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Please don't interpret "I don't like Linux" as "I think Windows is better than Linux", because I don't like Windows either. I think they're both half-assed solutions to a really difficult problem, and I think we can do better.

My ex-hubby and I used to make our own music. We had our own internet radio station and everything. I go see my friends play in bars and brag about them. I happily support bands that fall somewhere outside the mainstream. Ever heard of Bile? Or Expansion Union? Or Cellophane? No? And you won't unless they all suddenly catch MTV's collective eye. *sigh* Good music is out there, in your own backyard! I think it's great that you're taking an active role and feeding the artists who bring you joy.

"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton

You don't need a recording studio. You don't need to sign with a label. You can sound as good or better than the Million dollar bands (not hard actually) and best of all you don't need to sell your soul.

Interesting you said that. I knew someone from Napster forum that supplied his music for free on Napster, despite being offered contracts by major labels. Why? Because he did not want to compromise his musical style to fit the marketability requirements set by big labels. I have heard his music. It is excellent and of high sound quality.

Find the music here: S A O

Enjoy!

The ability to more directly connect the average music consumer to the people producing the music is always a good thing. The consumer gets music from a wider variety of sources then they would otherwise, and the artist doesn't need to give up as much money to a label or distributor. I don't know about you, but I'd rather buy CD's under those terms then at any outlet at the local mall.

...mobile reception of streaming mp3's, from my home computer or from mp3.com.

Now you'll finally have time to listen to all 33,000 trance tracks.

(Synthr's Spiderman soundtrack remix is actually kind of nice :)

I'm instictively wary of any large multi-national corporation, but given that mp3.com was always eventually going to be 'aquired' by one of them, I'm slightly less nauseated than if it had been Sony or BMG.

These days it's all about degrees of corporate evil and Vivendi are in the upper levels, not quite down in the boiling core of corporate hell.

Ever the grinning optimist.

queque

by FEAR IN PARIS.

I used to live in stormy waters, just dying of fright,
but now I've found a special hobby
and I'm doin' all right

Line from the song Suction Cup 6.1 by Sofina on mp3.com. Great tune.

(Nope, I'm not in the band, but they're local to my area and they're pretty darn good).

--

Yeah, as MC Hawking says "fuck the creationists" [MP3]
--

say I start a band, and I name the band "S@ndman"

First, you would change your name; it's too similar to an existing Electronic artist Sandman. After that, you would sign up with MP3.com. You keep the copyright and $5 of every $10 CD you sell. And because they run the server and listen to everything that goes on it to make sure that no unauthorized cover songs are posted, RIAA/ASCAP/BMI won't attack them.

I was just listening to a skit called Welcome to the Internet Support Desk by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie on MP3.com. It has that in there. If you haven't heard it, it is hilarious!

The best thing about it that I have had to say nearly the exact same thing to some of the people I talk to.

"No, that's my fault. First turn the computer on, and then try to login."

Here's my contribution.

Every author, musician, software developer...? No, certainly not every one. There are lots of people who give away their work for free, and lots who permit you to copy it. I'm serious, some people do not think the way you do. Linux and a lot of the software that goes with permits copying explicitly. I'd like to think of myself as a graphic designer and musician, and my fonts and music are free, and I permit copying. I'm sure we can find significant examples for your other categories. This is not an obvious point.

As for the "copying is moral" argument, I don't expect to win over many people with just slashdot posts. Morals are more complicated than that. However, I believe the distinction between theft and copying is real, and that you are just plain wrong to claim they are the same. Theft deprives someone of property directly. Copying does not (though it may, indirectly). There's plenty of reasonable arguments to be made about copying being bad, but none of them come down to analogies about stealing cars.

Could Slashdot readers reply to this and tell me if they can tell the difference between MP3s and CDs?

It's gotten so that the only things I use MP3 for are old AM radio shows and Napster downloads of rare demo stuff that's already sonically degraded prior to the MP3 encoding process.

D'oh. Forgot to link to the song =D

No, it's not that Signal 11. It's referring to the enunchs error message.

What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

Either they create a master database that contains EVERY name of EVERY
copyrighted song ever (we're talking like 15 megs worth of text)

OR

Napster will add encryption to the songs that my band has written ( the Jeff Mullins Band ),
to which WE own the copyright, and THAT would PISS ME OFF!! We WANT
our stuff traded on napster!

