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Well, you really have no choice in the matter unless you go to an independant music provider like Vitaminic who will provide the music in good old fashioned mp3 format... but don't expect to see Eminem's entire music collection on there. Actually, don't expect many current major musicians at all. You could try allofmp3.com. The music is provided in the format of your choosing but the legality of their pay service in North America is questionable at best. I personally found iTunes to be a system hog and Napster isn't a whole lot better - but at least it works with Windows Media Player. Of course, that's useless to me because I can't stand the setup of Napster, iTunes, WMP, or even Winamp when it comes to handling my music library. I leave that to Foobar... but that means getting locked off my content. If you ask Apple or Napster how to use it on xx player, they'll just tell you to burn then rip to mp3. It works well enough, but expect a bit of quality loss from the transcoding.

http://www.vitaminic.com/
Look in Classical. Lots of free music.

There are several sites that carry a wide variety of music from independant artists.

There's dmusic.com, Musician MP3, Sound Click, Vitaminic, CNet Music, and even modarchive.com, Just to name a few. There's a bunch of other sites to get music from independant artists so there is no need to even use P2P to share RIAA music let alone purchase it.

This would be the proper way to protest the RIAA. If everyone did this, they would see their profits fall and at the same time, see that file swapping is way down, then they would have no choice but to confirm that they're really the ones to blame for the decreased sales. The biggest challenge is trying to get people that love the "Cookie Cutter Boy/Girl Bands" to switch over.

Here are some more for you:

besonic
mp3.de
soundclick
garageband
france mp3
vitaminic(free + pay)
Washington Post (yup)
Online Rock
Peoplesound
Download.com from the old mp3.com's new owners
Emusic (pay)
Artistlaunch

European music and artists : independent (mp3).

ecompil : universal (wma)

a cool label

epitonic : good independent site (mp3)

This is just a selection from google

I've had material on MP3.com for several years now. Never paid for the service, so I had less to lose than those that took the Gold Membership, etc. But I still don't understand the griping.
The era of free multimedia serving is over. There's just too much overhead to justify providing that much free bandwidth.
For those of you who bitching about MP3.com, just accept this unfortunate reality.

Who's been screwed? OK, maybe the folks that signed up for Gold Membership. But it seems like it's pointless to bitch about what's happened - it's all just business.

It's not the same as being ripped off by your producer [Beach Boys and countless others], or cheated out of payment by a venue after a performance [an ever-present risk in a business rife with unscrupulous people].

There's always an element of risk, whatever endeavour you undertake. There's no guarantee that a party with whom you have entered into a contract and paid money for future services will not go out of business, or sell out to another party. That's just a fact of life.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of free and low-cost music-hosting alternatives [sorry, I haven't checked ALL these links recently, but most should still be good. I am a lazy sod.]:


AMP3.com
AmpCast
Audiogalaxy
efolk
etree.org (SHN)
Listen.com
Lycos Music Search
MP3.com
nzmp3
peoplesound
SoundClick
stationMP3
gdlive.com
FurtherNet
CD Baby
IUMA
BeSonic
My Local Bands
SoundClick
VITAMINIC
archive.org etree listing (SHN's)
emusic
listensmart


My music (if you're curious, totally bored, and looking for something to listen to).

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi who, so far, haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA (based in the USA, but international)

Besonic (based in Germany, but international)

mp3.de (based in Germany, but international)

Soundclick (based in the USA, but international)

(Garageband based in the USA, but international)

France mp3 (based in France)

Vitaminic (free + pay - based in the USA, but international)

Washington Post (yup, the newspaper)

Online Rock (based in the USA, but international)

Peoplesound based England

mp3.com Australia (not the same mp3.com - based in Australia, but international)

Emusic (pay and not really indie per se, but smaller label and re-release oriented, based in USA)

Artistlaunch (based in the USA, but international)

mp3 Poland - (Based in Poland - mostly domestic)

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, some smaller labels that have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap.

Use Google - many local newspaper sites have mp3 sections for local artists and there are many mp3 sites that are specifically for local talent.

If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. One concept they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.

I have looked for ogg sources and found precious few. Unfortunately, Ogg is still a long way from critical mass.

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi, but so far they haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA

Besonic

mp3.de

Soundclick

Garageband

France mp3

Vitaminic (free + pay)

Washington Post (yup)

Online Rock

Peoplesound

mp3.com Australia(not the same mp3.com)

Emusic (pay)

Artistlaunch

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.

They've gotten steadily worse. Some alternatives: Vitaminic and PeopleSound are pretty good, let you make CDs on an on-demand as-sold basis (though PeopleSound actually makes you mail them files on CD-R, no uploading) and let you charge for downloaded tracks.

AngryCoffee doesn't pay anything, but it's free and cool.

I'm extremely disappointed with MP3.Com, though. Every time they change their policies they get suckier.

Personally, I hate the idea of being spoon-fed a steady diet of this band or that artist and told this is cool and that is not. And well, I won't bow down to that. But I think what is important for us to grab from this article is not "how do we change who determines what is cool (a la GPL type music referral system), but rather to give a wake up call to the people.

Our society is built upon this whole money-driven system that determines what music is hot, what trends are cool, what clothing you just gotta buy and even what car to drive. If our society really wants to have this life of individuality, then it also needs to start thinking and purchasing for itself--not driven by marketing and advertising types. One of the most pathetic examples of being driven by marketing and advertising was seeing someone driving down the street in a gray Ford Focus with the license plate "Duuude". That's great and all if they honestly did that out of their own volition, but really now... it was just a commercial.

And regarding one other user's comment:

Well, there are three major corporations that manufacture all American cars. And only a couple of major U.S. banks. And only a handful of large retailers left. And only a couple telcos left. And so on.

Consolidation saves money. That's how things are done, and all the bitching in the world on Slashdot isn't going to change things. Fighting the music companies is a lost cause because they will always win.

I'm not sure if I agree with you. Every Goliath has its weak spot. The only way they can continue to win is if we continue to buy into their crap. I hate to use this example, but I'm going to anyway: in the movie A Bug's Life, when the ants realized that there were more of them and less of the grasshoppers, they were able to overcome the grasshoppers. Ambitious, yes. A big ideal, most certainly. But far-fetched, perhaps not.

But I guess if you are content being spoon-fed crap, then by all means buy into the recording industry's crap. But there is much freedom in exploring the artists who aren't well-known and who create and perform music because it's their PASSION, not necessarily their JOB.

As much as mp3.com and Vitaminic may have a lot crap on their sites, they've also got a lot of great artists who just have little visibility. Take some time and check out all the great indie artists out there. Seriously!

Free Your Mind.

Michael
dock72 music group