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| Author |
Message |
mcnally
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Legal MP3 downloads
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Feb 12 16:32 UTC 2003 |
Over the past five or six years, millions of words have been written
about the impact of MP3s on the music industry. The overwhelming majority
of what has been written, however, seems to be concentrated on file-sharing
services like Napster and Kazaa and on the major music-industry titans'
unrelenting opposition to the downloadable music revolution.
Although it may no come as news to everyone here, there's another side to
the MP3 issue that gets considerably less attention. I've been very pleased
lately with the number of musicians who have been providing legal download
material for their fans.
Since we already have several items which discuss file-sharing services and
the music-industry's crippled music download services, I thought it might
be interesting to have an item devoted to legal music downloads..
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| 22 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 1 of 22:
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Feb 12 16:38 UTC 2003 |
One development that I find highly encouraging is that a number of artists
on indie labels, which lack the traditional promotional might that a major
label can bring to bear on behalf of one of their artists, have begun
really reaching out to fans with free downloads, either of teaser tracks
from upcoming releases or to make available live performances and other
non-album tracks from bands whose followings are not large enough to
justify B-sides collections or live-album releases.
A great example of this trend is the lo-fi experimental pop collective
Elephant 6, whose label site offers quite a bit of download material for
affiliated bands. This morning I downloaded 237 Mbytes of live and
unreleased material by four Elephant 6 bands from the label's web site
and there was a good deal more music by bands whose work I'm not as
familiar with. Once I get through listening to the downloads from the
bands I know, I'm sure I'll go back and listen to some of the other stuff
and it seems likely that I'll buy one or more albums as a result.
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mcnally
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response 2 of 22:
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Feb 12 16:56 UTC 2003 |
Another promising sign, I think, is the work done over the past several
years by musician Roger McGuinn. McGuinn is famous as the leader of the
tremendously influential pioneering 1960s folk- and country-rock band
The Byrds.
The commercial phase of his musical career has been mostly inactive since
his successful 1990 solo album "Back From Rio", but McGuinn continues to
record music that interests him -- he's just not doing it for release on
a major record label. Which is probably good, because it's unlikely that
any major label would be enthusiastic about promoting McGuinn's homemade
recordings of traditional folk ballads, spirituals, and sea chanteys.
Instead, McGuinn has been recording, and releasing on his own web site,
one track per month of his interpretation of some traditional folk tune.
CDs are available from MP3.com for those who don't want to download the
music but fans who just want to sample can go to his site and download
thirty or forty tracks of work from the past several years.
The upshot is that in McGuinn's case, with enough residuals from Byrds
material to probably see him through the rest of his life, he's free to
concentrate on making whatever music he wants, whether it's commercial
or not, and he can deliver it directly to his fans without any
intereference from a record company. This is the real promise of the
digital downloadable music revolution and one can only hope that more
artists will take advantage of it if they manage to find enough success
in the commercial system to establish themselves comfortably.
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mcnally
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response 3 of 22:
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Feb 12 17:05 UTC 2003 |
One more comment on yet another type of legal music download --
the pre-release teaser.
I've also been finding lately that a number of my favorite bands not
only have new upcoming material that will be released soon, many of
them are promoting the material with teaser tracks available months
before the album is due for release. (At the moment I'm listening to
one such track by Yo La Tengo, one of my favorite currently-recording
bands, called "Don't Have to Be So Sad" from their upcoming release
"Summer Sun", due out in April.)
Since I think the last time I heard a Yo La Tengo single on the radio
was three years ago, and that was in Ann Arbor on WCBN, this music
download is about the only way I'm likely to hear a single intended
to promote the new album. Despite a strong indie following and great
reviews from the music press, like many other bands they simply don't
fit into any of the commercial radio formats prevalent across the
country these days.
So yet again, another win for legal MP3 as a promotional tool.
Everyone can understand why the big guys are so afraid of MP3 but it's
really heartening to see the smaller players in the record industry
realizing what it can do for them..
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cyklone
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response 4 of 22:
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Feb 12 21:17 UTC 2003 |
Great posts! I also see the day when a substantial portion of an album may
be downloaded for free, and a small payment will purchase bonus extras,
like cool packaging or a special video.
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steve
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response 5 of 22:
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Feb 12 21:36 UTC 2003 |
I have been trawling for music at mp3.com for four years now,
with great success. Although I like all sorts of music, I've
spent at least 95% of my time looking for various electronica
there, and have found about 550 titles so far that I have on
my laptop. I've talked with several of the artists there,
mostly musically inclined types who don't see much of a
future in making a career of it, but who like making it and
spreading it to the winds. At least one artist compared
what he was offering on mp3.com with the idea of open source
code, which I found interesting.
So yes, there are definitely sources for legal downloads
and thats what I've been interested in.
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tpryan
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response 6 of 22:
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Feb 13 00:13 UTC 2003 |
Go to mp3.com and search for "Fire In The Sky", from a
forthcoming Space CD. The song was quoted in part by Buzz
Aldrin in his comments on the loss of Columbia and her crew.
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steve
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response 7 of 22:
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Feb 13 07:22 UTC 2003 |
Interesting. I'll go look.
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greycell
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response 8 of 22:
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Feb 16 08:38 UTC 2003 |
can u tell me good websites to download mp3....must be p2p ..
cya
regards
mukesh
:)
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krj
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response 9 of 22:
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Feb 17 03:32 UTC 2003 |
My guess is that www.slyck.com is a good site I've found for news and
recommendations for filesharing networks. I haven't tested any
of their recommendations so I can't evaluate how good they are;
I just use them as a news portal.
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