With the fall of Napster, eager mp3 hounds have had to sniff out new Internet haunts to download the music they don’t want to pay for. And sometimes these digital-audio safaris lead to the dark corners of ‘Net where the files these addicts so desperately seek can be found, but are often-gasp!-pirated, illegal copies of tunes for which the artists and labels will receive no compensation. But sometimes, as is the case with Internet startup Epitonic.com, the downloads are legal.
While Epitonic.com doesn’t offer entire albums for download the way Napster did, it does offer fully-legal, full tracks from a number of current independent releases in 8 genres. And one of those genres is jazz. The catalog of jazz tunes on Epitonic.com is ever-growing, but at the moment mp3s from artists like Ken Vandermark, Anthony Braxton, Nels Cline and Gregg Bendian can be downloaded. If those names are any clue as to what’s to come in the future, Epitomic.com will lean more toward the avant than the traditional.
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