Slashdot Mirror
Anything Box Releases An Album To Share
cats writes "Anything Box, the synthpop band from the 80's who had a hit with 'Living in Oblivion' have released an introspective albumn in mp3 format under a 'freeware' style license. Anyone who has ever seen these guys perform know they are just a bunch of nice people trying to make ends meet as musicians. I had the opportunity to hang with Claude before his show in NJ at The Pipe back in 1998. He had some interesting asides about how the music business in general operates. They manipulate the artists' work as well as take huge cuts of musicians' profits. The album is available via download as one big zip file including artwork and is in mp3 format. Very cool."
A band from the 80's, just trying to make ends-meat, and you link them to slashdot. Hopefully the publicity will skyrocket whatever profits they can make, instead of just incuring heavy ISP costs.... looked like an independent site.
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
Not my kind of music, but if you like it...this is they way we've been hoping thigs would start to go. If there's anyplace on their site where you can donate a couple bucks to help support the band, it would be a good idea.
We DO want to encourage this kind of thing, and the only way to do that is if they can make a little profit from it.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Great! Now if I could only get some of those (other) pro-Saddam songs they're playing on Iraqi media... at least those are in a language I can't understand.
(Prediction: this post will be moderated.)
Ron Paul 2012
When I hear the music I'll examine it as well and see how I can use it to create and mix with my own tunes.
This sort of thing much appreciated.
Could do with a few mirrors though eh? If only BITTORRENT/similar came with http/tcp-ip!?
A blog I run for the wealth
So... can I give them money then or do I just download it? Where is their ROI? Despite what many Slashdotters seem to think on these threads you can't make a (good) album just by clicking a mouse over some menus a couple of times, it does take time, skill and talent. Just like coding, even with point-and-clicky IDEs.
So maybe they don't want to make any money but I can just see a whole bunch of people using this as a precedent to force all musicians to give their work away for free.
Put it this way, if they choose to do it, that's great, but if they do it for a full-time job they are not earning money for as long as it takes to the record. Who pays the bills during that time?
This is exactly how software works, I don't see why it should be different for music.
Again, great that we can get this album for free, but that doesn't mean *every* album *must* be free as well.
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
Tar is available on every modern computing platform
Unlike zip, tar is not bundled with Microsoft Windows ME and Microsoft Windows XP operating systems.
and doesn't waste time trying to compress uncompressible files.
Neither does zip -0.
Sometimes it's easy to forget there's more to packaging utilities than ZIP.
What other packaging format is supported by a program that comes bundled with the standard distribution of Microsoft Windows operating systems?
Will I retire or break 10K?
tar is far better for that kind of thing than zip
Even if 90 percent of users will see nothing but an error message? "Click the program you want to use to open 'foo.tar'. If the program is not listed, click Other."
Will I retire or break 10K?
make derivitive works as simple as small modifications to morphing the work into a completely different product; ie, the right to build on this music and incorporate it into other music. It would also contain the 'source code', that is, the music tracs in what ever composing softrware they used
as the slashdot title says, this is more 'freeware' than 'free'
...that basically, as I have been led to understand it, the record companies make virtually all of the money on record sales. The money made by the artists truly comes from doing tours and other live performances.
It seems to me that these guys are actually on to something. If they give the music away free, it does NOTHING to discourage anyone from coming to see them live. In fact, it goes a long way to encourage it with all the extra "good will" and generosity the band will be perceived with. THIS is the move bigger artists should experiment with at this point. I think it could at least be educational to test the notion.
Forget about secure digital formats and all that DRM crap, let's share the art and go see their shows if we love'm! Let the band publish their own CDs and sell'm themselves from their web site using paypal as a convenient means of payment.
Independent is the only way to keep the artists from being screwed, I think...
In terms of being more appropriate technology, yes, tar is better for the purpose than zip. In terms of being something that the average luser will be able to figure out how to use, zip is by far the better choice.
.gz, .bz2, etc) is for geeks, and .zip is for everyone else who doesn't want to hassle with having to know about a bunch of differnt file formats.
.tar to make it a teaching moment, or they could use .zip, which everybody understands, and appeals to the widest possible audience.
Zip is easy, people recognize zip. People use WinZip. Windows XP's treatment of zip files is so similar to treatment of directories, a lot of people might not even notice the difference.
Tar is confusing; people aren't used to it. Non-techies don't know what it is, much less what circumstances it is a more appropriate technology for the purpose than zip. People don't have, or don't know they have, software that can handle tar.
The word "Zip" reminds people of bringing things together, of speed and efficiency. Of zip disks. The word "Tar" reminds people of black, sticky goo.
Ultimately, tar (and
It would be nice if more users were educated as to why tar is a better option, but they are not. Anythingbox is just trying to distribute their music; they could use
So for this application - precious seconds of compression time be dammed - zip is better.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Rather than trying to make their album available on their own site, they should have been led by their chief techie to the P2P networks. In fact, I suspect the folks at Sherman Networks would have loved to help promote this as another Legal use of Kazaa.
So, anyone who's already posted this around and has the song list to look for?
Let's post an ftp site with a 10 user limit to a website known for sending hundreds of thousands of connections per minute.
I'd be willing to bet this link was even unavailable for those TotalSlashdot subscribers.
I'd love to hear this music. if anyone is mirroring the zip file, please let us know.
- Created in a boardroom by suits
- Sex symbolism more important than musicianship
- Underdog in engineered, artificial controversy
- Willing to change fundamental values to increase profit
- Cannot write their own music
- Inane, cliché-filled lyrics
- No innovation
What is bad for the music industry is that this makes my purchasing activities as limited as my listening activities. Because so many of today's alleged artists can answer "yes" to one or more of the above points, I simply don't buy very much music. I know many people who feel the same way. Certainly, we are outnumbered by consumers of the "fickle sheep" variety, but I do wonder how much money the industry loses because it refuses to address my wishes as a listener.One of my favorite quotes addresses this subject. It is from the Rush's "The Spirit of Radio" (words by Neal Peart (the drummer)).
I also like what Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" has to say about the music industry.Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I posted this comment as a joke, or a troll even. I can't believe a call to kill people because they are communists is marked as 'insightful', i expected an immediate -1/troll or -1/flaimbait. Just shows you 'nerds' are a bunch of brainwashed fascists.