Digital Music

Salas, Randy. "MP3s don't travel well in music's new world." Minneapolis StarTribune 10 February 2009: E1+.

Salas bemoans that he cannot download a recording of Sharleen Spiteri's new album Melody because the Scottish singer's music is sold only in the United Kingdom. The term for this is "territorial restrictions." Salas contacts Skye Rossi of Rhymesayers, a local hip-hop recording label, who suggests "[t]here's this convergence of the old way of doing things in the music industry and the new way of doing things" (qtd. in Salas E1). Salas goes on to confess that he'll "just by a used copy of Spiteri's CD for about the price I would have paid for a download and rip it myself. That's perfectly legal, but, ironically, she and her record company won't get any money as a result of that transaction" (E8). I hate to repeat myself, but this reminds me of the dilemma that Lawrence Lessig describes in the oft-cited book Free Culture.