Piracy is all I seem to be hearing about on the web these days. Record companies suing people left right and centre, entire torrent distribution sites being shut down and what this tells me is that Record Companies are scared. And they should be!

I don't understand why record companies are blaming fans for downloading music for free. If you see a dollar on the pavement

do you pick it up? If someone is offering you something for free would you take it? Most of us will say "Yes" without thinking too much about our moral obligations.

 

Last month the RIAA took down a popular torrent tracker called Oink.cd. I think they have failed to see a golden opportunity in having their music freely distributed amongst  music hungry audiophiles at absolutely no cost to them. No advertising, no bandwidth, no hardware. Yes, the users were downloading tracks they should have been paying for but instead of arresting the site owner what would have happened if the RIAA decided instead to negotiate a licensing subscription service to the Oink.CD members for an affordable amount each month?

 

So here is how I see the current situation on a personal level:

• I love to make music
• I want to spend as much time as I can making more music
• In order to that I will need an income from my music
• Customers want music freely available at little cost to them

 

So what if I said to you: Here is my latest release, you can download it from any torrent site legally and all you have to do to license it is visit my website, download a unique license and code,  rate the tracks in the release and possibly donate a few dollars if you think it is worthy of your money?

 

What I am asking is, what if we make a brand new type of music license that meant you could keep our tracks legally if you went to our site and downloaded the license after your download?