And the Limewire

Extra, extra. Read all about it!

That’s the slogan of the newspaper industry in an era when there were paperboys selling papers on street corners. At least that’s how it is depicted in movies. These days those headlines are dealt electronically and sometimes we hear about them first from friends on social network sites.

High profile music industry cases are getting to be more common. In the news in the past week was the judgement of $1.5 million against a woman dealing with copyright infringement for having music on her computer that she didn’t purchase.

Next up is the Limewire service. There are likely to be a lot of bummed out people right now because one of the main sources of sharing copyrighted material has been ordered to be shut down. It appears they have complied. Limewire is currently no longer. Though they do say they are working on a version that will actually compensate copyright holders. I’m not one to cheer yet. Mostly because Limewire isn’t the only P2P game in town. However, it does mark a great victory for people in the creative fields of music (like myself) and in film and other IP styled incomes.

The judgement against Limewire likely means that other services that are operating in similar fashion will likely be put in the crosshairs and gone after. While I understand the desire of free content, I live on the side that says if you like my creations, do the right thing and pay for it.

I see this as a starting point to where services like iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, and others are going to have a better time at making those business models work. iTunes is already a winner, however the subscription based models are still having difficulty, but the shut down of Limewire could help.

I don’t agree that the shutdown of Limewire has made Taylor Swift’s album sales rise, but I believe it’s a great PR ploy to say it did. I do think overall that when P2P finally monetizes the copyright holder, the world will again see a rise in the quality of entertainment.

Maybe this will benefit today’s pick of Arron Dean. Here’s a song that is more about the production style for me. Arron’s voice is very soft. Not a style that I would normally shine on, but the technique he’s got going on reminds me heavily of Imogen Heap. She had a song that was entirely making use of the Vocoder. The extra vocals behind the lead you hear in this song are making use of Vocoder as well. Different from Imogen but definitely reminiscent of it.

I like the flowing nature of the journey in this song. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. Instruments that come in and out and move. There’s cool use of delays and such. Might be a hard song to pull off live, but certainly fun to hear on record.

Go get it!