I received an email this morning informing me that Jamendo (the music sharing website) has won a place in the CNET Webware 100, basically a list of websites CNET recommend. I signed up and voted for Jamendo a couple of weeks ago but I’d forgotten all about it, until the email prompted me. If you haven’t tried Jamendo before I really recommend it. They promote Creative Commons licensed music, and everything is free to download and share. In this age of large corporations suing old grannies over alleged piracy, I find that refreshing. I regularly discover great new music on there, and I’ve even hooked many of my music anorak friends on it too. The likes of Professor Kliq, The Rinky Dinks and Arthur Cravan, amongst others, are popular with our group.
So congratulations to the Jamendo team on making it into this list, and I hope it directs more people their way. We use the site a lot to find music for our Linux Outlaws podcast, and it’s an invaluable resource. They seem to have some problems with their download service lately, possibly due to high demand; but I use the Torrent links anyway. BitTorrent being used legally, and to the benefit of musicians?! This is not possible according to the RIAA and their cronies.
Jamendo are pushing the NC (non commercial) license on a lot of their music at the moment, this is a major problem for some Free Software proponents. They sell commercial licenses as a revenue source you see. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that, but I can see both sides of the arguments. I’m never against musicians making money of course, how could I be? I’d be shooting myself in the foot if I were. Artists can also make money from donations, merchandising and live performances of course though. Physical media is still popular, even when free downloads are available. People want to own something they can put their hands on, and smart artists are capitalizing on that, as I’ve said before. The downloads often act as an advert for the product more than anything else. I’ve bought lots of concert tickets, albums and all kinds of other stuff from bands I’d never even have heard of without downloads. As an alternative to the traditional major label system, I think this will only grow and grow. Jamendo could be a part of that, who knows. So get over there and get yourself some great new music. After all, that’s what all this is about.
I’ll see you there.
Dan
Thanks for turning me on to this – I’m loving it!
@papageek – Glad I could help 🙂
+1 on using BitTorrent – if I can push a bit of data too, it is a good thing.
I would say that the music used from Jamendo on Outlaws is of extremely high quality. As you know, I have appreciated Pornophonique a lot, and the STEEP album you took a recent number from is brilliant – every number on that album could have been used, it is good stuff.
What I would find interesting is a comparison of similar bands getting a record contract, how it compares to donations through Jamendo.
I don’t think I ever heard a conclusion about Severed Fifth, but of course, if Lugradio is not around to announce it…
@mjjzf – Yeah that’s a really good point. Everything went quiet after the initial Severed Fifth release. Was it ever even put onto Jamendo? I know Jono moved to America not long after and that probably affected things. I’d like to hear more conclusions from it. What he felt he learned and so on. There are artists who definitely do well and earn a living from gigs etc with a CC model. Brad Sucks and Jonathan Coulton spring to mind
Nice overview, i love Jamendo i keep finding something to keep me occupied! Though do you find some people are still skeptical about trying ‘free’ music thinking is the whole thing you and fab said its like when windows guys download the ‘pro’ version it must be much better…. haha 🙂
But i generally see once they try it they like it! 🙂
@redbrain – I’ve had many people argue all the free music must be rubbish, but so far I’ve managed to convince every one of them with just a few tracks. There’s some really good stuff on Jamendo and many other places.