Strypey's Jukebox
or A Quick Guide to Free Music On the Web
OK so we all know the MP3 revolution is here. We are all stealing music
now instead of buying it if the Recording industry Assocation Parasites
of Earth (RAPE) are to be believed. In fact what's happening is that
instead of selling their souls to multinational record-selling
corporate rip-off merchants, bands are recording their own music,
compressing it into .mp3 and putting it on their website for people to
listen to. The theory is that if a fan really enjoys the music they
will want to buy a record (whether it be vinyl, CD, DVD or whatever)
and if the band has the good grace to give out some goodies for free,
the fans will go back to the same website to buy the record direct from
the band, cutting out all the corporate middle-men (and women) and the
marketing spectacle that goes with them
The RAPEists are responding by creating all sorts of proprietary music
formats that restrict the freedom of both artists and users. They sound
shitty, expire after a set time-period, only contain samples or can
only be played on proprietary players. As far as I can see the
long-term consequence will be that people will download good quality,
independent music in open formats like Ogg
Vorbis. Radified has an how-to on encoding music into digital files
including some instructions for using Vorbis. In the
meantime there are heaps of kiwi bands putting free
mp3s and streaming audio on their websites. Some of them can be found
in these band directories...
And if you are interested in Ozzie bands...
Wednesday 13 October
For those who prefer synth to guitar there is the Kahvi Collective, an online distro who
encode all their music files in Vorbis. The Vorbis website has a list
of sites that have free
music available in the .ogg format.
Monday 22 December:
Today I checked out mp3s by the Carnys from Wellington and Foamy Ed
from Auckland, two all-womyn punk bands.
The Carnys
offers 3 songs in mp3, although when I clicked on Need not Greed it
actually dropped White Rabbit. These files are reasonable quality live
recordings that capture the band's manic on-stage energy.
Foamy Ed have
self-released two EPs of original songs and have 2 tracks of each
available for download. Their recordings are more studio-sounding but
still capture the feel of their hardout live sets.
I also checked out the Indicator Dogs site. Like the Carnys they
feel the need to use irritating Flash titlepages, in fact their site is
entirely Flash and although it worked fine on our DSL connection those
with dial-up might wait a while for it to respond. That said it is a
choice wee site. The downloadable movie taking the piss out of music
industry big-wigs is heaps of fun and the 3 songs on streaming
were a sizzling sonic barrage.
Back to...
Strypey's
House Party
Page Design: Danyl Strype
strypey@indymedia.org
Last Updated: 13/10/2004
Created:
