The Netizen's Journal

For the past few months, I've been getting more and more fed up with the recording industry and the stranglehold that they have on consumers. You've heard about Radiohead and the refreshing attitude they've taken toward their latest album, and NIN's recent departure from their former record label - both of whom I applaud and support whole-heartedly. But I recently discovered a new music "market" making a name for itself, and I'd like to help it along.

People want you to share their music?

Jamendo is a (free!) service that was created in 2004 by Sylvain Zimmer, dedicated to sharing music with the world. A combination of free thinking, superb technical talent, and the Creative Commons licenses has yielded a forum useful and fun for both musicians and fans. The musicians get publication and free distribution, and fans get awesome music for free. It's actually legal, too, and I don't just mean "There's a tiny loophole that may or may not apply." The artists have put their music on this website with the intent that you would download and share this music with your friends. (If you want to make sure for yourself, read the Jamendo FAQ and check out the Creative Commons website.)

It's actually really good music, too!

At the time of writing, Jamendo is host to 6304 albums. Albums are put into any of 498 categories (tags), and come from around the world. (Six albums are by artists from the Czech Republic.) I have personally downloaded about a dozen of them, and have loved every one of them. You should know that I am not some sort of music elitist, and I love Johnny Cash as much as everybody else in this world. This is genuinely good music.

• JT Bruce is an instrumental metal band from San Diego, California - think Def Leppard, but with a lot of emphasis on guitar work.
• tryad is a virtual band specializing in "Industrial Classical Pop". If you like Morcheeba or the older albums from Hooverphonic, then you'll like tryad. (It's actually spelled try^d, with the ^ being as close to a triangle as you can get.)
• From Roots is a French reggae group that sounds a lot like - well, reggae, I guess. I don't know much reggae, but I really like the stuff that I know.

And no matter your music preference, you can find something that you like. You may even find something you'd never even dreamed of - bonus points if it turns out to be your new favorite! :)

Why can't everything be free??

As with everything, the issue of money pops up. Artists, especially independent artists such as these, don't all have recording studios in their basements, nor do they all have enough money to rent a studio for an hour on a whim. Unfortunately, the give-your-music-away business model is a little lacking in the income area. Jamendo knows this, so they've created a way for you to help and/or thank the artists. Artists can sign up for a donation feature when they register; basically, this just puts a "Donate!" link on their artist page. And should they decide to participate in the donation program, they agree to let Jamendo have a very small part of the donations, so it helps to keep Jamendo on the web. (It's only fair, I think.)

Sweet, merciful conclusion...

You probably haven't heard of Jamendo before this, and you might be skeptical of the quality of the music available. In the time it took me to write the stuff between here and the part about "6304 albums" (about 30 minutes), 3 albums were added. And in the worst case, we can use the "infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters" analogy to predict that out of these 6307 albums, there has got to be at least a handful that you're going to like. (Yes, finding a handful out of 6000 sounds daunting - but you forget, we can search, and select tags!)

Finally, I hope you have an excellent experience at Jamendo. If you do, give your friends a link, or just share the music you found. If you find it lacking, let the team know, so they can improve it! (Oh, and by the way - 4 more albums have been put up since I wrote the bit about monkeys and typewriters.)