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Where Are The Legal MP3s?
kwhite asks: "Unlike many of the /. community I have not made the jump to Naptser, Gnutella, etc. due to the belief that I think it is wrong. I was just curious to know of what 'legal' websites there are out there that give away MP3's or some other kind of compressed music format. The only good site I have found so far is downloadsdirect.com. This site has a lot of free downloads, and others that allow you to pay by song. Just curious as to know whether anyone else has found any other good sites out there?" There is, of course, the ever popular MP3.Com but are there other sites out there that legally distribute MP3s? Do others feel as I do that the RIAA should have answered this question a long time ago? (Especially considering the fuss they've made about Napster.)
I get the vast majority of my legal downloads from mp3.com. The mainstream Top X charts all blow. The music on MP3.com is orginial and interesting. Admittedly, there's quite a bit of junk in there, but find one or two genres you really like and your hit rate should be pretty high. If you like Electronica I have about 38 highlighted tracks from assorted artists at my MP3.com station, and a bunch of news on solid state audio players. There'll be a review of my brand new MP3 player for the Ericsson T28 after I've had it for a week -- around next Wednesday. (Look'n good so far)
I put up a few of my ow n songs on Brainkick Media's server.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
BUT... I was reluctant to do that for a good year after it was released. It's psychologically difficult to give away something that you've always viewed as a commodity for free, hoping that the person you're giving it to will be honest and pay for it -- especially when there's clearly a huge group of people who *don't* pay for the music they download and listen to repeatedly.
Frankly, all of the arguments that I've heard about people buying CDs based on free mp3 versions of songs they download have been based on anecdotal evidence. I have no doubt that there are some people whose behaviour is consistent with this, but whether these folks actually make up a significant portion of the music-downloading public remains to be seen.
-Ed
COJ
www.funkatron.com
You may not know that there is a big number of online labels existing, and distributing free mp3s (legal mp3s) on the net.
The existence of those labels makes it easier to find music of your taste:
There are also tons of stuff on mp3.com or vitaminic.
Even laurent garnier's website has some mp3s which were selectionned after a remix competition...
You can get also some infos and more links on the scene news website noerror
The conclusion is that you can find tons of legal mp3s on the net, (I hardly listen to anything but what I get on the net) It's just a bit harder to find and know about the artists and labels around.. but if you're interested, you will find.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Worth a look, IMHO.
Leknor
Personally, I find most new music I hear on the radio "sux". I cannot stand 98% of what is on the radio, and the repetition is rediculous. [ I know, I know, I'm getting old and those two statements prove it. It's funny, as a Gen-X'er, I think we cannot say "too loud" like our Baby Boomer parents did about our music because I think the Gen-Y stuff is too tame. ;-> ].
I have held off on getting into Napster and Gnutella just like you. Just more problems then I care to deal with. And, again, the traditional media of radio and the lack of variety (again, getting old since it all sounds the same ;-) keeps me from buying CDs as I don't like much out there. [ And I do NOT pirate, from music to software, I stay legal! The proof is in the fact that my wife makes fun of the "old" music I "still" listen too. ;-) ].
Now I would kill for a site with just "sample" MP3s and the like, designed specifically for consumption by end users. Now that I have a cable modem, this is the preferred "new" way I'd like to sample music! If anything, MP3 distribution is no different than radio distribution -- sample lower quality to sell a higher quality end product (e.g., CDs).
I really don't know why the RIAA and "signed" artists have not persued this. If anything, after sampling, I'd probably go out and buy a number of CDs again. Again, I haven't bought but ~10 new ones in the last 3 years! [and, again, I don't pirate]. The RIAA and artists have lost customers like me. It's time they deal with the new market called the Internet and reach me!
And outside of the traditional RIAA and artist relationship, I'd rather just give my money directly to the artists -- especially the ones that can't get playing time on the radio. I mean, is anyone listening? There are consumers out there like me. And I make 5x as much money as when I did when I used to buy CDs by the crate!
