The good son.

[reddragdiva]

The Open Rights Group wiki has an entry on DRM, with a list of providers of DRM-free content at the end. I've added eMusic, Darkcell and allofmp3 (with a note on that last one). I know there are lots of MP3-selling sites for small genres — who have I missed? Is there a handy directory anywhere?

Today we let Kyneston out into the big world. arkady took him into the back yard after breakfast. He did not bolt, but wandered off in a calm exploratory manner. Then I went with her to a doctor's appointment.

Cute girlie in hat; lavender flowering, in honour of Gay Pride's faaabulous showing on VFH; cute girlie in hat's boyfriend.

Telephone poles that caught my photographic eye. These will be gone in ten years.

Kyneston showed up for dinner!

Break out the fatted cat biscuits for the prodigal kitty!

He also wandered in later, so now we can leave the damn windows and doors open as necessary.

Dinner was cold chicken, potato salad and cherry tomatoes. redcountess also played with her dollies for a bit:

Kiyoshi, Ren with Valentina in her lap, Violet.

eyeliner297 is coming for dinner tomorrow, and we shall roast her on a spit feed her veggie pasta.

Comments

hth

[twicezero.livejournal.com]

warp records have a reputation for selling non-drm files at very high quality bit rates: http://www.warprecords.com/mart/

burning shed use non-drmed mp3s and flac files to sell interesting oddments

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

I am quite amused by the look on Kyneston's face in that photo.

Re: hth

[reddragdiva]

Thank you :-) Where's the Warp Records page where they sell the downloads? I can only see physical records for sale on that page.

[reddragdiva]

"Thank you for dinner. I am going out into the garden now. I may be some time."

Re: hth

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

bleep.com would be warps (and many other record labels) online music shoppe.

Re: hth

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

ah, which would already be listed on that wiki ;)

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

What does the t-shirt on kiyoshi say?

Re: hth

[twicezero.livejournal.com]

thanks :)

[reddragdiva]

"You touch, you pay."

Re: hth

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Bleep appears to rock - why didn't I know about that before!

I've just bought two tracks I've been looking for ages (vinyl only releases suck when you don't have a working record player and it's only been released on a CD in the US). However I lost connection part way through downloading so I may have been over enthusiastic ;)

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

He is a lovely-looking cat, isn't he?

Pasta is a Good Thing.

[cymrys.livejournal.com]

On the subject of DRM, it is my contention that DRM encourages more, not less, piracy.

Figure: Joe Fan buys the latest Singing Slapheads single from an online store. He plays it on his PC media player and (somehow) enjoys it.

Then he decides to put it on his MP3 player to listen to it whilst out and about. Shock horror, the track doesn't work! Joe gets increasingly cheesed off about this and eventually investigates alternative means of getting the track he paid for to work where he wants it to. Eventually he finds a way of copying it that bypasses the DRM.

The Singing Slapheads release a new single, but this time Joe Fan hesitates before shelling out for a copy online. "All I got was grief last time," he thinks. Instead he fires up the P2P program somebody mentioned when he was looking for ways to bypass the DRM on his last purchase and downloads it direct.

I'd like to see a tip-jar model for online music purchase. It would encourage people to investigate acts they wouldn't necessarily fork out for in advance. Yes, you'd get a lot of people just not bothering to tip, but I honestly believe you'd get higher download figures and by extension a higher actual number (if not a higher percentage) of tippers. If 50 people buy m song at 99p each or 200 people download it and half of those tip me to an average of 60p, which distribution model am I better off with? And even those who didn't tip are advertising my music more widely, potentially earning me more downloads and more tips.

And having decided that this entry has rambled far too long, I sign off and contemplate a more complete piece on my own lj at some future point ;)

[reddragdiva]

Yeah. The problem small artists have is not piracy, it's obscurity. Cory Doctorow explains this marvellously.

e.g. for someone like yourself (slightly known folkie, a few albums, making beer money but not a living), putting up MP3s for anyone to spread around (web page address in comments field, etc) would be one sensible approach.

Look at the way deathboy does it: he records all this stuff late at night, puts it up for free and gets ... fans! And enough buy the physical CD to bother having pressed it and to bother making another one. He also sells tracks through Darkcell.