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People aren't going to stop "pirating", nor should they. "Pirates" spend more money on music than non-pirates. It's called marketing. The MAFIAA labeled bands have radio, the indies have P2P.

Want to pirate a book? To to Cory Doctorow's site craphound.com. He doesn't mind. In fact, read the forward to Little Brother (free download of the book there) where he explains how your "pirating" his books is a good thing.

Go to my friends in The Station's site. You can "pirate" their stuff, too (first link leads to shn, flac, mp3, ogg). There are dozens of their live shows on archive.org.

You can "pirate" the top 40 by plugging your radio into your PC and sampling. Better quality, less hassle. The only downside is it's only MAFIAA dreck; you have to actually download indie music. A few years ago Micheal Crawford compiled a list of tens of thousands of songs you can pirate legally.

If you live in St Louis you have a lebal-sanctioned pirate radio station that plays seven complete CDs, uncut and uninterrupted, every Sunday night for you to sample and has done so for decades.

Only an idiot wants to keep his art secret.

Here's some more free music from some friends of mine (I think the links are still good, the band broke up iinm). here are some more, they're still togather and I doubt you've heard anything like them. Their first CD, All That Lies Between is IMO their best.

-mcgrew

Hmm, destruction of your whole business model, financially costly? Really?

Not if your business model is fatally flawed and/or obsolete.

The fact is that the labels' current business model is untenable. Fifty years ago it took LOTS of money to make a record. Today it only takes a couple thousand; just about every local band (link is to friends of mine) in Springfield has at least one CD recorded in a studio and professionally duplicated.

They don't HAVE to sell a million to make a profit - the things only cost a buck or two apiece, anything above that is profit, so long as they're sold at the bands' shows.

The RIAA labels' only current hold on music is that they still control radio and empty-v. THAT is why they killed internet radio and are trying to kill P2P - they can't control it and keep the indies off. These two outlets are the indies' meal tickets and the labels' worst nightmare.

If you're trying to find, say, a live version of The Station's song The Fog on Kazaa (say someone told you about them), you're likely to find a Radiohead song by the same name, and get yourself sued. But the labels' fear is that you'll be looking for Radiohead's tune and find The Station by mistake. You buy their two CDs (or downloads from iTunes) and you no longer have the money you spent on those two CDs and now can afford one less RIAA CD, since they cost twice as much as most indie CDs sold as shows.

This isn't about "piracy", it's about destroying the competetion.

-mcgrew

With the majority of music in existence now belonging to the RIAA in some way

If you're counting all the 20th century music by all those dead people, perhaps. But if you only count new music (lets say from the present century), most of it is indie.

In the last century, a bar band needed a label to record; studios, pressing, and distribution were all controlled by the labels. But we have computers now; five hundred bucks for a machine more powerful than the biggest supercomputer in existance when CDs were invented.

Hell, I have friends with CDs out, and none of them have an RIAA contract. A label tried to to sign Joe and he told them to go to hell. The link is to a blog posting with links to MP3s of live recordings (acoustics in the clubs aren't good; find a copy of Posamist's CD for quality). Some other friends have 2 CDs out and SHNs at Archive.org. And those are just a couple of my friends; here is a Michael Craford article linking to thousands of FREE MP3s. The article is several years old, there are more free MP3s posted on the internet every day!

"Piracy" is a red herring. You can "download" the entire top 40 in a few hours by plugging your radio's headphone jack into your PC's sound card and sampling the RIAA dreck. The RIAA's problem is that they control radio and empty-v, but they can't keep Joe and Dave and the other thousands of bands Mike linked to off of P2P or internet radio. That's the real reason they have attacked both of those outlets (and very sucessfully, too).

It's not about copyright infringement. It's about destroying the major labels' competetion. There is no reason whatever to download or upload top 40 crap with P2P; it's easier to sample it from the radio. Old John Lee Hooker tunes, and indie music, are what P2P is for.

-mcgrew

"The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff.

"Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn't bode well for long-term artistic vision."

I also try not to infringe copyrights

Yeah, mod that guy "funny" but it's insightful as hell.

Say he's trying to find the song The Fog" someone mentioned on slashdot by a midwest jam band called The Station (friends of mine). Say he doesn't know that there's more than one copy on archive.org that was put there by the band itself.

So what does he do? He fires up Kazaa and types in "the fog", downloads the song and... oops, he's violated Radiohead's copyright; a copyright Radiohead holds on a completely different song with the same name. Radiohead's label then goes and files suit against poor Vexorian.

It's not about keeping Radiohead off of P2P, it's about keeping The Station out of your ears.

