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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?"
I've learned about new music and expanded my international music collection.
downloading gives inconsistent quality. when I rip/encode/tag myself, I know its done right.
borrowing from co-workers totally takes the entertainment industry out of the loop (after First Sale, of course; which is all the damned rights they deserve!) and I like it that way.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Over at IBiblio, they've launched a plan for free community recording studios, under the condition that the recordings be public domain. I'm not convinced that this is the way to do it; I think maybe some sort of GPL for music might be better.
Andy Oram at O'Reilly has some interesting thoughts along these lines: Stop the Copying, Start a Media Revolution.
If you occasionally need a bit of industry-sanctioned entertainment but don't want to fund their legal teams, get it at your local library.
One strange thing that I recently heard about from a friend is the practice of making ads on speculation. Some creative aspiring set of artist (directors, camera folks, etc) will get together and basically make an ad for free for some random company in the hopes of either selling them the rights to it after the fact or in the hopes of getting future gigs.
These ads tend to be quite a lot more interesting than those produced by your more conservative ad companies. For example, there was a speculation tampax commercial where a woman in goggles and pristine, white undies get hosed down with an firehose of blood -- very visually striking and much more creative than regular tampax ads. Yes, it's a commercial, but its very well done. And the folks putting these out are very likely to go on to more than ads as they get more funding, reputations, etc. The same might be happening in the music industry; don't know.
Still, the creators are starting to find ways to cut out some of the middlemen. There's bound to be better ways and creative minds are likely to find some. Don't give up hope yet....
I think somebody is planning a PLAN B if bullying doesn't work.
As a producer, composer, and general content creator, I think that looking for quality entertainment is the critical concern. There's plenty of stuff out there, the trick is finding the good stuff. And with a few notable exceptions (Ani DiFranco, etc.) you aren't going to find it at your local Best Buy, and maybe not even at your local record store (if any of those still exist). For now, the web is where it's at.
While certainly not a litmus test for quality, you can at least trust that artists that use alternate distribution like CDBaby to provide distribution for self-produced/funded titles at least cared enough about their music to scrounge up the money to press a CD and arrange for distribution.
If you're willing to trudge through some crap (albeit interesting crap in many cases), the big music sites like IUMA, MP3.com, and Garageband provide more tracks than you'll be able to listen to.
One hint for the more commercial sites like MP3.com - skip the charts occasionally. The way the MP3.com charts work, you'll typically get a song at number 1 that stays at number 1 for a long time because everyone's listening to it because it's number 1. A self-perpetuating hit, if you will. Also, ever since Vivendi bought MP3.com out, there have been an awful lot of mainstream artists in the top charts. Still, if you're looking for mainstream, you can at least get a "legal" mp3 of a bunch of stuff there.
An additional hint, you'll find some real gems in the less-traveled genres like film music, darkwave, folk, comedy, etc.
Finally, there are lots of small independent labels/artist collectives like RTFM Records that have quality artists that either got tired of working in the mainstream entertainment business, or were smart enough to try and slog it out themselves. Supporting labels like these is a good way to encourage more of the same.
I don't have much advice for you on the movie side of things - I think with the advent of cheap digital camcorders and products like iMovie and Final Cut Pro, you'll see more of this kind of content hitting the web in the next year or two, though. Especially as more people get broadband, which is more or less required for visual stuff.
One site I can recommend if you're into fan-produced Star Wars stuff is theforce.net which has quite a few short films and trailers of varying quality. There's also an absolutely stunning short film set in the Star Wars universe called Duality that you just have to see to believe.
Finally, I'd like to put a plug in for a new benefit album created by a bunch of musicians from around the world in response to the WTC/Pentagon attacks. The album, September Rising, is now available. It was put together by a bunch of pros, most of whom have never met each other face to face. Complete information is available at septemberrising.org. It's some really great stuff, and unlike most of the benefit albums coming from the major entertainment conglomerates who only donated a percentage of sales, I believe that all proceeds from sales of this album go to the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
Of course you need a payment method. But don't be an ass. I wish for it to be known that you should seriously go into the street performer protocol by Bruce Schneier.
OK, here's a question approaching this from the other side. I know a local band that in my opinion has the potential to appeal to quite a number of people. Due to intra-band relational shit they've been out of it for a year or so, but are now starting to pick up steam again in a slightly different configuration.
Because of where this band operates (the lowlands), it's unlikely that they'll be able to reach over the Atlantic through the normal channels, and I've been thinking that the way to go for them would be the internet. Seeing as what they're after at the moment is exposure (as opposed to huge profits, a little money would be interesting, though), what would be the best way to get attention to their gig?
I understand the first stop would be a good website that announces their presence on the world of music... but what then?
They already have the bare-bones website up 'n' running (it needs A LOT of work, though), but how do you get the people coming in, and possibly paying a small amount for the tracks they like and download?
BTW, they have some six tracks up for download
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