lifebsideben

A few years ago I thought it would be great, with all this fileswapping going on (Naptser was new), it would be cool if there was a way to pay artists when you download and like their stuff. A site, where the funds would go to them, and it would at least go easier on your conscience, even if you didn’t receive any kind of legal right to the content you might have received. This is fraught with problems in the Real World, such as the record companies wanting no business in this, what to do with collaborations (divx movies?!), how to make sure the artists themselves get the money, and the ever-present micropayment dillemas. (There’s lots more problems, but that’s the starter kit.)

Lately I’ve been finding this is an attractive idea to me again, but the problems aren’t really solved (maybe SMS helps with the micropayment issue a bit, in Europe, sort of, OK not really.) This is because I realize that I am quickly becoming CD-free, or trying to.

What does this mean? I moved to Europe a year ago; one thing I wasn’t going to take schlep overseas was a few hundred CDs (and especially not their cases). So I bought one of those big album thingys for CDs, and stuffed it with about 100 discs, and carted it over–I also brought my PC, which already had a sizable mp3 collection (probably 80% of which are from discs I own.) My CDs went into storage in the brother-in-law’s basement (as well as the DVD cases, and roughly 100 other boxes of junk.) Once I got to Spain, the first place I lived didn’t have a CD player, so I couldn’t play the CDs… but I could play them on my PC, and also drop stuff onto my mp3 player (a 192MB flash-based thing, good enough for a week of tunes without reloading.) The CDs collected dust. Before I moved I listened to CD-Rs burned of mp3s I owned, in my Aiwa aftermarket car stereo; partly because of the 10-albums to a disk capability, but also because I didn’t want my “original” cds to get stolen.

Later, I moved to a real place, but was never motivated to buy a real CD player (although did end up getting an alarm clock one, but only use the alarm clock functions.) Anyhow, I have this stack of CDs in the cabinet that I never look at or play. The songs are all ripped to mp3s on my or the wife’s computer (she is an iTunes fanatic, I’m windows boy.) Now I pull stuff onto her iPod and listen to it commuting back and forth to work, and no matter what, I don’t really have any use for these plastic disc things. They just take up space. I don’t miss the 500 I have in storage in the US, especially the ones whose content I really like, because the content is duplicated (”backed-up” if you’re reading this from the RIAA) on my PC.

Last week I was watching european MTV (Spanish I think, but we get several variants), and they played a video by some group (turns out one guy) called Four Tet. It was amazing. I searched emule and yah, the latest album is available. The next day (patience with the mule!) I was listening to the album, and really dug it. Great stuff. Before winamp delivered the last track, I was leaving him praise on his website’s comment form, and trying to figure out how to buy the album. Turns out it’s a small indie label (yay) called DominoRecords in the UK, and they have a pretty nice site. Within 15 minutes I had purchased that CD, and one of his previous ones as well. (The Internet is a great thing.)

That’s how I got back to the pay-the-artists-directly-website-is-a-great-idea (but really isn’t) idea. I want the music, and maybe the booklet would be cool, but damn, I don’t want more of those stupid prerecorded CD things. I would be much happier, and I suspect the artist would have been too, to just download the music off their site after I paid, and maybe pdf’s of the booklets. Virtual is good. I have lots of virtual space. Bandwidth is infinitely cheaper than pressing discs, printing booklets, assembly, packing, shipping, etc. I can’t be the only person who is willing to make the change (and if I could get a slight discount on the “license”, that would be great–but the 10 UKP was perfectly reasonable for the great music in this case, anyhow.) There’s no easy way to do this in aggregate, though. Maybe ASCAP and BMI could handle it for some music, since they already pay the artists, but that’s just a start (and methinks the RIAA would squelch this immediately anyhow.) And how do you pay painters, scultors of public art, dancers, and other people who you might want to?

Dealing with the status quo, I believe artists should probably all just have their own websites and accept Paypal donations or similar. It still leaves me with the problem of how I pay Bravo for the episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, I’ve downloaded. I guess there will be a DVD set released at some point and I’ll buy that, just as my way of saying ‘thanks’. I can’t get Bravo in Spain, at all, but on the other hand, I had Bravo legitimately for years in the US and there was hardly ever anything decent on the channel, so maybe I’ve already “paid” for it. A problem for another day, and a more creative solution than I can devise now, to be sure.

Tags: big_business, Music, Spain