iGuanaGaL's Blog

Hi everyone,

Normally, I keep my blog pages fun - but the Music Industry Gestapo, the RIAA, has my knickers in a twist.
For those of you not interested in this subject, please visit my other two blog pages whose links are to the right of this post. The subject matter is much lighter!
For those of you who don't want to read all the stuff below and just want to go to where they can help boycott the RIAA while supporting new and indie music, please go to:

RIAA Radar: Tool For Finding Great Indie Music
http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/
and
Downhill Battle - Music Activism
http://www.downhillbattle.org//

Both of these sites and their missions are described in detail in the last two posts on this page.

Thanks for stopping by ...
iGuanaGaL

by Jeriko One

The truth is that big business controls the types of music and artists that get exposure and become popular. The record industry is a $14 billion dollar business. The five major record labels; Sony, Universal, BMG, EMI and Time Warner dominate 85% of the market when it comes to sales of Compact Discs. Leaving only 15% for the hundreds of independent record labels and thousands of artists out there. And when indies get too big or an artist starts making noise these major companies usually pick up the artist or label. This way they control the artist/label, get a percentage of the sales and keep competition to a minimum.

The Big Payoff (Radio Payola)
Ever wonder why you hear the same songs on the radio all the time? It's because major record companies are paying radio stations thousands of dollars to play their records! That's why you rarely, if ever, hear independent music on commercial radio. Most people don't know that virtually all the pop and rock songs they hear on the radio have been paid for by the major record companies. The record labels pay millions of dollars a year to middlemen (independent radio promoters), referred to as "indies," who in turn pass on some of that money to radio stations (they get a portion too), which accordingly play what the promoters ask/tell them to. In exchange for paying the stations an annual promotion budget ($100,000 for a medium-size market), the indie becomes the station's exclusive indie and gets paid by the record companies every time that station adds a new song.
Launching a single at rock radio can cost between $100,000 and $250,000. If the song's a hit and gets played at hundreds of stations across the country (with added charges for multiple plays a day) the costs can skyrocket enormously. Mercury Nashville president Luke Lewis told attendees at a music conference that his label spent more than $1.5 million on promotion for a Shania Twain single that crossed over to pop radio!

According to payola laws passed by Congress in 1960, it's a crime for a station employee to accept payment for playing a song if the station fails to notify listeners about the financial arrangement. That's partially the reason major record labels use huge indie promotion companies so if crap ever happens the promoters will take the fall for it. But no one wants to rock the boat so everyone in the industry keeps their mouth shut and indies make tons of money for basically being nothing more than pay-off people.

Overnighted packages stuffed with cash are shipped off to recipients with phony names, money orders made out to programmers and sent to home addresses, travel and vacation packages... all of this is being used by major record labels and independent radio promoters to buy airplay of their songs on the radio. New and independent artists have no chance to receive airplay on radio and listeners are bombarded with the same music hour after hour.

Who pays for all of this? The artist. Most record companies recoup their costs for independent promotion from the artist's CD royalties - which of course would not be as high if they did not receive radio airplay. And, ironically enough, the radio stations pay as well, since money that might be used for promotions to build a larger audience is instead diverted into radio programmers' personal bank accounts.

Big Fish Eat Little Fish (Monopoly)
There are three companies that own most the radio stations in the US - EMMIS, Radio One and Clear Channel. Over the past two years the Clear Channel company has been on an acquisition binge, spending almost $30 billion on buying radio stations, concert venues and advertising companies. The company is building a "monopolistic multimedia empire" that has decreased competition, reduced consumer choice, and driven up ticket prices for concerts.

Prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a radio company could only own 40 stations nationwide and only four in a particular market. Since that has changed Clear Channel now owns 1,170 radio stations nationwide! One out of every ten radio stations across the United States broadcasts under the Clear Channel’s banner and the company’s approximate 1,170 stations bill a full 20% of total industry revenue. Clear Channel broadcasts in every top ten market and in 47 of the top 50. These stations take to the airwaves across all 50 states, in almost every major market, reaching nearly every demographic. Clear Channel stations broadcast to over 110 million listeners every week.

