Freeware

RIAA Radar: Stickin’ it to the Man One CD at a Time

By EAN ⋅ October 5, 2007 ⋅  Email this Post ⋅  Print this Post ⋅ Post a Comment

Developer: N/A
Version: N/A
Price: Free
Operating Systems: Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Click here to check out RIAA Radar

The First Step of Many

In light of the outcome of the RIAA’s lawsuit, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, I figured that now would be a fitting time to post a review of RIAA Radar. It’s a simple web app, nothing fancy, that’s designed to help you, the savvy consumer, determine which CDs you own (or are thinking about purchasing), are from record labels associated with the recording industry. With a variety of ways to access the site, RIAA Radar makes it easy to figure out exactly which CDs are recording industry related.

The main tool associated with RIAA Radar is the website itself. There’s a short list of frequently asked questions and the bread and butter of this app - the search box. You can use it to search for keywords, artist names, record labels, and even the UPC code of the CD you are pondering over. The search is speedy, often taking only a few milliseconds even for artists or labels that have hundreds of CDs available. Really, the only problem that I can see is that there is no way to tell the search engine to show more than the default ten results at a time.

Moving along, there is also a nifty bookmarklet that you can save to your bookmark toolbar for easy searching through the RIAA Radar database when you are browsing Amazon’s music store. Find a CD you like, click your trusty bookmarklet, and RIAA Radar will tell you whether or not that CD you were considering is RIAA safe. Like the traditional search function on the site, the bookmarklet works well and quickly.

For those of you who still buy your CDs in stores, RIAA Radar is even available on your cell phone. Find the UPC code from the back of the CD, type it into the RIAA Radar mobile UPC lookup page and the web app will tell you the status of that CD. I’ve not tried this service, but I suppose that it works just as well as everything else on the site (though likely not as fast).

Despite the different ways to go about searching for non-RIAA music on RIAA Radar, there are a couple of issues. The first, which the website clearly states, is that the information on the site may not be entirely correct. Membership in the RIAA changes all the time, so it is impossible to be 100% certain that the CD you are about to purchase is not from a record label affiliated with the recording industry bigwigs. This is more of a problem with the RIAA’s structure and record keeping than the RIAA Radar site itself.

The other issue I had was the inability to customize the search output to include more than ten results per page. No big deal, though, and certainly not a reason to stop using the site. I highly recommend RIAA Radar for those of you who are looking to stick it to the man, as it were. Even if you don’t care one way or the other, RIAA Radar is still a fun little web app that you can use to see exactly how much control the RIAA has over the music industry.

And for all of you nosy types out there, my CD collection consists of only 10 to 15% RIAA affiliated discs.

Click here to check out RIAA Radar

- Eric Norton