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As a producer, composer, and general content creator, I think that looking for quality entertainment is the critical concern. There's plenty of stuff out there, the trick is finding the good stuff. And with a few notable exceptions (Ani DiFranco, etc.) you aren't going to find it at your local Best Buy, and maybe not even at your local record store (if any of those still exist). For now, the web is where it's at.

While certainly not a litmus test for quality, you can at least trust that artists that use alternate distribution like CDBaby to provide distribution for self-produced/funded titles at least cared enough about their music to scrounge up the money to press a CD and arrange for distribution.

If you're willing to trudge through some crap (albeit interesting crap in many cases), the big music sites like IUMA, MP3.com, and Garageband provide more tracks than you'll be able to listen to.

One hint for the more commercial sites like MP3.com - skip the charts occasionally. The way the MP3.com charts work, you'll typically get a song at number 1 that stays at number 1 for a long time because everyone's listening to it because it's number 1. A self-perpetuating hit, if you will. Also, ever since Vivendi bought MP3.com out, there have been an awful lot of mainstream artists in the top charts. Still, if you're looking for mainstream, you can at least get a "legal" mp3 of a bunch of stuff there.

An additional hint, you'll find some real gems in the less-traveled genres like film music, darkwave, folk, comedy, etc.

Finally, there are lots of small independent labels/artist collectives like RTFM Records that have quality artists that either got tired of working in the mainstream entertainment business, or were smart enough to try and slog it out themselves. Supporting labels like these is a good way to encourage more of the same.

I don't have much advice for you on the movie side of things - I think with the advent of cheap digital camcorders and products like iMovie and Final Cut Pro, you'll see more of this kind of content hitting the web in the next year or two, though. Especially as more people get broadband, which is more or less required for visual stuff.

One site I can recommend if you're into fan-produced Star Wars stuff is theforce.net which has quite a few short films and trailers of varying quality. There's also an absolutely stunning short film set in the Star Wars universe called Duality that you just have to see to believe.

Finally, I'd like to put a plug in for a new benefit album created by a bunch of musicians from around the world in response to the WTC/Pentagon attacks. The album, September Rising, is now available. It was put together by a bunch of pros, most of whom have never met each other face to face. Complete information is available at septemberrising.org. It's some really great stuff, and unlike most of the benefit albums coming from the major entertainment conglomerates who only donated a percentage of sales, I believe that all proceeds from sales of this album go to the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund.

The RIAA and media companies are using this idea that people of violating copy rights to mask the real objective of their proposed legislation.

Their real goal, is to force independant artists (musicians, videographers, filmmakers) to have to use the big name media companies to get their work to market. The big companies cannot stand the fact that independant artists can produce Hollywood grade material and get it to market without them.

That's what this is really about. They've chosen to use the copyright issue because they feel the general audience (consumers) can understand
such a topic but that consumers would not support such drastic measures if the truth was known.

The people that will feel the suffering the most should all of this crap pass with be those independant artists you find at places like Atom Films or MP3

there are artists and lables out there speaking up against the RIAA for example Projekt Records founder Sam Rosenthal has said that Napster was one of the best marketing tools ever devised. Artists like Negativland have spoken out on freespeech censorship and copyright issues.
As an artist, my own bands are up on MP3.com fully downloadable and available for purchase if you are so inclined.
say what you will about MP3.com, i can still give away my music to people and you can still download it there.
It is becoming the realm of Indy lables and the old punk DIY ethic that is taking a stand against the RIAA and the recording industry. As an Artist and music lover, I am offended to see bills like This be presented. Support indy lables and bands by buying the cd from them directly - or go see their shows & buy a t-shirt. Most of the artists I know, made more money from their independently produced cds that they are selling than their major label counterparts. if you get bored check out my 2 projects The Winding path and Arriviste if you want to make a diffrence - support artists that are fighting to make a diffrence.
matt

there are artists and lables out there speaking up against the RIAA for example Projekt Records founder Sam Rosenthal has said that Napster was one of the best marketing tools ever devised. Artists like Negativland have spoken out on freespeech censorship and copyright issues.
As an artist, my own bands are up on MP3.com fully downloadable and available for purchase if you are so inclined.
say what you will about MP3.com, i can still give away my music to people and you can still download it there.
It is becoming the realm of Indy lables and the old punk DIY ethic that is taking a stand against the RIAA and the recording industry. As an Artist and music lover, I am offended to see bills like This be presented. Support indy lables and bands by buying the cd from them directly - or go see their shows & buy a t-shirt. Most of the artists I know, made more money from their independently produced cds that they are selling than their major label counterparts. if you get bored check out my 2 projects The Winding path and Arriviste if you want to make a diffrence - support artists that are fighting to make a diffrence.
matt

'nuff said...
--
Jeff
intervox

i allready dont make any money and it costs around 4$ per cd

on the other hand the Canadian government dosn't really care about their starving canadian artists...

