Dr. RIAA or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Torrent

For some strange reason both the music industry and copyright law interest me. I am not really sure why this is, but what I do know is that I really can’t stand the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and like to stay up to date on watching them burn their industry to the ground. Especially now that judges might be understanding that mafia style tactics of trying to make an example of people is not a viable business model.

Before I go into the RIAA I feel that I should at least justify my stance on the issue. First off, as a pirater I mostly take a product that I would not buy in the first place. My mp3 player has over 20 gigs of music and that would roughly come out to about $5000 had I planned on buying that music legally. Music has become a commodity and our generation is both bombarded with it (see MTV/commercials/ringtones/movies) and demand it (see all the earplugged people walking around/working/exercising/reading/generally living in a stereo music cloud).  Obviously im not going to be able to pay to fill my Zune, so instead (and conveniently for me) I consider it free advertising for me to make a copy of an artist’s music and keep it on my mp3 player to show and play for others. For example below I will suggest some music and tadah, free buzz for your artist, Universal Music Group, you’re welcome. Also, since my preferential medium is digital distribution it’s not like there is a theft taking place. You will never be able to convince me that creating my own electronic copy is in any way theft, no matter how many FBI ads are put at the beginning of a DVD that says its the same as stealing a car, because its not. If I could make a copy of that car without stealing any resources from you, you can bet I would. I understand that there are future monetary gains that may have been forfeited by me making a copy from someone else, but maybe if you actually had a pricing scheme that allowed me to get what I wanted you would be better off than trying to having your lawyers running around suing people to try to take out as much flesh as they can to plug the holes in your sinking ship of a music industry.

I know that you hear that you starve artists by pirating their music and not paying for their product makes them not want to make music but, lucky for me, I find that people that are making music only because they can make money at it happen to make shit music. If piracy had started 10 years earlier, there is a very real chance I would not have heard any Nickelback songs. I find that comforting. Plus if we all act right now,  newspaper headlines could read: Paris Hilton unable to feed self, starves. It’s not like she is selling tapes out of the trunk of her car to make ends meat people, she put out a record because she would be turning down money not to. So sorry musicians but you will have to actually learn to play music and play it at live shows to make a living at this… unless of course you are Nine In Nails, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Madonna, Jimmy Buffet, the Eagles or any other artist that has figured out that you can make more money by selling music straight to the consumer and cut out the middle man (thats you RIAA). Not to mention that this week NIN has put out another free album, this one you can’t even pay for if you wanted to.

There are many alternatives to the current broken model:  iTunes monthly subscriptions (with compensation to the industry to each iPod sold) – a $5 surcharge for your internet subscription to get a library of music – selling advertisements with downloads or streams – www.pandora.com  – all very possible business strategies that would bring in a lot of money. Selling mp3s at the current album price is not viable.

So thank you RIAA, you have inspired to make sure everyone is sharing files correctly. And now as an encore…

HOWTO: TORRENT

I assume Big Dog is still trying to use Napster to download his Hootie cuts, so do yourself a favor and start using torrents. The main benefits are a much better transfer method which increases speed and a much better way to search for files. Using torrents is a two step process and here is what you need to know. A “torrent” is a link that takes you to a list of people that are seeding a file and a “client” is the application that manages the download.

First go to www.utorrent.com and download the free program ( the “client”), and install it.To search for what you want to download go to a torrent searcher, like www.torrentz.com or www.piratebay.org. Here is an example if you went to torrenz.com and searched for The Black Keys, you would get a link to their album Love Potion here (at least listen to the first 3 songs of this album they are fantastic). You then click on whichever site you want to download the .torrent file from (usually the first one) and your uTorrent program will automatically open it download it. A torrent will have a list of files it contains and you can choose to leave any of them out if you don’t want them. For example that Black Keys link will probably give you all the mp3s for the album and some album art and maybe a playlist, click off any files you dont want. For extra credit download this album too (its the best album I have heard in awhile).

If you still need help, watch a nerd explain the process step by step http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KV5mG6k4pg