Djembe music downloads

[James]

I prefer mp3s to CDs. I was delighted to find the art of jenbe drumming volume 2 on amazon downloads, but you can only download it if you're in America.

Could some one In the states buy it for me and I'll send them the money via paypal?

I also found a limited selection of downloads for sale on drumskulls. Dies anyone know of any other places that do downloads?

[e2c]

There are a lot of djembe recordings on eMusic.com, but that's a subscription service. It's available in the UK (and maybe Germany?), but availability of MP3s varies by country... and I'm not sure where you are now - ?

Worth checking out, at least...

[bubudi]

try payplay, cdbaby and mondomix. emusic looks good too. itunes and amazon are among the worst options for people living outside america due to region limitations on mp3 downloads.

i would really like to see music downloads available on this site. we could have many djembe/dunun/tama/sabar/bougarabou players available, plus some of the independent african singers and instrumentalists. anyone second the idea?

[bops]

Check out Mondomix. Lots of great stuff there - all "world" music (the good kind), no mainstream stuff. You can browse by country, which is cool. They have Mamady, Famoudou, Adama Drame, as well as some lesser-known stuff.

emusic.com is also good. They have the art of jenbe drumming vol. 1 & 2 as well as a lot of other nice stuff.

[e2c]

try payplay, cdbaby and mondomix. emusic looks good too. itunes and amazon are among the worst options for people living outside america due to region limitations on mp3 downloads.

That's true for all sites that offer downloads, due to the legalities of licensing, etc. There's plenty on eMusic that's up for grabs in Europe but not in the US, and vice versa. The thing is, eMusic is dealing with a number of companies that are set up to handle licensing for *many* small/independent labels (like IODA and The Orchard) - at this point, Amazon isn't. (You can potentially get around the regional licensing restrictions *if* you either have a credit card with a billing address in the country where the downloads are available, or if a friend is willing to purchase them for you and send them on. But neither option is feasible for most of us.)

i would really like to see music downloads available on this site. we could have many djembe/dunun/tama/sabar/bougarabou players available, plus some of the independent african singers and instrumentalists. anyone second the idea?

It would be nice, but dealing with all of the administrative/legal/technical/etc. stuff involved is a lot of work - running a whole separate business, really. You might want to check with Drumskull on this, as they've started to offer MP3 downloads of CDs and could likely provide some advice on how to go about it. (Ditto for CD Baby, though their situation is different, since they combine distribution with retail sales of physical discs and downloads. Might sound jargony, but as an ex-record store person, i can tell you that this is all more complex than it might appear at 1st blush.)

Brad Powell, who runs Calabash (which has partnerships with Afropop Worldwide and National Geographic) would be a good source for info., too. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabash_Music for more. (I can't seem to locate the actual parent site for Calabash, which is odd... I've corresponded with him in the past; he was the 1st to open an independent download store geared toward "world music" and is a very nice guy.)

Maybe a year or two down the road, though?

[bops]

Brad Powell, who runs Calabash (which has partnerships with Afropop Worldwide and National Geographic) would be a good source for info., too. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabash_Music for more. (I can't seem to locate the actual parent site for Calabash, which is odd... I've corresponded with him in the past; he was the 1st to open an independent download store geared toward "world music" and is a very nice guy.)

Calabash Music was acquired by Mondomix last year. Customer accounts have been transferred over.

[bubudi]

yea that's why i'm suggesting small/new labels - they don't seem to have those restrictions. if we decide to go down that track i might have a word about international licensing with brad at dsd and the mondomix folks. we could be offering the first cd download very soon, and slowly build from there.

[e2c]

Re. new/small labels (independent labels) that's definitely not always true. Every label and label owner(s) has/have their own way of dealing with this stuff, and some are very restrictive. (Includes having serious reservations about selling digital downloads, among other things.) Music sales is (imo) a very quirky business, with many complexities, hidden costs, and more. It's not for everyone. (And yeah, I know I'm taking something of a devil's advocate stance about this, but that's because I've had to deal with lots of this stuff professionally.) fwiw, eMusic handled independent labels only until very recent times, and there were many restrictions on where content could be sold, where it couldn't, etc.

Brad (at Calabash) was a one-man show, and he worked incredibly long hours for many years.

I can see being an affiliate of Mondomix (or some such), but to do it all on one's own - no. (Reminds me a bit of all the people - and there are a lot of them - who say "When I retire, i want to open my own bookstore." If they had any idea of what all that entails, they'd never entertain that fantasy! )

Brad Powell, who runs Calabash (which has partnerships with Afropop Worldwide and National Geographic) would be a good source for info., too. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabash_Music for more. (I can't seem to locate the actual parent site for Calabash, which is odd... I've corresponded with him in the past; he was the 1st to open an independent download store geared toward "world music" and is a very nice guy.)

Calabash Music was acquired by Mondomix last year. Customer accounts have been transferred over.

I'm embarrassingly out of the loop here - thanks for letting me know. (I used to have a Calabash account, but it hasn't been active for several years now, so...)

[bubudi]

word. it's just an idea at this stage and probably it wouldn't go further than a downloads from a few artists that released independently (i.e. without label or own label). such artists want global distribution for their music.

[e2c]

Gotcha.

Go to eMusic and you'll see that almost all of the Buda Musique catalog is available - with the exception of Famoudou Konate's recordings for them. Ditto for Soungalo Coulibaly's for a couple of French labels.

And yet, everything Adama Dramé has released on Playasound is there, along with a lot of other recordings (on various labels) by some extremely talented djembefolaw, as well as recordings by griots on bala, ngoni, etc.

It's all a bit of a head-scratcher for me personally. (Why some people seem to be so uncomfortable with digital downloads, that is.)