MEET THE MP3 LUNATICS
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Matthew King KaufmanWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticI was introduced to the Internet in 1996 when a bunch (and I mean bunch) from the Internet Underground Music Archive stopped by our little independent record company’s office. As an individual who started in the recorded music field in 1971, I was encouraged. Very encouraged. The creative oasis that was the music business would finally be restored, in all its glory. The future had finally arrived!I got involved with the 1st wave of music sites on the World Wide Web. At that time, the future was so bright you had to wear shades. But quickly, DRM, RIAA, P2P, MP3, copyright infringement suits, and a lot of small thinking soured this wonderful opportunity. Depression set in as repression abounded. Rather than me write thousands of words, check out this map of the music landscape as us MP3 Lunatics see it. It hasn’t changed much since we first drew it in 2001. I didn’t think I was a Lunatic then, only someone who might be thinking differently. Instead of looking at the Internet as a digital jukebox, I felt it was a wonderful "word of mouth" and "exposure opportunity" for new artists and old catalogues. There is no way I could have predicted the misinformation and foolish behavior on the part of the established record companies. As the major record companies consolidate and their fortunes dwindle, I found the only position to take is considered to be "lunacy." Why not agree on the MP3 format to enfranchise everyone? It’s not like every CD in the world isn’t a master tape already. Selling CDs is like selling MP3s. But every time I mention this to other people in my industry, the look in their eyes convinces me I’m a Lunatic. So here I am. BioIn 1973, Matthew King Kaufman - manager of seminal A&M recording artists Earth Quake - founded Beserkley Records, one of the very first successful independent labels of the 70s that went on to launch the careers of Jonathan Richman and Greg Kihn. Kaufman’s efforts as recording artist, songwriter, producer, and publisher have been responsible for the sales of millions of records and CDs worldwide. In 1991, he co-founded Eastern Light Productions, producing a series of award winning Russian historical documentaries in collaboration with the Soviet Filmmaker’s Society, Kinocenter. In 1996, he launched the Son Of Beserkely label, most recently recording with legendary ska pioneers, The Uptones. In 1999, he co-founded MP34U.com. His current passion is creating a "Music Lover’s Playground" on the World Wide Web located at Muzic.com. Mr. Kaufman has a B.A. from American University in Washington, D.C. and a J.D. from the University of Baltimore. |
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alien protocolWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticBefore I became an MP3 Lunatic, I was a digital music lunatic. My very first moment of digital music lunacy occurred one day in 1984 when I spent the entire afternoon downloading a seven second song clip at 300 baud. After waiting nearly two hours for the download to complete, I loaded up the file on my computer and heard what sounded like a song being played through a walkie talkie. Still the notion of downloading actual digitized music onto my computer made quite an impression.Then 1995 came around and I began using the WWW for the first time and my roommate was showing me his growing collection of MP3 files on his computer. It hit me that everyone's music experience - not just my own - was eventually going to be augmented by the Internet. In 1996 I registered the muzic.com domain name with my business partners at the time. I decided I wanted to be part of the greatest seismic shift in music consumption that was ever going to occur in my lifetime. From the start, my focus was to harness the growing networks of people on the Internet to improve fan music discovery and make more stars out of all those amazing unknown bands I had found online over the years. As the years have passed, I have witnessed two things:
And that's what probably makes me an MP3 Lunatic. BioAlien Protocol provides the technical vision and designs/creates the interfaces for the MP3 Lunatics' suite of music-themed websites (muzic, MP3 4U, and mp3 jackpot). Alien Protocol graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Political Science, focusing on ethics and political philosophy. Professionally, Alien Protocol has provided software and Internet consulting services to over 35 Fortune 500 companies including SAP, Apple, Intel, Hitachi, and Nike. He keeps a blog at www.alienprotocol.com. |