Actually, Bobby Prince (the guy who did all the music) used to have a huge number of Doom MP3s availabone on his mp3.com homepage, but it looks like most of them got taken down. I still have them stored local though, all 27 of them.

After the Zero Wing animated gif bounced around the internet, a thread began in the Something Awful message boards where people added lines from the game to various images. This started the craze of putting "ALL YOUR BASE" etc. to every picture imaginable that spread across the net. The Laziest Men on Mars, also from Something Awful, even made it into a song, which was later attached to a Flash compendium of sorts.

My URL went sour. Sorry. You can check out The Hunz here.

Tech is not the limiting factor anymore. Not by a long shot. For less than the price of a decent used car, you can make excellent sounding music in your bedroom! The cheap semi-pro stuff became "good enough" several years ago. The only real limitation now is your musical vision and performance.

Need proof? It's all over mp3.com. For example, this guy (no relation to myself) blows my mind with the sound he gets from semi-pro gear. That song "Lie" sounds like it might have been one that Lennon cut in the studio. And you know what? All his stuff was recorded in his bedroom with an AT4033 condensor mic (~$500), Alesis SR-16 drum machine (~$250), Roland V Drums ($2-3000), Roland VS1680 ($2500 with effects cards), ART Tube PAC (couple hundred $) and his guitars. The guitar sounds were all done with the VS1680 amp sims! No live amps. No fancy preamps. No acoustically treated room necessary. And it is pro quality. I know of many other examples like this on mp3.com

Nothing's holding you back if you have the musical talent and you're willing to put in the time necessary to learn how to engineer a good sound. The semi-pro stuff is now about 85-90% as good sounding as the most expensive stuff. A $500 condensor mic is good enough to get your point across in hi fidelity - you really don't need a U87 to make music that is enjoyable.

And if any of you have heard "Kernkraft 400," by Zombie Nation, the original version was created mainly using a SIDStation. Great 8-bit sound according to an interview in this month's Sound On Sound.

Another thing is that many artists that were around for the beginning of the tracker scene are still using trackers to do their music, then converting the wave output to MP3.

Umm, SC2's music was made through a contest for mod music, the creators of the game explain it at the SC creators' chat log at Pages of Now and Forever. They had 4 or 5 different music guys in the end. Nicholson was one of several. Another one of those guys is part of Robots Are Supreme. Wierd shit. Potatojuice is actually a remix of the Melnorme theme. I recommend "homage to RC Sonic" and "Powerdown/fly home".

If you ask me the CD-access feature is the least interesting thing about my.mp3.com. The thing that is really cool about mp3.com is the access to a bajillion independent musical artists from around the whole world.

I could not agree more. My.mp3.com is a red herring. The salient feature of mp3.com is its indie music. With their current playback royalty scheme, mp3.com is paying large amounts of hard cash to unsigned, independent musicians. There is an 18-year-old in Minnesota who's been making like $8,000 a month by producing techno music on a SoundBlaster Live card. This is the only functioning alternative to the big-music-label hegemony that I've ever seen. Give it some credit and stop whining about their my.mp3 program. Even Towel Daddy himself makes a bit of change with his rocking-yet-commercially-unmarketable music at mp3.com. RD

I'm with you. Some good stuff in amongst the static. Outside the Box

But is the reasons for the service fee, besides being used for service maintainance (web servers, bandwidth,etc), because of fees being paid to the record companies?

If the 1,000,000 email succeeds in getting the legislation past, will the price be reduced?

I do not look forward to having to pay twice to listen to the same thing. Now if they perhaps reduce the price to a $9.95, $19.95 or $29.95 a year charge...maybe. I guess this is also to may the lawyers as well.

BreezyGuy

For a hillarious song on this topic by my favorite Canadian humor group (okay, so it's the only one I know), Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, go check out The War of 1812. While you're at it, listen to their other pieces, including the Internet Help Desk and the Toronto song. I laughed myself silly when I first heard their stuff.

Personally, I don't have any problem accepting that, on a cosmic scale, all of humanity is microscopically insignificant. It doesn't bother me one bit. Now I'm the first to admit I have a little bit of a big ego, but I'm quite happy with the fact that if I spun in tomorrow, although my Dad would be distraught, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't give a damn.

I think this song is quite apt:

The Big Cigar Theory

What really happened in 1812 (in mp3 format).