Clear Channel also acquired SFX Entertainment, the world’s largest promoter and producer of live entertainment events, including concerts, theater and sporting events. Clear Channel now owns 135 venues, producing 26,000 shows last year (attended by 62 million people) - 70% of the total "live concert" market! Buying entertainment giant SFX cost Clear Channel $4.4 billion, making it instantly the nation's biggest promoter with $2 billion in live-event revenue a year.

Clear Channel Outdoor owns over half a million outdoor displays (770,000 billboards) around the world. This gives them and their customers the ability to, as they state on the Clear Channel website "reach over half of the entire U.S. population and over 75% of the entire U.S. Hispanic population". Outdoor is more than just billboards, other products they provide include; bulletins, posters, street furniture, airport displays, convenience store posters, mall displays, mass transit displays and mobile ads.
Now there's rumors that Clear Channel wants to start their own record label... hmmm. Think about it. They can play their artists on their radio stations, tour them in their venues and advertise them on their billboards.

What can you do? Support college & non-profit radio stations in your local area. These independent radio stations program alternative music as well as specialty shows (hip-hop, jazz, electronica etc.). Also support your local independent bars & clubs.

Product Placement (Retail Co-ops)
Isn't it great when you can buy your favorite artist or a new CD on sale at the record store. Ever notice those special displays (called endcaps) at the entrance, window or at a prime location in a large record chain store. Guess what? It's not the store that is putting it on sale, record companies have to pay to have it on sale in the store. This is what is called a Retail Co-Op and it works like this: If a label wants to put one of its new CDs on sale in a chain store they would have to pay about $3,000 to have it's CD in 100 of its stores. In exchange for the $3,000 the Chain store would bring in around 1,300 units and give them good placement in the stores, put them on sale and feature them in their listening stations in those 100 stores for one month. There are many different Co-Op programs with independent and major chain stores and they can be very expensive. There are a few problems with this system. First, for the record label it does not guarantee that the CD's the store brought in will sell. And since stores do not "buy" but take product on 'consignment' it is all 100% returnable (see Retail Returns below). Second, major record labels spend so much money on Retail Co-Ops so that stores bring their product that stores aren't left with much money in their monthly budget to bring in independent music.


The Big "R" (Retail Returns)
Most people think that a "return" means that someone returned a CD to a record store because of a defect. That *is* called a return, but in the record business "returns" mean something else - death. Music stores do not buy CD's and then sell them. They take CD's, sell what they can and return the rest - only paying for what sold. There usually isn't a time frame, so a company can return CDs to a label/distributor even a year or more later, usually with cracked jewel cases and all stickered up. The problem with this is record stores/chain stores can (and do) over-order a release because they can always return it. Returns can kill any record label.

Too Greedy (Price Gouging)
Major record labels and retail chains stores have become too greedy by charging $18-19 for a CD that usually doesn't have more than 3 good songs on it. Universal priced Ja Rule's album Pain Is Love with a sticker price of $19.98! But it is not always the record label overcharging. The price to the store is based on the suggested retail price. For example a $16.98 list price CD is sold to stores for $11 per loose CD or $10.79 per CD by the box (usually 30 CD's in a box). These chain stores that price the CD at $18.98 will probably not sell very many because it is priced to high for underground hip-hop and/or a new artist. These stores do not care because in the end whatever they took is 100% returnable.

In Conclusion
There are approximately 27,000 music titles released every year. Of the 7,000 "new" titles released every year by major labels less than 10% are profitable. Major record labels sign only what they hope will sell, jumping on the latest trend and flooding the market with sound-alikes. Everything radio and video shows play sound and look like they came off an assembly line. Major record companies focus on radio-friendly and videogenic acts and unfortunately exclude new and experimental artists and genres of music. People need to be more educated and take a pro-active approach to music. Seek out new artists and new types of music, don't let big business influence and control what you think is good music or what you purchase. Take what you have just read and inform others of what you have learned - "each one - teach one".

