sounds good to me…

So my friends have great ideas, and I usually catch on to them much later.

One recent good idea they’ve had forever, and I just got hip to is: NOISETRADE

There are artists out there who – now get this – care about MORE than just making money from their stuff!! *gasp. I know. Crazy, right?

So here’s the thing. You go to NOISETRADE, and find music you like by sampling the artists right then and there, with no downloads needed and no crazy pop-ups to help them exist. It’s extremely easy to use.

If you find an artist you like, you can download all of their cd one of two ways: 1. Tell 5 of your friends about what you’re doing (they send them a link ONCE, and never anything ever again). 2. Pay them whatever you think the album is worth when combined with how much you have available to pay them. (to say it simpler: pay them ANY amount)

Then you download the music onto your computer, and burn it to a cd…and you’re solid.

My only beef? Most of the music selection is uniformly “different”, with a lot of hippy-sounding indie folk. You won’t have heard of most of the bands, because they haven’t spent much time/money telling the world about themselves. Also, a ridiculous amount of them claim to sound like Derek Webb. (he’s one of the founders, so either they’re sucking up to him, or his fans….or maybe one of them actually does sound a bit like him….but I’ve not found any)

But if you go through the selection a bit…you may find a few worth checking out. And it can’t hurt to listen to a different genre of music once in a while….right? And if you’re one of those people who love to go into a social situation knowing something about a good artist none of them have heard of thereby staking your place the the one “in the know” (you all know who you are), this is a pretty good source. 🙂

And by doing so you’re participating in the sharing of art done in a very “right” way I think.