economy is starting to route around them. They claim piracy is killing them, but it's the world changing around them and they have their heads in the sand.

steveha

You should check out the excellent and cheap MP3-player Diva, which has received very high marks from users at MP3.com.

It can be bought with different amount of built-in flash memory and has a CompactFlash Type 1 slot where you can put inexpensive CF-cards to expand the memory.

This player does not even require any driver installations under Win2000/XP and is said to work with Linux (according to Diva themselves, read the FAQ). The memory card shows up as a removable drive in Windows when you connect the USB cable and it's extremeley simple to download or upload MP3s from/to the player. Yes, you read me right, no security protocol so you can easily move music from one computer to another too.

I just bought one and I couldn't be happier. Best player I've tried so far and definately lots of bang-for-your-buck.

You should check out the excellent and cheap MP3-player Diva, which has received very high marks from users at MP3.com.

It can be bought with different amount of built-in flash memory and has a CompactFlash Type 1 slot where you can put inexpensive CF-cards to expand the memory.

This player does not even require any driver installations under Win2000/XP and is said to work with Linux (according to Diva themselves, read the FAQ). The memory card shows up as a removable drive in Windows when you connect the USB cable and it's extremeley simple to download or upload MP3s from/to the player. Yes, you read me right, no security protocol so you can easily move music from one computer to another too.

I just bought one and I couldn't be happier. Best player I've tried so far and definately lots of bang-for-your-buck.

Call me crazy, but I was under the impression that just as you can find both legally and illegally distributed software online and just as you can find both legally and illegally distributed books online, you can find both legally and illegally distributed music online.

Mp3.com comes to mind as a place where you can download legally distributed music for free. Emusic.com appears to be legally distributing mp3s for a fee.

I'm sure the music traded on venues such as Kazaa or IRC is more likely to be illegally distributed, but to characterize all online music as being illegal is absurd.

The ProTools rigs sound good (especially the big ones with the hardware-based effects plug-ins), but they're way overpriced and the software is a little messy.

Then again, I was commissioned to compose a piece for a performance festival in Zurich, and ended up buying a Sound Blaster from a market in Istanbul (I love tight deadlines). It sounded a bit crappy compared to what I usually use, not surprisingly, but it did the job. (Look for the piece "Renewal" at MP3.com if you're at all curious; by contrast, the "Diffusion" piece there was done on a big ProTools rig.)

Hell, same thing for just about any skilled work that combines technical expertise with creativity EXCEPT FOR PROGRAMMING.You never even tried to look around for musicians, mappers, texture painters, modelers and animators that put their work on the net for free did you?

If you look at the work that went into some of the commercial quakeIII engine games (sof-ii,jediknight-ii,startrek something) then you will know that there are people out there who can do more and better in a three to ten people teams in their spare time!
The process of going to good gpl games will be in two steps:
- getting (gamecontent commercial like quake 1/2?) games with sufficient gameplay to iron out the bugs in the engine, get the physics for gameplay that feels good and get the and tools to build for it

- getting the current hl/ut/q3a modders to come to the new engine and build good games from scratch, they have what it takes (just play some of the free single player half-life maps and look at the models build for half-life multiplayer mods)

No "financial incentive"? Well some people think there is not reason to write gpl code for free and therefore there will never be any good gpl code, I dont think this is the case and looking at the mappers and animators working on all of the populair mods out there who work mostly becouse they know their work will get spotted and get them a job I have high hopes of games equivalent in size to the current mods getting made available for free as in beer.

btw: When you go looking for programmers you can find them on every street corner (although not linus level ofcourse) but when you want people who know how to make games where do you look? The best of the modding community has proven to be a great place to start your search, moddelers and mappers know that!