A few book suggestions for reading
1. HIT MEN by Fredric Dannen
2. LIFE AND DEF by Russell Simmons with Nelson George
3. OFF THE CHARTS by Bruce Haring
4. BLACK VINYL WHITE POWDER by Simon Napier-Bell
5. LAST NIGHT A DJ SAVED MY LIFE by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton
6. LOSING MY VIRGINITY by Richard Branson
7. THE RISE AND RISE OF DAVID GEFFEN by Stephen Singular
8. BAD BOY by Ronin Ro

excerpted from
http://www.bombhiphop.com/newbomb/bombpages/linernotes.html

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench,
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,
and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
- Hunter S. Thompson

The RIAA - Recording Industry Association of America or is it the Rip-off Impoverised Artists Association?

Note: From the Holier Than Thou news category: I guess the RIAA was just too busy last fall busting and suing college students for downloading MP3s to have time to pay their recording artists their royalties. Depending on the length of time they had possession of the 50 million dollars (that they're admitting to thus far) - one can only imagine how much interest the RIAA made on all those unpaid royalties.
This goes far beyond record sales - it seems to also include licensing fees, publishing, mechanicals and every other way a performer or songwriter has to make money.
The RIAA needs to clean up their own back yard before they go pointing fingers (and lawsuits) elsewhere.
===================================================
NEW YORK (AP) 04/2004 - Major recording companies have agreed to return nearly $50 million in unclaimed royalties to Sean Combs, Gloria Estefan, Dolly Parton and thousands of lesser known musicians under a settlement announced Tuesday.

A two-year investigation by New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office found that many artists were not being paid royalties because record companies lost contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments.
As a result of the agreement, Spitzer said, new procedures will be adopted to ensure that artists and their descendants receive the compensation they are entitled to get.

"Once the recording companies have received royalties, those royalties have to be disbursed to the artists who are owed those funds," Spitzer said at a news conference. "There are many artists who struggle. ... They depend on the stream of royalties," he added.

The attorney general said about $25 million in royalties has already been paid, with the other $25 million still outstanding.

The Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the companies, planned to comment later Tuesday, said spokesman Jonathan Lamy. Representatives for Combs and Parton did not immediately return calls for comment. A spokesman for Estefan, reached prior to the announcement, was unaware of the settlement and had no immediate comment.

Spitzer had no explanation when asked how companies could lose contact with such big-name artists.

The participating companies include:

SONY Music Entertainment;
Sony ATV Music Publishing;
Warner Music Group;
UMG Recordings;
Universal Music;
EMI Music Publishing;
BMG Songs;
Careers-BMG Music Publishing;
BMG Music and the
Harry Fox Agency.

Under the settlement, the music companies agreed to make good-faith efforts to track down artists to whom royalties are due. If the artists still cannot be located, the money will revert to the state.

The settlement could expand to include other recording companies, Spitzer said.

By Andrew Orlowski

Tens of thousands of performers have failed to claim their digital dues from the Recording Industry Ass. Of America's royalties agency, SoundExchange. If they don't get in touch by the end of the year, SoundExchange will keep the royalties that were owed to them between 1996 and 2000.
SoundExchange was set up to bring the US into step with the rest of the world by paying a performers a royalty. ASCAP, BMI and SESCAP are the collection agencies responsible for distributing the songwriting royalty. SoundExchange's remit covers satellite broadcasts, cable music and webcasts.

(The RIAA lobbied Congress for a compulsory license (or "digital pool", or "flat fee") to raise money from internet broadcasters. That's a good compulsory license, they argue. But the RIAA has lobbied against a compulsory license (or "digital pool", or "flat fee") for recordings on digital media. Because that's a bad compulsory license. We hope you see the distinction.)

The decisions to make it an opt-in scheme, and to retain the unclaimed royalties have both raised hackles. As many as 38,000 artists - including backing performers - have failed to step forward. SoundExchange says these include The Shangri-Las and The Count Five, of Psychotic Reaction infamy.

Families of performers who have inconveniently died since recording their work are urged to step forward on their behalf, to http://www.soundexchange.com/

excerpted from:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/28/riaa_royalty_hoard/

It's still the soundtrack to greed in the radio business

by John Gorman

Want to get your music in regular rotation on the radio? How much you got? It costs record labels between $150 million and $300 million annually to expose new music on U.S. radio stations. It works like this: To circumvent allegations of collusion, labels employ third-party independent record promoters to influence and control radio playlists. The labels deduct this cost of doing business from artist royalties. An artist's management has the right to veto what is now known as legal payola, which is why only a select few releases are worked at radio.

