SLC Musician Serves 100,000 Free Music Downloads

While the RIAA and MPAA use litigation to fight downloads, many independent artists are turning to a free download model for music distribution, and it's working. Dilvie, an independent electronic music maker in Salt Lake City, has served up over 100,000 free, legal music downloads.

(PRWEB) December 16, 2004 -- While the RIAA and MPAA use litigation to fight downloads, many independent artists are turning to a free download model for music distribution, and it's working. Dilvie, an independent electronic music maker in Salt Lake City, has served up over 100,000 free, legal music downloads, and he's just getting started.

According to a recent study from Pew, "Two-thirds of artists say peer-to-peer file sharing poses a minor threat or no threat at all to them." Dilvie agrees. "P2P software plays a vital role in my music distribution strategy. It's legal because I am the copyright holder, and I specifically authorize free sharing with the Creative Commons license." He isn't alone. Wired magazine recently issued a CD full of Creative Commons music featuring better known artists, including the Beastie Boys, and Thievery Corporation.

Dilvie takes musical freedom seriously. He chooses licenses that specifically allow unrestricted sharing, derivative works, and even commercial uses. Brandon Bethmann, an independent filmmaker based out of Albany, NY, recently used Dilvie's music in his feature film, The Risen, a John Carpenter inspired sci-fi thriller.

"We had a deadline to finish the film and deliver it to the distributor and as you can imagine we were short on music, money, deep in post-production and the clock was ticking -- basically the craziness of indie filmmaking. Low and behold a ray of light, our associate producer calls me, telling me to check out this website -- dilvie.com. Long story short, Divie's music fit what we needed perfectly and really improved the film."

Dilvie says, "It costs me next to nothing to offer these downloads for free. Why should I charge money for them?" Bandwidth isn't free. To date, those downloads have consumed over 390 Gigabytes of bandwidth, but Dilvie isn't worried. "I have my music hosted on a dedicated server. I could handle a lot more traffic. I'd be okay if I got 390 GB worth of downloads in one week."

Dilvie gets the money to support his music through donations and sponsorships on his website. "I'm not making enough money to quit my day job, but I probably could, if I worked on it full-time," he says. "The market has changed. People don't want to pay for something that artists can give them for free. On the net, traffic is money, and offering free content is a great way to get traffic."

http://www.dilvie.com/

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/142/report_display.asp

http://www.creativecommons.org/

http://creativecommons.org/wired/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002JP3PG/

###