Au revoir to AG pals
Monday June 17, 2002 – 11:21 pmI’m running around on Audiogalaxy trying to gather e-mail addresses and new locations for all the people I’ve met in the past ~2 years, and all the genre-specific groups I’ve joined at one time or another. It’s pretty sad. The message boards over there are all boiling over with postings. Most people are cursing the RIAA and a lot of them are swearing they’ll never buy another CD again. I keep thinking… please don’t boycott the INDIE labels!! But it’s no use, people are just furious, and for good reason. It’s like someone coming in and taking away our TV remote… we want to be able to hear good music, and THEN choose what we’re going to buy, not the other way around! And most of all, we want access to music that is no longer in print. For me that’s the biggest problem of all. If you can’t buy something, and you’re not allowed to share anything but the "authorized" material, then 90% of everything that’s ever been recorded in the past hundred years is off-limits. That’s just a crime; there has to be a better way!!
I don’t know what’s going to happen with the ISM group. We’re all discussing the options, talking about where to go. We have new members knocking on the door and I don’t know what to do about it… I would hate to admit them, only to kick everybody out 2 days later! Anyway, I need to keep it open for the time being, until the fury dies down a little and people start moving off to wherever they’re going to go. How sad, how stupid.
We have a group theme song of sorts… "It’s A Gas" by Alfred E. Neuman. Good luck finding that on yer Kazaas or what have you! It’s from an old Mad Magazine record. There are a million obscure songs like that, that will be so hard to find on any of the filesharing services I know of. Just the fact that you can’t keep a wish-list of songs — you have to keep typing titles in over and over — it’s an insult, it’s like going back to the Stone Age!!
June 18th, 2002 at 9:02 pm
Yesterday, I was in such a sad state of mourning over the death of AG. Hands-down, the best service EVER for finding music. My fave thing about it? Being able to be at work, hear a song on the local college station that I liked, connect to the AG website, search and FIND songs by the band, click them and have them download on my home puter running my sattelite, and then come home to new tunes waiting for me. Finding new bands was never so easy. But something to remember: everyone groaned when Napster went away, but then along came AG, kicking Nap’s ass in every way. We gotta just hope that this void will provide the opportunity to some saavy programmer to come and take what AG had and make it better.
Edith, knowing that your tastes are all over the place, if you do find a place/P2P program that caters to those a bit far from the mainstream, will you share it here with us?
I found this on AG’s bulletin board yesterday, and I thought it summed up my love of d/l’ing music:
zeonnebra - Top 10 reasons why I download music & will continue
1. Japanese music. I live in Canada, and it’s hard to get Japanese bands’ music. You have to find a site that has the cd, that will ship to Canada, and you usually have to pay duty on top of Japanese prices. On album can cost $60.00, assuming you can track it down & get it shipped.
2. Unreleased music. Like I mentioned earlier, I only got to use Audiogalaxy for a week, but I found an entire Shonen Knife live broadcast from NHK Radio Japan. You can’t get it on cd.
3. Rare b-sides, compilation tracks & remixes. You own every album by your favourite band, but there are always rare tracks that managed to escape you. Side 2 of an out of print single or some song from an obscure compilation album.
4. Punk rock. I’m a guitar player & I’ve been in lots of bands. We released a few singles & cassettes here and there way back in the ’80’s. They’ve been unavailable for years, unless you’re able to find a used copy online someplace & you’re willing to pay $100.00 to get them, until Napster came along, and Audiogalaxy. I’ve managed to track down all sorts of impossible to find indie ’45’s by similar bands through programs like this one.
5. Replacing lost, stolen or damaged vinyl. I used to have a huge record collection, but I had to sell all my vinyl about 10 years ago. I’ve replaced a lot of it on cd, but I’m not too interested in some, like old stadium rock from the ’70’s. Kiss, for example. I once owned all their albums up to Dynasty, but I got sick of them. I’m not interested in buying their albums again, but one day I went on a Kiss downloading binge because I was feeling nostalgic. This is music I’ve already paid for, so nobody’s getting ripped off.
6. Sampling new music. Perfect example, The Strokes. I downloaded the album a year ago & liked it, so I went out & bought the Australian import since it wasn’t released in Canada yet. I also sample music by bands who are coming to town because it helps me decide if they’re worth going to see.
7. Convenience. I’ve downloaded a lot of songs I already own on cd simply because it’s faster and easier to download it than it is to run to the other room & dig through my cd’s to find the song I feel like listening to.
8. Backups. Music to take with me to work or wherever. I could rip all my cd’s one at a time and convert them to mp3, but it’s much faster and easier sometimes to grab them off the internet already converted. I’m talking about music I already own.
9. When I’m at work. My albums are at home. I often feel like listening to songs I didn’t bring with me, and it’s nice that I don’t have to wait until I get home to listen to them. I own every Ramones album, but I still download a lot of Ramones songs because I don’t carry their entire catalogue around with me, and I often feel like listening to them.
10. Curiosity/self-abuse…just how bad is Britney Spears version of I Love Rock & Roll? Download it and find out. It’s torture! Not everyone who downloads top 40 music does it because they like it. Sometimes it’s just to get a laugh. Nobody’s losing money because I wouldn’t spend my money on that rubbish if my life depended on it.
June 19th, 2002 at 5:03 am
Super dooper points matt. heres some trivia fer ya…what fab singer gal did I discover 2 yrs ago on a filesharing site and later GO OUT AND BUY 2 of her cds at the record shop? Answer: Ms EDITH FROST!