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Alternatives to the Entertainment Industry?
Lendrick writes "With all the discussion lately about the increasing proliferation of Digital Rights Denial and the erosion of fair use rights, it occurs to me that if the entertainment manufactured by the big entertainment companies gets to a point where it's no longer worth the trouble, then maybe we should get our entertainment elsewhere. My question is this: Does anyone know of any places (apart from the obvious mp3.com) where music and especially movies by independent artists can be legitimately downloaded?"
There are lots of indie film sites on the web these days... form hypnotic.com to ifilm and such.
Support them.
In addition, maybe sending an email to your favorite bands to put some mp3s up on their site could generate some interest. If a band sees that their stuff is eagerly downloaded form their site, maybe they'll start thinking about alternative means of producing and publishing their work.
Furthurnet.com is, to quote from their site:
"...a non-commercial, opensource, peer-to-peer decentralized music sharing program currently under development by PCP Networks, LLC, with much support from members of the etree.org and Sugarmegs music sharing communities.
Furthur is unlike any other music sharing software on the Internet. Furthur is the first and only 100% non-commercial peer-to-peer network of legal live music created by fans for fans! We have no paid software or website developers, nor do we accept any advertising or compensation. We are developing Furthur to help spread live music to fans. Any musician that allows the non-commercial taping and trading of their live performances are fair-game for Furthur."
There is a *lot* of free music here.
Support Righteous Babe Records, Ani Difranco's indie label. They have a lot of high quality, frequently politically charged, and non-mainstream music. On top of that, the music doesn't suck.
None of that money goes to a big corporation; most of it goes back into making music and fighting the good fight, so to speak. If you want to put your money where your mouth is, go support Ani and the artists she publishes.
If you just want free music, you should get involved with etree.org, which is a community that distributes "bootlegs" of live concerts...the bootlegs are legal, recorded from performances of taper-friendly bands, such as Phish, older Grateful Dead shows, Bela Fleck...stuff like that. The bands that allow this tend to fit a certain profile (lots of improvising, etc), so if you don't like songs that can be fed to you in 3.5 minutes between commercials, you aren't going to like this avenue, however, there is a genuine community being fostered here that tends to be more artistic and intellectual, and frequently, very tight-knit for a bunch of virtual strangers. It's kind of cool, actually, and unlike the P2P mentality of leeching everything you can, there's a sense of the value of contributing back.
etree.org also happens to be Linux-friendly; there are links for XMMS plugins on the frontpage, etc.
The ultimate problem of these massive media corporations is they _do_ have a product that you want. I mean, if you want N'Sync (or that Episode 2 DVD, or some new Disney-owned Anime, etc...), then you can only get it in one place. I can also respect that not everyone is going to be falling over themselves for the latest release from indie band Bitch and Animal, but you _can_ consider this a chance to broaden your horizons; entertainment doesn't have to be mindless, and can in fact be a bettering activity.
Get out there and try something new.
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
I tend to like all sorts of techno, house, breaks, trance, etc. I get all this pretty much on demand from Groovetech.com
They have a store where you can sample and buy Vinyl, but if you check out the broadcast section you can get live DJs mixing for you 12 hours a day from Seattle, London and San Francisco.
If you're not into what's playiing live, then check out the archives. There's probably over a thousand hour-2hour sets all nicely searchable by genre, date and dj.
Another good site (though the archives seem broken to me now) is thewomb.com. Those of you from Miami will recognise that thewomb.com is a rebroadcast of one fo the local radio stations.
Anyone into funky/spoulful/disco house should check their favorite p2p application for terrance parker. He's a dj along the lines of dimitri from paris, but 10X better and from detroit.
Thewomb.com also has videos of some cool stuff if you can wait for the download.
That's what I do for original music on the web. I haven't run out of sets to try on groovetech.com yet, though I have my favorites that I listen to occasionaly. Groovetech.com also has streaming video of the dj's mixing, so having a really cute dj spinning funky breaks is a nice perk(naha, requires realplayer or equiv)
"A witty saying proves nothing." -Voltaire
Besides the obvious places to get free music, NPR and PBS are both good ways to avoid the big entertainment industries. As a matter of fact NPR even streams all of their programming (current and past) for free. If you want music they even have that too, especially jazz.
http://mp3.washingtonpost.com/
Local to washington area bands. More newspapers need this feature.