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Eric DinWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticI come at lunacy from the standpoint of a musician - as good a way to get a pass to the asylum as there is. I play guitar and sing in The Uptones and I run the MP3 Lunatics websites.In 1998, "MP3" was a new word in my vocabulary. My fellow MP3 Lunatics and I started talking and found we shared a common vision about potentially the biggest word of mouth tool we had ever witnessed. As an experiment, I made an MP3 of our song Get Out Of My Way from the Uptones Live recording. I posted it on the web, and within a day it had been downloaded... a whopping four times. But as the weeks went by, it got crawled by Google, was posted on some blogs, and before long the file was being downloaded hundreds of times in a day. Then thousands. Finally - a way to get music directly to our old and new fans throughout the world had arrived. I have been webmaster of all the sites we have built since then. I communicate daily with the MP3 Jackpot Committee as they choose their Jackpot Winners. I love being a source at MP34U.com. I listen to all the music I possibly can, and I have found that I've grown as an artist because of the amazing new music I hear flowing daily thorough the MP3 Jackpot, MP3 4U, and muzic websites. I walked into a club the other night and heard our song Radiation Boy blasting on the PA from the DJ's iPod. Kids are singing the words to our MP3 songs at shows. This has put the fun back into music for both me and my band. I can't wait for more lunatics to join our asylum so everyone can have more fun. |
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Eric BlanpiedWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticMusic is a social thing. A shared experience. Watching a band play is the best example of productivity without hierarchy. So how did sharing music become crime?Oh well, it's hardly the first law we've all broken. As long as I've been listening, I've enjoyed seeking out new music and turning my friends on to it. For years it was passing cassettes around. I can still remember the day I put a tape of London Calling in my tape deck when I got home from school. Suddenly what was on the radio was a lot less compelling. That was 8th grade at King, the place where I first met Eric Din, as it happens. Back then the music biz was shouting "home taping is killing music" at us. As far as I can tell they did just fine. Later I spent some time as a college radio DJ, where I got to pick through an enormous library of vinyl, much of which didn't get near the top 40, and play whatever I wanted. I could probably count the number of hours of commercial radio I've listened to since then on one hand. The 80's & 90's were a long period of combing through record stores (luckily Berkeley was blessed with some good ones), going to shows, and passing those cassettes around. They sure sounded better off of CD, though. Then came the net, with an ever-expanding set of choices for music. Sure, Napster was fun, but in my mind the true excitement came from the musicians who were experimenting with posting brand new stuff. It was right about then that I bumped into Eric Din at the video store, for the first time in quite a few years. To me, one of the most exciting things about the net is how democratic it is. The whole open source movement takes me right back to the things I learned about social justice growing up in Berkeley in the 70's. Getting involved with this project for the past few years has really been wonderful. I seem to be too busy to go out and hunt down the music myself, but writing the code to make it work is a really satisfying contribution. Plus, I end up swimming in a sea of sounds as I do it. |
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Paul JacksonWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticGod help me, I was a teenage rock star. This is no joke. How is a kid ever going to throw away something so precious? I never have. Me and my mates, the Uptones, have been making good live music for over 25 years now. When we were selling 2000 tickets to our shows back in 1985, record companies were too busy repackaging Baby Boomer records into CDs to notice. We were in heavy rotation on local San Francisco radio but never got "the big push." In hindsight I’m thankful, because now I know that such deals come from Dracula and we would have died. My music is more precious than that. It's like going to church. It's a whole culture that I’ve created and love dearly. The Internet has provided a way to share this without the old crusty music industry getting in the way.In 1998 my good partner in crime, Matthew King Kaufman, explained MP3 to me and his whole vision of how it would shake out the music industry. He has been amazingly accurate in his predictions. I had no computer and was working in a metal shop while the whole Internet boom exploded. I was invited to start figuring out how to make digital images for MP3 4U and find good, legal MP3 downloads on the Internet. Then we watched Napster hit. I was famous for the amount of space my MP3s took up on our little networked hard drive. We watched as Gnutella was released and other P2P software began to proliferate. We watched the music industry threaten and drag their heels in denial. We watched Myspace explode. We watched online music discovery become the norm and music start to get interesting again. Meanwhile, we had been dilligently putting up links to good, free and legal music everyday and quietly working on software to help users access these great songs and create endless sources of music fun. I'm an MP3 Lunatic because the Internet provides the best avenue for discovering truly new music from entirely fresh sources. Music directly from the artist is more interesting and more entertaining. Artists beyond your imagination, from all over the globe are providing the highest entertainment value. MP3 4U provides the best and purest way to find and share my musical finds with an engaged community. What could be better? This ranks along side the invention of the wheel and light bulb! I'll keep this lunacy up as long as it promotes artists and music lovers to share in this free and open way. This is culture at its best. |
