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DRM Free Music is Everywhere
guisar writes "I continue to endure stories on Slashdot and elsewhere complaining about EMI, itunes and other organizations maybe (or maybe not) releasing material in DRM free format. Well- here's some news there's LOTS of material out there. So instead of complaining, download what you like. There are plenty of artists releasing their material in FLAC and other DRM free format. Just look around. Most artists are doing their part by releasing their music in the hopes they can gain enough exposure to earn a living at what they love. If you're complaining about major labels not releasing material, it's probably too late and you are part of the problem." I think this point is often unfairly ignored: the existence of DRM is a fantastic chance for new distribution to reveal new bands. Unfortunately this music is difficult to find because there is simply so much of it.
I certainly don't have time to listen to 100 bad tunes to find one good one.
I need filtering, or i'm just going to keep on listening to Zeppelin.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
If I have to fight with a balloon to navigate a site then it's not worth my effort.
Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more!
This is the reason why big labels are finding themselves to be irrelevant, why should we buy manufactured pop-cruft that's encumbered with DRM when a much better alternative is available?
Let's ditch these money-grabbing middle men by voting with our wallets. The only thing missing is a good online community for upcoming bands. Something like music charts (but better and more community driven), which will show the best bands in each genre.
The next triumph will be when an unsigned artist makes more in royalties than one signed to a major label. That will break their monopolies.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
The DRM free content available to download legitimately, usually is not even worth the time you sift thru them to find the one piece that you can barely tolerate among 100s of trash metal bands (I am speaking of music only here but it can be stretched to cover any art form) who thinks louder they play better it is, or some talentless hack, who thinks whatever he/she plays is instant classic.
On the other hand, we have the metallicas for heavy metal and Beatles for classic pieces, yet they are crippled by DRM and I really do not want to waste my time or my money to be able to listen to them on two different platforms, i.e., on my iPod and on my non-itunes ready computer.
Am I asking too much after paying $1 to a single song ? In what justification can the IP owner can ask me to pay for the same thing twice ?
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Twenty paying shows a month? You're absolutely extraordinary.
I'm serious: I worked with a woman who did your job for a while. She spent the days making phone calls to venues who generally never called back. The band I worked for was extraordinarily talented (download some of their music for free here). They quit their day jobs for over two years. They toured up and down the East coast and as far as Detroit. They had a devoted but small audience.
If they could have booked 20 paying gigs a month, they'd still be in existence. Most venues want cover bands, not original music. The venues have the power and so they get to treat me rudely. I bow before your superior nagging-people-on-the-phone skills.
(It's because of that that the "Hey, give the music away and make it up at the live shows" argument on Slashdot makes me furious. But if you've got the secret for booking venues, please let me know and I'll retract everything I've said about it.)
True. It's just unfortunate that they filter by +6 (population is brainwashed)
I would like to see record companies moderate at -1, release at 3.
"Actually, I think I just thought of a new peer 2 peer scheme UBER money making scheme! Register users who could get free music if they trial & rate bands for promotion on a 1-5 scale. Then, all bands who get say 10,000 votes & have a 3 or better, get cut to CD and released. " ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
In today's glossed over vapid music climate artists like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and many others would not be taken seriously by the majors. I can hear it now.. Not marketable. Too nasally. Screams too much. Won't sell enough product. Not worth our investment.
Pop rock, rap, Indie scene, punk... No thank you.
I haven't bought music in a long while except used CDs off of ebay. Why? Because there is no such thing as DRM and Classical music. There is NO market for this- and MP3'd material is present poorly at 128kbps instead of 384kbps/vbr. Why would I waste my money (if it was offered) to purchase music that spans the complete tonal and then chop it down to inferior quality?
The Bach Partita #2 is a very-often recorded piece. Amazon lists 657 different 'featured' artists that have CDs with that search term. I own 5 different versions of the same music, on CD,- Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, and two others I can't recall off the top of my head. You don't have this issue with 'mainstream' music- there aren't 300 different bands trying to record the same music Red Hot Chili Peppers has done- and provide their own artistic interpretations of it.
So I sit and watch the DRM debate with saddened eyes- the music I want will never be offered... and there's nothing I can do about it (Classical Nerds UNITE!... not gonna happen).
This is an excellent point and it's been bothering me for years. I actually used to listen to dozens of bands to try and find a good one. I've found a lot of gems, but had to wade through a lot of stinkers to do so. (I would download the entire SXSW bittorrent compilation and start wading through. The keeper ratio was approximately 10 (bad) to 1 (good) overall.
What we need is a Digg (or /.-style moderation) for music. On a track-by-track basis. Digg has a music section, but that's for music news, and MySpace has shitloads of bands, but it's not good for aggregating the good tunes from the bad (and it's slow, ugly and full of useless crap). Last.fm is closest to this ideal, but they're still more about tracking listening habits and they haven't added too many ways for unknown bands to get heard. They do have a label/artist signup section and some free downloads, but it's not integrated into the site very well yet. Garageband.com is good for finding cool tunes as well, but writing reviews can be a real chore.
I'm hoping for improvement here, but in the meantime, I'd really like to see a simple, clean site in the style of digg that allows people to vote either yay or nay for songs (which could easily be listened to via a simple Flash interface). Songs could be categorized individually by genre (meaning a band is not restricted to one style) and popular songs make the home page. Popular does not equal good, so people would have the chance to drill down to genres they like, and block songs from bands that they know suck (and vice versa, like a karma bonus for bands that rule).
Anybody want to make this? You'll make millions of dollars. I can't code for shit or I'd do it. It's not even a unique or novel idea. I'm kinda surprised that it hasn't been done yet. Is there a problem I'm not aware of here?
Fuck the majors, this should be a resource for up and coming bands and listeners who want to find good bands without having to listen to all the crappy ones. Oh, and the songs should be downloadable, too. MP3, FLAC or Ogg format. I know that my band would submit our music to such a site in a heartbeat.
Electric Monkey Pants
Memetics, however, is a science, unlike sociology.
It's no more scientific than sociology. For a start, nobody has come up with a robust definition for a meme, it's just waffle. Genetics have things like DNA which are a repeatably measurable and remarkably useful natural encoding. memes, as far as I know, are nothing more than a vague idea of an idea which is transmissible.