Before getting into how the music industry should be responding to the technological changes in music distribution, particularly piracy, I want to discuss how consumers should be responding.

I think it’s fair to state that most people have either illegally shared music or obtained such music at least once. While this isn’t based on any research, I talk to a lot of people with different backgrounds, belief systems and bank accounts and nearly all of them have at least implied they’re okay with piracy in some or all situations. Piracy has become a common way of obtaining music without much discussion of ethics besides the fact that in most contexts, it is both illegal and undesirable by the creator. Here are some popular excuses for downloading illegally that I hear, and in some cases have used myself.

1.       “It’s just $12, and most of it doesn’t go to the artist.” While this is basically true, there is a danger to this approach. The problem with piracy isn’t just stealing a few dollars from an artist, it’s respecting the law regardless of whether we agree with it or not. Another $12 isn’t going to hurt most Americans, so why not just take the legal route?

2.       “The artist makes enough money.” This might be true if we’re talking about 50 Cent or Lady Gaga (although why would you want their music?), but to go back to my last point, it’s still illegal. Besides, a lot of people are also “stealing” songs from independent artists who are living paycheck to paycheck. Don’t do that.

3.       “I only download music from major label artists.” Insert any qualifier. It may also be bands that you don’t actually care much about, but would like to have in your library, just in case. While supporting independent and local musicians is a great practice, be careful not to fall down a slippery slope.

4.       “I can’t afford to buy the CD.” If you can’t afford to buy a car, should you steal one? Yeah, I know, it’s different. But what about the principle of it…should this ever be an excuse for illegally obtaining something?

Is piracy okay? Is it really stealing? Why and who from? These are questions we have to answer for ourselves, but hopefully these points will get you thinking. I’m not going to pretend that I know the answers to these or that I’ve never engaged in piracy, but nobody should ever engage in a behavior without understanding its implications, which is one of the goals of this blog series. Ask yourself what you believe about general moral and ethical principles such as the Ten Commandments, what you believe about respecting federal laws and copyright protections and what it means to support a person’s creative property. I believe that one should be consistent in their beliefs and actions, not just because people are looking or one can be arrested, but because it’s what one believes.

Tough stuff! Next week I’ve got some great input from people with different perspectives in the music industry on how they should respond to these issues.

The first big step in internet entrepreneurship for bands was Myspace. How could it not be? It allowed artists to quickly create their own website, complete with a song player, pictures and the opportunity to market themselves to fans worldwide. However, in recent years Myspace’s user experience, not to mention reputation, has significantly declined. While the original social networking giant still works as a great website supplement for bands, it no longer carries the clout of Facebook in the marketplace. The reason why is a detailed story, so let me focus on the merits of Facebook for tomorrow’s next headliner.

1. Everybody uses Facebook.

There are over 500 million (and increasing) active users of Facebook, half of which log on every day and 70% of which are located outside of the United States, according to their own data. This is a staggering amount of people around the world! Getting radio airplay, record and distribution deals and significant tours requires a strong fan base. In the digital age, with this many people using Facebook, what better way to introduce your art to the world?

2. Fans want an artist, not a celebrity.

Okay, so there are still Justin Biebers out there, but the most loyal fan base with the most staying power long-term isn’t found in mainstream pop music. It’s found in garages, bars and concert halls and clubs. There are an astounding number of incredibly talented bands making waves in independent music because more and more kids want artists they relate to and can talk to after the show without paying hundreds of dollars for a VIP backstage pass ticket. These groups are even appearing in more mainstream circles as this trend continues (Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons)! Facebook gives you a chance to connect on a more personal level with fans, updating them daily with personal anecdotes and band happenings, and linking them to your Twitter, blog, Myspace and YouTube pages. I know a number of professional singer-songwriters who even make their personal pages public and give their fans the same access to their lives as their own family members!

3. Facebook is easy.

In the end, we all want to make work as efficient as possible. Facebook requires a minimal amount of maintenance (With my band, I spent about 30 minutes a day updating our page and responding to fans), quickly customizable boxes and applications for providing access to music, show dates and other information, and an easy way to connect to current fans and make new ones. For example, my good friends Deadhorse (Deadhorse Facebook page) have over 3000 Facebook fans in just over 1.5 years of being a band. Some of these were gained through extensive touring and then following up via Facebook, others simply stumbled across their page. Frontman Brian Morgante does an incredible job with reaching and retaining fans through their Facebook page, never possible without such a great tool.

To sum it all up, the garage bands of today can’t expect to go anywhere very soon without using Facebook to its full potential. You can write great music, but only with the internet and Facebook will it reach the masses.

So pandora is a popular site for listening to music.  only problem is you can’t exactly choose your songs.

on grooveshark.com you can listen to whatever you want as much as you want.  and you don’t have to have an account, so it’s free.

on stereomood.com you choose what kind of mood your in, and then it plays a list of songs that match up to how you said you were feeling.

both of these services are pretty cool to use, especially if you spend alot of time on you computer and love to listen to new music.

If you happened to start liking techno music, but don’t know any of the styles, or even those who is super knowledgeable, you will find this website very interesting.

Techno.org made this website called Electronic music guide. This is a website with some ads on, but usually for more informative website. It shows different features and history of techno, trance, house,  breakbeat, jungle, and hardcore.

It shows different styles and shows the relations, groupings, and samples of all the styles. It is pretty sweet. Try it.

After looking through many other guitar tab websites, it has become clear to me that Ultimate Guitar Archive is clearly above and beyond all other competition.

With over 300,000 tabs, UG has separated itself from their competition. But it’s not the tabs themselves that set them apart, it’s the thousands of video lesson, album reviews, band interviews, news, and contest that keep the user coming back to the website, even when they aren’t looking for a tab.

With an estimated 56,261,373 page views per month (http://www.peekstats.com/www.ultimate-guitar.com), UG has enough traffic to make significant profits from advertisements alone, and with daily updates and fresh tabs, it looks like UG can only grow from here.

Ultimate Guitar is hands down the best free guitar and  bass tablature site on the web.  I’ve been a heavy user for years, and after trying many other tablature sites such as guitartabs.com, guitartabs.net, mxtabs.net and countrytabs.com, nothing compares to ultimate-guitar.com. 

Ultimate Guitar is a huge archive of user created tablature or “tabs”.  A tab is a form of guitar music written in the easiest form to understand for everyone.  Its different from sheet music in that you don’t need to know how to read music to understand it. So where sheet music uses the grand staff and music notes, tablature looks like this…

the only downside to it is that you cannot tell what the tempo for the song is or how long to hold different notes, but for playing guitar, i find this favorable because guitar is much more of a free instrument in that everyone really has their own style.

Ultimate guitar is free for any user, and you don’t have to create a user name to view tabs which is great for casual browsers.  If you create an account, that’s when the social media aspect of the site is activated.  you can talk with other users, comment on news, submit tabs and articles, and most importantly in my eyes, comment on tabs.  

Because the site is user driven, commenting on and rating tabs is a huge part of the success of ultimate guitar.  all tabs are rated on a 5 star scale.  when you browse for a tab, you can see all the tabs that have been written for a song and their rating. This is awesome when looking for a song you want because you don’t have to look through so many songs to find a good one. other users have already done it for you.

Ultimate Guitar is a great site for communicating with other musicians as well as finding good free music that is user created.