The problem is that our current distribution model for intellectual property, especially music, does not work given the nominal distribution costs of internet-based music distribution. No digital form of distribution provides an equivalent level of moderation provided by the music industry, it is almost impossible to find the best quality content out of the giant databases like IUMA or MP3.com. We still need some way to sort the good stuff from the banal. It probably makes sense to use Gnutella to download pop music today, but from a long term perspective, we need to create an entirely new paradigm for music proliferation.

You're allowed to give your music away. However, the reason Napster was so popular was because of the illegal mp3 trading. There were and are venues (such as mp3.com) that try and keep things constrained to legal mp3s. Furthermore, the filtering imposed on Napster (which is a big part of what killed it) should've theoretically had a minimal impact on legitimate trading (but unfortunately, the filtering was overly broad). So in reality, the only reason why Napster was a good venue for legitimate trading was because it was using illegitimate trading as a form of marketing/bundling.

Also, it's my understanding that Napster did get nailed for breaking laws relating to contributory and/or vicarious copyright infringement. These issues were hashed out on Slashdot awhile back. It basically boiled down to Napster being aware of the copyright infringement going on and unwilling take means to stop it when confronted on the issue.

I agree. While I won't concede that musicians are stupid, when my band recorded our CD (by ourselves, which we then proceeded to burn and give away 500 copies of for free), we used Cool Edit Pro. That was complicated enough, setting levels so as not to peak, mixing this and that, cutting tracks (we recorded one track at a time due to lack of decent microphones - we had about 3). After getting over the learning curve for that piece of software, we were all convinced that it did everything we ever needed to do. How would you convince us to change OS's, much less programs? It would have to be significantly easier as well as offer more features. I don't say this out of a greedy standpoint, just out of a time necessity.

Also, I'd like to see not just an audio distribution, but an entire Multimedia Linux distro. One with a focus on audio and video tools. That's something else that I think Linux is missing - an easy to use set of video capture and compression tools, complete with (dare I say it outloud) a non-command line DVD rip program (shhhhh!). Seriously, high quality vid compression and easy to use capture programs, with support for the later cards like the GeForce 2's with video cap features would be really cool.

Of course, this is comming from the guy who currently doesn't have speakers hooked up to his linux box...

~Will

P.S. If you're really a sadist, and feel the need to know what this music is that was recorded dirt cheap and given away freely with encouragement to pass around to your friends, you can check it out at mp3.com. Be warned, for a self recording it's not bad, but it's not studio. It's also rock pop with very little distortion.

I'm reading lots of posts saying people should get it even though they've never heard of the artist before; well, I for one would love to be able to get a good song legally for $0.99 but I am not rich enough to spend money without sampling the product first. Especially when it comes to something like music, where the quality of a song varies with the listener. (Ie, the same song is one person's jewel and another's garbage)

Luckily, neither I nor you need shell out our $0.99 before having listened to a sample, conveniently linked from the front page of MP3.com.

Now even if you don't like the song, you should still consider shelling out for it as a sign of support for the business model. But if you're a cheapskate like me, try the sample first.

I'm reading lots of posts saying people should get it even though they've never heard of the artist before; well, I for one would love to be able to get a good song legally for $0.99 but I am not rich enough to spend money without sampling the product first. Especially when it comes to something like music, where the quality of a song varies with the listener. (Ie, the same song is one person's jewel and another's garbage)

Luckily, neither I nor you need shell out our $0.99 before having listened to a sample, conveniently linked from the front page of MP3.com.

Now even if you don't like the song, you should still consider shelling out for it as a sign of support for the business model. But if you're a cheapskate like me, try the sample first.

MP3.com advertises this MP3 as 192kbps, but after you download it you'll discover that it's really 128kbps. Bastards.

Good luck slashdoting mp3.com!

Their network resources are not trivial...

30 second sample at low quality

Well, seeing as how mp3.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, I'm sure the record execs are probably smiling, too.

I honestly have no clue what Norway's legal system is like. However, DeCSS did (arguably) have a use in violating copyright/copy protection. Regardless of whether or not DeCSS was generally legitimate in nature, the MPAA could at least argue that it assisted in piracy.

