DRM Free Music is Everywhere 369
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.
DRM hurts, copyright hurts - recording = marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Small bands need to give their recorded music away freely online in order to get more people to come to their shows. My brother's band Maps & Atlases [maps-atlases.com] just went on a 7 day tour to the East Coast and ended up in a tiny university town called East Stroudsburg, PA. Instead of showing up to no crowd, the venue was packed -- a rarity for the town and venue. Why did this happen? Maps & Atlases released their EP for free online. They sold out of their first EP (2000 copies) during their 2006 tour, and they're coming up fast on selling out their second pressing, even though the music is easily downloaded online. Why do fans pay for albums? They get face time with the band, they get autographs, and they know that buying the merch direct will keep the band writing and touring.
DRM is terrible for any band but the absolute largest, and even for them it is bad because the new fan base wants to have nothing to do with it. I look at it this way: DRM for the adult contemporary crowd just makes life harder for them, DRM for the teen crowd is easily bypassed. But it isn't just DRM that makes things difficult, it is also the fact that copyright really throws fan distribution a curve -- even the fans who openly distribute the music know it is "piracy" but they feel they're helping the band.
I look at the Internet as one big radio station waiting to be harnessed by smaller musicians all over the world. Write music with one purpose: to attract fans to your live shows where you can make your income by continuing to work, rather than hoping to write one hit once and earn royalties for the rest of your life. Who here works a regular job and wishes that they could work a few months in exchange for years of income? Life doesn't work that way -- unless you work with the distribution cartels that are quickly watching their futures slip through their fingers. If you're in a band, tell your fans to copy your music for their friends in hopes that those friends will become the new fans. Viral marketing is key to making a solid income in live music.
Sidenote: If you're in a band and you disagree with me on making a living, it is because you're trying to keep a "steady job" while also trying to tour. You can't do both. My brother's bandmates all quit their jobs (some of them have master's degrees!) to handle a tour schedule that includes typically 20 shows a month. Stop whining and dig in.
Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [myspace.com]). 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.)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't book shows -- they have someone who handles that in exchange for a cut of merch sales. She handles dozens of bands, and she gets them shows constantly. I can't think of one band I work with that can't get 10+ shows a month by hiring a booking agent, even small bands.
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.
She didn't follow through well with her contacts. Venues want to see warm bodies buying beer, if you send bands to them that don't attract even a small crowd, they won't call you back ever. The best way to get a band out there is to get them involved with show promoters (we have www.mpshows.com in Chicago) and get them opening for small bands. A lot of bands don't want to invest the 1-2 years it takes opening up for bands that they think are worse than them. I know, I watch bands all the time give up because they won't move forward with the risk. Many people invest 4-8 years in college to further their career; a band needs to invest 1-2 years of even more work, and they don't have to pay as much as college costs.
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.
I have never heard of a venue that wants cover bands over original music. The indie pop scene is huge right now, I just went to an indie show last night in Chicago for 4 bands that I've never heard of, and they were all excellent and the crowd was thick. Cover was $7, but all 4 bands sold a ton of merch to people who liked their sound -- and I think I heard one cover song the entire night. I go to 2-3 shows per week in the Spring and Summer, and I have yet to visit one venue in Chicagoland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and the Bronx that had cover bands. Most of the bands I talk to fail because they refuse to invest the time it takes to get notoriety.
(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.)
Plan on investing as much time honing your writing and performing skills -- make it like a future career. You go to college for 4 years and spend up to $100,000 learning a trade or a skill, why should a lifetime of performing be any different?
One thing, though: there are a LOT of bands that just don't have it -- just like there are programmers or CAD operators or lawyers who don't have it. It is easier to pick up a guitar and a mic and find 3 friends and call yourself a band than it is to become a lawyer, so of course there is a higher drop out rate. Yet I still see venues dark 3+ nights a week for a lack of bands committed to playing and bringing in warm bodies.
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And it was huge a decade ago (see Slumberland, March, Simple Machines, K, Shinkansen, Elefant, etc). And it was huge a decade before that (and even somewhat mainstream in the UK) (see Sarah, 53rd & 3rd, anything jangle/shambling/twee). And it will continue to be huge a decade from now. Basically, indie pop ain't going anywhere...
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I find this absolutely hilarious. Few things make so much impact as when the "real" band utterly fails to follow the openers.
