The people they couldn’t find included some of the biggest names in country music, people who were touring and certainly could be found with a minimum of effort, but no effort was made. A couple of the people had theaters in Branson, others had regular Vegas gigs. The system was designed not to pay.

NO KIDDING! (Pardon the shout.) I’ve known local or regional bands or solo artists with two or three albums out who still can’t make any kind of reasonable living off their recordings. Either someone else gets huge percentages off the top before the artists see a dime, or they sell at live shows, and sell CDs mainly for the value in having their name known when they seek gigs. And it’s been this way since the early 20th century. Few musicians have managed to beat the system… John Lee Hooker was one such, and they’re still trying to figure out all the different names he recorded under. In general, the recording industry thrives by stiffing working musicians, and having once been one myself, I resent the hell out of that.

Bryan and hipparchia, thanks for reminding me of my one other source of recordings… I buy them at live performances, with reasonable confidence that most of the money goes to the musicians. They’ve gotta eat, you know. Such recordings have gotten better and better over the years, as technology has improved and musicians have come to understand how to record themselves, or found other knowledgeable people to do the job.

Steve nails it: the music execs don’t know how good they had it back in the old days. I used to practically shovel money at them too. I seldom buy it now, nor do I ever pirate it.

You’re right, it’s moved from being about piracy to being about privacy.

iTunes would be a great resource for creating a mix CD as a gift. You buy their favorite songs and create a single CD for them to play at work or in the car. I did it for people in the old days of cassettes because I had the equipment to transfer from vinyl to a commercial quality cassette recording. Now I would be accused of piracy.

They really are pissing me off with this paranoia. This is no longer about piracy, it has become a matter of privacy.

My question in this case is just what the extra 30 percent or so you pay for supposedly DRM-free tunes buys you. What is the intent of embedding the identifying info, and how may the purchased license be used? For example, are spouses or other family units living in one household expected to purchase separate copies for each person? What if two accounts on two computers in the same household store tunes in common on a server or an external HD, and all tunes are legitimately purchased, but are played more or less randomly on computers used by holders of the separate accounts? May spouses in community-property states inherit licenses to play tunes if one spouse dies? May two people lie in the same bed (or even sit on the same sofa) and listen to a licensed instance of a tune simultaneously? The ridiculous scenarios just continue to accumulate. The whole thing is stupid beyond stupid.

Again, calling this scheme “DRM-free” is simply lying.

Many of you have read my approach by now, but I’ll repeat it here:
* I don’t buy or steal downloadable online music.
* I don’t buy new commercial CDs except as gifts.
* I patronize stores that sell used CDs.
* If I discover the sale of used CDs is being tracked by vendors in a way that identifies the purchaser, I’ll pay cash for purchases. Believe me, someone out there will sell them to me on that basis, and I’ll be happy to defend such purchases in court, based on long tradition in (at least) the book industry.
* If the recording industry succeeds in making even that basic transaction untenable, I’ll say fuck ’em all, and stop purchasing music altogether, in any form. They won’t know how good they had it in the old days when I practically shoveled money their direction.

There are people who do good work, but can’t buy a break. Now, if they can master the technology, you can hear them on the ‘Net, but if they couldn’t get on the radio in the old days, they ended up at McDonalds.