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Here, try visiting Musiclink. It allows you to do just that -- send money directly to the artist. You send as much as five bucks, and it's probably worth more than 5 CD's worth of royalties for the artist. Everybody happy, except for the leeches who normally get 95% of the cut.

I don't care if they starve. They deserve it. My money should only go to the artists.

I don't know about you, but I kind of respect artists enough not to fuck them over by taking their albums without paying them.

Buying a CD does not pay the artist. It only pays the companies who distribute the plastic. You want to pay the artist? Go to musiclink (formerly Fairtunes) and pay them. Directly.

(I used to be an extremely active Fairtunes community contributor, but when they dropped the bulletin-board style forums and started using Slashcode, in which you couldn't start new "threads" without getting them approved by moderators, it fell flat on its face and died. Then it got taken over by this "musiclink" group, etc. The new site doesn't seem to have any sort of community or forums at all; in fact, it looks like it isn't even done yet. Where's the list of contributions? Where's the "top X artists" lists, etc.? I hope they're still doing some good work.)

This is a good idea as long as you can solve the problem of authentication.

I prefer donating through musiclink , a nonprofit service that 100% of the money to an artist after a $20 threshhold is reached.

It is really amazing how few of the artists are soliciting through paypal or amazon or musiclink on their websites. Are musicians just stupid? I think they always want to hold out for the possibility about signing with a major label later on.

I wrote an essay about a voluntary payment system at
sharethemusicday.com

Why? When do you get the benefit? The label fucknuts that own you don't see it on their balance sheets, so you're no more valuable to them, nor to your prospective new masters at another label. How many people that fileshare instead of buying CDs go on to buy moichandise (and what's your cut anyway)? How many contribute through musiclink? (hint: fuck all).

Your argument, such as it is, comes back to the assumption that artists make money through touring. Wow. Tell you what, next time I write a book, how about I give it away online to market myself, and make my living through appearing at conventions and opening bookshops?

Why? When do you get the benefit? The label fucknuts that own you don't see it on their balance sheets, so you're no more valuable to them, nor to your prospective new masters at another label. How many people that fileshare instead of buying CDs go on to buy moichandise (and what's your cut anyway)? How many contribute through musiclink? (hint: fuck all).

Your argument, such as it is, comes back to the assumption that artists make money through touring. Wow. Tell you what, next time I write a book, how about I give it away online to market myself, and make my living through appearing at conventions and opening bookshops?

Perhaps a network where one can donate to worthy artists, such as musiclink.com (ex-FairTunes). Perhaps a donation even allows dl'ing of album .FLACs on donation. It's not a hard idea, tho the music industry is concerned more with not loosing money than making a profit.

I see a lot of band websites out there (both big label and small label), but I almost never see a site that tells surfers/listeners how to tip the band. Why don't more band websites include links to musiclink or paypal? Case in point: I bought a used Patti Rothberg CD (EMI) on half.com for $1 (plus $3 shipping), and I would have preferred to download the mp3's off her site and donated $5 directly . Why do artists not perceive the value of online tipping? Is it ignorance or some clause in the contract? rj

Yeah, that $10 for Linkin Park will really wean them off of the label's money teat.

I actually bought a couple songs from the Apple site before I decided I didn't want to support a service that provides:

1. DRM-impaired files, and
2. Low-quality bitrates.

When I made that decision, a number of people thought I was basically impossible to please -- after all, the AAC files were "all but" free of DRM.

Now we see that DRM ultimately means the distributor owns you. If they can delete the files for "good" reasons, they can delete the file for any reason. You are totally dependent on their good faith. And as we can see, their idea of fair use may not mesh with yours.

I thought of downloading the song from P2P but then buying it from the iTunes store, but that amounts to giving our mortal enemies, the music industry, a lot of money to attack us with. (Note that I have no such concerns about certain indie labels that are not attacking P2P users. It is unfortunate that they tend to get grouped in with the far more evil big-5.)

Nevertheless, let me emphasize that this does not negate the need to pay the artist. In fact, we absolutely must get "paying the artist" off the table to win the intellectual debate. P2P is not about paying the artist, it is about who is in control of distribution -- the comsumer or the record company. We as P2P users, IMO, must make it a cultural reality that we always pay for MP3s we keep. It's easy to do this: go to MusicLink. You can pay any artist (or almost any artist) with a Paypal account or a credit card.

Once paying the artist is the P2P way of life, it will be very hard indeed to trot out words like "stealing" and "theft". Then it will become clear that the complainers are not really complaining about money, but about loss of control of distribution. When the debate is reduced to that, the other side will have already lost.

In the end, I say: insist on DRM-free files. Insist on high quality, at least as high as you want. And ALWAYS pay for the MP3s you keep. Use your money to support those who create great music, not those who attack you politically and legally.

> The people that want a specific candy bar will pay for it if it means they can't get that candy bar otherwise.

Speculation, and I assert otherwise. Find a counter example.

>Just because something's free doesn't mean you want it, as plenty of ugly couches left on the curbside with "FREE!" signs on them can attest.

Have you ever moved a couch? That's a high transaction cost, not a free one. Notice how I talked about the cost of negotiating the transaction, not the dollar value of it. Find a better counter example.