I saw Seaweed (they fucking sucked) and Green Day open for Bad Religion one year in Santa Cruz. Green Day was quite good, didn't steal the show or anything, but everyone was on the floor for them whereas anyone on the floor for Seaweed was standing around talking. Just
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure it's a travesty (I love Bad Religion but I think Green Day does a better job interacting with fans, and they've always been that way), but I agree 100%.
If you want to make money as a band, stop pretending you're "just an artist trying to be heard." Anything you do for income must be entered in with a business perspective. If you want to be broke performing, that is easy to do. If you want to pay the bills and live off of performing, you have to understand that you are now in the market of entertaining others, and this requires investing the time it takes for people to know that you will always be there for THEIR needs (entertainment), so they will support YOUR needs (financial).
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if you consider spitting on people a better job of interacting with them, I guess you're right.
On the other hand, Greg Graffin has a habit of hanging around where people can find him and talk to him after shows - or at least I've found that to be true, and have spoken with him after two of three BR shows I've seen.
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I'm very sorry that this band had to break up. They had extraordinary musical talent, and did put in the time and energy and follow-through, but even in the best of circumstanc
Indie capital of the country? (Score:3, Funny)
Ummm, DC is one of the indie capitals of the country.
Not that it matters... I hate country.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider especially the boy-bands of the late 90s. It was literally a money-making machine owned from the industry from start to finish.
But to do this, the industry requires tight control over who listens to what. I'm not some sensationalist saying that they can determine who likes what. But through the use of DRM they can monitor and influence choices. I like emo/screamo. There are DOZENS of bands who play very good music of this genre. About 3 are on the radio. Why? Because it's more profitable to have 3 popular bands than 12 semi-popular bands.
The industry needs to keep the pyramid-shape of the market to be able to siphon the rich profits off the top, and they need to be able to stay at the top of the pyramid.
This is what DRM is really for.
http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2007/01/big-surp
-stormin
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from their site:
Will you book our cover band?
No. AS220 aims to support original music. In addition, as of November 1st, 2004, a boycott of all music licensed by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC is in effect. This means that all material performed at AS220 must be original or must be in the public domain. Please contact the office if you need clarification on this policy.
so, not all venues are the same. AS220 hosts a huge variety of music of all genres and the shows are always cheap (no more than $9 i think), the beer is cheap (and they got some good beers there), and the space is nice. the music is almost always worth listening to. many of the artists that have gone through there got there start at AS220 and went on to more regional and sometimes national recognition (sage franci
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IMExperience, the clubs that want cover bands and don't have promoters
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Re:DRM hurts, copyright hurts - recording = market (Score:5, Informative)
At the risk of flamebait.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no problem with the argument that the system is broken, and that Indie bands have little to no chance of success based on the model used by the media megaliths. Yet you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater by arguing that copyrights shouldn't exist. As a writer, I expect to get paid for my work, just like the baker down the street, the cop at the corner, and so on. If all I wrote didn't return any money, I wouldn't write for a living-- there would be no living.
As a musician, I went out on the road, snoring in the band bus, tried to stay sober, and be musically creative and deliver what I was paid for-- good music, sometimes really great music. I knew that the record companies were highly unlikely to buy into us because we were out on the edge. We cut numerous tapes, CDs, and so on. A few adventurous and kind people bought them. But we also knew they weren't for subsistence-- our time on stage was what we were being paid for.
Now that there are distribution channels, we found two bands that took two of our songs and essentially dry-ripped them. We have recourse if we want to sue. They haven't made any money with the songs, either (I'm not surprised, nor is my ego bashed). If they had, we'd be likely to want to stop them for the theft they made of our hard work.
There's the gigs, where we made money. There's the media, where we made money, all outside of the 'system'. If we'd done things differently, we might be working for the devil (I mean Sony/BMG/etc) and expecting much different ends to our work. But realistically, we know that's not possible.
Your single solution set doesn't fit all cases. Copyright has justification. DRM is probably a bad idea, because we might be interested in spreading our music far and wide. It's not necessarily a given that bands need or want to do this. Sure, we'd all like some fame, but we're not narcissistic. We'd rather just live, eat, and create. You place too much emphasis on distribution in the same sense that consumerism is a double-edged sword.
