teamhasnoi's Journal: Copyright Infringement and Internet Crack

Well, here I am with an update on what's up - You may have seen this story that I'm reprinting here.

I just happened to see a post [slashdot.org] earlier on /. mentioning this. I happened to look up my old band, The Lovejoys (from Mpls, MN - all others on the net are newer fakes :P )

My record is on there [buymusic.com] It is also on CD NOW [amazon.com] but that was during the contract and all cool with us. I don't have the contract (another member of the band has it) and I don't remember what it says. I haven't spoken to the other guys yet, but I'm pretty sure that contract ran out awhile ago.

Every song you buy off of buymusic.com is not paying the artists, that's for sure. And I don't know how Orchard [theorchard.com] could even have copies to sell, we sent it to them to distribute; they aren't manufacturers.

We paid for that record out of pocket, and still have a zillion. :( If you like the samples here [amazon.com], let me know and I'll get you a CD. We still have boxes of the album, since the band went down right after releasing it. Ah, the sad stories of Minneapolis...

It seems as though people dig the CD, so I am sending them out for $5, plus mailing. If you would like one, email me or visit theschmoejoes.com.(I'm in the process of setting it up, so if you're in a hurry ;), email away. I am also looking into CDBaby for selling these things - anyone out there have first-hand experience?

I also would like to announce "Internet Crack" of the first order.

Pixeltees.com. This is a great website (runs on Linux, heh) that lets you make your own t-shirt designs ala cafepress.com. The 'catch' if you will, is that you have 128x128 pixels (big ol' Atari 2600 pixels) to work with. This makes coming up with a design a little tougher. Needless to say, I have been spending/wasting lots of time making designs with the little shockwave 'paint' program. There is a 'moderation' system of sorts; you can run through the 10,000 plus shirts and rate them 1 to 5, and sort by ratings and keywords.

If you find a shirt you like, you can send 15 bucks to pixeltees, and they will send it off to you.

The nifty thing is that after 6 shirts, the artist starts to earn money (1 to 2 dollars). There is no way anyone will get rich off of this scheme, but it is more than most musicians get per CD with a label deal.

I would be shirking my duty as a t-shirt whore if I didn't link to my store.

And if-

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

you'd do a nice BeOS shirt, I'd buy one!

Re:And if-

[teamhasnoi]

I will do that, check it in a day or so. :)