Web Sheriff 2

Since my musical tastes are officially on Web Sheriff's radar, I thought I should make another statement about it. This is the last time I'll mention it.

This blog does not have a large population of regular readers. It exists only as a cathartic, creative release and a log of things I find particularly awesome and worth sharing with whoever may be out there reading. I don't advertise the blog anywhere or even talk about it or acknowledge its existence amongst anyone other than my girlfriend. My facebook profile lists it as a favorite website but nothing more than that. But while I do not know (or particularly care) who or how many people are reading it, I can guarantee that a person accessing this page will discover something new, however useless that information might be. Mostly this new information comes in the form of me talking about music and then posting a streaming example of the band in question. These are streams that exist for public use on various websites, some more dubious than others. I'm not condoning these websites, nor am I teaching anyone how to download pirated material, but I do find streaming full mp3s to be the only logical way to promote a band I like, and sometimes the only way to accomplish this is through websites like Skreemr or Grooveshark. I think free streaming music is so important that every band should make new albums available for streaming in their entirety before, during, and for a time after the album goes to market. If record companies want us to buy their product, they need to make the product a known quantity. You shouldn't blindly buy Taylor Swift's album because you heard "You Belong to Me" and are keeping your fingers crossed that the rest of her album will be just as good. You should buy it because it's good and therefore you'd like to own it. You get the point. This should include giving fans the ability to share as well as a way to compensate the artist for streams. Right now, literally none of this happens, but Grooveshark sort of gets it, so I'll continue to use their service. The labels still don't get it though.

I mention all of this because while Web Sheriff is being awfully nice in thanking me for "plugging" the artists it represents, make no mistake that his little notes of thanks are in fact thinly veiled threats on behalf of of Columbia records, and I shouldn't have to worry about something like that for being a fan. Specifically, it's lines like this that are confusing:

thanks, also on behalf of the label, management and artists for not posting any pirate links to unreleased (studio) material.

This bit was confusing because as far as I know, Columbia and Monotone do not yet have licensing agreements with Grooveshark, so in essence I WAS posting a pirated link by embedding the song. I have no idea who or what uploaded the Broken Bells song to Grooveshark, so it could very well be an illegal file. My point is that it shouldn't matter. Should I worry because I informed my friends about a band they would not have otherwise known? This type of free promotion can only help Broken Bells or any other band, and so I wish their dogs would be called off. It's a losing battle they are fighting, and the worst part is that I'm sure the members of the band wouldn't stand for it if they had the choice.

If you want to know more about Web Sheriff or just the relationship between labels, fans, and the artists and all else having to do with our rights as consumers in the ditigal age, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been the absolute best source of information. I suggest you start with this article, which deals with exactly what I've just written about.

Grooveshark

You may have noticed this site's liberal use of Grooveshark as a means of posting streaming songs to blog entries. Unlike Skreemr which seems hardly legal to use, Grooveshark is at least somewhat legitimate having somehow turned a lawsuit by EMI into a licensing agreement earlier this year. Presumably this means that artists representing EMI will be seeing a share of the revenue generated by Grooveshark's (surprisingly not annoying) ad supported model. The only problem? EMI licensed music represents only about a quarter of Grooveshark's entire user-submitted library.

This is both unsettling and a cool aspect of the EMI licensing agreement since their agreement basically just says "we know EMI music has been uploaded to your site by users illegally, but we won't sue you." Finally one of the big 4 music giants starting to understand the way this is going to work in the 21st century. The other 75% of user-uploaded copyrighted material can be removed by the copyright owner at anytime by mechanisms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

The site is great for all kinds of things including building and saving playlists as well as "following" friends and even a Pandora-like music recommendation engine. Definitely a great place to hear a track on demand.

Web Sheriff

You may have noticed that my last post was paid a visit by Web Sheriff on behalf of the legal team of whichever recording company Bob Dylan used to produce his Christmas album. I think it's Sony, but Dylan usually works with Columbia and I don't know what's going on with mergers anymore. Apparently the youtube video I posted was not the officially licensed video which can be found at Dylan's myspace page. I was not asked officially to take it down, so I won't until it becomes inactive.

