Looks like Audiogalaxy is done for.  My queue suddenly disappeared; every song on the whole site is now blocked!  Except for the few things that are being specially hosted on AG’s own servers, which is nothing I really want.  They’ve fixed it so musicians are going to have to "opt in" to get their songs shared on AG… which means my little group is kaput.


Might as well confess: for the past seven months I’ve been running a really cool group on Audiogalaxy, under my username charmap.  I’ve kept my identity mostly anonymous up ’til now, because it didn’t matter who I was… my own music has nothing to do with the crap we’re trading in that group.  Which is called Incredibly Strange Music, after the RE/search book/compilation of outsider and incorrect music.  We got a little over a hundred members and we’re song-spammers — we trade rotten music with each other, and 99% of it is out of print.  None of the artists we trade are going to be calling AG to give their permission.  We can’t share music anymore, simple as that.  Fucking RIAA assholes!!!  I’m sorry… I know AG wasn’t going about things the right way, but I wish they could’ve made it work somehow.  Why couldn’t it work the same way radio works?  You can play anything you want on the radio, you don’t have to get permission first!  And the musicians get paid, so why can’t the file-trading services figure out a way to do the same thing?  Monitor what people are trading, and make payments to BMI and ASCAP for whatever got traded.

Argh.  I got soooo much amazing stuff from my weird-music pals on AG.  We had a lotta laughs.  I’m in another group too, for antique Western Swing music, and it’s the same story… people are making MP3s from their old 78s to trade, and of course there’s no way we’re ever going to get somebody’s freakin’ permission for that.

Well, maybe it’s for the best anyhow.  I have to get our apartment packed up, I have all kinds of things I could be doing other than listening to terrible old novelty songs and shit.  Whatever it takes to pry my hands off this computer!  But still, waaaaahhhhh…

A lot of people are migrating to Filetopia.  But there’s no Mac client for it.  So I dunno… I think I’m just going to wait and see.  I’ll keep an eye on the techie websites and see what happens in the world of P2P.  It really is sad, that there can’t be a way for us to do this legitimately and legally.  Really harshes my mellow.