--

In case anyone's interested, I did a comedy sketch about the world's oldest bacteria for CBC radio today. You can hear it here.
(Sorry, it's on mp3.com so they'll ask you for your email, blah blah blah...)

I made a tune that just tells you one good place to get th'source code - kind of a musical link. It's getting a bit old now. I'm amazed this is still an issue - but it is!

I want one of those handy dandy Aiwa car Mp3 players so I can blast The Shizit all around my hood.
2nd in line is an SMP chipset for Durons and Thunderbirds.
Other than that I'd like to get rid of all the Ebay people that bid in the last 2 seconds 25 cents over my bid.

See the BBC's story about MP3.com' s 'e-mail march' where MP3 is launching a 'million e-mail march' in support of an American bill which could end legal action against it.
Richy C.
--

"As used in this section, the term "personal interactive performance" means the performance of a sound recording and the non-dramatic musical works embodied therein by means of a digital transmission and includes any digital phonorecord deliveries associated with such transmission, provided that the transmission is received only by a recipient who has provided to the transmitting organization proof that the recipient lawfully possesses a phonorecord of such sound recording and who has conveyed to the transmitting organization a specific request to receive the transmission of the performance."

Ther is nothing in this defenition, or elsewhere in the bill that says the user can't record the stream (although it doesn't protect it either). It also dosen't define what constitutes "proof that the recipient lawfully possesses a phonorecord of such sound recording."

Certainly though MP3.com's current method is insufficient since it only demonstrates momentary possesion.

Is there anyone here that really belives no one played their friends CDs from MP3.com?

Of course, MP3.com is involved in this... go here and write a letter to your representative and senators...

Certainly. However, if reading of DeCSS has "offensive lyrics", why haven't they removed bands like Jerk or Testicular Flatulence? Oh, sorry, I forgot that it's purely politics again.

(To those wondering, I found those bands by searching for "Anal Cunt", the most offensive band I could remember the name of. Though I have no records by them... :-P)

Certainly. However, if reading of DeCSS has "offensive lyrics", why haven't they removed bands like Jerk or Testicular Flatulence? Oh, sorry, I forgot that it's purely politics again.

(To those wondering, I found those bands by searching for "Anal Cunt", the most offensive band I could remember the name of. Though I have no records by them... :-P)

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, Dee Ee Cee Ess Ess, 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...

..I have a cute little band I did back when I was in high school called "Bovine Ignition Systems" that I'm currently hosting on mp3.com. I figured, what the hey, it's somewhat amusing, and maybe even more people need to hear The Girl With the Biggest Hair and other timeless classics.

Well, I uploaded 15 songs to them, and to my surprise, two were rejected! One, "Do Not Side Behind One Particular Band", has a sample from SOMEWHERE on it, of one person saying a sentence and someone saying "I know". They said this "possibly violated copyright". In other words, they premptively said it must be some illegal sample, and took it away. (It later showed up again, don't ask me why.

But the second song, "Fight to Your Right to Bovines", was also struck for "possible copyright violations". Great. The song is certainly reminiscent of "Fight for your Right to Party", except it's got COMPLETELY different lyrics, uses an actual band, which jams and interacts through the song, and which sounds like a rock tune more than rap. It's parody, people! The supreme court was unanimous that parody was A-OK!

So my opinion, based on this, is that after MP3.COM got sacked with their possible huge judgement coming shortly, and while they negotiate like mad to get out of the impending mess, they are being WAY overcautious and WAY hesistant to take on anything that might even smell of copyright violation, even if that's being judged by someone with too much coffee and 1,000 songs to review through that day.

..I have a cute little band I did back when I was in high school called "Bovine Ignition Systems" that I'm currently hosting on mp3.com. I figured, what the hey, it's somewhat amusing, and maybe even more people need to hear The Girl With the Biggest Hair and other timeless classics.

Well, I uploaded 15 songs to them, and to my surprise, two were rejected! One, "Do Not Side Behind One Particular Band", has a sample from SOMEWHERE on it, of one person saying a sentence and someone saying "I know". They said this "possibly violated copyright". In other words, they premptively said it must be some illegal sample, and took it away. (It later showed up again, don't ask me why.

But the second song, "Fight to Your Right to Bovines", was also struck for "possible copyright violations". Great. The song is certainly reminiscent of "Fight for your Right to Party", except it's got COMPLETELY different lyrics, uses an actual band, which jams and interacts through the song, and which sounds like a rock tune more than rap. It's parody, people! The supreme court was unanimous that parody was A-OK!