[ I really gotta get into MP3s. I have a Plextor 40x CD-ROM with 24x DAE and I haven't even bothered to make MP3s of my own CDs. And now that those MP3-ROM CD players are out, there's no excuse anymore! ]
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
They have a lot of They Might be Giants in MP3 format, including a few that are only in MP3 format. I got one full CD for $8.99. Allows about 5 downloads, but download it once and you're set. No funny SDMI, worked from Linux, etc.
Yay TMBG!
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
The law reserves to the copyright holder pretty much any type of action that makes money. You can't rip mp3's and sell them. But the kind of massive, uncompensated copying that napster and gnutella make easy is not restricted.
This applies to copyrighted software as well. You can make copies of commercial software and give them to your friends, or use them on machines at home, as long as you aren't using them to do consulting work or stuff for your employer or anything besides enthusiast/hobbiest type stuff.
The big software copyright holders had a very successful propaganda campaign to convience people otherwise. Remember all those "Just Say No to Software Piracy!" posters in school computer labs back in the late 80s and early 90s ? There were ads in magazines and even on TV as well. But Microsoft and the enforcers they funded were too smart to ever take anyone to court for giving away software; the court cases were all legitimate cases of people copying and selling, or using a copied version in a company or other commercial enterprise. ( Ok, there are a few cases in which someone running a server with commercial software on it was legally harassed just to shut it down; usually after running them out of legal fees, some secrete out-of-court settlement would be agreed upon. ) This adertising and propaganda campaign resulted in enormous numbers of people like you buying software that they didn't need to. Ponzi had nothing on these guys; immagine the amount of money involved here.
So the RIAA and MPAA are going for the same move. And thanks to dupes like you, it's working. We probably live in the age with the most unfettered access to and desimination of information ever. The fact that you can download the law in question off of the web and read it for yourself is amazing. But you didn't do it, you just used the internet to parrot your enemies' propaganda. Hey, I got an idea -- why don't you go tell every one to send ME ten bucks ? And when am I getting a check from you ? Cause that's what I'm charging to read this message, and you little post-pirate! Feel guilty and send me a check!
Ok, back to serious mode. When you download that thing, the fair use section is going to be very vague and loose. (It definitely includes napsterizing mp3's though.) This is why:
Congress wanted to give the copyright holders the ability to profit from their work beyound the first sale. So they gave them the right to be the only one's to sell it. But they said that you had to really sell it, you couldn't license it for a particular purpose. (Of course that is exactly what the RIAA and friends want to do -- they'll sell you a copy for each position of the volume knob, or make you pay each time you play it, if they can.) The reasons for that, from Congress's point of view, are probably well thought out and pretty clever. The whole copyright structure is pretty much self-administering, in that the remedies for breaking the rules are usually enforced by the copyright holder in a suit, so we don't need to have the BATF of copyrights soaking up the budget, and copyrights which aren't worth anything are not enforced. If we start allowing use-based control, then we get away from that lean, efficient self-administering system, because we have to support a lot of monitoring of people, a lot more legal actions, etc. Remember, Congress is allowed to give away our rights to copy things only for the "advancement of the Arts and Sciences", and a use-based control system would probably retard things as much as it encouraged people to make more music or whatever.
So that's why you have the fair use exemption. So why didn't Congress spell it out and take away all this uncertainty ? Well, if you think about it, it is pretty hard to do. If you make an itemized list of fair use activities, then the big copyright businesses will invent some medium or method of distribution so that you pay for something, and then have to pay again to use it. If you make an itemized list of things a copyright holder can charge for, some new technology will present a new medium which can't benefit from the copyright system (and the copyright system is a very beneficial setup, over all), and this new medium will languish until congress notices it and adds it to the list. Obviously, it is better to use the gray words "fair use", simply saying that you can use what you buy, and let the courts sort out the details as they arise. And then you get some dinosaur-brain like Kaplan, but hey, no system is perfect.
So stop worrying about legal mp3s. I don't think you could find someone charging for mp3's, other than the legitimate artist or publisher, if you had to to save your Mom's life. I have other good news also. That guy named Lars who said you have to come over to his house and clean his toilet ? You only have to do that if you want to be his serf. The same goes for taking out Jack Valenti's garbage tonight. But if you just feel less morally anguished by being a slave, go ahead.