I Own My Music

Guns n Roses’ long-awaited new album has been 14 years in the making. We aren’t all that excited about the album because we can’t remember who Guns n Roses are. Ha! The youth of today. Anyway, the surprise of their new album has been somewhat spoiled after tracks were leaked onto filesharing networks before the official release date.

The nine tracks first appeared on little-known rock website www.antiquiet.com. They then made its way onto filesharing networks and onto peoples’ computers and iPods.

The album reportedly cost the ridiculous sum of $13 million to produce. Must have been a lot of hairspray.

After 14 years of making an album, it’s no surprise that it ended up being leaked before it was due for release. If there are any Guns n Roses fans left, they will likely have got the album through filesharing networks first before they buy the CD, so it’s unlikely that sales will be affected too much.

Foxy singer Joss Stone is the latest celeb to come out and say that she supports filesharing. Joss Stones allegedly said that piracy is brilliant.

In a bit of a twist, Joss Stone said that she loves music, but she hates the whole music industry. Don’t we all! When asked after a show what she thinks about people who download her music, she said, “I think it’s great,” which raised a few eyebrows.

Joss Stone went on to say that music should be shared and it should be free. So filesharing is a good thing.

She may come under flack for saying that people should buy music, burn it, share it on filesharing networks and so on. It’s rare for a singer in her position to come out and speak so openly about this subject.

Record labels have brainwashed artists into thinking that filesharing and priacy is bad, she added.

After hearing these comments, we went and downloaded Joss Stone’s latest album using Limewire. Thanks Joss!

The release of the iPhone 3G in the UK is very exciting, but if you’re planning on using your spangly new gadget to get music downloads, you could end up with a bill for thousands of dollars.

The warning came over fears that consumers may get their music downloads from overseas. In the UK, Apple and O2 will launch an unlimited download service. But, the unlimited function of service will only work in the UK.

If you leave the UK and start downloading music, you’ll be charged £3 per megabyte downloaded in the EU and £6 for the rest of the world. This means that one song in the EU would cost about £9, or double that if you’re outside the EU.

Some other Internet functions also use data services that could rack up hefty bills, many of these kicking in without a user’s permission. So iPhone 3G users will have to disable a bunch of options before they travel.

Miles Doughty, the frontman of Slightly Stoopid, a band we’ve never heard of, has gone on record and said that filesharing is good because it gives people who would not have otherwise heard your music a chance to listen to it.

This is in line with many bands and artists who have sung the praises of filesharing for making music available to the masses in a way that was, until recently, virtually impossible.

Filesharing is said to give artists direct access to fans and would-be fans while putting record labels in the precarious position of not really having any point. Miles Doughty has praised filesharing for the exposure it has given his band, although that exposure wasn’t enough to make it to our iPods. Or perhaps it was, given this news report. The mind boggles.

Anyway, Miles Doughty says that filesharing increases a band’s ability to tour and play live shows, giving a band the opportunity to do what it’s supposed to: play music.

Despite music pundits insisting that CD sales are dead and that filesharing is the only way people are getting their music, Lil Wayne’s new album Tha Carter III has sold by the bucketload since its release on June 10.

CD sales in the US have dipped by about 11% in the past year, thanks to filesharing and other ways of getting music, but that didn’t stop Lil Wayne shifting 423,000 units in a few days.

Predicted figures for the album put CD sales at anything up to and above one million. So people are still buying CDs and filesharing has yet to kill the music industry. Interesting.

Lil Wayne’s new album is more popular than the likes of Mariah Carey and Usher. This kind of reception to a hit album is rare and is perhaps something that the music biz can learn from. Despite Lil Wayne’s new album finding its way onto filesharing networks before its release, sales of Tha Carter III appear to have not been affected at all.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has come under fire after the announcement that it is teaming up with Virgin Media to send warning letters to people who use filesharing services, such as Ares.

There was a BBC article about the issue that suggested that Virgin Media is more concerned about the music industry than it is about its customers. The article went on to say that such a move only really highlights the fact that Virgin is monitoring its customers’ Internet usage.

A rep from BPI responded to the BBC article by saying that action must be taken against illegal music downloading in order for licensed music services to make any money.

It’s a typical case of the filesharing community versus the music industry. The only difference here is that the filesharing community is represented by someone in a powerful position, namely a BBC author.

I decided that it was time to retire my old version of Ares Galaxy and pick up one of the newer — and better — version of Ares. I hadn’t been a position where I needed to download Ares for some years now, so I was essentially new to the area.

I’d been on the Official Ares site before; it’s good resource for ‘current affairs’ of the P2P filesharing world and is a great information resource. I vaguely remembered that the site had a reviews section. I’d not been there before, but I thought it might be a good place to start on my quest to download Ares.

To say I am impressed with the quality of information there really is an understatement. Even if I were new to the p2p filesharing game I wouldn’t have any trouble deciding which was the best way to download Ares. I went ahead and managed to download Ares (Ares Ultimate was my Ultimate choice) without much trouble.

Thanks very much Official Ares – you made my day a lot more trouble free than it could have been. Lifesaver. I would definitely recommend this site to new and old hands alike. There’s nothing like it anywhere on the Internet.

We had no idea that Fergal “Teenage Kicks” Sharkey had a blog, but he does, over at the Guardian website. Fantastic. In his latest post, Sharkey says that a recent survey of 14-to-24-year-olds in the UK revealed that 63% use filesharing services to download music.

Those surveyed said that they love music and that they do still like CDs. More than 80% who use filesharing services said they would be interested in legal filesharing services.

Even if such a filesharing service were created, more than half of those surveyed said they would still buy CDs. Fergal Sharkey sees the solution to all of this in subscription-based filesharing models. He may have a point here.

Fergal Sharkey seems to be one of a select group of musicians in tune with the way the music industry is heading. It’s refreshing to read a balanced and insightful opinion on filesharing and music downloads from someone who has a powerful voice.

Good job, Fergal.

Rogers Cable, Canada’s largest ISP, recently held a press conference to dispel a few myths about how it shapes its bandwidth with regards to people using filesharing networks.

A spokesperson from Rogers said that the ISP does not block filesharing traffic. Rather, it controls the traffic when it is uploading data. Apparently, many people are unaware that when they download material through filesharing networks, they are also uploading data.

Rogers limits the rate at which users can upload material. The idea behind this is that filesharing users then do not then overwhelm all other Internet traffic. Apparently, expanding the network would not solve the problem, so limits must be installed.

Filesharing traffic is designed to overwhelm other traffic. With filesharing traffic expected to triple by the year 2012, ISPs such as Rogers will have their work cut out for them to control the traffic.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently gave a demo of its new method for hunting down people suspected of downloading copyrighted material through filesharing services and other such means. This new method specifically targets students who have been using filesharing services to share music they shouldn’t have been.

The infamous Media Sentry, the RIAA’s partner in tackling filesharing, uses similar software to that which Internet users have access to for downloading music and movies. Media Sentry first scans filesharing networks for copyrighted material.

Media Sentry then matches the files with records of known pirated songs. If files are matched then Media Sentry will try and match the user’s IP address with that of college campuses. If a match is found there then the files are carefully scrutinized before a letter is sent to the campus. It’s a remarkably simple process, but it is catching out hundreds of students across America. It’s strange, however, that the method specifically targets college campuses.

There was no mention of what action the RIAA takes against people whose IPs are not on college campuses.