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You can get DRM free tunes (mp3) from their site, or sign up to their newsletter for free mp3s.

Alternatively, you could visit the TMBG website, where you can purchase their music free of DRM, as well as sample free tunes and video clips.

Better yet, do what They Might Be Giants do - sell it direct from your website.

http://www.tmbg.com/
http://www.bigkid.com/

Please think logically.

Getting paid for content and allowing information to be free are not mutually exclusive. Unless you equivocate on the word "free," that is.

Free as in speech does not mean free as in beer.

Musicians can give their songs away for free on the Internet and then charge for t-shirts, concerts, and TV contracts. It worked for They Might Be Giants, and it can work for you too!

Free newspapers have been around since the birth of the republic. People have been free to give away their writing for all that time, in spite of the rise of Big Media. Give me one example of Big Media stopping someone from writing their own material and giving it away for free.

Open Source has not been defeated even though Microsoft has attacked it relentlessly. Plus, at this point there are plenty of big players who want Open Source to stick around. In any event, Open Source is still alive and doing very well. The SCO case will likely only solidify the legal underpinnings of Open Source.

P2P networks lost in court because they not only allowed people to infringe on copyrighted material, but because they actively enouraged it. Had they been smarter in their marketing, they may have won their court case on a fair use defense, the way Sony won the Betamax case. It's not about being attacked for "giving away music," it's about profiting from the giving away of pirated music. Nobody is trying to get Magnatune or TMBG to shut down, right?

I won't touch the assertion that everybody who voted for Bush has seen the light and repented their warmongering and bought "Farenheit 911" DVDs and started pooling their resources to save whales.

I wouldn't either. But that's not what I said. I did say: "judging by the opinion polls, even the voters who brought Bush into office are starting to realize that his fear-based policies don't make any sense." There are people on the fringe Right and the fringe Left, but most Americans are in the middle politically. Historically the American voting public do change their minds in the face of evidence, and the evidence against the Bush approach is mounting to a degree that can't be ignored.

LA Weekly had a couple articles about this a few months ago-- Myths Debunked and New Small Future
that pointed out that overall CD sales were going up, but the sales of the biggest sellers (i.e. the stuff produced by RIAA members) were going down drastically.

There is a lot more depth to list of CDs that people buy than the major labels would like (the majors want to stamp out enormous numbers of a few titles and not have to deal with the breadth of catalog that listeners seem to want), and a lot of it is due to the increased access to samples of alternatives that people get through filesharing. Filesharing has probably replaced radion for many people as their source of introductions to music, and it allows them to find things that they otherwise would never be exposed to via the conventional RIAA/Clear Channel sources. Niche labels are doing well as a result, because they get the free marketing and people go on to buy the CD, either to support the band or for the higher quality, or maybe for some other reason.

There are even bands that have given up with labels and are dealing the CDs themselves-- They Might Be Giants is one, and Einstürzende Neubauten is another. They seem to prefer both the greater control over their work and not having to get paid through a label.

No legitimate music site is allowed to sell songs in any of those formats. So other music sites cannot inter-operate with the iPod, unless they break their license agreement with the RIAA.

Oh no! They got tmbw.net! No one messes with They Might be Giants and get's away with it. No one.

http://www.tmbg.com/hello.html

(I couldn't find it clicking around on the site, Google helped. :)

As another example of their commitment to online music, it's also worth pointing out TMBG Clock Radio, which has several hours worth of full streaming songs... live, album versions, and rarities.

As a note, the "PC" version works swimmingly with Wine under Linux.

Actually, I was referring to an obscure cultural reference.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople) is a song by They Might be Giants which debates where you are gonna show up for your date if it was supposed to be in Constantinople.

I didn't realize I was that obscure.

They Might Be Giants

>some cd's have intro or little skit song throughout the cd. i don't wan to have to pay $1 for a 30 second intro or skit.

Dear god...some They Might Be Giants CDs could cost THOUSANDS.

Hehhehehe...Classic TMBG.

Damn. Now I've got that song stuck in my head and I'll have to dig up that CD...Damn you, mcgroarty! ;)

A lot of bands with a history of allowing taping (greatful dead, phish , DMB). Now phish is selling all 2003 concerts. They're in both mp3 and shn formats. The SHN format costs more (more bandwidth)..

The have a good FAQ which answers the age old question ...Why should I pay for when I can get an audience recording for free?

They Might Be Giants also gives away tracks on the internet. Better than the dial a song, which used to give away free songs over the phone.

Contrast this with the FooFighters annoying extra track download feature which doesn't work with Mac (Windows Media) and uses a special program which seems to check if the music cd is in the drive.. I like the band but that experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

The bottom line here is that creative bands can have alternative music distribution. This is good, unless your band is already signed, then the label can object.

they might be giants use the internet a lot. they may not be in exactly the same situation, but they did manage to maintain a fan base and release new music even when they were between having a label to support them.

they did what i thought was a pretty cool thing they did when they sold mp3's on emusic.com. if you bought the entire album's worth of mp3's, they sent you a cd of those songs, too. they also have some mp3's available for free, which i believe helps them sell the others.

check out their techniques on their websites tmbg.com and theymightbegiants.com.

of course, it also doesn't hurt that they are almost always on tour.

If they thought sales were slumping before, just wait till they piss off their user base. Just because there are still lots of people out there who don't download music or have anything to do with the Internet doesn't mean they don't know when someone is trying to screw them.

