"Pro-Music" - An Anti-Piracy and Pro-Money Website

This bullshit makes me so angry. If the music industry tried producing a quality product at a sensible price, tried paying the artists fairly, allowed consumers to download in a variety of formats, didn't shove awful copy protection into the product which breaks the standards of the files downloaded, didn't charge ludicrous amounts for CDs and didn't force people to upgrade to a new medium every 5 or 6 years ... then maybe I'd have sympathy for them.

The truth of the matter is that I would love to be able to legally download music. I've been waiting for the music industry to embrace this new technology, but they haven't and other people have. Now they can't stand to lose out, but it was their own inaction that lead to this situation.

I don't want to pay as much for a downloaded, low quality MP3 as I would have paid for the album. I don't want to grapple with the product when I want to listen to it because it's full of copy protection. I don't want to waste time ringing the company I bought the music from to obtain a new licence becaue I want to listen to it on a computer other than the one I downloaded it to. Why the hell should I?

http://www.allofmp3.com is the site that came closest to doing the job properly. They ask for sensible prices, and they provide the music in any format you could want it in. Best of all they don't assault their downloads with copy protection bullshit. Surprise surprise, the music industry is fighting them and they will likely be shut down within a year.

If you haven't already listened to Larry Lessig's talk about Free Culture then I suggest you do so now. (Thanks to Saad for sending me this link a year or two ago). You can also read the book "Free Culture". His talks, book, and everything else he has made public is available for free. You can even make "remixes" (any derivativeve work based on his works) for free under the terms of the Creative Commons license. His thinking outlines a radical change to the media industries, one that would benefit everyone. Everyone, that is, except for the fat cats who currently run the assorted media companies that make up the media industry.

If you fancy downloading some high quality, copy-protection free music of any genre you could possibly think of, and you want to do so for free, then head over to CC-Mixter. Now that's a site that really is pro-music.