Beatmixed

While the mainstream critics seem to be giving the thumb ups for the new Napster, members of the blog community are poo-pooing the music-rental model.  Others have taken matters into their own hands, devising clever circumvention methods to save unprotected copies of their Napster rented music.  As a DJ and music geek, I think DRM sucks the big toe and the idea of renting DRM protected music does not excite me.  I also believe that DRM does nothing to promote an artist, as it attempts to control the spread of music rather than promote the spread.  The average artists needs their fans to promote their music and DRM alienates these fans.  I won’t buy any CD labeled as copy protected; I’m no longer a Beastie Boys listener as their label has totally irritated me by releasing the last CD with lame-ass (albeit circumventable) copy protection.  As more and more labels decide to ruin their CDs with this shit, I’ll buy fewer and fewer CDs.  It’s just no use if my main goal as a consumer is to rip it and put it on whatever device I happen to use for music playback.  If I can’t do that, or labels make it terribly inconvenient to do that, why would I continue to patronize these labels?

Enough of the rant, though.  What does excite me is the formation of musician-centric Internet labels like Magnatune and the popularization of new distribution and compensation models that don’t involve a pyramid hierarchy in which the artist are at the bottom.  This is what I believe to be the future of music, and there are no digital rights that need to be managed there.