-mcgrew

They don't though, so their patented GM genes end up in the crops of people who chose not to use their seeds. Since the genes are their property, they feel that they are entitled to money for them, and end up suing the farmers who used their products either unknowingly, or even unwillingly.

The same can be said of the RIAA affiliated record companies and their copyrighted songs. Say I'm looking for the song The Fog by The Station. The link is to the actual song on archive.org. Now, say I'm trying to find it on bittorrent or kazaa. I'm very likely to download "The Fog" by Radiohead by mistake. Note that until I made this post I didn't know Radiohead had a song with that name, nor any of the other bands on the linked Google search. Guess what? I was looking for a song that an indie band wants you to hear, and I'm in danger of being sued by Radiohead's label!

Note that Dave and the guys from The Station are friends of mine, which is why I use them as an example ;) but the same could be said of any of the other thousands of bands out there who are begging for you to hear them!

Bow to the corporations, their lawyers, and the US government that they own.

-mcgrew/a

The way to "bleed them to death by a thousand cuts" isn't to download their music, but to STOP BUYING IT. Support the (mostly superior anyway) indie musicians instead. Support your local musicians. Buy/download indie music. There are literally THOUSANDS of very good bands who post their music on their web sites and would thank you for sharing it. Don't share the MAFIAA's music, share indie music!

Here is some FREE music (live shows) in lossless SHN and FLAC format by some friends of mine. If you like it, go to one of their shows (they play at half the US) and/or buy a CD or two. IMO their first one was the best, but YMMV.

-mcgrew

...while I really do hate the RIAA and the music industry...

You could have fooled me.


She also feels a need to support the artists

Then she should forget Bryan Adams and listen to indie music, where the artist actually gets paid more than a pittance. Sure, megastars like Adams or Metallica or Ted "if Jimmy Buffet had my money he'd declare Chapter 11" Nugent get filthy rich, but most musicians live on subsistance wages. Very little money comes from sales of anything but concert tickets and merchandise.

Really, DRM free on iTunes is predicated on the fact that the recording industry must feel like it is getting some sort of handle on musical file sharing - that is, RIAA lawsuits to music downloaders must actually be working.

Don't believe everything you read. The lawsuits aren't what is getting people to switch to paid services; most people would have gladly paid at the start had there been a legal alternative. Now that there is iTunes and other legal venues, it doesn't make much sense to use P2P. If the lawsuits had anything to do with it, file sharing would have declined earlier and people would stop using illegal drugs. You can go to prison for marijuana, but millions of people smoke it anyway.

Were there REALLY no DMCA or copyright controls on music, though, someone would eventually make something with a really cool user interface, like iTunes, but where music would be genuinely free. Then, musicians would starve.

First, lets not confuse copyright, which COULD be a good thing if its term limits were what previous generations had (12-30 years) rather than the present calamity, and the DMCA.

Secondly, Roger McGuinn, an early '60s rocker (the Byrds) stated that the old, illegal Napster revitalized his career!

Many artists DO give music away. The link is to free recordings of live shows in lossless format of some friends of mine. They've released two CDs (the first one is their best) and play all over the midwest. here is a bluegrass version of a rap song(!!), while here is a cover of an Allman Brother's song. However, that's not their usual style. Links are lossless, but there are MP3 and Ogg versions available.

I link them because these are friends of mine, but there are literally thousands of artists who are giving it away, as the money isn't in selling recordings, but rather in performing. This is the megastars as well as the little guys. And the only ones who are starving are the ones that suck.

And if the CD you bought only has one good song, guess what? They suck!

-mcgrew

Music group pac at issue
Firm sues over snub by mcgrew
By Alice DeFrye, Glube Staff | March 26, 2007

Sony BMG music, one of the country's largest manufacturers of recorded CDs, is scheduled to argue in court today that mcgrew wrongly picked another record label to supply tens of CDs.

The CDs are at about $90 ($200 for the Sony BMG CDs).

William M. Whatdafuk, a lawyer representing Sony BMG's Van Zandt, said in an interview yesterday that the company wants a review of the internal records showing how mcgrew's office came to select the self-published "The Station" earlier this year.

"We compete against The Station around the country all the time," Whatdafuk said. "Based on the criteria set out by the customer, we had a fair degree of confidence we'd come out on top, and nothing we heard during the process dissuaded us of that confidence."

Whatdafuk said Sony was so stunned it did not get the contract that it now believes "it's worth the time and money" of going to court to challenge the contract's award, even though the company at this stage has no hard evidence of unfair treatment.

mcgrew yesterday called the Sony BMG suit "fucked up" and unlikely to succeed. "My office made a very reasonable selection after a long, open process of evaluating the CDs," mcgrew said. "Besides, Dave and the guys are friends of mine."

