I appreciate your comments and your interest but this matter has been raked through from just about every angle for
the past several years. The fact is that the mp3 format just isn't the best format to prevent a user from downloading or
copying a music file without paying for it. It's the worst format choice for copyright integrity.
We have the majority of our CD catalog listed with just about every major pay-per-download vendor site, including
Roxio's Napster, iTunes, MusicNow, EMusic, & WalMart.com, plus 2 digital jukebox services....These sites are all
good legal sources of legal digital distribution.
A "digital library" type of source for folks to study from is a great idea, but impractical for small catalogs such as ours.
To prevent the files from being "saved" to hard drives and copied, the selections would have to be streamed on demand.
This is available as a subscription service by many of those same vendors I've listed. For us to develope our own service
is just too costly for now, though it truly is a goal we wish to achieve in the future. As I also believe that digital distribution
will be the primary way to sell music in the future.
Based on the legal sources available online, there is just no good excuse for violating copyrights for the sake of education.
I was NEVER given a free textbook in all of my college years....
If we don't all do our part to help preserve the integrity of recorded music, there will be no feasible way to produce more
wonderful works in the future.
Links for you:
http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/servlet/MainServlet
Mon pardon. Ok, thanks for clarifying that. Well, that's good news then. When I get a high-speed connection back, I'll defintely subscribe to Napster and will buy alot of music from Swallow/LL. Is Goldband in this as well?
If you really want it on mp3, you buy/download/burn/RIP the cd with CDex to regular mp3 format. It's a pain but that's the way to do it legally without physically buying the CD itself.
As far as comp cd's come out. I'd like to see a box set of the 50s-60 Dancehall bands like Aldus Roger, Joe Bonsall, Nathan Abshire, the Rambling Aces, the Scott Playboys, etc.... I'd go nuts.
It's ironic that this is coming up now. My wife called me into the office to check out the new service she'd just subscribed to, (Emusic) and showed me about 114 Cajun and Zydeco albums. The price is cheap. 40 downloads per month for $9.99. At 25cents per song it's one of the cheapest available.
I've already Loaded Ray Abshire's new album and one of Horace Trahan's older albums.
I had no clue Horace played old style Cajun like that till I checked the cd out on this site.
There is a free trial right now with 50 free downloads. Worth checking out!
(Oh, by the way, the Cajun/Zydeco is listed under World Music. Punch that and then look for Cajun under style of world music)
Lz
This has certainly been an interesting discussion. It is a shame that the words from the record companies are so stultifying. Their arguments are specious. Requiring songs to be removed from a website or allowing 30-second snippets might increase their revenue by a few pennies, but it will make it difficult to relate the songs to the wonderful narratives the Neal has written about the songs and the times in which they were recorded.
If record companies are interested in revenue and in expanding the market for their (and all Cajun) recordings, they should encourage websites like Neal's. Maybe they don't know how difficult it is to find Cajun recordings or how few people know about the music.
If they want to increase revenue, record companies could figure out how to make their recordings available and how to market them. A single internet site that has available Cajun recordings by all labels and artists would be a good start. Then a regular newslettter describing the recordings should be regularly distributed. Customers would of course have to be treated fairly. The biggest problem today is that it is quite difficult to learn about and then find specific Cajun recordings.
Just as an example, how many people know where to find two terrific Cajun recordings, one by Leo Abshire and Allen Touchet and one by Jason Frey and Al Berard? The first is untitled (I actually heard about it on this Board.), and the second is titled "Old Style Cajun Music."
How could anyone buy those (and hundreds of others) if they do not even know about them, much less where they can purchase them? Using the internet to increase the market for Cajun music would increase money for the artists and for the record companies. If done correctly, it would also be a pleasant benefit for customers.
That is where record companies should focus their efforts. Trying to reduce the ability of people to listen to the music by requiring them to pay for downloading songs will actually discourage them. The bigger opportunity is to increase the base of people who know about Cajun music. If they know, they will buy.
Musicians, producers, distributors, and sellers need to make money to survive. Customers need to be treated fairly. Limiting access to the music is counterproductive to that goal.
I took a look at Emusic's list and saw some Swallow, Jin and MdS labelled CDs there as well as others. One label that was missing though was ACE. They have great compilations. Two that I own are Floyd's Early Records and Cajun Classics. They contain the best of the Swallow label. So if Swallow wants to renew copyrights on their music, they have to battle with ACE I guess.