free music.
just create any random video, replace the crappy audio with the high quality music track you actually want and then record the resulting track back to your computer. simples.
Along with world+dog, I overlooked very something important this week. I was wondering why, to launch its new music service, Google would want to get into the messy and thankless business of administering rights. Best to leave the region-by-region haggles to someone else, I reckoned. But Google is already in the business of …
.. Only if the licence also allows them to distribute the recordings in return for payment etc.. otherwise it might be a very narrow licence that only allows them to improve the audio that already exists on uploads. I can imagine that a narrow licence like that might be much cheaper and easier to obtain. And recording companies might not like people using their tracks, but are probably even more unhappy when is also sounds crappy; this way they get something back at least, and their artists sound better. Whether it can be freely converted into a raw distribution licence might be a very long and expensive saga.
I've posted before - we *need* an easy, accessible, no-stupid-software-like-iTunes-required master website with a catchy title like mymusic.com where we can go, search for whatever we want (regardless of genre and country) and download at a fair price without arbitrary restrictions based upon where our IP address happens to be, in the format MP3/AAC/raw of our choice (and NO price difference for 'better' recordings). If such a service existed for the music I like to listen to, I'd use it, instead of pulling the sound from YouTube downloads.
Google is one of the few organisations that might pull off something like this. Apple tried, but their catalogue of the more obscure is woeful, their search is inadequate, and to actually do anything you need iTunes. Oh, and the prices don't scale - check out $ vs £ vs €; listed in order cheapest to priciest.
If the music industry would rather sit on their fat asses and pervert our laws, why not let Google have a crack at this? It can't be any worse than "you're a criminal for downloading a song you can't buy legally"...
The reason IP (horrible term, but whatever) is important, is that it is one of the few exports the western world has left.
We are quite screwed should people manage to erode IP rights for their own ends, because our chief export will cease to be valid (it's going that way anyway, you could easily argue it's inevitable).
Google seems to be actively encouraging eroding IP rights these days, as it sells ads on the back of free exchange of information.
Life was much simpler when we exchanged hard drugs for goods that were hard to get locally*
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
I am not sure that you are correct with this - Hollywood may produce a lot of entertainment, but so does Bollywood, and China for that matter. As a result, I doubt if the west as a whole is a net exporter, California probably is, but whatever the locals may think, there is more to the world than just the USA.
In any case, trying to base an economy on something intangible is a bad idea, hence the current banking crisis.
( @ AC 11:05 )
...in fact, I think they're watching out for their own corporate bottom lines, and I don't believe it goes any further than that. Creator rights? A scrap to the musicians, to keep the musicians happy in the production work.
II believe that they'd also like to believe that the entire collected legal resources of the nation are behind them, in their crusade - I'm not aware of their being proved wrong, in that, so far - and that it's them vs. the morass of spoiled "little people".
I don't believe it's really so simple, though - or so simple, in *that* way, at least - once the surface of the matter has been scratched. There are more stakeholders in the equation than the self-beloved IP enthusiasts and the formal corporate and individual music rights holders. There's also we, the consumers. Who's speaking for us, then?