Or better yet, don't pay it and find alternative content to broadcast -- content whose authors give you permission to play without a fee. There is plenty of good stuff out there if you look.

That really doesn't matter. This isn't about profit. It's about ethics. An artist or studio releases a work under certain conditions (e.g. don't copy and distribute the work, pay for each copy). The assumption is that there is a quid pro quo - in exchange for them actually releasing their work to the public (which they didn't have to do), the public agrees to abide by those conditions.

Now, it's entirely possible that some musician will release his/her music without requiring any fee (see mp3.com). That's their decision, and their right. But many artists don't do that. If you respect the artist enough to want to listen to their work, you should respect the artist enough to live with whatever conditions they impose on its distribution (which doesn't mean you shouldn't try to persuade them that there's a better way).

I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp around here. I mean, the entire community has a collective cow when someone violates the GPL. But no one seems to care when musicians have their release terms violated, or when movie studios have the same problem. It doesn't matter how much money they're making. The simple fact is that you wouldn't have the music or movie to rip off if it wasn't for the musician or studio or whatever. If you don't respect that fact they will eventually stop producing.

I'd love to see freely downloadable music. Or movies for that matter. But I'm not going to take the music or movies without permission. The same way I wouldn't use GPLed code without releasing my software under the GPL.

Lastly, you rip an mp3 that is music you created to put up on mp3.com. I download it. If it has a copyright on it, and I didn't rip it, how do I play it?

"This europop remix of the Tetris theme has been arranged, performed, and ripped by Gregory Chekalin, who has authorized it for world distribution. This licence has been digitally signed by Gregory Chekalin." The SDMiPod verifies the signature, checks the license, and plays the MP3 file.

If it doesn't have a copyright on it

Huh? Doesn't every work have a copyright on it from creation? Nothing expires into PD anymore.

The artists should be signing up with web sites where they can sell their music directly to the public, say $3 per album with the profits split 50/50 with the distribution site, passing on the cost savings and still taking more per download than they get on each CD sold.

Vivendi Universal, one of the proponents of violating the Red Book standard, operates such a service, called MP3.com D.A.M. Artists like Gregory Chekalin who distribute their albums on D.A.M. for $10 a piece keep $5 a piece, and unlike Universal's other releases, D.A.M. discs are compatible with the Red Book, and they include cleartext 128 kbps MP3 files of all audio tracks.

Toward Ultimate Reality

Electronic LSD, Virtual Theater, Roll Your Own AR.

The Dopest Geek Rapper of All Time

As an artists I have found that it is possible to sell your music using the internet and make some money. You wont make millions but it is possible to make a nice supplementary income from it. I sell 10-20 albums every 2 months online in which I recieve $16 per album.. and I spend minimal time promoting (very minimal in fact) 1hr every week or two.

My strategy?

1. Upload as much of your music as you can onto mp3.com and the like, Audiogalaxy, Morpheus, etc..

2. Set up a website you update frequently

3. Sell your CD through an online music store like Chaosmusic.com where you choose how much the CD retails and will get around 85% of the retail price of the CD.

4. Promote the music online, word of mouth, email newsletters, newsgroups as much as you can.

5. Spend most of your time doing what you love: making music. As much as you can, uploading new tracks, ideas through the avenues above. The more feedback I get the more it inspires me to make music. It's a nice cycle.

6. Forget trying to be a star. The popular stars of tommorrow will be musicians making music in their bedrooms that will gain fame through online communities. It's already started to happen.

www.mp3.com.au/detect (plug)
www.mp3.com/detect

so I might as well throw in a few links:

Everyone - a vg music tribute band.
Evil Adam - Check out "Zerg Must Die" & "Evil de Chocobo"

• Tetris
• Korobeiniki
• Korobeyniki
• Korobushka

• Bond - Korobushka (and the rest of the CD Bond - Born, which isn't all Tetris related but still beautiful)
• Dr Spin - Tetris
• tetris boonch
• The Wookies - Tetris (and) Limpopo - Korobeyniki (drunk russians singing the song)
• Tetris OC (several overclocked.org remixes)

Or just go to Russia2000 and get 'Korobeyniki' (which incidentally mixes perfectly from "Barbie Girl" by Aqua).