"We are entirely confident we will prevail," he said, "Provided those bloodsuckers don't find out I've been seeding Morpheus with The Station, Posamist, and Linux distros. They never lose when they find out you've been trading music by people who want it traded.

In court filings, Sony BMG has indicated it will ask a judge today to immediately halt further use or distribution of the The Station CDs to other fans throughout the state. If a judge issues that order, Van Zandt and BMG will then present arguments over the coming weeks on why the process was flawed, Whatdafuk said.

"We want a judge to either order the contract awarded to Sony BMG, based on his review of the proposals, but if he does not want to go that far, to at least order a reopening of the competition," he said.

Whatdafuk said the company is not alleging any improprieties by the mcgrew's office. Instead, it is saying the office acted in good faith but made a mistake in the selection. mcgrew's purchase of about 35 CDs from The Station, Posamist, Inspected By Twelve, and other local Springfield indie bands for use by stoners and other music lovers arises out of the Help Starving Indie Band America Act, passed by the Springfield City Council as a rider to the smoking ban in 2006. It mandates bands provide CDs for those disabled by the killer bud or the loss of vision, among other disabilities.

mcgrew said The Station CDs have already been shipped to some of the city's 17 million non-smoking bars and the five smoking OK bars outside Springfield.

"I want to get the CDs in use quickly in the municipal elections before larger statewide smoking bans kill the local bar scene completely," mcgrew said. "I see this suit as interfering in that."

mcgrew invited bids from numerous CD manufacturers before his daughter inadvertantly infected his computer with Sony's infamous rootkit, narrowing the field to indies-only, and then to three, mcgrew said. While price was a key consideration, other criteria were considered, such as the quality of the CD, security, (ESPECIALLY security!) and service.

mcgrew said his office surveyed stoner and crackwhore groups and during the evaluation process after letting those groups test the competing CDs.

He said there was a consensus in favor of the The Station.

mcgrew cited as an important factor in favor of The Station its use of one kind of paper "ballot" for brain-disabled stoners and "others".

He said that gave extra privacy to stoned listeners.

The challenge will be heard in the business litigation session of Madison County Superior Court in East St. Louis, rather in the more business-friendly facists in Sangamon county.

Music sales aren't down. What's down is CD sales by the "big four". The indies are doing well; my buddies in Posamist and The Station (and Inspected By Twelve, who don't have a web presence) who sell CDs at their shows are selling quite a few CDs at each show.

I bought my latest Little Feat CD at their (alas, rained out) show at the State Fair a couple of years ago.

It's telling what the WSJ doesn't attribute their decline on: DRM, rootkits (Sony must DIE!!!!!), the attitude that their paying customers (formerly ME) are theives, the boycott that has been ongoing since 2001, the fact that there is afaik only one true major-label rock and roll band since the century started (Buckcherry), the fact that country music now has violins rather than fiddles (As Mojo Nixon put it in Let's Go Burn Old Nashville Down, "country ain't got flutes!"), the fact that Wierd Al parodies sound better than the songs they make fun of, insipid Simon Cowell-type production on every God damned song, the list is endless.

The reasons they put forth are but a tiny bit of the decline.

The article is clueless all around; for example, they attribute the reduction in CD sales at WalMart from reduced shelf space, when in fact the reduced shelf space comes from the fact they're not selling as many CDs there (partly because WalMart sells crippled, censored versions).

-mcgrew ("three eyes")

PS- support your local bands!

"Sorry, the page you requested was not found." IE, 404. So to assuage the disappointment of those who went to the geocities page you gave a URL to, here's a shameless plug for some of my buds.

Here is an old page; their hosting ran out so it only links to the (loathed by slashdot) MySpace page (warning - music plays when the page loads). Here is a shitload of MP3s from them. Here are some more musician friends and here is a half dozen CDs worth of losslessly compressed music from them.

Free music, courtesy of my friends here in Springfield; I've known and partied with these guys for years. Posamist is playing the Illinois State Fair tonight at the Bud tent, if you're in central Illinois go on out.

So with Google you can find Madonna's shitty music, but you can't find a file like Posamist's Loom Up , even though it's a legal download that the band WANTS you to have?

They have four CD's worth of MP3s for free download, none googleable.

Pretty much proves what I've been saying all along - the RIAA/IFPI isn't trying to keep Madonna and Metallica off the internet, they want to keep you from hearing Posamist and The Station (Whose FLAC files on archive.org can't be sucessfully googled for, either).

