Down it goes.

Hometaping got me thinking...

Today, one of the largest music sharing sites has gone down at the hands of an international group of RIAA thugs law enforcement. It was an exclusive site based upon invites, that kept to a strict ratio of uploads to downloads with the goal of maintaining its integrity and speed.

Probably the largest such place since Napster (bigger than Soulseek?) went down 8 years ago. Its 2007 quickly going on 2008 and while it cost some fat cats some money it showed that there is a gaping hole when it comes to downloadable digital music that doesn't suck (aka music outside of the major labels).

iTunes doesn't have nearly the selection it had or the quality. Obviously the problem was free music with no type of payment system. What its popularity does show (outside of people that like to steal) that there is a void when it comes to access to non-MTV mainstream bull. Typically it wasn't used to get the top 20 single it was used to get that 320 bit quality EP of that 1982 Greensleeve release of The Scientist's Scientist Wins The World Cup record. Like Hometaping says you can take away all the major record label stuff most didn't use it for that.

Again its seems like Record Labels have missed the boat. They have come up a dollar short and a day late. While there are a few out there that are thieves, a majority of music lovers have a craving for rare and hard to get digital music and would LOVE an outlet to get the artists the money they deserve. Wikipedia has a point in this:

"In contrast to the opinion of the police, the site's main purpose was not to release albums before they were commercially released. The albums that were leaked early only accounted for a very small percentage of the vinyl, lossless and hard to find rips of rare music."

This seems to be about right. eMusic might be a start but its depth is just not there. It seems that we must resort to labels continuing to use scare tactics and intimidation to put listeners into their place and fight for their spot in the music listening pecking order.

The writing is on the wall however for the fat cats, as we move forward and in light of Radiohead's latest effort, label execs and their cd printing will soon be an unnecessary middle man that will hopefully be cut out. Hopefully at some point listeners can directly get money to the artist and get the rare stuff they crave. Sure shut it down it really doesn't matter give a couple months and there will be something rearing its ugly dome.

Read more:
Huge pirate music site shut down from BBC News Online