Bad organizations and good music

I should first assert my opinion that I think the RIAA (don't worry if you can't reach the site, it gets hacked as much as a bad Hollywood movie) is an incredible group of idiots who wouldn't know a good music policy if it kicked them in the nuts.

CD sales are not what they used to be, but then again what they used to be was called price fixing. The music industry is a bit of a joke. There are those who are either boycotting or fighting the RIAA. If you are using a file-sharing program, please be careful.

Personally, paying $16 for a CD with one, maybe two songs I like is asinine. Maybe I don't understand the artists creative concept. But maybe, just maybe there is a lot of crap that is being released. KaZaa, Morpheus, Limewire and Audiogalaxy, etc. all served to address several issues, to name a few:

1. CDs are overpriced
2. Users wanted to hear music before buying it
3. Music was shared with those who would otherwise not have bought it
4. Access to music you may not have considered listening to or buying previously

Wanting to be a righteous citizen, I was fairly excited about the idea of ITunes and Rhapsody. But then other problems arise; not all the artists you want are available, wonky digital management implementations and...wait for it, increasing prices. How the fuck can you justify selling bytes for more money than the bits? So people are back to a virtual square one, unless you live in Canada, then it's the golden age.

So what's a music loving person to do? I don't know about you, but streaming Internet radio created by small, no name artists and labels is very appealing. There are quite a few out there (at least until the RIAA or someone else taxes them out of existence), but here are a couple that I like:

Magnatune is an interesting concept, they and was sent to me by a friend who has vowed never to buy another CD ever again from a major record label. It's a small operation that applies the shareware model to music and artists get 50% of the purchase price. I've been listening to their streaming radio and deciding which artists I want to invest in with my money. Yes, I wrote invest, because that is what it feels like when you know the artist is getting half the money.

Speaking of record companies, Magnutune had its own blog and it posted the results of a small run in with a record executive earlier this year which makes for some funny ass reading.

Another little operation is Netmusique. It is a cool streaming music site with Jazz, House and Techno. I listened to it all day today while working on my research paper and it was seriously cool. They are one of the longest running house music channels and are constantly well ranked in the Shoutcast index.

Did someone say Shoutcast? The Nullsoft Shoutcast network is amazing with more than 5,800 servers and 50k listeners at any given time. I'm guessing most of you have already heard and used this service due mostly to the popularity to Winamp.

I'm not an Internet radio guru and I may be just some bitter anti-music industry ranter, but these types of efforts seem to be steps in the right direction.