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Re:DRM hurts, copyright hurts - recording = market (Score:2)
You are damn right.
Having DRM-free music to download is nice. But practically all music on so-called "piracy" file-sharing is DRM-free. So what?
What we need is not to find workarounds and be okay with the crumbs that fall from the mouth of **AA. We need instead to stop actively all this "piracy" demonization, and to make sure that the free, non-profit sharing of information (bits) becomes absolutely legal. I hope one day "piracy" will be a word reminescent of a primitive, embarrassing past just like "nigg
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Wow..sounds like the 'old' days when I grew up, but, wasn't small bands doing it...all the bands did this. We used to buy their albums, usually a group of us agreeing to each buy different ones, and trade them to make tape copies. But, this basically whe
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Re:Who has time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dylan, Joplin.. indie rock throwaways (Score:5, Interesting)
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the major labels won't even promote someone who's really ugly, even if he/she has an amazing voice, writes perfect songs, and plays awesome guitar. little girls won't scream and cry over someone that ugly. that's how we ended up with john mayer... so-so voice, mediocre song writin
Re:Dylan, Joplin.. indie rock throwaways (Score:5, Funny)
That would really pose a problem for Mick Jagger then.
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it's sociological (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't that the unsigned unknown music is bad, or that there's too much of it to find the good stuff. It's a sociological thing: I want to hear what my friends are hearing so we can say "do you have the latest XYZ album" or whatever. There's probably a scientific word for it but I'm not a sociologist!
It doesn't really matter how good the major labels' tunes are, whatever gets played on the radio will become a hit. This has been shown many many times, with a few rare exceptions of underground hi
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It's a memetic phenomenon. Memetics, however, is a science, unlike sociology.
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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.
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I think his point is that this particular site (which hasn't emerged from under the Slashdotting, so I have no idea if it's true) doesn't provide any filtering. As opposed to GarageBand, Live365, Pandora, LastFM and all sorts of other routes to finding new music.
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From the Whois entry (sin
go back and re-read the parent (Score:3, Insightful)
You never answered the question except to say that the record companies DID do some filtering for him and they missed a bunch of stuff. Great. I am not surprised at all. But it still doesn't solve his predicament.
Who's going to do the filtering/moderating of internet/indie music? Where is a solid "Top 40" or other chart (like Billboard)? Please, tell me. I really do want to know because unless it changes, I whole-heartedly agree with the parent:
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I put it to you that this is no different than radio, with the difference that it seems to me that 100 songs is the entire live catalog of a pop station at any given time.
May I recommend
http://www.jamendo.com/ [jamendo.com]
They have an embeddable player, ratings, everything you need. No DRM anywhere in sight; in fact most of the music is free to share
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For example, my own band is know to exactly three of my brain cells, thereby making it the most obscure and therefore the best band EVAR.
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Pandora.com is a similar service, not as complete though. But you can specify a band or even a record or a song, and it builds a p
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To take an example - one of the few radio music shows that I listen to is John Kelly's on RTE (http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/thejkensemble/). There's a lot of crossover between the stuff that he plays that I haven't heard before and like and the stuff that last.fm plays (and I haven't heard before and like). How John Kelly chose to put out Keith Jarrett's Cologne concert
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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.
Don't we all, don't we all.
But some people do have time: proper, music oriented, DJs.
I'm talking about people like the late lamented John Peel, his BBC semi-replacement Huw Stephens, and many of the good people at Seatte's wonderful KEXP.
Now, Peel was broadcasting bands' self-issued vinyl releases back when that was the most open way of distributing your own music -- he'd read out the addresses of the homes where people had stacks of 7" singles waiting to ship out by mail order. This was stuff you couldn't
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Now that is very true. A legend in his own lifetime. He must have listened to loads of crap, as you say - but the difference was that was his entire livelihood, so he did have the time to do it.
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And how did you find out about Zeppelin, exactly?
Why don't you just keep doing that?
It's ok if you want to get off the find-new-music train, but don't blame it on the music. Blame it on your unwillingness to put a bit of effort in your search technique. One of those streaming recommendation services like http://pandora.com/ [pandora.com] should be within the means of even a lazy old fart such as yourself....
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Why don't you just keep doing that?"
I heard them on the RADIO....