I'd like to boycott mp3.com, but that's the only place I can send people to get the CDs from brother-in-law's band.

And the funny thing about the "evil MPAA corporations" is that they're probably spinning the MP3 thing in their favor when they pitch to unsigned artists.

I imagine it goes something like this: "We're the only ones with enough resources ($$$) to develop digital anti-theft technology to protect your recordings from unauthorized distribution. If you went out on your own you'd never make a dime because of all the file sharing."

I keep clinging to the dream of a site like mp3.com or Emusic that will eventually allow artists to publish themselves. Forget $15 CD's, think of PayPal minipayments. Even with minipayments I'll bet the artists could make more money in the long run. Yeah, they lose the promotion and up-front production money, but they retain some control and put their music at a price point where even Pentagram might pay for it.

Now if only they could filter out the total home-brew crap... sigh, now I'm getting into double-standards. Okay, at least set up the "Aspiring Amateur Musician" section. :)

Right now the entertainment industry is trying hard to reduce the power of fair-use exceptions to copyright law, and thereby expand their own power.

"I like Jimmy Buffett, anyone got any Jimmy Buffett? I'll trade it for some Wayne Newton."

How about:

Although the files are easy to play and listen to, they are not the "source" of the music, but rather its end result. Even in electronically composed music, where it is easier to distribute the "source" files from which the listenable end product is derived, there are relatively few musicians making those "source" files available.

I couldn't quite figure out how to work in the phraseology about "source" being the form preferred for modification of the work.

Also, there is at least one open-source musician who does make his source files available: Void Main.

IMnsHO, they should've tossed in a drive a la the archos recorder, and made the thing capable of =192VBR.

Link to an article on mp3.com

Thats the cover letter to the care package.

Favorable at MP3.Com

Negative at CNET.COM

Brief at IGN FOR MEN (heh)

Mixed at Epinions

This is for all of you who don't have google-equipped browsers.

Maybe just so they can get the email addresses of people who are too stupid to give them a fake one, and sell their email to spammers? What the heck else can free registration accomplish?

Just remember: Whenever any registration asks for personal info, just lie for the sake of screwing up the bastards' database. Like the mp3 by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. here Oh, dammit, there's free registration required. Just tell them your name is Homer Simpson and your email is nospam@FuckSpammers.com

Not all MP3 player companies are using the ASIC MP3 decoders. iRiver the company that produces the CD MP3 players that Rio rebrands as their own is using ARM processors and is actively developing Ogg support for their players.

Thier New Player the SlimX is really quite neat looking, some pictures are provided here.

If you are looking for discussions about MP3/etc players I recoment MP3's Portables message board.

-OctaneZ

P2P isn`t illegal, nor is the mp3 format... but that`s not what a lot of people seem to believe.. I was told to delete ALL mp3 files from my computer at work, I even had a personal visit to my office by someone assigned to task of deleting mp3s. I had mp3s of my own creation, aswell as mp3s of some friends music, where i know the artists well, and perfectly legal posess mp3s of their work. But because of the public branding of mp3s as being "pirated" music files, i couldn`t convince the people at work, and the files were deleted. They then had the nerve to pass me a catalog and ask me to buy some CD`s to listen to at work.

P2P isn`t illegal, nor is the mp3 format... but that`s not what a lot of people seem to believe.. I was told to delete ALL mp3 files from my computer at work, I even had a personal visit to my office by someone assigned to task of deleting mp3s. I had mp3s of my own creation, aswell as mp3s of some friends music, where i know the artists well, and perfectly legal posess mp3s of their work. But because of the public branding of mp3s as being "pirated" music files, i couldn`t convince the people at work, and the files were deleted. They then had the nerve to pass me a catalog and ask me to buy some CD`s to listen to at work.

It is all over comedy central too. I watch that channel more than any other (by far) and Impostor is being promoed to death on that channel as well.

I would have thought comedy central, sci-fi, and dimension (film distributor) was all owned by the same company, but that is not the case, so actual money did change in promoting this movie.

Sci-Fi is owned by USA Networks (which was just bought by Universal/Vivendi, the same company that owns mp3.com)

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, says this site.

Dimension is owned by Miramax, which is owned by Disney -- says this site and this site.

I don't watch too much tv, but you would think that Disney would plug the movie on ABC and ESPN, which it also owns, especially since they are hurting for cash right now. Why not promote in house?

How is this related to Impostor? Only tangentially. But be aware of the Big Six media companies. Three are involved in this film. It's more than six, but the other companies are AOL/TimeWarner, Sony, NewsCorp, and Bertelsmann (of Napster fame).

Others would add GE to the list, because they own NBC.

