Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

So how do you buy your music? Let me guess...you go to Wherehouse Music, find the CD from the band that has a cool, new single, buy it and take it home. But when you actually give it a spin, everything but the single SUCKS, and even that one, golden track gets lame after you hear it 25 times a day on the radio. This system sucks, and it has sucked ever since bands made a whole CD to push one good song that these talentless morons somehow wrote. The days of finding an album that is good cover to cover are virtually over, and it is time to find new cheese.MP3s, the internet, and the ease and low cost of burning CDs are the three key ingredients in the topple of traditional music media and the institution of making bastard record execs rich bastard record execs by our patronage. And the time is not as far away as you think. So kiss your 16 dollar USD CDs goodbye, boys and girls, and hold on to your butts, because now is the winter of their discontent.The idea: being able to walk up to a vending machine, and as easy as buying a Dr. Pepper, create a custom compilation music disc that is burned, labeled, and packaged while you wait. The technology has been around for a good long time, and has just been waiting to be implemented. In fact, I heard on the Mindspring Minute (Click here for ToTSP story/info) that kiosks very similar to these are being field tested in certain places around the country.Other companies, like EMusic.com are offering a plethora of music available in MP3 format for download at a fraction of the cost of buying the album. They offer downloads of single tracks, whole albums, or compilations according to genre. MP3 (if we can get on a commond ground with the format) tracks can be downloaded into a number of handheld/car/console devices, not to mention your computer, and the format offers CD-quality sound at a fraction of the digital footprint(for those of you who are unfamiliar).Now im not saying these new mediums of entertainment will erradicate the money-hungry record industry, but with our help, it will change the face of it as we know it. In true open-source fashion, we are demolishing their control over how we can purchase and enjoy music, and declaring that something that has so little to do with money and corporation, and so much to do with expression and freedom, cannot, and can never be, controlled by money-hungry business men to be packaged and sold as they wish.Im excited about the day that I can go to Lenox Mall, put 8 dollars in a machine, pick out a little Better Than Ezra, a little Ben Folds Five, a little Josh Joplin Band, and walk out with a disk that would cost me 45 dollards in the stores. Technology is finally being used to provide for something that could not have existed before it, and a great day it will be (soon!) when anyone and everyone can use it to better their lives. And isnt that why we started messing with computers in the first place?