Magnatune Nagware

The following article was posted hy Matthew Davidson for News Forge: The Online Newspaper for Linux and Open Source. The article informs the early blog and interview that we had posted earlier on the site. The article reads as follows:
A couple of weeks ago I was pleased to find that Magnatune had a new album available by one of my favourite musicians. I downloaded the new album with keen anticipation, fired up totem, and sat down to my day’s work. At the end of the first track a synthesized voice warbled “That was track number one from the album [name withheld] by [name withheld] from Magnatune.com.”

“Oh, those quirky Magnatune artists, incorporating tacky ’80s-style synthesized voices into a track to show their appreciation for their progressive publisher,” I thought, smiling to myself. When the voice returned on the second track I stopped smiling. By the time I’d checked a track off an album from a different artist I was furious. A similar message was appended to the end of every MP3 file I downloaded. I have often received such messages, in the dark days before I discovered the GPL, when the principal function of most of my software was to remind me that my trial period had expired. Magnatune is possibly the first organisation in the world to distribute “music nagware.”

As a fiscally disadvantaged hacker I have never paid Magnatune a cent. However, I often speak and write on topics relating to copyright, and I invariably make reference to the Creative Commons project and to Magnatune. I have, non-commercially and at my own expense, compiled CDs of “free culture” that I have given away at events, including recordings by Magnatune artists and hypertext links to the Magnatune Web site. More than a few musicians are aware of Magnatune’s existence because of me, and most importantly I have shared music from Magnatune with friends who love music. And I’m not alone; many people have contributed to the success of Magnatune in this way.

Yet the music we love and support is now calling us freeloaders.

There are heaps of comments to read about this article here

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