I’ve been reading that gizmodo.com is declaring this March to be “Boyccott the RIAA Month“, asking readers to refrain from purchasing any and all music represented by the Recording Industry Association of America—an attempt to hit them where it hurt the most, which would be the wallet for those not in the know. Personally, i find the whole thing a little on the weak side.

Thirty days without purchasing any big-label vomit? Big fucking deal. It’s like it’s Lent or something. After thirty days, it’s back to scarfing cheeseburgers and buying DRM-crippled Justin Timberlake shit. I get that the main point of Gizmodo’s boycott call is to make a statement, increase awareness to what’s going on and what kind of alternatives are there (like eMusic, which i’m liking a lot), but I think limiting the call to one month is wrong.

The RIAA is evil. One month is nothing. Any label that sleeps with them should be subject to boycott, for life. Or, at the very least, until they wisen up, ditch the RIAA and their bullshit DRM scams and stop treating their customers as thieves by default. Fuck them. Fuck their music. Fuck Windows DRM. Fuck iTunes DRM and fuck the RIAA.

If you can’t live without it, steal it. Other than that, use sane and reasonable music stores like eMusic that sell music from labels that don’t have their heads shoved too far up their asses. Don’t give anyone who uses DRM or hangs with the RIAA a thin fucking dime. If you pay money for that shit, you’re being taken for a ride by a company that assumes you’re a criminal and knows you’re a sucker. Every penny they gain in sales is proof to them that people are sheep and furthers this insane business model of lawsuits, inferior products and consumer abuse.

Here’s a very comprehensive and searchable database of albums released by members of the RIAA. Use it as a tool to know what not to buy and what to steal, if that’s your thing.

I signed up for an account with eMusic this weekend and so far, I’m really liking it. Based on a monthly subscription model, I pay a set fee for a certain number or tracks a month. Right now, I’m doing the 50 tracks for about $15.00 package, which works out to about thirty cents a song. The music is delivered in a DRM-free MP3 format and is encoded in VBR at a median of about 192kbps. Normally, I encode at CBR 192kbps, so this works out totally fine. Once I’ve purchased a track, I can download it as many times as I wish, without affecting my monthly quota, which I love.

Since eMusic sells unlocked, DRM-free music, it doesn’t have everything. If you’re a top-20 loser, stick to Itunes. I find that for my musical leanings, just about 75-80% of the bands I like are on eMusic with at least one album. With over 2 million tracks and new music being added every week, I don’t feel restricted at all. In fact, 24 hours and 4 albums later, I’m in a bit of a Black Metal overdose. A good thing.

eMusic uses a download manager application that has clients for most all operating systems. However, the Linux client sucks major ass. Luckily, some intrepid user created a Java application called EMusicJ that does an excellent job getting my purchased music to my hard drive.

I hate DRM. I refuse to purchase from any label that uses it and as long as media companies try to shove it down people’s throats, I will strongly support piracy. However, I also like to able to support bands I like and eMusic is a great example of a sane and reasonable music store. Piracy to me is a protest not a permanent option. Thirty cents for a high-quality digital file seems about right to me. Ninety-nine cents for a DRM-infected Itunes track that you can only download once is a fucking insult and a rip-off. I hear it a lot and perhaps it’s become a bit of a cliche, but who the hell wakes up in the morning, wanting to pay more money for music with less value and use? Not me.