In any case, the entirety of our information and entertainment world comes nearly exclusively through those 8 companies.

not only computers and laptops... but also television sets, parking meters, telephones, cars, bird cages, cheese graters, battleships and pants.

Pants?

That's right, digital pants, or as we like to call them.. smarty pants..

"Behind the Scenes at Microsoft" by
Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

it's not that the thought police can charge you directly for the posession of mp3's. the mp3 standard is patented by the fraunhofer folks. this means that when someone like rio wants to add mp3 decoding ability to their devices they have to pay fraunhofer royalties. also if you want to do any encoding the person who make the encoder has to pay them royalties.

so if you want to listen to mp3's on a commercial player these costs get transferred to you the user. also people who have developed free encoders (like bladeenc) have been threatened by the mp3 thought police for giving away the encoder without paying the mp3 hordes.

Who is behind Lindows.com? Michael Robertson is the CEO, founder, and central visionary behind Lindows.com. Prior to starting Lindows.com, he was the founder and CEO of MP3.com

Hi!

I use the DM2 in my DJing. First off, the DM2 software sucks. Studio Pro 4.5 is it for me. I use it mostly for remixing in the studio, though I have been known to bring it to the booth with me on occasion.

As far as the ability to use your own tracks with it, this is absolutely supported. There's a certain amount of monkeying required, but you can do it with the Studio Pro. One-shots are easy as pie. Just load in the WAV. For loops it's not quite so easy... you can do it the hard way (requires a good WAV editor, and a bit of time monkeying... e-mail me if you want details) or the easy way with a software program called Recycle.

It's made by the propellerheads (they did the Spy Hunter mix from The Matrix)... it takes WAV files and manipulates them into TRK files which contain metadata, allowing any supporting player to smoothly loop it, as well as change the tempo, pitch, and lots of other effects that would be hard without the metadata.

Blatant self-promotion: I just posted my first track on MP3.com... made entirely with the DM2. Check it out if you want to hear the capabilities.

I guess I get the Bad Dad award for letting my 4yo play Diablo II. His favorite area is the River of Fire; he just loves seeing all the lava. The only part he doesn't like is the cow level. He gets uneasy fighting the cows. "Daddy, cows aren't evil!"

His favorite song is The Chainsaw Juggler He likes the part where the title character is found dead, "all bloody with his arms by his side". Another verse goes,

A Buddist, a Moslem, a Nun, and a Jew
Were all in a hot air balloon
It suddenly popped
And though they prayed as it dropped
It proves that God hates us all

Kevin's question was, "Who is God and why does he hate us?" I just hope he never asks about some of the other lyrics in that song!

He also has a stuffed Sylvester the Cat in a devil costume (was a give-away promotion a couple Halloweens ago). He came to me and said, "I'm going to take the devil to preschool to sleep with me!" Oh yeah, I'm just waiting for the child welfare authorities to knock on the door someday because of something the kid says at school...

Actually there's a fair amount of this around. I release all my music under a GPL-style license.

As it happens there are quite a number of copyleft licenses for music and other non-software content. I maintain a list of them and I'm always on the lookout for more.

Exactly how helpful all this will be against the music industry I don't know...

I'm not equating "innovation" with "masturbatory graphic design" - I'm saying that there is room for rich web interfaces using images, flash, CSS, DHTML, or whatever.

Macromedia Flash technology currently provides little or no support for assistive technologies designed to help those with disabilities. Images without a textual alt ernative also give little help to visually impaired users who "see" the Web through the synthesized voice of Cats. On the other hand, well-written CSS will gracefully degrade (except on nutscrape-4.x).

mp3.com reviews a large selection of mp3 players, many of which are not SDMI.
Any combo hard-drive/mp3 player like the neo jukebox, the archos or the nomad jukebox can't be SDMI compliant.

I've gotta give this thing mad props, too. I just got mine yesterday and it's more than I expected. I knew it was going to be a small unit, but I didn't really realize how small it was going to be.

I've gotta give this thing mad props, too. I just got mine yesterday and it's more than I expected. I knew it was going to be a small unit, but I didn't really realize how small it was going to be.

http://www.mp3.com/news/222.html
http://www.musicalevolution.8k.com/albini.htm
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini .html
http://www.musicianassist.com/archive/article/ART/ a-1098-1.htm

There's a heap of musical talent in our I.T. department which means friendships are easily formed on common ground other than shoptalk.

In fact, four of us in particular formed a rock band to record and perform original music, and we have our first CD coming out in a week or two. Other than that, I guess reaching the age group of starting a family will probably mean an increase in our social get togethers with colleagues. Oh joy!