Once upon a time they were new, and cutting edge....and you were able to hear that kind of music on your popular, mainstream, free-to-air radio station. Back then, they let the DJ's program much of their own music, and you got a very diverse selection of music throught the day. The first album rock stations that came online back when I was a teen...proved to be a great place to hear new an
If you Want Something Interesting (Score:2)
Check out [bbc.co.uk] Late Junction, Mixing It, Hear and Now, in particular. Their Jazz is pretty cool too, if you like that kind of thing.
I don't know if they stream outside the UK, but I imagine that they must; Radio 3 is part of an ex-pat's staple diet...
Re:Who has time? -- We need a Digg for tunes (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Freakin Balloons (Score:2, Interesting)
Poor marketing hurts, too (Score:4, Insightful)
I went to the site linked, and found that the only way to select music was by the artist's name. Considering that I didn't recognize a single artist, this left me totally in the dark as to what the musical genre was, and the only way that you could get a sense of the musical genre was to select each artist, one by one, where sometimes a note would tell you - but often not.
I would be more than willing to support a site like this if they make it reasonably easy. Even Wham-a-lart takes the time to sort music by genre so shoppers don't have to weed through all the styles they don't like to find something to listen to.
When they get the genre thing figured out, track preview and sale by track are the next items required to get them up to the bare-bones standards of online music sales.
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Small indie labels really need some kind of recommendation system. Genres aren't enough. What really needs to happen is indie labels should band together and set up something like Pandora, but designed for their own marketing. Like, maybe you start by entering in some bands that you like, and it starts recommending some songs. As you hear songs, you give them a "yes" or "no", and it tries to refine the selection based on that. If you find something you really like, the site gives you a link to download
Check out magnatune.com for non-DRM music (Score:2, Informative)
DRM Free Music is Everywhere (Score:4, Funny)
difficult to find? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like something Yogi Berra [baseball-almanac.com] would say. As in "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
Couldn't Agree More (Score:2, Interesting)
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 uns
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Already happened. [jonathancoulton.com] In a recent interview, the recently signed band The Dresden Dolls disclosed they were making about $1500 a month touring. Jonathan Coulton, who released his music on his website where you can buy it with no DRM, is making more than that.
The Bastard Faries... (Score:2)
^ The Bastard FAIRIES dammit (Score:2)
DRM free content is usally not worth the effort (Score:3, Interesting)
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 ?
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dimeadozen.org [dimeadozen.org] offers quite a wide array. Here's a sample from the two pages of torrents:
OASIS - First Time Out 2000
Emusic (Score:5, Informative)
They have free 50 download trials all over the place. Worth checking out and all DRM free mp3s. It's a great service and one we should be supporting.
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http://www.google.com/search?q=emusic+100+free [google.com]
BTW, there is also http://audiolunchbox.com/ [audiolunchbox.com] if you are not into the subscription plan.
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I like eMusic too. Don't love, but like.
They have tons and tons of good stuff, but also an equal or greater amount of stuff I don't like. They offer a variety of mechanisms to try to hone in to whatever suits you, but I still find that trial and error takes more time than I would like. That said, I'll take search cost over DRM any day.
Also, if you don't download all of your songs in a month, they go away (no rollover). That's a little miserly, I think.
The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
1. They're rubbish.
2. They don't want to sell out.
3. They're too damn original for the major labels to take a risk.
Types 2 and 3 are probably very worthwhile. They're greatly outnumbered by type 1.
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I was never much of a fan of indie music but after playing around a bit on EMusic I'm finding that there are some great tracks on there, you just need to spend
emusic.com (Score:3, Informative)
You won't find The Eagles or Brittney or other Top 40 stuff, but if you're the least bit adventurous* in your tastes it's well worth a look.
* Johnny Cash, James Brown, African music, Bjork etc...
Controlling distribution (Score:2)
Netwerk Bare Naked (Score:2)
I wish more bands used this distribution technique, but they need to use better quality USB sticks.
What DRM (Score:2)
Re:What DRM (Score:4, Informative)
Congratulations! You've just taken a lossy audio format, and transcoded it into a totally different lossy audio format, with an unnecessary step in the middle provided by Apple. You have caused the quality to degrade significantly; most of the tones in the music will come through okay, but some will be completely trashed. Anything approximating a square wave (any kind of funk groove usually has some of this) will be utterly destroyed. Most of your highest highs will end up completely distorted as well.
