Support it, please.

1. From today
Saul Williams Niggy Tardust
Thank you for your interest in Saul Williams.
Order number: **********************
date: 11/1/2007
You have elected to pay $5 US for Saul Williams' The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!Order total: $5 (US)This transaction will appear on your CC bill or PayPal account as "Musicane".We thank you for your support.If you have any questions or concerns, please contact customercare@musicane.com.

2. From a few weeks ago
Radiohead In Rainbows
Order Number***********
Order DateThu 18th Oct 2007
DescriptionQtyEachTotalCredit/debit charge1£ 0.45£ 0.45Download1£ 5.00£ 5.00
Total Goods Price£ 5.45Order Total£ 5.45This transaction will appear on your credit card bill as WASTE PRODUCTS LTD. or a shortened version of this.

Preachy,

I like Radiohead but they aren't my favorite or anything. I confess that I did download In Rainbows from Demonoid.com first and after I decided I liked it I proceeded to radiohead.com and paid my $ for the real deal. I would have like the option to download lossless but I was happy with what I got.

Saul Williams, on the other hand, was someone whose name I knew but knew nothing about. I bought his album today. Haven't heard it at all. It was available in FLAC format. You've gotta love that. You might ask why I bought it if I didn't know anything about the artist. I would answer that, at this point, I'll probably buy an album from anyone who distributes music this way. I desperately want to support this method of distributing music. Once more artists have cought on and are doing things this way I will begin to pick and choose.

This method of music distrobution allows you to get the music cheaper but the artists themselves make much more this way. They might make pennies per album through regular CD sales so you can see how they would prefer to do it this way. Who's the loser in this equation? The record companies. That's find by me. They've squashed innovation for the sake of profit. They've resisted the internet and made and adversarial relationship out of something that could have been beneficial to both. They've lied about losing money and used innocent people as scapegoats with the use of legal bullying. Screw them. They make more money every year than the year before but the they complain they are losing money. The only artists hurt by the new system would be those who aren't really artists anyway. Artists that are just glossy, overproduced, marionettes with no artistic merit and only exist as a walking commercial to sell tarty clothes to tween girls and grow up to carry tiny dogs through rehab, walk like Peggy Bundy, and bare their meat flaps to photographers and teach young men what 20 pounds of cheese doodle residue packed around a cessarian scar looks like.