So my opinion, based on this, is that after MP3.COM got sacked with their possible huge judgement coming shortly, and while they negotiate like mad to get out of the impending mess, they are being WAY overcautious and WAY hesistant to take on anything that might even smell of copyright violation, even if that's being judged by someone with too much coffee and 1,000 songs to review through that day.

..I have a cute little band I did back when I was in high school called "Bovine Ignition Systems" that I'm currently hosting on mp3.com. I figured, what the hey, it's somewhat amusing, and maybe even more people need to hear The Girl With the Biggest Hair and other timeless classics.

Well, I uploaded 15 songs to them, and to my surprise, two were rejected! One, "Do Not Side Behind One Particular Band", has a sample from SOMEWHERE on it, of one person saying a sentence and someone saying "I know". They said this "possibly violated copyright". In other words, they premptively said it must be some illegal sample, and took it away. (It later showed up again, don't ask me why.

But the second song, "Fight to Your Right to Bovines", was also struck for "possible copyright violations". Great. The song is certainly reminiscent of "Fight for your Right to Party", except it's got COMPLETELY different lyrics, uses an actual band, which jams and interacts through the song, and which sounds like a rock tune more than rap. It's parody, people! The supreme court was unanimous that parody was A-OK!

So my opinion, based on this, is that after MP3.COM got sacked with their possible huge judgement coming shortly, and while they negotiate like mad to get out of the impending mess, they are being WAY overcautious and WAY hesistant to take on anything that might even smell of copyright violation, even if that's being judged by someone with too much coffee and 1,000 songs to review through that day.

DeCSS code in an MP3 is "offensive lyrics".

The Cocky Sticks' tracks, "I'm a Catholic Girl, of course I swallow!" (featuring samples like "OK, whoever hasn't had their dick in my mouth, form a line over here, uh, I mean at all today", from what appears to be a gangbang video), and "Fuckin' Wheelbarrow" ("I'll pull the skin o' yer ass o'er yer head and turn ya inta a fuckin' wheelbarrow!", which sounds like something I'd pay good money to see a judge do to Hilary Rosen, come to think of it)... don't contain offensive content. We won't even get into Adolf Hitler (oops, thread's over!) being sampled into "House of the Rising Sun".

Personally, I think the Cocky Sticks are great. I love 'em. Got a (paid-for!) CD of 'em. But while I'm not personally offended by their samples, I'm willing to say that many might be. But a bunch of goddamn code expressed as speech?

But it seems to me that Michael Robertson really has become Hilary Rosen's bitch as a result of his my.mp3.com trials.

And that is far more offensive than anything I've heard or seen in the music on MP3.com.

"Wisen up 'cuz on Election Day, we'll see who's banned in the USA"

- 2 Live Crew, from "Banned in the USA", a parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" - and endorsed by Bruce - written in response to Tipper Gore and the PMRC's attempts to eradicate them in the late '80s

A comedy/rap band on MP3.com called "No Time" has had a bit of fun at Dr. Hawking's expense. Go to their page and listen to "No Time Presents Steven Hawking".

Jar-jar is a good enough argument against any CGI charecter. But they had to make Jar-jar CGI, as they found that it was psychologically impossible (and against a number of laws) to impose such an annoying charecter on a real actor.

Jar-jar is a good enough argument against any CGI charecter. But they had to make Jar-jar CGI, as they found that it was psychologically impossible (and against a number of laws) to impose such an annoying charecter on a real actor.

I know you're just trolling, but I can't resist a coherent response.

(you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement)

I'm sorry if your quest for independent music has not yielded the results you hoped for. Here are some of the mp3.com artists and songs that I enjoy. You might find them tolerable.

• Red Delicious
• Soma Sonic
• The Annie Hawkins Band
• Fisher
• Girl Next Door
• Mistake Theory
• Tom Aragon
• Mother Funk Conspiracy
• 790 Robot Head
• Greta Gaines, "Firefly"
• Moke, "Down"
• Plunky & Oneness, "Don't Be Afraid of Freedom"
• Wolf Hoffmann, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"
• Maktub, "Lies" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Purple Planet, "Little Push"
• Sedona, "Filling Up the Holes"
• The Hill, "Loungecat Called Sin"
• Clyde's Ride, "The Time is Now" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Pyjama Charm, "Interstellar Pizza Girl"
• Fiercen, "Control"
• Blue By Nature, "Cadillac Blues"
• Bradley N. Litwin, "'Tain't Nobody's Business"

I know you're just trolling, but I can't resist a coherent response.