There are as many file traders as ever, and they're trading more files than ever, but most of the indie file trading has leveled off.

It's the indies that require them to be against file trading. If they could control P2P like they do radio, they would have embraced the original Napster.

BTW, these guys and these guys want you to trade their files. And buy their CDs. But there's little chance you'll buy the CDs if you haven't heard of the bands, is there?

-mcgrew (non-MRC="miners", no coal here dudes)

When you listen to what they say and see what they do, it indeed makes no sense. But if you realize that these are amoral liars it makes more sense; in fact, perfect sense.

They'll PAY to get radio play and risk huge fines for it. FM radio is higher quality than even a high bitrate MP3. KSHE in St. Louis still plays whole albums on Sunday night... hmmm. You can record ENTIRE ALBUMS, 7 each week.

The indie bands like this one can't get on the radio. There are only three ways for these guys to get known: live shows, P2P, and MySpace.

The RIAA labels don't give a shit if you download Metallica. They know fuill well that increases, rather than decreases, Metallica's sales.

However, if you spend ten bucks on that Posamist CD and another ten bucks on that Station CD, that's twenty bucks you don't have to spend on the Metallica CD.

The only reason for any band to want a major label is radio. P2P is radio for the indies, is it any wonder they want it stopped?

Don't be surprised when they try to stop MySpace.

-mcgrew

We love selling music and will gladly sell it for a fair price...

Well? What's stopping you? The Station's two CDs are each ten bucks, each a full 70 minutes of music that is head and shoulders above any of the shite your so-called "artists" put out, with full art and a ten page lyric sheet enclosed. You can get lossless compression files of a dozen or more of their live CDs for FREE.

Meanwhile you worthless dickweeds want thirty bucks for a forty year old Beatles album.

You and your labels are pathetic. Die already, and get the hell out of the way of the artists and listeners. Neither of us need you any more.

(BTW, Posamist's first CD is killer, and also only ten bucks, but there's only 50 minutes or so and no lyric sheet, although lyrics are at their web site. Still better than anything YOUR label produces, at a half the price or better! AND they give MP3s away on their site.)

It's pathetic when someone lies in such a baldface manner. When (if ever, unlikely imo) you really ARE willing to sell at a fair price your labels might stop dying.

-mcgrew

I was 100% with you until the last sentence.

Who wins? Nobody.

But yes, there WILL be winners -- the "content industry's" competetion. For example, friends of mine.

BTW, that movie Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning was well made, hilarious, FREE, and done by a bunch of geeks. I heartily encourage each and every one of you who hasn't seen it to DL it, it's well worth ethe effort.

These are the people that the **AA are really afraid of, not "pirates." Sony isn't afraid you'll DL Van Zandt(sp?), they're afraid you'll DL Posamist instead. I mean, you can sample Ronnie's stuff from the radio.

DRM is about keeping Star Wreck, Posamist, and The Station at bay.

Know thy enemy, your enemy does.

I haven't ever really understood what the RIAA hopes to achieve from all their lawsuits and extortion rackets

...
I download music from the internet quite frequently, if I like the song I have downloaded I will usually buy the album if I don't like it I delete it

This is exactly what they DON'T want. You see, if you go to the internet, whether P2P or the now outlawed internet "radio," you might be exposed to indie music; music the RIAA members don't want you to hear.

See, the indies use P2P to get the word out. You're not very likely to buy an album that you never heard a single song off of.

The RIAA labels have radio and empty-v, and they control both outlets. You're not very damned likely to hear this band on empty-v, although you might hear them on a college station.

At one time, the major labels controlled the studios, the media, and the retail outlets. They had no competetion.

It's not their music the RIAA doesn't want you downloading, it's their competetitors' music.

No, it isn't. The RIAA labels have no monopoly on music. My friends in Posamist are coming out with their first commercial CD next week (the first 4 were free; you can get MP3s at their web site). My other friends from The Station have 2 CDs out. Still more buds from Inspected By Twelve (don't know their URL, sorry) have a CD out as well.

In fact, the last two dozen CDs I've bought are from local bands; friends, acquaintences, and strangers. There are likely more non-RIAA CDs for sale than there are from the big four.

What they DO have a monopoly on is radio. THIS is what should be investigated.

-mcgrew

Yeah, you're one hell of a Christian, ain't ya? You're a damned liar, buddy. You worship money, not God.

Meanwhile, my heathen musician friends GIVE THEIR MUSIC AWAY!

One last note, fellow: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" (look it up).