The Upside of Music Piracy

I just got three awesome albums. - Lovage - Music to make love to your old lady by: Is some of the sexiest music I've encountered. It's a collaboration several different artists. " Lovage is the supergroup of Mike Patton (Faith No More), Nathaniel Merriweather (Handsome Boy Modeling School), Jennifer Charles (Elysian Fields) & Kid Koala. Guests include Damon Albarn, Africa Bambaata, Maseo and Chest Rockwell (aka Prince Paul). Produced by Dan The Automator." - Bif Naked - I Bificus: I really like the sound of Bif Naked's voice. For just pure girl rock she totally rocks my socks. From what I've heard so far there's a fairly high mediocre to fantastic ratio in the songs on her albums (many mediocre songs few fantastic songs.) This one's pretty good something like half the songs are great. I've wanted this album for a while because I like to support the more independent artists and I really like those ~6 songs. - Black Box Recorder - The Facts of Life: My new favorite band. Isis had this playing on her home page and that song blew me away so I had to have more. "The Worst of Black Box Recorder" is the next BBR album must have. It's very British. There's a female lead who basically talks sexy most of the lyrics and the music behind it is great. BBR is Sarah Nixey, Luke Haines, and John Moore (the drummer from the Jesus and Mary Chain.) If you like Portishead, you'll probably like BBR. You may also want to check out crustacean (difficult to locate.) But the best part is I get these albums and I realize. All three of them are bands I would never have owned if I hadn't pirated their music first. Bif Naked I probably encountered trying to download and watch the Buffy episodes I had missed but that weren't out on DVD yet. Although I may have encountered them the way I found Lovage which is thusly: disillusioned by radio for the past say 12-15 years, yearning for new artists and of course obsessed with sex one of my hobbies is to type porn searches into the audio only section of limewire. Now of course Brittney spears naked won't do me well as I'll end up with, well Brittney but watch your "searches" section of limewire and type some of those into the audio search section. Yes there is a band called Cock and Ball torture(you probably don't want to hit this link from work, just for the name.) I don't make these things up, (they aren't all that good.) I think it all started after someone loaned me Lords of Acid - Our Little Secret. Where all the track names are sexual "Pussy [round]" "LSD=Truth [Solo]" "Spank My Booty [reprise]." Let me tell you searching for some of those songs you're going to come up with A LOT of porn if you don't limit your search to audio only. Now I've got a long way to go in my search for new sex named bands. I still haven't looked for things like "Anal Rimming" or "canning" (and "girls fingering" just returned no results.) But I'm still young and there are a lot of artists to cover. Now BBR did not come about in this fashion I'll admit I heard one track over on Isis' site, but I never would have paid for an album based on that one song. So I downloaded it. Now I have to own all of their albums. It may take me a little while but I'll get there. In fact pretty much every album I've bought in the last three years I've downloaded first. O.K. Green Day played almost their entire album on a Windows media player preview, Now I own it no download. No I never downloaded. I just went out and bought that one. Ways to rationalize your MP3 downloading habit: 1) The artists don't really get much off these songs anyway it's the Label that makes all the money. This is true, in many cases. In fact it's the record labels I blame for the wild trash that passes for music these days. When artists with real talent are begging their labels to let them back into the studio to record another album but the label keeps them on the road eaking out every last play of that top 100 song. I swear every time I hear an acoustic version of a top40 song I want to rip someone's lungs out. Most of these bands just aren't capable of pulling that off to begin with and I'm frigging sick of hearing 5 versions of the same song. This is why I don't keep songs from self promoted artists. The Mother hips and Ani DiFranco and the like have formed their own labels to produce their stuff thus control their own music. more power to ya! But honestly don't lie to yourself. They do get paid for these songs and if nobody buys the album the artist will go away because they'll get paid more to shovel shit in Kentucky than to put up with yours. 2) Music should be free. No it shouldn't. These people have to eat. Do you do your job for free? Probably not. I'm with you that our society is perhaps a bit to capitalist and maybe things are getting a bit crazy but again. If they don't get paid they don't play. The Grateful dead had probably the richest underground music culture known. They invited folks to record and distribute their music. They even helped by setting up special places where folks could plug recording decks into the sound system and record directly. Folks who had.. paid for tickets. Yes the deadies had to eat they couldn't live on pot fumes alone, but once you became a part of their music family they gave you a little leeway. 3) I'll buy the song later. Hey that's mine! And I am. In fact I think every single audio CD on my Amazon wishlist I have already downloaded. Now I'm just working my way through it buying them. I've stopped downloading music because I'm going to loose track and not be able to catch up. I like this reason. It is.... fuzzy, I'll admit but it's mine (along with #1) and I'm running with it. 4) I already own this song. I do this one too. I have a bunch of shit on vinyl and cassette that I've downloaded MP3 copies of. Anyone who wants me to buy the CD or buy the MP3s can bite me. I already paid for the goddamned album and I think that entitles me to the songs even if they're release in new media format. Now if they re-record it. Maybe you should shell out a few clams. And no, this does not apply to every cd you've ever borrowed. 5) I'm only taking what's out there already. I have no idea but this one is in my little brain somewhere as making it more O.K. I don't share any music I have ripped. Anything in my downloads folder is good for upload. I'm pretty sure I'm full of shit on this one so I really don't have anything to say about it other than buy some music. Really, I support downloading music. But I try and support it with the artists in mind. I'm really banking morally on number 3 up there. Like I said I use the MP3 pool instead of the radio to find new bands. I use it to try out albums I've never heard and if I don't like it. Guess what? I delete it. Crap doesn't stay around for other people to download. Not to mention once it's officially part of my collection it comes out of the shared folder and into the music folder. Just remember, if you know me, and you report me to the RIAA, I know where you live.