I just finished ripping my 1300 CD collection and now I'm trying to fill in some of the gaps in the pop/rock parts of it.

There's been lots of sensational hoop-la about how Amazon.com and iTunes are now offering MP3 downloads from major labels so I put them to a little test. I selected 20 of the songs I needed to fill gaps. All of them were major hits from about 1970 to 1990 in the pop or rock genres. Examples ranged from from Jackson Brown "Stay" to Phil Collins "In The Air Tonight" to "Tom Sawyer" by Rush to "West End Girls" by the Pet Shop Boys to "Barracuda" by Heart.

My requirement was that the track had to be the original hit version by the band in question, not a live or acoustic version (unless, of course, that WAS the original).

Of the 20, Amazon had five. And iTunes only had one!

My verdict: The music industry still doesn't "get it". So millions of dishonest people will continue to steal music they have no legal right to, and resourceful, ethical people like me will find other ways of boycotting the music industry, for example by only buying used CD's. Either way, the music industry is digging its own grave. They will lose millions of dollars, apparently because they don't WANT our money enough to offer us the products we want (non-DRM'ed music) at anything resembling a market price.

Everyone has different music tastes. You think English language music is hard to find? At least most albums remain in print decades after they're released (and often remastered or with bonus tracks).

I did a search for your artists and found PHil Collins, Rush, Pet Shop Boys, and Heart on the iTunes Store. I didn't search for Jackson Brown as I didn't feel like it. Heart has a couple of iTunes Plus albums but that was it. That is not the fault of the iTunes Store though, only EMI/Virgin seem to be going the DRM-free route with online stores like iTunes and Zune. Other record companies could come in and allow for the selling of their content with higher bitrates and lack of DRM. Apple has already showed that they are willing to change by offering these higher bitrate DRM-free tracks, it is now up to the record companies to follow through.

Apple wants your money as they are offering the tracks for download. You can remove the DRM from these tracks using various methods that I won't get into so they can become universal. That is why I tend to always just purchase the audio CD itself unless the songs/albums were released digitally only. Purchasing used CDs still doesn't boycott the music industry as you are still purchasing their product. Boycotting the music industry would mean that you have no affiliation with it and you don't listen/watch their products. This means that you would have to give up watching television as you never know when a show or commercial is going to have music or if the music being played came from an artist, give up on games as game soundtracks are often released on audio CD thus making them a product of the music industry, and you definitely can't listen to the radio.

Basically, you would have to give up everything entertaining and stick to a simple life where you read books for entertainment and only use your internet access for research and news related articles that have nothing to do with music artists. Not very fun if you ask me. Purchase the CDs and you get all of the DRM-free quality that many have been enjoying for decades now.

My criteria (as I said above) was that they had to be the original hit versions. I found all of the above only in different recordings from the original hit versions (or not MP3).



I'm not aware of any reliable way to remove DRM so for practical purpses that's not an option for me (or most people) and in any case all that would leave me with is an AAC. I can't play AAC on my cellphone, my boombox, or my car stereo, even though they can all play MP3, so I want MP3. Some people write their DRM'ed AAC's out to CDA and then rip that to MP3, but that's two transcodings of a file that's already lossy, so obviously that's not an option.

I probably should have said "recording industry" since they're the real villains here anyway. When I buy a CD used they're not making a penny from me.

What makes you think I watch TV? (the only TV I watch is American football so my TV stays off from February to August) I don't play video games and 95% of the radio I listen to is college or public radio, and noncommercial internet radio. So I hear very few advertisements!

The bottom line is that until the recording industry gets real, I've found a legal way to enjoy their product without giving them my money. Just for fun I Googled "music industry" and "idiots" and got 175,000 hits and when I clicked on them, most were exactly what you'd expect - people calling the music industry idiots! I swear to god - in most companies when you become an executive you get a car and a key to the executive washroom. In the recording industry they must give them a gold-plated drool cup.

You won't find many kind words on lawyers, realtors and building contractors either. The "music industry" is what it is for a reason: it does the things that the artist can not do or does not want to do. Get your royalties for you, finance the recording, arrange distribution and promote your album so that people hear it. Yes they're weasels. They charge a lot for those services and they will try to take you for a ride wherever they can and they often succeed because the artist is in most cases uneducated and even worse, [a gullible idiot/an unstable druggie/a megalomaniac/all of the above], and is generally represented by a manager who is either incompetent or another weasel. Fundamentally the majors make money because they take risk: they spend a ton of money on a given record and expect to be rewarded for it. When illegal downloading threatens to make their business all risk and no reward they'll do as much as they can to stop that happening. The shareholders paid a lot of money building a portfolio of publishing/distribution rights. If those rights are in danger of becoming worthless (because everyone copies/downloads/buys from the local guy's trunk) they'll tell management to do everything it can to minimize the damage. Hence RIAA trying to scare downloaders, raids on pirate CD pressing plants, etc. It's not some incomprehensible evil plot. If an artist can sell his records without hiring professionals then he does not need the traditional labels - and that's exactly what has happened in dance and hiphop, where the majors only tend to get distribution deals, for mainstream/foreign physical product-in-stores and publishing (ie, getting your royalties from the equally shifty t-shirt sellers and radio & tv stations).

It's the same reason why your accountant and your banker probably make more than you do and the guy that built your house drives a bigger car than you do. It's also the reason why we all rely on their services and happily complain about them at every dinner party. Artists and record companies have always been very good at the good cop-bad cop game. The more an artist publicly slams 'the suits', the more his fans like him and feel better buying his record at WalMart. Cogitive dissonance, textbook case.

Essentially it's the choice of the artist: either run everything yourself as a small-scale operation with a MySpace account, selling CDs at local gigs, or have a shot at superstardom and give most of the proceeds to the machine that gets you there. As a fan of a major label artist, you might not like this machine but morally it's none of your business. The artist thought at some point that it was a good idea to team up with these slimeballs. Either you support him and the choice he's made or you think him an idiot too and support your local (or these days, global) unsigned band.

And no, I don't work for the majors - I did run a (very) small record label in the 90s.

(oh and about iTunes store selection: digitizing their entire back catalog, tracking down the correct holder of the publishing rights and negotiating the terms for digital distribution on every one of them is massively expensive and time consuming. Give it some time.)

Oh I understand all that, but my "idiot" reference is that the methods they're using today are causing them to LOSE business. If they were really in it for the money they'd have a business model where people like me, who can't live without music and consume v a s t quantities of it, would be buying their products.

In theory I'm their perfect customer - I've spent thousands of dollars on home audio equipment; I'm never without my music - working, driving, working-out, studying, cooking, cleaning house, painting, shooting in the studio, whatever. Plus, I'm affluent - my wife and I are both professionals and we have no kids, so I have no problem plunking down the 89 or 99 or 119 cents per song the online music stores charge, and filling up my hard drive or portable music player with the stuff.

But they hardly make a penny off me because they apparently don't WANT my business. That's why I think they're crazy.

Those 20 songs are just the tip of the iceberg. I could come up with another thousand where they came from (I'm trying to construct a Jack-FM -type playlist plus some personal choices of my own) That's why I'm pi$$ed to hear all the hype from Amazon and iTunes about all the non-DRM'ed music they say they have, only to find out that most of it is stuff out of the remainder bin.

Doubtful, but that's another story. More and more artists are wising up to the fact that the record companies' paranoia about technology is losing them sales. Here's what Gloria Estefan has to say. Turning away willing business is never a good business model.