This stupid argument about burning and re-ripping is, well, stupid. And yet someone brings it up every time this discussion happens.
Take my hard earned money, please (Score:3, Insightful)
The Police tour is coming to town, and I am going to be handing over fist-fulls of cash in order to see them play live. But you're not going to see me buying their mp3's, as I already own all of their works. I'll just rip 'em, thank you please.
I really do not buy CD's anymore, partly due to the fact that I no longer wish to directly support the RIAA hedgemony, and partly due to the fact that I live in Canada and pay a levy on blank recording media (Handing money over twice just doesn't do it for me, thanks).
CDs, and music in general, should be viewed as a loss-leader to get people in to see them perform. I honestly feel that the days of rock musicians living like kings are pretty much over, with the exception of top-tier talent. It is not to say that they will not be able to earn a living, it just will be more akin to the professional musicians that you see in the classical and jazz sphere, which if you are any good, is a decent wage. If you're not any good, that's the economy saying, "It's time to get a real job."
Simply stated, I have to work to live, why should someone write songs and do nothing more than live off of royalties? Musicians work should be their ability to perform, not their ability cash royalty cheques. The performance driven model also would have the added effect of cutting out the no-talent publicity-machine generated "stars" who cannot play an instrument, rely upon production tricks to sound good singing, etc.
I pay to see you play. Do a good job, and you too can charge $200+/ticket and I will hand over my money willingly and without complaint.
It's not that hard, people.
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Or why do we got interest on loans or heck, even a stock market. Its a free world. Come up with some good music of your own, buy DRM-less music or just enjoy the silence.
I got to wonder from where the bands are to get the funds to do these huge tours, really. Have you ANY idea how expensive and risky a tour can be? Do you want all musicians to be pub entertainers? Do you think all music is
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Why even have a free market? Why not get all on a state payroll?
A Free market operates by supply and demand - something that is completely and utterly destroyed by the very notion of copyright. Non-tangible works have in infinite supply, but laws are put into place to recreate artificial restrictions on it. When I go to work if I setup a server that handles email, I don't get to go home, never come to work again, yet still get paid because the email server I setup is still there and working. And that's entirely right. If I want to keep getting a check I should have
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Please produce the royalty cheques that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach cashed, and I'll consider this argument closed.
In any marketplace, the cream will rise to the top. Any decent band will get noticed by those who want to profit off of them, and is willing to undertake marketing and promoting said product. That is the free market at its finest. Much like athletes, actors, corporate consultants, etc. If you have talent, someone, somewhere, will find a way to make money of
Loss-leader...? (Score:2)
CDs, and music in general, should be viewed as a loss-leader to get people in to see them perform.
Unfortunately, right now most musicians consider live gigs to be a loss-leader in order to get people to buy their CDs. How exactly are they to make money if the CDs are to be a loss-leader too? I'm not The Police, and I'll never be able to command those ticket prices.
HAL.
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I've been to a bunch of shows, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and Digweed, Chemical Brothers, NIN, and many more lately. But I've also been to shows from other styles: Guster, They might be Giants, etc.
Here's my problem...some shows are excellent, Sasha and Digweed, Chemical Brothers, Paul Oakenfold are great live. You know why? They attract a certain style of concert goers. TMBG does as well.
NIN, Guster, almost any band that gets any form of current local radio play, t
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Oakenfold, S&D, Chemical Brothers, etc don't have to worry about vocals so much, they concentrate on the music, the lighting, the sounds that come at you from all directions. Maybe that's what makes me enjoy them more. TMBG is just damned fun live.
Submission answers own question (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you like listening to trance or house music, you have been overflowing in DRM-free purchase options for years already. If you like alternative r
Labels already sell all their warez DRM-free (Score:5, Informative)
Even itunes has become a PITA when i want to make an MP3 CD for my car. I've decided i'm no longer going to buy from iTunes until i can convert the songs into mp3 in 1 step.
Remember - everything that the lables are telling you is bullshit when it comes to DRM - because they sell ALL of their music RIGHT NOW DRM-Free.... At WalMart, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, etc.
All Steve Jobs asked for was to have the same ability the CD-selling stores have - the ability to sell music DRM-free. Absolutely nothing different.
What about something like pandora? (Score:2)
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Here is one:
http://indy.tv/ [indy.tv]
From the creator of the Freenet project.