In this case, however, there's nothing for them to bring a case with. As long as Gateway is getting permission from the copyright holders, they're in the clear. As I said before, it sounds just like what mp3.com is doing. A quick check at mp3.com's weekly top 40 shows that they're carrying a number of "regular", commercial artists (Sheryl Crow, Linkin Park, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Imbruglia, Enya, ...). And as far as I know, mp3.com hasn't been sued over this portion of their service.

(Yes, mp3.com was sued in the past over its BeamIT system. The system did a decent job of confirming that a person owned a given CD, but it was still streaming songs from albums that mp3.com had not obtained permission from the copyright holders to "broadcast". Even though they were acting to minimize piracy, they were still arguably violating copyright laws. So that issue isn't exactly relevant here.)

MP3 or OGG COULD be used to do the same thing? Um, have you ever been to mp3.com? They have all kinds of streaming MP3. It plays in Winamp, and I assume it should work in XMMS or whatever Linux distributions are using now. I'd venture that as many people have Winamp as have RealPlayer, especially as RealPlayer gets crappier and crappier.

It would be interesting if Valve could incorporate some kind of "pay for play" system into Steam like MP3.com does. Steam is the medium you use to distribute your mod/game/etc. The more you get played, the more they pay you - just like MP3.com's Payback for Playback system. Suddenly MOD creators and creators of more extensive single player creations such as Neil Manke could actually become the Bassic of the gaming industry.

It would be interesting if Valve could incorporate some kind of "pay for play" system into Steam like MP3.com does. Steam is the medium you use to distribute your mod/game/etc. The more you get played, the more they pay you - just like MP3.com's Payback for Playback system. Suddenly MOD creators and creators of more extensive single player creations such as Neil Manke could actually become the Bassic of the gaming industry.

It would be interesting if Valve could incorporate some kind of "pay for play" system into Steam like MP3.com does. Steam is the medium you use to distribute your mod/game/etc. The more you get played, the more they pay you - just like MP3.com's Payback for Playback system. Suddenly MOD creators and creators of more extensive single player creations such as Neil Manke could actually become the Bassic of the gaming industry.

yup, like my friends' band hovershark (described by a colleague as "music to slash your wrists to") and of course the... uhm.. unique... big poo generator... I'm not being sarcastic. I'm quite fond of mp3.com.

yup, like my friends' band hovershark (described by a colleague as "music to slash your wrists to") and of course the... uhm.. unique... big poo generator... I'm not being sarcastic. I'm quite fond of mp3.com.

If there was an official site where I could legally download professionally made MP3 or OGGs of all of my favorite tracks for two bucks a pop, I would be all over it in a second.

Before the takeover, I used to like to patronize MP3.COM. Now their charts are all clogged with RIAA promo-crud, and it's harder to find something unique. Its too bad IUMA never took off, and didn't develop the Print-on-demand CDR capapibilities of MP3.com. Just out of curiousity, how difficult would it be for someone to set up a similiar POD system for mix-and-match OGG buring (MP3.com never had mix-and-match - you had to go with what they had)?

yes there are, and there are some that are extremely "pro" net.
John Mayer is one of them.

besides having his music on the radio and on vh1 and mtv, he also has a really cool attitude about mp3's- "Remember, you can burn a cd but you can't burn a t-shirt."

he's also a really cool guy. He's got some interesting views on digital music- it's not an RMS or anything, but it's fair to guess what his views are while listening to "this is my napster song"

btw, Since I heard his mp3's from a friend, I've bought 2 of his CD's and took my girlfriend to see him in concert.

AND, for those who think mp3.com doesn't work, check this out.

Besides the obvious places to get free music, NPR and PBS are both good ways to avoid the big entertainment industries. As a matter of fact NPR even streams all of their programming (current and past) for free. If you want music they even have that too, especially jazz.