If you haven't figured it out already, Web Sheriff is a real company hired usually by entertainment giants to protect against copyright violations on the internet, usually by means of take-down issuances. I think the fact that Dylan's Christmas album is for charity makes this less of a copyright violation and more of a free plug to the many thousands of readers I have which is why I think a take down notice was not issued.

My policy on using youtube, skremmr, and grooveshark will not change as a result of this visit. Commence dancing in the streets.

Digital Beatles?

It appears the Beatles back catalogue is being sold digitally online via the US-based retailer Bluebeat. This is big news because the Beatles have never before made their catalogue available online, not even through iTunes. It remains unclear as to whether or not EMI or Apple Corps have given Bluebeat permission. For now, individual songs are .25 a piece.

Source--NME.com

Update: Yes, it is illegal, and EMI will be suing. However, there is this little bit in the article I just linked:

The entire catalog of stereo Beatles albums will soon be legitimately available in digital, albeit physical, form. Apple Corp. and EMI announced the pre-order availability of 30,000 16GB Apple-shaped USB drives containing 14 albums in lossless 24-bit FLAC (better than CD quality) and 320 Kbps MP3 formats, 13 short documentary films about the albums, album art, “rare photos” and expanded liner notes, all accessible directly or through a Flash player that automatically loads on Macs and PCs.

It’s quite a statement — especially the 24-bit depth of the lossless files, which allows more gradations between volume levels than standard 16-bit (CD-quality) audio files. The only catch — they cost $280. EMI and Apple Corp. plan to release the drives on December 8.

Home Sharing

From the "where the eff were you when I was in college?" files, iTunes newest update 9.0 brought us something called Home Sharing. With Home Sharing, up to 5 computers on the same network can share their iTunes music libraries with one another. This means all you need to do is click and drag someone else's music into your own library and it's now on your drive ready to be copied to an iPod or just listened to at your leisure.

There are some hitches, of course. Something called "copyright law?" doesn't want you sharing music with other people who aren't you, so you need to "authorize" iTunes with the same user name and password on each device to be able to share freely. But with some creativity and trust this can be just a small hurdle.

Seeqpod

Seeqpod to me is like the wacky Uncle of Skreemr. The user interface is nuanced and busy, even though it seems to have more capabilities. The gist of Seeqpod is the same, just simply a search engine for tracks of music which pulls its searches from websites all over the globe. There may be a difference in the algorithms used to search the web, but that shouldn't bother the untrained user, as to my knowledge there's really no way of being sure. Whereas Skreemr (supposedly) allows you to download the tracks you find, Seeqpod just lets you save them to a playlist of your choice which can be saved for later, sent to a friend, or embedded into the boring blog of your choice.

Behold, as modern technology allows me to showcase the final song from Conan O'Brien's Late Night, along with two other random, strange tracks put together to form what some refer to as a playlist.


SeeqPod - Playable Search

SkreemR

You may have noticed that I like to back up my music blogging with sample tracks embedded into the blog. Although I can't really comment on the legality of this, I do know who I can blame if I'm in the wrong. Skreemr,is essentially the Google (which we've established is a genius) of mp3s and just individual song tracks in general. You simply enter what you're looking for into the search field and the resulting tracks (if available) will populate in order by their audio quality. From there you may play the track through skreemr's site, embed the track in a blog, or supposedly download the track to your computer. I've surprisingly not yet tried that.

Skreemr can do all of this because they don't host any of the music through their service. They simply scour the web for freely available mp3s hosted on various music blogs and websites. You'll find that it has a very user friendly interface, and I especially love how it positions itself as a search engine for rare songs and single tracks rather than a competitor to other peer to peer file sharing networks. That should at least keep it afloat for a few years before the RIAA comes knocking.

Today's track comes simply as a testament to Skreemr as an indicator of how far we've come since the days of Napster. It comes also in defiance of God's will, so far as Lars Ulrich is concerned. Here's a rare good, new Metallica song, the new single The Day That Never Comes (let yourself listen at least to the dueling guitars starting at around 5:40):

	Metallica - The Day That Never Comes
	Found at skreemr.com