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MucsterWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticI'm Mucster, aka Inspector Dub, aka Ali La Pointe. But if ya don't feel that, hit up my MP3 4U site. I've got mad love for my fellow MP3 Lunatics and yeah, I'm down with MP3, but I don't gotta have a reason for every little thang I do, right? I'm an MP3 Lunatic by birth, been like this forever so if you see "Mucster" on your way to B-town, you know I been round. So just listen up and check the content. |
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SubverseWhy I'm An MP3 LunaticI get it. You don’t have to explain anything to me. From my intital discovery of the digital file format, I felt the hope of MP3. It was Chuck D. who said, “I’m going to ride MP3 like a cowboy.” I jumped immediately on that ride. The year was 1999, and my world just opened up.What came to mind right away was that I could have my whole music collection on me at all times. This excited me because as a DJ I had amassed a big collection of vinyl, CDs, and mix tapes. I had weeks and weeks of continuous music in my possession. If I had a MP3 player I could listen for weeks without hearing the same song twice. This idea ushered in a new level of exhilaration for me. I also fully embraced the idea that artists could benefit just as much as music fans, and that the fans could connect directly to their favorite artists. I knew that artists were mere slaves in the music business, and I recognized the possibility of artists empowering themselves by using the MP3 format. My excitement increased even more. I see the word "MP3" today and my lunacy continues. My experience as a MP3 4U source over the last 6 years has only validated my initial hopes and inspiration. I plan on continuing to utilize the ways that I filter music and guide music lovers through this Music Lovers Playground. I am also interested in being a subjective catalyst for artists who want to connect with the fans who are going to be at their future shows. I believe MP3 can only benefit the music community. As an MP3 Lunatic, I feel that I am a vital member of music's future. BioI have been a radio pirate, a mix tape collector, and a DJ for the last 15 years. I am one of the original sources on MP3 4U. When I am not exploring the net for quality MP3s, I am a music supervisor on film projects. When I am really bored I do live sound at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley. |
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Lou ParmeleeWhy I'm A MP3 LunaticThe lunacy... well it all started 30+ years ago. Music was always something I was drawn to. Whether it was playing instruments, transcribing my favorite band's lyrics from cassette to paper, doing sound engineering gigs or setting up massive concert productions, music was always something I had to be around.I was introduced to the Internet in 1994. A few guys and I had a sound company and a band came through town that wanted a board tape of their show recorded. We began talking about record deals and distribution and a so-called "rumor" popped up when one of them mentioned they had heard of this "place" where you could post music that people could hear on their computer. That marked the beginning of my MP3 lunacy. We started the Northampton Performing Artist Network and began recording bands from all over New England and posted huge MPEG files of their shows to a network to help promote the local bands. Along came HTML + Netscape and a new way to display and distribute music was born. We went from working with bands to working with labels and music orgs like AFIM, showing them how to use the Internet to promote and distribute music. It was at this time that the divide happened. Some artists and labels embraced this new medium and others strongly opposed it. But it never stopped technology’s progress. During the ThrottleBox years I got a call one day from fellow MP3 Lunatic Matthew King Kaufman. That conversation led to the MP3 release of Jim Morrison’s last interview as sponsored online episodes. That was the beginning of our shared MP3 Lunatic trip. I've been creating new services over the years like K-amp Player to help musicians post and showcase their music online and now BlogAmp to cater to our podcasting friends. Somehow I always seem to keep finding new ways to support the MP3 format. The first dot.com wave came and went and not much has really changed in the digital music landscape overall. Sites and services have come and gone but only one thing has held solid... people love music and love to share their discoveries with their peers. The common thread for me since the early days of uploading huge files is my format of choice has always been MP3. And all this is probably why I am an MP3 Lunatic! |
