Want to broaden your musical horizons, for free, and in the process support artists who actively encourage you to hear their music? Then you could do worse than pay a visit to the 001 Collective and use your torrent software with the full blessing of the musicians found there. It's early days at the moment but there are new tunes being added regularly as word gets around, and the blog also takes you off in interesting directions. If nothing else, it's worth checking out for the amusingly absurd (yet accurate) genre descriptions chosen by many of the acts - anyone wanting to catch some 'twee ukelele catpop' and 'freak folk' before they become mainstream movements should go there pronto!

I'm reproducing their mission statement in full below, because it puts it all far more eloquently than I could manage:

There is a revolution happening. You may not know it's happening; but you've heard of it. Napster, p2p, Oink; these were all signs of the changing climate, steps in the right direction. Major Record Labels are quickly becoming relics, dinosaurs of the old world, led by men who follow no equations. Distribution is now in the hands of the internet; people can download a hundred albums in the time it takes them to drive to the store and buy one. The internet is the future, and this is the time of a major change in the entertainment industry.

The good majority of artists don't make a living off of their music. Everyone knows the gap: they either live in excess or in obsolescence. As history has shown, any gap this large will be fixed with time. The entertainment industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Twenty dollars for a CD, or a movie? Very little of this goes to the actual artist; most goes towards a bloated industry to pay for the massive manpower involved in such products. That was the old world, when it was impossible for an artist to have mass public consumption of their work without significant money and effort. But this is the new world. Through the internet an artist can reach millions of people. And through the internet the people can find obscure artists and download anything they want for free.

We dream of an age where artists don't create out of greed, but out of love; a golden age of the arts not seen by any time in history. Sales and promotion don't generate income, fans do. And artists who climb a human pyramid to live in luxury are finding that they have an ever dwindling number of fans to step over.

The future is coming, and artists have to make a choice. They can dream of making it big and live in a mansion, they can compromise their art to market it, and they can profit excessively from their fans to stay on top. Or they can change to reflect the times. They can allow fans to download their albums for free, and still have the option of selling a hard-copy. They can sell merchandise. They can go on tour. They can adopt the business model of Chinese artists. They can accept that nobody should be making millions of dollars doing something they don't even consider work.

This is a revolution, and there is no question of who will win. There is no amount of money or political maneuvering that can save the enemy. All that is required for victory is time. And in time, the people will prevail. The battles fought by the people and the lives ruined by the record industries will not be in vain, every man and woman who has been thrown in jail or fined thousands of dollars will see justice done. This is the new world, and the brink of a golden age. Embrace it!