[Danberg]

I'd like to purchase music on-line and as a newcomer to this have many questions. 

I was told to use limewire by a friend.  Looking on the internet I get the impression that this is not a site that "supports" musicians by paying royalties.  I joined Rhapsody (trial) and find that the songs I was looking for were not listed.

Is that the dilemma one is faced with in trying to support musicians, limited selections of songs?

Any recommendations on what I might do to solve this problem.  Is using a 2P2 that has seemingly unlimited song selection illegal?

[ehart]

Limewire is, as a general rule, illegal.  Of course, it depends what you're sharing -- if you are sharing material you created or that is not copyrighted, then it's not illegal.  But the vast majority of what happens with Limewire is illegal music sharing.

Limewire can also be a conduit for viruses and malware -- a friend does computer support at the local medical school and says he is constantly cleaning up behing Limewire.

The legal services do have holes in their selections.  It's all a matter of what publishers have been willing to negotiate with them.  I use Napster and really enjoy it (especially the "radio" feature) but find that there are definite holes.  For example, no Beatles and no Grateful Dead.  And they will often have less than the complete collection of an artist's work.  Still a great way to find out about new stuff.  One complaint is that most of these services don't offer uncompressed downloads (that I know of).

There's always iTunes for legal downloads.

Best,

Eric

[nathanm]

Limewire is just folks sharing their files, so yes technically that would be naughty naughty piracy if you're getting music from there.  P2P file sharing is always a complete tossup anyway.  You never know what the hell you're getting. 

I'd recommend instead allofmp3.com.  These crafty Russians have, in my opinion, cut iTunes off at the knees.  You get a great selection of easy-to-find music (I was always amazed at the rare crap I could find on there) in numerous formats and at a fraction of the price.  (Paid by file size rather than per song)  Since digital downloads represent a compromised product I think the price is right.  You can afford to experiment.  Is it legal?  Who the hell knows, the world is run by lawyers and they live in an entirely different reality.  We can never hope to understand their language.  All I know is that this company is providing a product at the right price.  Doesn't sound illegal to me.

Pro:
None of this proprietary Apple file format bullshit, they're just regular MP3s. No passwords necessary.

Con:
You might need to tweak the metadata, every genre is "Blues".
Filenames are a bit hairy, but not everyone may care.

If maximum musician-supportingness is desired I would stick with buying CDs and going to shows.  In either case we the consumers don't necessarily have a direct line of exchange between the folks playing the tunes and us.  But that's okay, you don't want musicians to make too much money cause then they can't sing the blues anymore.  They should make just enough to afford bread and guitar strings and that's it.  It's the middlemen suits who kinda sorta do something to help the process who should make the big bucks. 

Allofmp3 offers uncompressed files, but I personally don't see the point.  The price\performance ratio goes out the window then.  If I am gonna pay regular CD prices and only get a lousy download I might as well buy the real CD.

[chadh]

I'm just guessing here (mostly hypothesising so that somebody can set me straight if I'm wrong) - but I would guess that buying stuff from allofmp3.com must be legal.  I would imagine that the responsibility for paying royalties lies with the agent who is generating revenue from the sale.  This seems to be the case when a consumer buys a CD from a store, so I don't know why downloaded material should be different.

Whether or not allofmp3.com pays royalties will determine whether they are operating illegally.

Of course, there's a distinction between doing something that's legal and doing something that's ethically justifiable.  It may well be the case that buying from allofmp3.com is quite legal but ethically unjustifiable, if you purchase suspecting that allofmp3.com is not paying royalties.

Of course, I might be completely wrong here.  If my reasoning is correct, it would suggest that downloading files from some free, P2P service would also be legal.  It would be the people distributing music in this manner who would be operating illegally.  I don't think that's the state of the law, though. 

Chad

[lonewolfny42]

nathan....

..you don't want musicians to make too much money cause then they can't sing the blues anymore.  They should make just enough to afford bread and guitar strings and that's it.

......   

[nathanm]

Allofmp3's basic premise is that, hey we're operating under this so and so license and the customer should check with the laws in his own country before deciding to buy.  They kinda wash their hands of it I guess.  I am surprised and quite pleased they are still running.  I fully expected them to be shut down.  It's hilarious because once I was watching an Apple developer conference video and Steve Jobs was all over himself about how Madonna was giving them permission to release her albums on iTunes and so I go visit allofmp3, type in "madonna" and oh what a surprise...her entire catalog!  Curiouser and curiouser...  Same thing with Metallica.  You know damn well how bunched up their undies were over Napster and oddly enough all the Metallica albums are available at allofmp3.  So stuff like that leads me to believe they aren't entirely on the level regarding the laws. But again, you're talking about laws from different countries and who can really know what's what.  To me if money is changing hands I don't feel as if I am stealing anything.  If totally-legit iTunes wants to get my money they're gonna have to compete on price.

[lonewolfny42]

In music news.....allofmp3.com has been shut down....

Story Link....

But.....The same company that operated AllofMP3.com has already launched a similar site called mp3Sparks.com.

[lonewolfny42]

Follow up......

 Court acquits allofmp3.com site owner.....Link....

www.mp3sparks.com is still running....

[Scott F.]

Chris,

Here is a more in-depth story of what happened.

From what I can gather, they acquitted the current head of allofmp3 who came on board in September of 06. The trouble is/was, that allofmp3 only began operating within legal guidelines as of ....September 06. The other issue is the IFPI (the Interpol of music) doesn't recognize the organization (ROMS) that allofmp3 is paying royalties to.

What isn't being stated is whether ROMS is distributing those same royalties to the music companies and musicians. If I had to guess, there are more lawsuits floating around out there. Now if ROMS is paying the proper amount of royalties to the musicians, I'm all in favor of buying music from them.

Should be interesting to see what shakes out from all this. Thanks for the link 

[mca]

I don't know anything about this new site, but it looks interesting:

www.amystreet.com

[gychang]

Follow up.....

www.mp3sparks.com is still running....

anyone have experience with this site?, safe? reliable?

thanks,