Sharing music among friends

[gortnipper]

I spent most of my life living in Seattle, which has one of the best college radio stations in the country - KEXP. Well, it is sort of college now, since it is still affiliated with University of Washington, but it is run in conjuction with Paul Allen's Experience Music Project.They have a fabulous internet stream (1 megabit!) and I still listen to them here in NZ when I am at work.

They also have a Song of the Day podcast. I am up to 335 or so songs legally downloaded for my use. I use this as a form of vetting new material that I want to buy, and to find new stuff I have no clue about.

Also, they have their Top 90.3 (since that is their spot on the dial) songs of every year. This is also a good form of ideas for new music.

http://www.kexp.org

Pandora is way cool too.

David

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ August 08, 2008 02:02 AM: Message edited by: Gortnipper ]</font>

[gamalot]

I think the Artists have to accept some of the bad to get the good.
If an artist makes a great song or CD and no one hears it, what good is it? I am sure there is politics involved that gets your music out to be heard.
Prime example is what CB just mentioned above. I am not in to Polka but how many who are have even heard of many of the artists he mentioned?

Friends have sent me burnt CDs of groups they like and if I like what they do I almost always purchase more of their music. Had I never been turned on to that group, they would have slipped right past me because they are not played on any public format like FM or XM for me to ever hear them.

How many times have we all heard a particular group in a movie and then gone out to see what their CDs are all about. The flick "The Body Guard" Kevin Kostner and Whitney Houston, I love the sax in the title song and went out to buy that CD. If I had not seen the movie I would never have bought the CD.

I believe we do artists a service by turning our friends on to their music and if the artists are good the rest falls in place.

I suppose it is a matter of what you do and why.
Some seek to get their music for free while others seek to find new music worthy of purchasing.

If I send out a couple of cuts from a particular CD and many here like and and go out and buy the CD or put that artist on their favorites list, I would argue I have done a service called word of mouth advertising. The RIAA might disagree but they apparently have not done their job either.

I also have dozens of LPs by various artists that have one or two good songs that I burn to a blank CD along with many others and allow me the easy of getting to those songs for my pleasure.

The way I see it, may not be right but I bought the album and should be able to do what I want with the music as long as I don't profit from what I do.

Gary

[gortnipper]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by gamalot:
...I buy a Sony (BGM)CD and bring it home to play on my Sony CDP and if I record it on my Sony CD/RW on to a blank Sony CD Music disc I am stealing...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The way I understand it, copying to a dedicated music CDR is cool. A portion of the extra $$ you pay for music CDRs is somehow supposed to be returned to the music industry. It can't go directly to the artist(s) you rip though, so I don't understand why it's considered acceptable. [/QB]</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think the courts ruled that making MP3s and burning CDs is format-shifting and fair use:

"Audio Home Recording Act of 1992...applies to "digital audio recording devices," generally allows consumers to use products like digital audiotape players to make digital copies of songs for personal use. The hitch is that manufacturers of the recording devices must pay a royalty to artist organizations, generally 2 percent of the machine's wholesale cost. In addition, each recorder must contain a system that prevents the devices from making serial copies -- copies of copies...the court reasoned, under standard fair-use principles outlined in the Betamax case, consumers are free to make unlimited copies of authorized audio files on their hard drives for portable, private and non-commercial use -- without any royalty payments to the music industry and without a chip that limits the number of copies that can be made. "


Audio Home Recording Act of 1992...applies to "digital audio recording devices," generally allows consumers to use products like digital audiotape players to make digital copies of songs for personal use. The hitch is that manufacturers of the recording devices must pay a royalty to artist organizations, generally 2 percent of the machine's wholesale cost. In addition, each recorder must contain a system that prevents the devices from making serial copies -- copies of copies...the court reasoned, under standard fair-use principles outlined in the Betamax case, consumers are free to make unlimited copies of authorized audio files on their hard drives for portable, private and non-commercial use -- without any royalty payments to the music industry and without a chip that limits the number of copies that can be made."

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is99/RioSpaceShifter.htm

I dont know if this ruling has been overturned, but this is all I found that seemed reasonably placed (in a quick search).