A convenient loophole in the 1996 Telecommunications Bill made payola payments to radio stations legal. To avoid accusations of collusion, labels have to stay clean from direct pay-for-play negotiations with radio. By employing independently contracted music promoters to influence radio station playlists, the labels are off the hook but firmly in control.

The conglomerate radio chains fell in love with legal payola, too. They viewed it as a new source of revenue, and radio station heads were convinced that their stations would get paid to play the music they would've played anyway. What's there not to like about this scheme?

Try everything. The label payouts to independent promoters meant no guarantee for automatic airplay. When the “indies,” as they're known, set up their exclusive deals with radio stations, it was cash upfront for radio. For a major market, a $400,000 annual payment was the norm.The “indies” charge labels a retainer fee to work their product. If they get a radio add, that carries a bonus, a low of $1,000 and a high of $10,000 or more per song, priced
by supply-and-demand conditions. Considering that most stations add only two or three new songs to their playlist each week, the retainer fee doesn't guarantee airplay but if you don't go the pay-for-play route, you have virtually no chance of being considered for a station's playlist. Independent promoters collectively bill an alleged minimum $3 million worth to labels each week .

Payola is no longer about getting your music played on the radio. It's about keeping the other labels' music off. With these prices, small labels and local artists are shut out of the radio airplay route.

Payola is showing some wear-and-tear. The scheme could collapse under its own weight once the bean- counters assess label damage. The problem? Radio airplay no longer converts to retail sales, while virtual unknowns, who receive no radio airplay, are showing up top twenty in retail sales.
Radio used to provide the soundtrack to popular culture. Now it presents the soundtrack to legal bribery and greed.

When German-based conglomerate BMG decided not to pay independent promoters for the release of American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson's first single, top 40 and adult contemporary radio boycotted the song. The album debuted at number one in sales with no radio airplay.
More music is broken and sold from movie soundtracks, TV shows and Mitsubishi ads. Those deals were set up by the artists' management as an alternative to shelling out legal payola elephant bucks. This has labels reassessing the significance of radio airplay to retail sales.
Artists signed to smaller labels and those releasing their own product are receiving encouraging response from active music consumers who are hearing their new music on Internet radio, college radio and through file- sharing. Satellite radio? Maybe, maybe not. There's increased concern that politics, though for now falling short of payola, are being played to secure airplay on that medium.

In its attempt to buy and sell popular culture, the medium is failing and speeding up its eventual demise.

excerpted from:

http://www.freetimes.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=585

During a single week in May 2004, Canadian pop rocker Avril Lavigne's new song Don't Tell Me aired no fewer than 109 times on Nashville radio station WQZQ-FM.

The heaviest rotation came between midnight and 6 a.m., an on-air no man's land visited largely by insomniacs, truckers and graveyard shift workers. On one Sunday morning, the three-minute, 24-second song aired 18 times, sometimes as little as 11 minutes apart.

Those plays, or "spins," helped Don't Tell Me vault into the elite top 10 on Billboard magazine's national pop radio chart, which radio program directors across the country use to spot hot new tunes.

But what many chart watchers may not know is that the predawn saturation in Nashville and elsewhere occurred largely because Arista Records paid the station to play the song as an advertisement. In all, sources said, WQZQ aired Don't Tell Me as an ad at least 40 times the week ending May 23, accounting for more than one-third of the song's airplay on the station.

All five major record corporations have at least dabbled in the sales programs, industry sources said, with some reportedly paying as much as $60,000 in advertising fees to promote a single song.

So basically, whenever you hear Ms Lavigne's song, some record company might be paying to get it on the air. Since it qualifies as an "advertisement," the industry, in theory, isn't violating the law.

The RIAA: Fox Guarding the Henhouse

By Lisa Rein (9/21/01)

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), with its deep pockets and high-placed lobbyists, has hijacked the process and is setting up a world where the music industry fox guards the henhouse.

