Re: music download sites?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 08:15:21PM -0600, Thomas Cameron wrote:
>  Anne Wilson wrote:
>  > On Saturday 24 January 2009 17:02:40 Thomas Cameron wrote:
>  >> I've had long debates with some friends about downloading MP3s.  For me,
>  >> I wind up downloading MP3s for music I find interesting but not worth
>  >> buying the CD for.  So in my case, I can honestly say that the whole
>  >> RIAA argument about musicians having lost revenue are complete bullshit.
>  >>  If I find an artist I *really* like, I will go and buy the CD.  It's
>  >> worth 15 cents a track to check out an artist I'm not familiar with.  No
>  >> way would I plunk down $12-$15 for the same CD.
>  > 
>  > Artists lose revenue through illegal file-sharing.
>  
>  I would argue that.  I am 100% certainly *not* going to buy a CD from an
>  artist I don't know.  So in my case, file sharing is actually much
>  *more* likely to earn them a sale.  If I can listen to a CD for a very
>  low price (e.g. 15 cents/track at http://gomusic.ru or free via p2p) and
>  then I like it, I go buy it.  So the argument could be made that
>  file-sharing is actually a win for the artists in my case. 
I agree that file sharing is probably a win for a lot of independent
artists, especially the good ones. ;-) But it should be the artist's
choice, not ours.

Sites like CD Baby provide 2-minute snippets of songs, often every
song on an album, which is plenty to decide if you like an album
enough to buy it.  They tend to feature indies, though.  Amazon does
much the same I think, but could probably provide longer snippets.
However, they seem to do it for almost everything they sell.

There's plenty of ways to sample records out there that don't involve
downloading albums from places where the artist is getting absolutely
no return on their investment of time, energy, and (hopefully) talent.

Anyway, this is a tired debate that doesn't have a lot to do with
Fedora at this point, but I'll bring it back on-topic by pointing out
that you can sample music using Jamendo and Magnatune, both supported
by e.g. Rhythmbox out of the box in Fedora, and both allowing you to
basically pay what you want to support artists.  I'm not going to lie
and say everything there has mass appeal, but even a picky guy like me
has found things to like on both services.  Those artists have made a
conscious choice to make their work available to you like that, and
it's good to promote that mindset and reward them as a lesson to other
artists on how they might market their work.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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