If you listen to the Folkways Collection Podcasts, you'll get some interesting commentary on Moe Asch and his practices with regard to royalties. Apparently, with many of the recordings, he paid a flat amount at the onset, with the understanding that amount was all the provider was ever going to receive. On his part, Asch promised to make every Folkways recording available to customers for as long as Asch was alive (and Smithsonian Folkways has continued to make those recordings available). On one podcast, Peggy Seeger told how Ewan MacColl grumbled a bit about not getting royalty checks for a long time, and Asch responded that MacColl's royalties were paying for the albums that sold only ten copies. Peggy Seeger didn't seem to mind.

I'd like to have as many of the Folkways folk music recordings as I can get, but the original $20 cost of custom CD's was prohibitive - and even the reduced price from CAMSCO was a bit daunting, especially since some Folkways albums have fewer than ten songs. The download price at Smithsonian Global Sound is usually $9.99 per album, and I think it's 99 cents for a single track. Folkways recordings are now available for $8.99 an album and 89 cents a track at Amazon (http://amazon.mudcat.org/) - and I think Amazon has the entire Folkways catalogue available [you have to download the liner notes at Smithsonian Global Sound].

I've found another source http://www.emusic.com/, and it appears to be even more reasonable in price (unless there's some fine print I didn't read). If I have this all correct, monthly membership with 30 MP3 track downloads per month is $9.99, and $19.99 for a monthly membership with 75 downloads. There's a 20% discount for an annual membership, and 25% for two years. I think the two-year membership works out to about 20 cents a song. That makes a 10-song album pretty darn cheap.

I've used up my 75 downloads for my second month, and now I have to wait until April 12, or pay $20 for a "booster pack" of 50 downloads.

http://www.emusic.com/ also carries Topic, Fellside, and a number of other labels popular with us folkies, but it doesn't carry Rounder. I'd like to find a good place to download all the recordings and liner notes from Rounder's Alan Lomax and Library of Congress collections.

Anybody know of any drawbacks with http://www.emusic.com/ ???

-Joe-