The RIAA is trying to convince Congress that it is capable of performing the duties of an objective agent for copyright holders. In November 2000, the RIAA created SoundExchange to function as a "collective" that would aggregate the royalties obtained from compulsory license fees and distribute them to artists. The U.S. Copyright Office is considering the RIAA's proposed rate structure based on the organization's claim that the 200 members of SoundExchange "own copyrights in approximately 90 percent of the legitimate sound recordings sold in the United States." Artists' rights organizations such as the FMC say that the RIAA and its agencies are not neutral parties in this arrangement and can't be trusted to fairly collect and disburse the royalties.

Corruption waiting to happen
The RIAA's petition proposed that SoundExchange would be able to deduct administrative costs from royalties--prior to paying them out to artists--without setting any limitations on these costs.

Artists would be required to foot the bill for any independent audits, and SoundExchange would be allowed to absorb any revenue from unclaimed royalties after only three years, despite the fact that the process for copyright holders claiming such royalties hasn't even been decided yet.

excerpted from:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5020594-1.html#lisa

The RIAA Radar is a tool that music consumers can use to easily and instantly distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). How do you use it?
1. You can search for artists, albums, and record labels.
2. Add the RIAA Radar bookmarklet to your bookmarks/favorites list. As you're browsing around Amazon.com, you can click the bookmark and it will give you just the info you need, when you need it most.
3. Use the RIAA Radar Indie 100 and Amazon Top 100 to help you find new music. There are also more top 10 lists broken out into genres to help you find what you like.
4. Use the "Find similar RIAA-free albums" link next to any search result to find up to 10 RIAA-free alternatives to the albums you know you like.

Why should I use it?
Just as people can currently find out where some products come from and who made them (Is this banana organic? Does this milk contain growth hormones? Were these clothes made in a sweatshop?), it is important to have that knowledge for as many consumer goods as possible. Knowledge is power, and knowing where the product came from can (and should) influence what you buy.

The RIAA is a group of several hundred record labels. The roster of members changes constantly (major labels create new subsidiary labels, popular artists are given their own labels, artists or labels leave the RIAA due to creative or political differences, etc.) and it is almost impossible to keep track. Aside from memorizing the entire list, or having the list available and checking it while shopping, it is hard to know who is a member and who is not.

Why is it important to know if an album was released by an RIAA member or not?That's possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files. (Feel free to visit the RIAA and Boycott-RIAA.com to learn more!)

In order to successfully and efficiently support who you like (or not support who you don't like), you need to have information immediately available to know who is who. The RIAA Radar works in two ways: if you're looking to stop buying RIAA releases, it will help tell you what albums to avoid (or purchase secondhand); if you are looking for new music or new alternatives, it works to promote non-RIAA releases by providing similar RIAA-free albums to almost any RIAA release, and RIAA-free popularity charts for several genres in order to showcase viable alternatives.


http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/

Downhill Battle is a non-profit organization working to end the major label monopoly and build a better, fairer music industry. Five major record labels have a monopoly -- that's bad for musicians and music culture, but now we have an opportunity to change that.

THE REASONS to get rid of the major record labels:

Music diversity will grow.
The very nature of their operation produces homogenized music designed for specific radio formats and scientifically honed to hit-making models. Artists are signed and promoted based on the opinions of individual A&R executives, not the popularity of the music.

Pay-for-play radio will end.
For decades, the major labels have controlled what's on the radio by paying radio stations to play their songs. Pay-for-play radio (aka "payola") means that independent labels can't get their music on mainstream radio and mediocre major label music gets on the radio just because somebody's paying.
Independent music won't be marginalized.
The major labels use their monopoly of distribution and their control of radio to prevent independent music from competing in the mainstream. Pay-for-play happens in print media too: if a record label places ads, they'll get reviews. Many in indie music circles have grown so used to being marginalized by the majors that they just accept it.

The RIAA lawsuits will stop.
The major labels hit a new low when they started suing fans last fall. But the million-dollar filesharing lawsuits are hurting hundreds of families, many of whom have young children. These lawsuits are literally driving families into bankruptcy. The risk and expense of fighting the suits rather than settling means that of the over 400 people targetted by the RIAA, there may not be a single case that gets decided in court. The only way to stop these suits is to stop buying the CDs that fund the lawsuits.

Artistic freedom will expand.
For artists on major labels, label bureaucrats hijack the sound and control the final product. The label picks the producer of the album and they can always refuse to release it; sometimes labels even trash entire albums. And at the end of the day the label--not the musician--owns the copyright to each song.

