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illusionofjoyToday is laundry day. This came into being, of course, due to the fact that I have no clean clothes. Thus, I am lounging around in my bath robe, waiting for the washer and dryer to relinquish my garments. Obviously I have no plans of going out today; at least I have no plans of going out until I have clean clothing to wear. Though greatly diminished over the eons, the human race does still have a sense of smell, and if I'm going to offend someone I'd rather do it with a snarky comment than primal revulsion.
Also today, I'm uploading MP3s to my account on the school server. From there, I plan on sending them to my MP3.com page to make a CD. For those of you unfamiliar, MP3.com allows artists registered with them to create CDs through their site. These discs are pressed just like those from record labels and have a small (2 page) booklet, to which the artist can upload whatever artwork and credits they see fit. As I am running on a very low artistic budget, I've decided to release Bitter, the album I made as my project for my Recording Studio Techniques class using this service. For the independent (and completely broke) musician, it's a viable (and cheap) alternative to shelling out $1,500-2,000 to get 1,000 copies of a disc pressed - especially when one has no guarantee of selling 1,000 copies of said disc.
The thought does cross my mind though as to how long the MP3s I'm uploading will stay on my school's server. We're all aware of the whole crackdown on illegal MP3s and how zealous educational institutions can get in trying to bend to the wishes of the RIAA. My cynical nature has me wondering how long the MP3s I upload today will remain in my account on the school's server. In fact, I wonder if they will be deleted before I even have a chance to move them from the network to my personal computer. If that does happen, I guess I'll be making some heavy-handed comments to the people in distributed computing that they had no right to delete my files. If they infer that I did not own the copyright to said files (as they surely would - nobody ever has MP3s of stuff that is legally theirs) I'll swiftly correct them, telling them exactly how to fill out form RA from the U.S. Copyright Office, along with quoting $30 as the asking price to register a copyright for any piece of media. I did write and perform those songs after all, so I should be able to do whatever I want with the MP3 files.
The question may arise, as this point, as to why I am uploading the files to my student account to be later uploaded to my MP3.com account when I could just skip a step and upload to the latter right now. I have two reasons for this: firstly, I want the files on my computer at school, and the best way to get them there is through my school's network. The files are already ripped from the master disc, so I see no point in re-ripping them (especially with my inferior software). Also, I don't have a zip drive on my machine, so transporting the files via hard media is out of the question.
My second reason for holding back on sending the song files to MP3.com is that I have yet to procure the rights to the artwork I wish to use as the album cover. While I can do whatever I want with the songs, I can't just yank someone's drawings/paintings/photos/etc. and use them as my album cover without prior permission. Such a thing is not only unethical, but a great way to wind up in court as well. As I have no great talent drawing things, I like to use other artist's work as my album covers. Not only does it look better, but I can usually find someone who has done a piece that I feel fits the theme of my music. In effect, I have the songs, but no album cover and I prefer to have "everything in one place" before marching forth on a project.
And now, the update I'm sure you've all been waiting for: since starting this entry, I'm now on my second load of laundry. Meanwhile, FTP is still uploading the first MP3 file. Goddamn 56k dial-up...