If you're interested, our band is called Camel Toe, and we formed earlier this year after an initial one off get together to play covers at a after work drinks occasion... Here's a link to all of our music for free camel_toe_aus

Enjoy.

Best,
Pete
mp3.com/petealec (my solo stuff ;)

There's a heap of musical talent in our I.T. department which means friendships are easily formed on common ground other than shoptalk.

In fact, four of us in particular formed a rock band to record and perform original music, and we have our first CD coming out in a week or two. Other than that, I guess reaching the age group of starting a family will probably mean an increase in our social get togethers with colleagues. Oh joy!

If you're interested, our band is called Camel Toe, and we formed earlier this year after an initial one off get together to play covers at a after work drinks occasion... Here's a link to all of our music for free camel_toe_aus

Enjoy.

Best,
Pete
mp3.com/petealec (my solo stuff ;)

All dvd players can read CDroms....MP3 player

Wrong. Not all dvd drives can read cd-r cd roms. This has to do something with the color of the laser. Since a mp3 cd would be self made (I think you want to burn your own). this might nog be the solution you want.

just look on mp3.com for your own mp3 car radio.

You might check out Mp3.com

That was the idea there...

I occasionally do "live" music improvisation with Fruity Loops and other packages.

I'm too cheap to use a laptop like many other electronic musicians, so I'm building a case out of wood. The original case is too much of a pain to carry, so I just used a plain motherboard on a board last time.

Now I'm making a proper case, out of wood, to be painted black. This plexiglass project looks really sweet, though!

Why wood? Where do mere mortals get Plexiglass and the tools to cut/shape it anyway?

When I finish my box, I'll post pictures and submit it - this story was accepted, right? :)

I use a Mac and a PC. It would be only a PC if it weren't for one special piece of software: Cool Edit. Cool Edit is destructive editing, but besides that, it has some excellent features! In particular its source cleaner (noise/hiss reduction et al) is second to none. Not even multi-thousand dollar systems can compare to the ease, speed and most of all quality of cleanup Cool Edit can do.

If you've heard my stuff you know the quality if already poor. But considering most of the worst of those songs were recorded single-channel with a radioshack mic and SB16 it is surprising they turned out at all.

Between those two sites you can easily accumulate 6500 legitimate MP3s without ever touching a CD. Well, "easily" if you have a broadband connection, anyway. And that's not counting all the garage band home pages across the net with MP3s they want you to distribute widely so they get name recognition.

As for buying CDs, I've been doing that on eBay a lot recently. If you don't require the latest releases you can easily stock up on CDs for less than half what you'd pay at a retail store. Again, all perfectly legal, though if your goal is to make sure the artists get their $.002 from the record label for each album sold, it's not so hot.

Personally, I bought a Game Doctor (CD buffer) to repair scratched CDs so I can buy second hand stuff without worrying too much that it will skip. And I regularly visit the new electronica page on MP3.com.

Ah Well, Major labels won't let me rip my CDs eh? Thats a pity - I was just dying to buy major label music anyway.. dontchya just love crappy generic radio rock/pop? Well ok, there are some major label musicians that put out decent music (especially if you consider Capitol a major label), but how long do you think it'll be before Independent record companies are gonna produce these CDs.. years?, not at all? That actually opens up the opportunity for Independent music to take over the file exchange systems (just what I've always wanted! - I hate trying to find rare tracks and being swamped by radio hits) I think Independents should take up the cause of providing better service to their customers, by not incoporating this technology - having an internet presence is good publicity anyway! Chris Fraew Andrews

Ogg Vorbis will never be popular, because of the name. Let's face it people, "I have an Ogg Vorbis of that song" sounds really stupid. WMA is a bit better, but still pales in comparison to MP3. MP3 is here to stay for a long time.

creative labs and loki both are maintaining openal very actively.

their discussion board is lively, and patches are submitted all the time.

you guys should do some research before acting like you know stuff.

subatomic-
http://www.mp3.com/subatomicglue

I tried plib about a year ago, and OH MY GOD, it was BAD!!!

It supported (get ready):
- 3 simultaneous voices
- 8 bit mono (only)
- not even 3D sound

Does anyone know if it has gotten better in the last year? Maybe I just missed why it is "so good"?

subatomic -
http://www.mp3.com/subatomicglue

openal is actively maintained, just monitor their mailing list. bug reports go in reletively quick too.

I've been using openal on win32, linux, and IRIX without trouble. The only caveat is the API varies just a little between platforms.

Kevin
http://www.mp3.com/subatomicglue