Manitoba Music | BLOG

I'm all over the second hand economy. My house is full of used furniture, my closet full of used clothes, and yes, I've bought lots of used CDs over the years, even though I know that the artist isn't getting any of that money.

When it comes to music, I've also come to terms with the argument that people want to be able to legally copy their music on to multiple devices, and maybe even make a copy of a track for a friend.

But a recent scheme by a company in the US that wants to facilitate sales of used MP3s has me struggling to figure out how this would work - or why it should.

Lots of people want to take music that they've purchased and put it out into the interwebs for other people to download. We call this file _sharing_ because no money trades hands. Many in the industry have come to see this as not such a bad thing. It's musical discovery and dissemination and it feeds music fandom.

Bopaboo, a Washington, D.C.–based company is set to launch a used digital music store later this year. The idea is that you would share the music on your computer in return for credits that would allow you obtain music from others. Not only do they want to help people share music with no financial compensation to the creators, they want to allow the user to benefit from the process.

Read more about it here, and here, maybe you can help me get my head around it.