>Obviously, some people won't pay for anything. But many will, especially to support the artists they like.

Sure, that $109.30 for U2 will really persuade them to go indie, and the $10 for Linkin Park shows just how much you wacky kids will pay for your college boy rawk.

Heh, how much have you paid?

> The people that want a specific candy bar will pay for it if it means they can't get that candy bar otherwise.

Speculation, and I assert otherwise. Find a counter example.

>Just because something's free doesn't mean you want it, as plenty of ugly couches left on the curbside with "FREE!" signs on them can attest.

Have you ever moved a couch? That's a high transaction cost, not a free one. Notice how I talked about the cost of negotiating the transaction, not the dollar value of it. Find a better counter example.

>Obviously, some people won't pay for anything. But many will, especially to support the artists they like.

Sure, that $109.30 for U2 will really persuade them to go indie, and the $10 for Linkin Park shows just how much you wacky kids will pay for your college boy rawk.

Heh, how much have you paid?

Send them a check? Very primitive...

Just go to Musiclink (formerly Fairtunes) and they will take care of it for you...

That may well be a waste of money, but this *definitely* is.

Hmm.. somehow I have a feeling that this would be a waste of money.

My suggestion is to download the music, and then contribute directly to the artists, doing and end-run around the 'AAs.

Sure, technically, it's still stealing, there's no denying that, but all you'd really be doing is getting the money to the people who actually deserve it, and not the crooks who are stealing from them in the first place.

If I were an artist on one of these major labels (God forbid), I'd much rather have a fan tell me that he/she downloaded my music illegally and then give me a couple of bucks out of appreciation rather than buy a CD off the rack for $17.99, and I get the nickel or dime or whatever for creating the music, while the record company makes the lion's share.

There's always fairtunes (now musiclink).

Also tipjar.com, and there were others that I can't think of off hand.

- Ert

how about instead of 500,000 people buying the album, 1 million download it for free and 100,000 of these each donate $5 to the band thus leaving each band member with $125,000 each - instead of the $38 grand each with the current model.

For more details on a donation type music model go here and also suss out MusicLink and also Cringely article on the topic.

It used to be called Fairtunes, It's now called MusicLink.Com

Send it to MusicLink this the former Fairtunes.Com where you can pay the artists directly!

There already is a system for paying musicians directly. Fairtunes.com was a third party who collected and distributed over $15,000 to various artist. The founders of the site are no longer with the project but the system continues at this site.
There is a minimum donation of $10.00 but you can spread it out to numerous artists.

They will just blame dropping sales on priacy if plp stop buying cds normally, not to say I dont agree with you. but If I am downloading music I feel i should pay for it, so pay the artist's directly at Musiclink Lets let the RIAA know that the artists are still getting paid but not by them.

That helps by actually getting money to worthy artists. This isn't all about screwing the RIAA, you know. I still buy CD's from indepedent labels, but at least I know they're more likely to be getting a decent share of the money that way. For those enslaved by RIAA labels, there's always Musiclink, for when you do feel like screwing the RIAA as well as paying the artists.

There is a sane, though I don't know how stable, way to pay for the MP3s you keep without having to fork over 20 bucks...

MusicLink: http://www.musiclink.com
They have a system in place where you can make "donations" to artists that are registered with them, and there seem to be a lot of different artists in thier database, and it's easy to do.

Save The Bands: http://www.niki9.com
They're trying to set up a similar system, only with more of an agenda. They do it specifically to voluntarily compensate artists for music that's downloaded via the internet or burned from a borrowed CD. Come August they'll provide the contact info where you can send an artist a check, and right now they're asking for feedback about which bands you want them to list and and suggestions for other initiatives they can start to help out bands that get screwed by record companies.

http://www.musiclink.com/ (also called FairTunes). It is by no means complete, but it's a start.

-Sokie

I guess if I really wanted to be honest, I'd send the recording company a check for the value of the album I'd downloaded -- but chances are that they'd then prosecute me for piracy -- even though I had offered to pay anyway.

Why send the recording company a check? They didn't press a CD for you. They didn't spend money on packaging for you. They didn't spend money shipping product to you, or paying for a salesman to smooze your record store. Don't worry about those creeps. They had their big lick at the trough.

Send the artist money. Here is an outfit that does that for you. (I have no association with fairtunes.com, except I saw a link to them here on slashdot a couple of months ago, and thought it was a good idea.)

The artists get what, 5% or 10% or less of the retail price you pay? According to the fairtunes FAQ, the artists typically get all kinds of things, like the cost of producing their CDs charged back against their royalties, so they get more like 2% of the retail price.

They cost too much, especially thinking of how much cd media costs, and all this copy protection talk is pretty tiresome. I always go to Cheap CD's to find the track listing and some sound samples, then go to Audiogalaxy if it sounds interesting, so I can listen to all the songs before I decide if I want to purchase it. I hate paying for filler material. I want songs that were made because the artist wanted to make it and put some heart into it, not something they had to cook up to finish the album. I'm threw with fattening up record execs just by doing(IMHO) the right thing and purchasing cd's.

I think the folks at Fairtunes have the right idea. Check out this link I got from their faq to see how much artists actually get from these cd sales.