Jag är småkär i The Wind Whistles

@Job – -Jösses vad bra musik det var!

I believe there’s plenty of good music on Jamendo, and since the service and number of both registered users as well as artists in there keep growing it could be seen as a sign that there’s ok stuff in there. You guys should sign up there

As with any other music you will however have to find it, even on Jamendo. If one compares Jamendo as a concept with a music store the music store usually has plenty of artists one has heard of, so, if you are looking for a specific commercial artist you would know that (s)he’s in there and one would be able to find the “good music” directly, granted one liked that specific artist.

Again, the comparison between a normal music store and Jamendo can be problematic since casual music stores (non-niched, non-small, non-local) often only carry the most known artists and whatever happens to be the commercial trend for the moment, while other type of stores have a much wider approach to music and genres.

I’d say that Jamendo will contain a majority of crap and minority of good stuff, as would most music stores, seen from the individuals specific preferences. Most individuals have narrow taste and usually stick to certain genres. And even in the cases where the individual has a broad and wide taste and like different genres (s)he’d usually limits her/himself to a few artists in each. Summarized, every person can point out many artists (s)he think sucks and a few (s)he likes.

I don’t believe that has changed with Jamendo. The “problem” is that it takes some patience. Imagine you enter a music store that carries LP:s and 12″. But wherever you look you only see artists you haver never ever heard of. What would you do? You’d stick around, and listen. Try different records. And that’s what goes for Jamendo as well – one has to give it some time and find the music. Since the entry level is low (all you need is to sign up and have the internet) Jamendo will of course have a higher crap-ration than many special stores have, but, if one can withstand that and improves the music searching techniques it won’t take long before it pays off – new good artist will be discovered, and, it’s legal and free.

The concept of having a large database, or several ones, with free music doesn’t have to implicate that it’s the only solution to how music should be, or rather, must be distributed. Even if I as an anarchist personally never would pay to get to hear an album (while I would show my appreciation and support the artists by going on concerts, donating etc if I found the album satisfactory) and like the Jamendo model I’d be perfectly happy if people kept on using services like Spotify if they feel like paying for them and if they prefer the music on them instead of the tracks found on Jamendo-like projects. There are no conflicting interests from the audiences side.

I believe good free music can and is already produced. It’s proven now and will keep on being proved in the future as more and more artists dare take the step from the conventional copright scare over to some kind of copyleft.

One of the all time greatest neoliberal & capitalist inventions is the lie that people, as soon as they can’t earn profit, will stop being productive and that all creativity will die. Sure, that’s true – if you’re a profitmonger. Music has however always been produced, even in ancient tribes that had no notion of what “profit” or “propertyrights” were.

Lastly, yeah, you’re right – freedom without alternatives isn’t any freedom at all. I reckon we have plenty of alternatives today: Legal commercial, pirated commercial, and copyleft. It’s kind of discussing socialism: I wouldn’t give a shit if people chose to be exploited and live in a capitalist society if there really was an alternative (socialist?) society. It would be their own choice. As you write – freedom is only within the scope of choices. Hence, I wouldn’t ever lead a campaign against anyone that tries to sell his cd/lp. (I would however question on what philosphical grounds that person can claim that the sounds on it are his/hers since that person has ripped off a million musicians in a million ways in order to create the album, and they did the same ad infinitum, but that’s another discussion…)

Almost forgot: Keep up the good work – your stuff is great. It’s a shame thats o few people actually do something political of their work.

Jeg synes det er bra med alternativer. Jeg er sikker på at jeg kommer til å være sint fordi spotify misbruker den monopol-posisjonen jeg tror de vil få bare kanskje kort tid fra nå. Men foreløpig er det vel ikke akkurat en seriøs utfordrer, og det går på for det første katalog og størrelse, og for det andre brukergrensesnitt.

Selvfølgelig også kudos for å utfordre den rådende copyrighten de fleste selskapene insisterer på å forholde seg til.

Men viser det ikke nettopp litt av sjølve dilemmaet med frihet? Nettop at frihet uten alternativer ikke er et spesielt godt alternativ? Heller ufri med god og gratis musikk enkelt enn fri med dårlig musikk vanskelig?

Eller er jeg for negativ, nå?