(you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement)

I'm sorry if your quest for independent music has not yielded the results you hoped for. Here are some of the mp3.com artists and songs that I enjoy. You might find them tolerable.

• Red Delicious
• Soma Sonic
• The Annie Hawkins Band
• Fisher
• Girl Next Door
• Mistake Theory
• Tom Aragon
• Mother Funk Conspiracy
• 790 Robot Head
• Greta Gaines, "Firefly"
• Moke, "Down"
• Plunky & Oneness, "Don't Be Afraid of Freedom"
• Wolf Hoffmann, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"
• Maktub, "Lies" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Purple Planet, "Little Push"
• Sedona, "Filling Up the Holes"
• The Hill, "Loungecat Called Sin"
• Clyde's Ride, "The Time is Now" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Pyjama Charm, "Interstellar Pizza Girl"
• Fiercen, "Control"
• Blue By Nature, "Cadillac Blues"
• Bradley N. Litwin, "'Tain't Nobody's Business"

I know you're just trolling, but I can't resist a coherent response.

(you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement)

I'm sorry if your quest for independent music has not yielded the results you hoped for. Here are some of the mp3.com artists and songs that I enjoy. You might find them tolerable.

• Red Delicious
• Soma Sonic
• The Annie Hawkins Band
• Fisher
• Girl Next Door
• Mistake Theory
• Tom Aragon
• Mother Funk Conspiracy
• 790 Robot Head
• Greta Gaines, "Firefly"
• Moke, "Down"
• Plunky & Oneness, "Don't Be Afraid of Freedom"
• Wolf Hoffmann, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"
• Maktub, "Lies" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Purple Planet, "Little Push"
• Sedona, "Filling Up the Holes"
• The Hill, "Loungecat Called Sin"
• Clyde's Ride, "The Time is Now" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Pyjama Charm, "Interstellar Pizza Girl"
• Fiercen, "Control"
• Blue By Nature, "Cadillac Blues"
• Bradley N. Litwin, "'Tain't Nobody's Business"

I know you're just trolling, but I can't resist a coherent response.

(you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement)

I'm sorry if your quest for independent music has not yielded the results you hoped for. Here are some of the mp3.com artists and songs that I enjoy. You might find them tolerable.

• Red Delicious
• Soma Sonic
• The Annie Hawkins Band
• Fisher
• Girl Next Door
• Mistake Theory
• Tom Aragon
• Mother Funk Conspiracy
• 790 Robot Head
• Greta Gaines, "Firefly"
• Moke, "Down"
• Plunky & Oneness, "Don't Be Afraid of Freedom"
• Wolf Hoffmann, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"
• Maktub, "Lies" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Purple Planet, "Little Push"
• Sedona, "Filling Up the Holes"
• The Hill, "Loungecat Called Sin"
• Clyde's Ride, "The Time is Now" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Pyjama Charm, "Interstellar Pizza Girl"
• Fiercen, "Control"
• Blue By Nature, "Cadillac Blues"
• Bradley N. Litwin, "'Tain't Nobody's Business"

I know you're just trolling, but I can't resist a coherent response.

(you can forget all the second rate ramblin' noise that 'independent artists' make in daddy's basement)

I'm sorry if your quest for independent music has not yielded the results you hoped for. Here are some of the mp3.com artists and songs that I enjoy. You might find them tolerable.

• Red Delicious
• Soma Sonic
• The Annie Hawkins Band
• Fisher
• Girl Next Door
• Mistake Theory
• Tom Aragon
• Mother Funk Conspiracy
• 790 Robot Head
• Greta Gaines, "Firefly"
• Moke, "Down"
• Plunky & Oneness, "Don't Be Afraid of Freedom"
• Wolf Hoffmann, "In the Hall of the Mountain King"
• Maktub, "Lies" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Purple Planet, "Little Push"
• Sedona, "Filling Up the Holes"
• The Hill, "Loungecat Called Sin"
• Clyde's Ride, "The Time is Now" (but it doesn't seem to be linked from their page any more...)
• Pyjama Charm, "Interstellar Pizza Girl"
• Fiercen, "Control"
• Blue By Nature, "Cadillac Blues"
• Bradley N. Litwin, "'Tain't Nobody's Business"