The major labels have also made it illegal or prohibitively expensive to make sample-based music. They own all the copyrights and, unless musicians pay to 'clear' each sample, the musical equivalent of a collage becomes illegal art. Hip-hop and electronic music suffer the most from this restrictive, legalistic atmosphere. But if we take down the copyright cartel, the problem is solved.

Musicians will make a better living.
The major label system is the biggest barrier to musicians making money off CDs. Major label artists only start getting their tiny share of royalties (5-10%) once they've sold over 500,000 units. Independent musicians can get a bigger cut, but thanks to major label payola they can't get on the radio and won't reach a large audience.

All the things the majors do to manipulate the music business cost money. Millions of dollars in payola, 8 figure executive salaries, poor choices of new artists, overpriced studios--this money comes from musicians and fans, but benefits neither. If we cut out the waste, fans will be able to support more musicians while spending less.

http://www.downhillbattle.org/

Dave Barry's columns are published every Friday on his Web site at the Miami Herald. But if you can't wait that long, you can use this page to generate one of your own, instead.

here's how mine came out:

IguanaGaL's "Dave Barry" column:
Recently in Los Angeles (motto: "The chunky air is here"), residents reported an outbreak of elephant tusks. Perhaps you think there are no elephant tusks in Los Angeles. Perhaps you are an idiot.
As the French say, au contraire (literally: "you are a dolt!"). I have here in my hands a copy of an Associated Press article sent in by alert reader Jennifer, whose name can be rearranged to spell "JREENFNI", although that is not my main point. "Jennifer", by the way, only has the letters "ennie" in common with "Monica Lewinsky", so there is no other reason to mention Monica Lewinsky in this column.
According to a quote which I am not making up, from Los Angeles Mayor Cedric formally "Mayor Cedric" and informally "dude"), elephant tusks ranks as a major crisis just behind coffee, sugar and milk (insert your "Cremora" joke here), as evidenced by the following conversation between Los Angeles government employees:
FIRST LOS ANGELES EMPLOYEE: "bite me, i'm outta here"
SECOND LOS ANGELES EMPLOYEE: "you friggin' butthead"
FIRST LOS ANGELES EMPLOYEE: "oops ! i didn't know it was you"
Fortunately I have a suggestion for Mayor dude, and that is: starch George
Steinbrenner's jockey shorts.
No, seriously, my suggestion does not involve George Steinbrenner's jockey shorts, although it might involve having the IRS audit Tobacco Institute scientists. My suggestion is more along the lines of a coup de grace, from the French coup, meaning "surfing", and de grace, meaning "the internet".
The procedure (you may want to write this down):
send it to iraq
using a plunger
But instead the Los Angeles city council (motto: "We'll keep people under control when you pry the coffee cup out of our cold, dead fingers") thinks that they (the elephant tusks) are bigger than the Goodyear Blimp - sending this message to the public, and to the world: "i love michael jackson".
Speaking of which, "The Los Angeles Elephant tusks Outbreak" would be a great name for a rock band.

http://www.peacefire.org/staff/bennett/autodave/

Download FREE MP3s for the holidays from members of the Washington D.C. area's music community.

From the Chromatics' humorous take on "One Horse Open Sleigh," to Eddie From Ohio's traditional "Silent Night" this is the biggest and most diverse assortment of holiday music yet from the washingtonpost.com/MP3 community.

The Alexandria Kleztet offers a swing version of the classic Hanukah song "Dreydl."
The Velveteens - A nine-piece ska-soul band, share their Klezmer-meets-Ska composition "Get Your Channakuh On." .

"Jingle Bells" is done in R&B fashion courtesy of the a cappella quintet Reverb and
Saxman James Bazen and his Big Band swing on this instrumental version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."

Lots more free music at the web site:
http://mp3.washingtonpost.com/holidays04/holidays04.shtml
All downloads are free with DOWNLOAD AGREEMENT. (which basically says you agree to not do bad things to the artists' music, etc. - no big whoop!)

Also, clicking on the individual artist's name will take you to a page where you can download other free MP3s by them.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays -
iGuanaGaL