4lex's Journal: Why do you listen to propietary music?

I mean, really. We are always talking about how software should be Free, about how the dependence on one (or a few) all-power monopolies is bad for our freedom, and even bitching about how US or Spanish entertainment monopolies fight against our freedom, for instance by overpricing blank recording media.

And yet, the vast majority of the Community keeps on consuming propietary music, either paying for it or otherwise.

I hope everybody knows that many alternatives do exist. Just for being sure, I will list some that I would like to rise during 2004 :)

On the one hand, there are "less-evil" music labels, such as iTunes or Magnatunes... OK, Apple is evil, like any corporation, but they do a fair job offering a commercial alternative to microsoft monopoly, and have also contributed fair chuncks of free software to the community. And both their music and magnatune's is propietary... but their licenses are not that restrictive, allowing a fair use. I have to thank Magnatune the fact that they let you try before you buy. Furthermore, they even make it easy for you, by paying for the bandwidth themselves.

But, on the other hand, you have lots of free music projects. There is iRATE Radio, which allows you to download Free music, rate it according to your taste, and proceeds tuning the downloads better and better to your likes; there is Creative Commons, where you can either build a license that suits your needs, and have it delivered in human-readable, lawyer-readable and machine-readable forms, or find graphic and acustic art under those licenses; there is vorbis, which promotes sites offering Free music under .ogg format; there is the free music archive,...

There are lots of ways to get Free, high quality content. You may decide to pay the artist, or you may to cheap to do so. It's the same as with Free Software. It's your choice to put your money in the wallet of your enemy, to save it... or even to put it where your mouth is, supporting artists which offer you Free music.

By the way, there is an essay about Free music and copyright law you might like to read.

Thanks for the informative First Post!

iRate nitpick

[metal_priest]

It's actually written as iRATE.