LET'S BUY A SONG WITH CASH.

Interesting development -- Juliana Hatfield is now offering free, new songs for download from her website as unrestricted MP3's.

The concept is this: there's a furor raging over the legal and ethical position on free music download and sharing. On the one hand there are huge multinational corporations suing children and grandparents for copying digital files that let them listen to songs so ubiquitous as Paranoid and Happy Birthday. On the other side of the line drawn in the silica is the rest of the world whose sense of entitlement makes them think that the work of artists belongs somehow, inaliebly, to the people. Copy and share, copy and share, this part of the world somehow believes that acquiring the product of artists' labor is somehow helping the artists, just by listening. Maybe it is. At their most honest, the file-sharers admit that the artists' livelihood is really not their issue and the downloading proceeds apace.

...

When a song is downloaded, you will have an option. You can decide that ownership of this song is your right and freely distribute the files to your friends and to the people who also think it's their right, without payment. Or, you can support the artist who wrote and recorded this song and click the PAYPAL button to the right of the download link and send Juliana a contribution. The iTunes standard of $.99 may seem too high for you, in which case you can send $.50 - though there is virtually nothing else you can buy legally for $.50. Alternatively, you can think of the number of people with whom you might share this file and give a multiple of $.99.

There are four songs posted so far, and they just started a couple weeks ago. I've only listened to them once each, but at least one is quite a bit better than what was on her latest album, so hopefully there's more good stuff to come, maybe even some tracks from her lost album, God's Foot.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra ::: 2004:12:21:23:37