Requiem for mp3.com (Score:2)
Not suprisingly, it was soon crushed by the big record companies.
Slowly they added their craptacular artists sample tracks, artificially inflated their ratings and drowned out the indipendants.
Then when it was so lame and no one used anymore they killed it
Classic embrace, extend, extinguish maneuver.
Somebody to filter your music for you (Score:2)
The solution, I've found, is to find an MP3 blog by somebody whose taste you share. That way, they will do the filtering for you. Personally, I'm a big fan of 3Hive [3hive.com]. A couple times a week, they post free MP3s made available by bands who want publicity. But they listen to all MP3s before posting them, and only post stuff they think is worth listening to. They h
education (Score:2)
We shalt bow beforee thy knees, my master.
And this is where Web 2.0 fails.... (Score:2)
Unfortunately this music is difficult to find because there is simply so much of it.
The problem with Web 2.0 thinking is that they insist having lots of metadata allows for a suitable means of editing -- it does not.
Web 2.0's metadata does help accentuate the positive, but Johnny Mercer's formula for success asks us to eliminate the negative. Right now, all Web 2.0 allows us to do is de-emphasise it, which isn't halfway good enough.
HAL.
yeah but (Score:2)
The woes of Classical Music Distribution (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Territory restricted music (Score:2)
This is DRM, but in another form (a server-side check). Online distribution should not be restricted by territory - it makes sense only in the "offline" world where I guess distr
DRM is for bands that suck (Score:3, Insightful)
We're going to be releasing a record by the end of the year (old school), and will be posting most if not all online (new school). I still have reservations, because I grew up the old way, but I'm fighting through them.
One of the issues in all of this is getting the word out. DRM free music lets people email you a tune, "Check this out!" When my pal tried to email a track he bought from the iTunes store to me, I couldn't open it (our first real case of DRM).
He threw it into Protools and got an unprotected version - but notably, he won't do that anymore. It's a pain. So, any other bands he might have turned me or others on to go unheard. But, they 'protected their content', right?
I agree with some
Great music that is DRM free IS everywhere, it's just that it is still harder to find than the tunes Clear Channel wants you to hear - and that is probably the biggest difference between the little indie-pop band [theschmoejoes.com] and 'Insert Major Label Band here' - marketing. Familiarity is the thing that every band needs, and DRM Doesn't Really Matter when you've got millions of dollars pushing your flavor of the week.
So yeah. Click on my link, listen to the couple songs up there, come to a show. This link-filled post is all the marketing budget I have today.
Sweet Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is filtering. I keep looking at that eMusic trial offer and thinking, man, how much time am I going to have to spend getting my money's worth out of that? If they had a built-in, fast working Pandora plug in so I could simply and accurately calibrate my mainstream preferences to their catalog? I would be on that today.
The problem is payment strategies. A dollar for a song is BS and micropayments have been pretty BS up to now too. Subscriptions make a lot of people skeevy. This should not be as complicated as it is.
The problem is dispersion. There are fifty million little this and that sites. That does not work. Independent artists who want to sell piecemeal tracks and not require people have a subscription to eMusic - desperately need a solution. The technology for delivering bits is not complicated. The technology for accepting money is not complicated. Social networking and community-driven filtering and moderation aren't the future, they are the RIGHT NOW. This is a get-in-on-the-ground-floor Google type opportunity, man.
God, that pie in the sky looks so del.icio.us. Ahem, gotta wipe these starts out of my eyes. Okay, well, if anybody takes up the cause, you know, I'm available for visionary consultation and next gen viral marketeering (not to self: no electronics on bridges)! Call me! (Man, why did I study chemistry instead of computers?)
Oh, and regarding that Nettwerk Store link (once it finally loaded)... You want me to use Real to preview, this is how you make your point? Come the fuck on. My Grandma has a simple, browser-agnostic preview player built into her website. Well, okay, that's not true but still. Bye bye, Hello Love.
amie street (Score:2)
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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
You have to patent it (Score:3, Informative)
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Which doesn't matter one bit, since mastering engineers so badly abuse compression [wikipedia.org] that CDs don't get used to even close to their full potential. Instead, we get pull-offs so loud you can hear them clearly against strong percussion, which peaks with a sad little "squish" amidst a background sea of clipping artifacts.
Any engineer should need to write a paragraph
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