SPCR

I hope this is not out of line here, but I have been following the music industry's shenanigans for many years now, and have often looked for ways to get involved in the fight.

I Stumble Upon'd an excellent article last night that talked about the closure of Oink. I'd never heard of the site, but it was exactly what I've been looking for, a project and an idea I wanted to support.

Article: http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/w ... th-of.html

All this to say that I'm disappointed I'm late to the party, and that if anyone has an invite to the waffles.fm or what.cd site (the replacements to Oink), I'd be grateful to receive it so that I can do my part to help take down the current music industry.

Thanks to all.

It is possible to do your bit to hurt the major labels without breaking any laws...

You could simply buy your CDs from the small RIAA free indie labels, or direct from the artists where possible. Any major label CDs that you absolutely have to own you could buy second hand. Then support the artist by buying merchandise directly from them or by seeing them live.

Artists join major labels to make a living and they do deserve to make money from their art. Just taking all your music for free and not compensating the artist isn't going to harm the record industry as much as you think. Ultimately, if it happens at all, it will be the artists themselves who destroy it, by finding other ways of making a living from their music that don't involve the corporate machine.

Of course file sharing is a great way of finding new artists. However there are music forums and blogs that are always discussing and sharing individual tracks, along with internet radio, so there are alternatives to torrent sites like Oink.

Sorry, Steve_Y. The laws don't serve anyone but the RIAA...certainly not the artists or consumers. And I don't want to hurt the music industry, I want to end it.

Anyone with an invite? If not, anyone with a recommendation on how to go about getting one?

wussboy wrote: And I don't want to hurt the music industry, I want to end it.

Not listening to the music you so dislike at all is a better way of ending it than just not paying for it.

If you want to have an intelligent discussion about the state of the music industry and what can be done to change it, you should probably stop trying to fish for torrent invites. If this thread is just an excuse to get an invite, it should be closed. I'm not going to act all high and mighty and pretend I don't download music, just saying that this isn't the place to be discussing such things.

Steve_Y's advice is probably the best IMO. RIAARadar is a great resource for determining whether an album is released by an RIAA affiliated label. If it isn't I wouldn't hesitate to buy it, if possible buy directly from the artist's site to avoid markup by a retailer. If the label is affiliated with the RIAA you could always purchase the album used, and of course buy some merchandise, from what I understand the label doesn't get to dip into merchandise sales, and of this will go to the artist.

Also check out CD Baby, they act as a distributor for independent bands. The cool part is they aren't greedy bastards, a very fair cut of each sale goes to the artists. They keep $4 per CD sold, and for digital downloads they only take 9%.

qviri has it right.

Here is what happens when you fight them head on. You hurt not only yourself, but the rest of us.

You can be sued for money.
You can be tried for a crime for willfull large infringements.
Everyone can end up paying levies on media even if they don't infringe copyrights.
Everyone can be under the rule of even worse copyright laws that effect us in ways outside of copyrights.
- Varies country to country though the industries will lobby various countries and with trade agreements laws can be synchronized.

Obviously if you keep buying in nothing changes.

The worst thing you can do is ignore them. Don't buy their product, don't talk about them and don't fight them.


Maybe check out sites like jamendo.com they have creative commons albums. Well over 5,000 albums you can download legally, share legally and free.

There is a creative commons-licensed documentary called "Good Copy Bad Copy" which you may enjoy.

Trailer. Watch the full video online. Download a copy (legally) via bittorrent

The online full video has a weird framerate..

One of the comments in the bittorrent link has the full credits, including interviewees.

The authors are soliciting donations here. Why not buy them a beer?

lung wrote:Everyone can end up paying levies on media even if they don't infringe copyrights.
Everyone can be under the rule of even worse copyright laws that effect us in ways outside of copyrights.
- Varies country to country though the industries will lobby various countries and with trade agreements laws can be synchronized.

I doubt that the industry would stop pushing for this kind of thing even if fewer people were sharing music. That's especially true if their profits were dropping for other reasons. If there was no filesharing at all I'm sure they'd find another scapegoat to use when lobbying.

It's like the argument I've seen that piracy hurts consumers by pushing up prices, and that software and music would be a lot cheaper if it didn't happen. As if music industry leaders would drop prices out of the goodness of their hearts, choosing to make less profit than they could, just because less people were copying their products.

frosted - thanks for the radar link!

I see I haven't been clear. This thread is not an excuse to get an invite. Getting an invite is its only purpose.

The current music industry needs to end. It steals the products of other people and sells it to fans at an arbitrarily high price. You may choose to fight them by ignoring them or by shopping at non-RIAA labels. I do these things too. But I feel it needs to go farther than that. The RIAA needs to see, demonstrably, that their business model is over, the same way that countless other business models are over. The best way to do that is to take no notice of their business model and use the new business model.

I like music. I want to find new music. The artists I discover only benefit from me discovering them, whether I buy their album or not. I can contribute to their success by sharing their music with other people. The only people hurt by file sharing are the big media companies.

So, again, does anyone have an invite to waffles.fm or what.cd? I would like to contribute.

You should read http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/17/0229238 .. it seems RIAA is meeting some resistance

and I dont have an invite, sorry.

Thanks for the link, Wibla. I frequent /. a fair bit and had read that article. I basically read everything I find about the issue.

Cheers, all!

Getting an invite at this point will be difficult. I suggest going on Torrentfreak or Zeropaid and trading if you can. Every time What.cd opens invites for another thousand people, the cap gets filled in about twenty minutes.