The South by Southwest Festival ended yesterday and the website was updated with information about the artists that performed during the festival. You find lots of information about individual artists as well as download possibilities for many songs that were sung during the festival. If you do not feel like downloading songs you can stream them instead and get a good impression of them before you decided whether to download them at all.

A tape icon in front of the name of the artist or band indicates that songs are available that can be downloaded and streamed. You do find background information about individual artists as well as links to their homepages and other contact possibilities making it easy to contact an artist if you like the music. (Read the rest of this story.)

James Blunt - Out of my mind, Björk - Verandi, Christina Aguilera - Make over ; want any of those ? Free ? With no registration involved ? With no DRM ? If you answer all of the questions with yes or want to take a look at the 239.000 mp3 files currently available you might want to head over to Sideload and try their service. It’s free, it’s fast and easy to use.

They find free music on the internet, for example on the artists homepage, samples of their albums, and publish the information on their website. All that is left to do is use the search to find music, artists, songs that you like and listen to them online or download them to your computer. Best of all, it is perfectly legal to use Sideload.

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We all know that the Music Industry is using hundreds of lobbyists to influence decisions in their way. Small radio stations and music buyers don’t stand a chance against this powerful force unless they unite and take a visible counter position. We all read the bad news that rates for internet radio streams are going to be increased every year from now on by more than 100% in the coming years putting most non commercial and semi commercial radio stations out of business.

Save the Streams was designed to coordinate the defense against the ruling trying to overturn it. It keeps you updated on the latest news, press coverage and ways to make your voice heard. The ruling affects only US-based internet radio stations for now but could very well get the ball rolling to make the ruling universal in the long run. Digital Imported Radio published a small article how listeners from outside the US could help in the fight for survival.

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Just a quick link to a nice search engine that I discovered today. DRM Free Music Search is a search engine that lets you search through various websites that offer only drm free music. It displays the search results neatly using Ajax displaying information such as artist, title and possible price. Not everything has a price of course, some sites charge for music, some don’t but you always see that information right away.

DRM Free Music Search currently supports 19 websites that offer DRM free music including Emusic, Garage Band and Audio Lunchbox.

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• When will they learn that customers are not criminals
• When will they learn that the internet is a new way of distributing media, not a threat
• When will they learn that DRM punishes customers, not the pirates
• When will they learn that Internet Radio pushes music sales
• When will they learn that customers want to play music in cd players, in their cars, in their mp3 players and computers without having to pay more than once for it
• When will they learn that copy protection punishes their customers
• When will they learn that suing children, dead people and the elder does not increase their popularity
• When will they learn that they have to change their ways instead of pressuring for harder punishments

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