Flutterby™! : Free music = fan base

Yes, Salon has gone subscription or "watch ads to read", but as long as they keep the latter I'm actually willing to link to them occasionally. When they have good stuff. Of course the ads are all for the super-tackiest of SUVs ("When the Escalade is too refined."), so their demographic is becoming less me all the time, but occasionally they have a gem like this: John Snyder, president of Artist House Records, and Ben Snyder, write "Embrace file-sharing or die". Curious that Artist House Records doesn't have a web site, but they lay out lots of good reasons why the "intellectual property" argument isn't going to work for the record companies in the face of what's really a changing market. There's some discussion over at FactoVision

That article mentioned TechN9ne. Free downloads of their music there, music which but for this gimmick I definitely would never have listened to, and which is helping change my perceptions of rap ever so slowly. Keith Knight turned me on to the Marginal Prophets a while ago, and I enjoyed their first album, but the genre goes beyond that. If we only hear it as it's rattling the windows of the passing car with the gold-spoked wheels then it'll forever be a cultural divide to deep to cross.

TechN9ne is running a ads in which he ("they"? The whole rap/D.J. naming thing eludes me.) wear FTI^tm T-shirts, with no further explanation. As "The Industry" works towards enacting a tax on recordable media, the way they have in Canada and other places, folks like this need our support. Although sometimes it's hard to get past some of the lyrics.