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The people I feel sorry for are the *good* artists who will get swept up in the free music movement that end up broke and pissed off when their fan base isn't using it for a showcase example of some alternative goodwill based economy.

Well, two things:

First, many artists make enough on tour, and find that recordings, legitimate or not, are good advertising for their actual live concerts. I know I'd never have gone to see Umphrey's McGee, had I not first heard a few pirated songs on my brother's iPod.

And second, I, too, want to see the RIAA go down, but not because I want free or optional-payment music to take over. Rather, because I want DRM-free music with a higher percentage going straight to the artist. Taking the above example, the first of their concerts that I went to, I bought an album of that concert on the way out -- they actually had people burning CDs madly just after the concert. The second one, I was with a bunch of people, and we were in a hurry, so I waited, and bought it online -- for a bit less money, but I got full flac downloads, as fast as my fiber (at work) could go.

Based on these experiences, I can definitely say that the RIAA couldn't really do much for this band. I can also say that I would go to see them live again -- being a jam band, every concert is different, and it doesn't take an audiophile to tell you that while these recordings are pretty good (about as good as their studio recordings, I think), they're nothing compared to the real thing.

Now, that is just one band, but it's a relatively small band. And their label has a number of other small bands, as does the company which makes and sells the live recordings. In fact, if I thought I could do a better job, I could make my own recording.

Understand: Concert tickets are not free, and while they're certainly easy to pirate (being DRM-free), the official recordings are not free, either. None of it is "free as in beer". But this is how it should be done. No gigantic recording industry needed.

Seems like most people mentioned all the other sources I knew of... though there is also Creative Commons Audio.

Not too much stuff here but it's all free: http://stash.nugs.net/stash.asp.

http://www.redferret.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php

Even Lars Ulrich has softened up and offered live Metallica concert downloads for free.

P.S. Check out the music video in my sig while you're at it... it's a monologue about destroying technology by a rapper from the year 3030.

For those into The Dead, Phish, WSP, Ratdog, Mule, Little Feat and the likes, there's plenty of music here:

http://stash.nugs.net/stash.asp

Yes, piracy is illegal, but when caught and fined, isn't the American way to declare bankruptcy when you have too much debt? A bad credit ding is only on your record for 7 years. I think this could instill a sliding scale of when to chance pirating.

Year --- % Piracy --- Logic

Freshman --- 95% --- 4 yrs undergrad + 2 yrs. grad, nearly clean credit score

Sophomore --- 75% --- 3 yrs undergrad + 2 yrs. grad, explainable negative action

Junior --- 50% ---- 2 yrs undergrad + 2 yrs. grad, still old enough to not to be fatal, plus, you can get into more bars and record more music in person.

Senior --- 5% --- 1 yrs undergrad + 2 yrs. grad, you TA in most classes, get songs you want from Freshman, only pirate when needing to impress women with your hip music collection

I can say that I used P2P for music minimally back in the early 00's, but also have purchased only a handful of new CD since VERY early 90's. Stuck in a timewarp maybe, but have found plenty of legal ways to get/listen to the music I like. Click here for my shameless plug of Nugs.net

Please know that I think that declaring bankruptcy is a shameful way to skirt out of your responsibilities, I offer the above only in humor.

here are some free files. help yourself

http://web1.nugs.net/stash.asp?cmd=dl&artist=-1

I am sure this is all illegal if some asshole at consortium_x says so

because SURELY those that CREATE the files have no rights to them

hmmm... maybe you all could start a collection to get this show on the road. ;-)

People, it's Friday (ok, maybe already Saturday Down Under), relax, enjoy the day and listen to some good music and just be happy you're still breathing.

However they are 52 Phish shows that you can either download or stream on nugs.net. I mentioned the LMA as they have downloads from live shows from many other bands.

Shameless plugs to follow... check out:

Phish, Dead, String Cheese Incident and others

Live Music Archive @ Archive.org

These are amazing sites to get that show/song you are looking for, from bands who lived and survived by allowing their fans to tape and trade their shows.

just a couple things, thanks for the discussion also. (here's a quick hello to everyone lurking,."Hello!")

I had a conversation about this last night with friends, some of which have high-speed connections.

Me too. We were listening to some of this (KVHW) using this. Them someone mentioned these guys. So I used this. And everyone heard what we were talking about. Which opened the door to summarize this discussion for them. :-) Later, I pointed out how we were all felons, pirates, and all that was evil in the world. Then, we went to this show, and made a night of it.

There is no philosophical connection between the Free Software/Open Source movement (if you merge them together for simplicity) and piracy of intellectual property.

Except that some folks in the FS/OM movement don't believe in piracy of intellectual property as a concept. I fall short of that extreme, but believe our current situation regarding IP, is, flawed.

Therefore, those who don't pay for such content are parasites relying on the "rubes" who do pay for it.

Then I guess I'm some sort of pararube, eh?

Basically, we'll be down to hobby content.

If Linux is an example of hobby content, then I'm all for this scenario. I like to think of Free Software (and hopefully someday Free Music) as the baseline for measuring software. If your commercial software isn't as good as the stuff I can get for free...your stuff sucks and isn't worth my money. As we raise the bar for what you can get for free, you have to raise even higher the bar of what you sell. This provides the necessary motivation to succeed, that other forms of communism (i.e. in the real world) lacked. Just so I can be honest with both you and myself on what I'm really talking about. Eliminating scarcity changes value fundamentally, it's time to deal with it.

If you want to continue this, may I suggest e-mail?

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