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Three years ago, executives from Sharman Networks—the parent company for the popular Kazaa P2P filesharing program--asked the independent San Francisco band Ten Mile Tide to work with them in a publicity campaign. To this day, Ten Mile Tide is the most downloaded independent band on Kazaa and has always been very vocal about their support of music file-sharing. For several years, Ten Mile Tide was featured in Kazaa ads and the company assisted with tour publicity for one of the band’s nationwide tours. Throughout this time, Ten Mile Tide has been an avid supporter of Kazaa and has publicly voiced their indignation with the RIAA lawsuits against users of Kazaa. But now things have changed. Ten Mile Tide has announced that they do not support the recent libel lawsuit Nikki Hemming and Sharman Networks have filed against the free speech site P2Pnet.net and as a result no longer choose to associate themselves with Kazaa.
“This new culture of lawsuits in music is disgusting,” says Jason Munning, guitarist and co-founder of Ten Mile Tide. “The RIAA started this sue-your-(helpless)-friends public relations campaign three years ago when it sued individual music lovers and now Nikki Hemming is continuing it.” Munning believes the surge of lawsuits in the music industry is counter-productive and is “destroying everything there is to love about music.”
Ten Mile Tide has recently posted MP3s of all of their songs for free on their website. “We don’t want to be a part of an industry that operates on brute force and unethical lawsuits. We have posted all of the MP3s from our just-released album for free on our website and we are encouraging other bands we know to do something similar.” Munning and the rest of Ten Mile Tide believe that sharing music for free encourages support from grass-roots fans who are more than happy to support a band they believe in. “People come to shows and they buy merchandise because they love the music and they support what we are doing, not because we might sue them for something.”
About the Band
Ten Mile Tide is five-piece independent band from San Francisco that describes their sound as feel-good acoustic rock, foot-stomping folk, and beer-drenched bluegrass. The band was formed at Stanford University in 1999 by twin brothers Jason Munning (lead electric guitar, vocals) and Justin Munning (rhythm acoustic guitar, vocals), along with fiddler Steve Kessler. The band is filled out by Jeff Clemetson (bass), and John Morales (drums).
In January of 2006, Ten Mile Tide was nominated for a Jammy award by Relix Magazine.
In April of 2005, Ten Mile Tide was selected as the New Groove of the Month by Jambands.com. In the summer of 2004, Ten Mile Tide was selected as a finalist in Relix magazine’s Jamoff Competition. Ten Mile Tide has shared the stage with other national touring acts such as The Wailers, Dispatch, moe., MOFRO, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Strangefolk, The Clumsy Lovers, Railroad Earth, The Slip, The Gourds, Jerry Joseph, Graham Colton, Luce, The Samples, Assembly of Dust and has played festivals such as High Sierra, Wakarusa, Three Rivers, Utah Arts Mt. Helena, Desert Rocks and the Green Apple Music Festival. The band has received national and international media attention including CNN, the Denver Post, the Contra Costa Times, Canadian Broadcasting Channel, San Francisco Magazine, Stanford Magazine, and independent and college newspapers and radio across the country for its support of file-sharing. With Ten Mile Tide’s consent, users of the file-sharing program Kazaa have downloaded more than 10 million Ten Mile Tide songs worldwide.
The band's growing Street Team now consists of more than 350 members in 45 U.S. States and 10 countries. The new self-titled album follows the 2003 release "Midnight Is Early" and the 2001 release “Flow” and has been met with critical acclaim from a variety of sources.
Sharman Networks develops the only two authentic versions of Kazaa software: Kazaa and Kazaa Plus.
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jason[.]tenmiletide.com 