...is a lyric from Man, it's So Loud in Here, from They Might Be Giants' new album, Mink Car.

They revamped the airport completely,
now it looks just like a nightclub,
everyone's excited and confused...

go gnome!

why are we marching hand in hand?
why are the ocean levels rising up?

It's a brand new record
For 1990

They Might Be Giants' brand new album
Flood

If you see that 90% of everything is crap, and I see that 90% of everything is crap, who said that your cap and mine are the same 10%? What is crap to you may not be to me.

My point is that everyone has slightly different tastes, so categorizing music and allowing a person to listen to music and determine _what_ they like is the tool. By playing only what the major labels push, radio is causing the majority of listeners to settle for _their_ drek.

One BIG example of an indy artist is They Might Be Giants, who haven't had radio play in years. I discovered them through Napster. I had heard one or two of their songs before, but didn't know who the artist was. I finally found the song on Napster and looked up the artist. Now I am a loyal fan and have purchased a couple of CDs. BTW, they started now handle the music for Malcolm in the Middle.

There were a few bloopers in the film though. I guess they could have done with this digital editing technique to switch the logos in all of the scenes.

And despite Pizza Hut having pretty low credibility over here, I don't think their reputation is anywhere near as bad as TBs (although saying that, if they continue to use They Might Be Giants songs without permission in their latest UK adverts, who knows...

This is Vietnamese name, pronounced "eng".

You must be one of the few people on /. who does not listen to TMBG. :) They do a song called "Ana Ng".

The real tongue twisters for most Westerners are the names that start with "ng", like Ngo. :)

Other bands that are going this route include Primus, who post tons of live shows on their site (mostly from tapes that fans send in). Prince is getting into the act. They Might Be Giants has songs at their site, as well as plenty of downloads at Emusic.com. They must be doing well with it since they keep releasing new stuff there (and their the number one act on the site... I guess the technology and their fanbase is a good mix).

Yes, record companies are just starting to feel the hurt. And it isn't because of anything illegal going on.

-S

Of course, people actually downloading the whole human genome probable wouldn't worry about this, but couldn't they use a better compression format than .zip? I bet using bzip2 or rar would shave a couple of hundred MBs off of that 753MB file. Also, the differences in compression techniques would be interesting to see on a large group of files mainly consisting of G, A, C, and T. -- demiurge You find a file that appears important and obliterate it from memory!!! Score one for the downtrodden hacker!

• G -- 00
• A -- 01
• T -- 10
• C -- 11

This would only work for the .fa files, but .fa files can contain "N"s also. If you just want to browse the Genome, look through the pieces directory. .

You mean like Emusic?
Of course, they also sell whole albums for $9, but they also sell on the song-by-song basis. They Might Be Giants have gotten into the sale of mp3's rather heavily thanks to Emusic. These places are out there, it's just that they're not as popular as Napster due to issues of price. (it's cheaper than CD's, but more expensive than free)

<SING>
to stop the ones who want
prosthetic foreheads on their real heads!

1. If you haven't deliberately and carefully kept something a secret, it's been common knowledge for a while now. Somebody mentioned "them" knowing when you piss -- "they" do, they're your water company, and it's 1.6 gallons per flush here in the States.
2. That's okay, because nobody cares about our stupid little lives.

To so many artists (TMBG), their relationship with their label is like that of an indentured servant and their master. Though the servant is grateful for what they receive, the indignities of day-to-day living could never make up for it.

To artists that have such awful contracts, each time that a song of theirs is transferred via Napster must feel like a small victory, a mini-uprising. Naturally, the artist can't cheer this on, nor can they even really acknowledge it. It's a rare gem like Chuck D that is willing to cheer on the revolution.

-Waldo

dot-com man, dot-com man
doing the things a dot-com can
what's he like?
It's not important
dot-com man
is he a dot, or is he a com?
when he's underwater
does he get wet
or does the water get him instead?
nobody knows
dot-com man

thank you
_________________________

... not since the invention of the VCR.

Scott played the leading role in They Might Be Giants, the film that named the band. He was also great as the effete critic in Mankievicz's All About Eve. Look for them and rent them!
-----------

You may have seen the story posted several months ago about the band They Might Be Giants releasing an album in MP3 format only. This release, Long Tall Weekend, will finally be available tonight at EMusic (formerly GoodNoise). Apparently, they've decided to make an event out of it, with a web chat and a live-broadcast concert. TMBG is one of my favorite bands, and I want to support them, but I also want to support the idea that people will pay a reasonable price for good digital music, even if it isn't copy protected.

You listen to exactly what I listen to! Are you sure we aren't the same person? All my car CDs are Phish and They Might Be Giants...

It's not new, it's from "Then: The Early Years", and the way they've split it up, it'd be cheaper to buy the 2-cd set because the CD contains all the B-sides, and "Lincoln" and "TMBG". At $28, that's less than the $36 that the mp3's cost. I thought the whole point of mp3 is that it frees artists from distribution and packaging costs. GoodNoise is just using the mp3 hype to screw us like the record companies. Go buy the album at http://www.tmbg.com/catalog/albums.html and rip it yourself and save eight bucks.

l

...is MONEY! REVOLUTION NOW! ANARCHY! FREEDOM!

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS FOR EVERYONE!