David

[valhallax]

i have to agree with what gary said..so many times ive gotten music from friends and went out and bought more of the same artist.
and for that matter..how many times have you wanted to buy an ol' favorite or some other obscure group, and they were no longer in production? what are you suppose to do then?
in reality there are so many garage bands that are just dying for someone to bootleg their music and pass it out!
but in the present tense i can still share my music with my neighbors...hehehe

[gamalot]

Some of us already converse in private emails.

I would suggest any sharing be done off the board after a PM connects the email addys.

We all have different tastes in music so I doubt this will be a major activity but it sure will be nice to get some previously unknown music ideas from others who know what it sounds like on Altecs.

I like the blues type stuff from BB King and Eric Clapton and I am always searching for a good wailing Sax. I can usually tell from a few cuts if an artist is one I want to purchase more of his/her music. The hard part is finding who is doing or has done the type of stuff I might like when I don't get any FM signal here in the mountains and don't have much access or info on new releases.

Gary

[selmerdave]

It is not an infringement of copyright to make copies of purchased music for personal use. That includes burning to a hard drive. Nobody has ever been convicted for that, regardless of the Sony executive's opinion (it's the judge's opinion that matters).

It is an infringement of copyright to distribute a copy or allow access to your hard drive if it has copyrighted music on it. People have been convicted for that.

I would suggest joining a subscription service like Rhapsody or something, getting suggestions from friends and then checking it out on Rhapsody (in lousy mp3 format). Then if you find something you really like you can go out and buy the CD.

With respect to the idea that freely distributed music will lead to sales, it's one thing when it's the artist that is intentionally freely distributing because [i]they[i] think it will lead to sales, and it's another thing when a consumer freely distributes because they think it will lead to sales. It should be the artist that decides whether to take that risk/gamble. Would you have somebody else volunteer you to do your job for free on the assumption that they think you'll get more work out of it?

No doubt it's a changing economy in the world of music.

Dave

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ August 09, 2008 09:36 AM: Message edited by: selmerdave ]</font>

[bfish]

Originally posted by selmerdave:
... it's one thing when it's the artist that is intentionally freely distributing because they think it will lead to sales, and it's another thing when a consumer freely distributes because they think it will lead to sales. It should be the artist that decides whether to take that risk/gamble...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

There are oodles of free legal resources for sampling and searching for new music. Stop at a Barnes & Noble and slip on the 'phones and start pushing buttons. Online, there are dozens of sites that offer preview cuts;


http://www.freewebcentral.com/hidden...tentomusic.htm

http://www.last.fm/music/+tag/classic%20blues

You can get specific in your search on most sites, for example, "blues sax" at Amazon;

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Blues-Sa.../2XIN21AK1G7C9

Those are the quickest ways to browse for stuff that strikes your fancy. Personally, my favorite way to hear new stuff is to chase the local clubs and venues, but then I prefer live music anyway. Next best is visiting a buddy and listening to his favorites. Part of the enjoyment of music IS in the sharing of it, but for me, sharing it in person sure beats swapping CDs by snail mail. Then again, if your buddies live far away, that's as good as you'll get. (thanks Marshall!)

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ August 09, 2008 11:21 AM: Message edited by: bfish ]</font>

[mah]

Hey, bfish,

Is Moondance the sort of 'roots music' that Carl Bill mentioned? Maybe you could give him one of your many copies.
Another of Van's songs goes like this: I've been WORKIN', WORKIN'so hard.. . Sound familiar?

Cheers, watch out for wombats,

Marshall.

[bfish]

Yeah, I'd call it 'roots', though genres tend to have rather loose boundaries. I call it roots rock if it has rather simple instrumentation, understandable lryics, and has basic elements of one or more traditional genres like folk, blues, gospel, or country.

Yeah...Workingman's Dead comes to mind too ( )... Week 1 wasn't bad though, I'm inconspicuously ahead of the curve they expect for a "new guy", and it sure feels good having a paycheck again.

Wombats aren't much concern when you're friendly with the dingos.

[cclark65]

I didn't read the exact details of each response, sorry.

I think if you copy a cd and give it to somebody to listen to, it's stealing from the artist, and the courts would see it that way.

Now, I don't see that there is any reason you can't make a backup of the recording and send it somewhere for off-site archive. It's not my fault that they happened to make their own "backup" of it before they archived it for you.