Last Night a Streamer Saved My Life
Back in 2004 The Onion reported on the tragic story of Sam Powers, a man who’s love affair with music ended at 35 when he discovered that buying music wasn’t fun anymore. A huge lump formed in my throat that made me choke back the emotion. Thousands of thirty-something people could, like me I’m sure, empathise with Sam’s pain.
“It’s always sad when something you thought would last forever ends, but I simply don’t have the energy to put into it anymore,” Powers said Monday. “I’ll always love music, but it’s not going to be at the center of my life anymore. My priorities have changed, I guess.”
It was many months later that my life changed when I rediscovered the love on Live365, an MP3 streaming service which allows people to share their playlists and music via their own channels. Music lovers as well as professional DJs and can fling open their CD collections, rip them into MP3s and their laptops and upload their tunes onto the Live365 and the streaming servers do the rest. And what do you know, you have your own Internet Radio Station. Its great for compulsive record shop rats, crate-shifters, laptop-musicians and frustrated DJs like myself who have a need to share the vibes. One fellow Live365 statio station owner told me that she downloads so many free MP3s that she uses Live365 to “pay back” to the public and the industry.
Intellectual-rights and licensing laws means that artists get royalties and its also free for the listener because you have to put up with cheesy ads. My “radio station” or rather MP3 playlist is at Radio.TiffinBox.
However, its apparent that lawyers and record company executives want to close in and get a peice of the action with pernicious legislation like the PERFORM ACT (Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act).
If passed, future satellite and digital radio receivers would be limited by law to what the bill calls “reasonable recording.” To the RIAA, this means that all consumers will be banned from choosing and playing back selections based on song title, artist, or genre. According to the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition, even the transmission of a recording from room to room inside a house would be restricted by mandatory blocks and controls.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are mobilising action against PERFORM.
Act now and don’t let lawyers and music companies stop user access to streamed digital music on the internet.
And please: Don’t let them stop Sam Powers, and people like him, reclaim his life and his love of music.
[That was a Public Information Message]
April 30th, 2006 at 8:31 am
I thought this was a very interesting post. Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the general public. I will definitely check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation website and get behind whatever they have planned.