Even More Digital Music
11.28.07 By Collin David
The rights surrounding digital property are a hotly contested, widely debated subject that’s recently infiltrated all of our lives, even if we wouldn’t even touch a computer for fear that the demons running on the little wheels inside might be released. You should be so lucky to work at the desk in a library - that’s one of the more realistic things you’ll hear during the course of a day.
We’re enduring writers’-strike-compelled reruns on the television because of digital property rights, the RIAA monopoly is pretty much punching people in the groin across the world should they suspect them of even the most remote form of music piracy. What does a rabid, excited music collector like me DO about all of this?
I can’t say that fear has gotten the better of me, but I actually abstain from almost all questionable music downloads. As a completist, I find it much more advantageous to legally download an entire album at consistent quality from a single source. That way, you don’t have to deal with possible viruses, fluctuating bitrates, frustratingly cut-off songs and odd blips. When I listen to an album, I want the full aural experience as intended by the artist, even if I don’t have the cover art at hand to read along with. I have, however, developed a three-pronged approach to legally enhance my digital music collection to its fullest potential.- not counting ripping my own CDs and music borrowed from friends. Many recording artists actually advocate this approach - Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and geekcore rapper MC Chris among them - to combat corruptions within the stagnant recording industry and negligible financial returns to the artists themselves.
First, I’ve joined LaLa.com. LaLa is an internet database of sorts in which users catalogue the entirety of their physical music collections on CD, as well as which albums they’d like to have in their collection. The database then anonymously pairs up these people, orchestrates a trade, provides the envelopes and outgoing shipping for the CD in question, and then arranges for a return trade to be made, though not usually from the same user. Within their trading system, everyone gets a fair return, and you receive just as many CDs as you send out - and all you pay is a dollar or so per trade for incoming shipping costs.
Their rules explicitly sending anything but a genuinely produced CD, and also forbid ‘rip and ship’ - making a copy of a CD and then immediately sending it out again in order to obtain a new CD… but it’s certainly a legal venue to test out new music, and the ‘digital property’ laws are not explicit enough to define what you can do with your own property, even if you end up deciding not to keep it. I know that I have boxes of CDs that I bought on a whim and have only found displeasure with, and this is a perfect way to get rid of ‘em and replace them with stuff I actually want, with minimal effort. Also, not being embarrassed while you’re trading in your Celine Dion CDs to the cute chick behind the counter at your local Rhino Records in a bonus.
Of course, there’s also straightforward downloading, which is an amazing, beautiful thing if you’re on a cable modem. If you’re on ol’ 56k dial-up, it’s more like a personal hell. I subscribe to eMusic.com, which is a great service, and has a Mac compatible downloading program that organizes your music into folders for you. They specialize in lots of smaller label, indie stuff, but lack in a lot of major label releases and older albums. That’s okay, ‘cause I’m more of an indie guy - but every so often, I get a hankering to catch up on some musical relic I’d missed up until now and am left sorely disappointed.
Of course, getting 100 songs a month for 20 bucks is a pretty solid deal - twenty cents a for a legally-downloaded song that you can re-download at any point in the future is a great deal. The entire Magic Marker Records catalogue is on there, as well as some live performances by Tom Maxwell, Travis Morrison and Elysian Fields that can’t be found anywhere else (even if they lack these artists’ full length albums). Their download speeds are also super-fast and consistent.
This past weekend, I was searching for a copy of ‘Old and In the Way’ for my mother, but every search I made came up with that dreaded ‘out of print’ status. Even used copies of the CD were roughly 60 bucks, so unwilling to pay the steep price, I perused LaLa and eMusic, and even the dreaded, restrictive iTunes, all to no avail. Finally, I found the complete album, legally downloadable, from MP3Fiesta.com.
Songs from MP3Fiesta cost roughly ten cents each, with a minimum purchase of 20 bucks’ worth. While these songs are not downloadable forever, they’re made available to your account for a period of 48 hours, during which you must download them one by one to your computer. It lacks the smooth interface of eMusic, but the price is half that of eMusic, and the catalogue is more extensive and familiar. I’ve found a majority of positive reviews of the site, though my experience with it is limited - it delivered exactly what I needed when I needed it, when no one else could. I think that qualifies as a success, and it fills in the last possible aspects of my musical desires.
I’m not, however, a fan of iTunes. While their revenue sharing and promotion are potentially more beneficial to the artists in question, I’m not fond of the idea of paying a dollar for a song that I don’t have unlimited access to. Yes, if you have a song that you bought from iTunes, you can only use it on a few of your personal devices - and you need to enter a password any time you choose to transfer it. It just seems overly complicated to need to organize my music collection by how many RIGHTS I have to listen to the music itself. I love you, Apple, but that’s just bad technology.
All this music and it doesn’t take up any physical space. And who has space when you can’t even find room for a dozen Iron Man busts amid your clutter?
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Article Tags: Digital, download, iTunes, Magic Marker, MC Chris, records, RIAA, Trent Reznor================
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