Free music for music webloggers

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I stumbled upon this via josh blog. Let me quote:
So here's what we are going to do: we are going to give you free CDs if you are a blogger, love music, and agree to write about it on a regular basis. I will need from you in the form of an email: your name, your blog, your email address, your approximate monthly traffic, your favorite genres or artists.

What do you think of it? Personally I am not interested as I have enough CDs at home to write about (which I don't do enough) and I don't want to write about music I don't care for. There is also the thing about independence. I will never write a positive review of a record only because I got it for free. And I can't imagine that they will send me free CDs, I will write negative reviews on them and I will get more free CDs.
Apparently Eric Olsen who writes that blog has got some connections to record companies. He says he needs at least 100 webloggers to participate to make the thing take off.

― alex in mainhattan, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

the link doesn't work, or maybe it's me.

― Andrew, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There is something strange about the permalink. Try the home page of the blog and scroll down. The initial post was called "Free Music". Apparently Josh's rather negative evaluation has already been commented by Mr Olsen.

― alex in mainhattan, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

rather negative? can't a guy compare people to murderous colonial explorers any more?!?

― Josh, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

why would one want to emulate those viral marketers who get paid to drink skyy and talk it up to the heavens? that 'must talk about everything you get' stipulation is creepy. but i'm sure there are bloggers who will do it, if only because of their seeming need to be the loudest member of the echo chamber.

― maura, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well I'm game.

― Tanya Headon, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It needs to be a weblog that people read more than two entries of though.

― Ronan, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I find it rather strange that the idea of someone to give away CDs for free incites so few positive responses. Apparently much less than 100 webloggers have answered yet. According to Olsen there is absolutely no obligation to write positive reviews of the records. Though I guess the idea is that you probably do not have to write something on every record you receive but you are supposed to write on the records you like. Why does nobody care about this? It is a win- win situation as Olsen puts it. Is there already so much free music in form of mp3s, real audio files etc. floating around that this offer which would have been unthinkable ten years ago does not excite anybody? And the thing about the majors Josh is on about does not convince me at all. I do not care where the music I like is published. I do not even know of most of my CDs which label they appeared on. Being on a major does not make good music bad music. Actually from my POV I could argue that in receiving free CDs from the majors I fuck them as they have to pay for those records and not me. Wilco's latest appeared on a major and I paid for it. Using Olsen's free record scheme I wouldn't have paid anything. And I would have written the same as I did with paying for it. That it is a wonderful record etc.

― alex in mainhattan, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Josh's second last paragraph rockSor the boat.

― david h(0wie), Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And also note "and Tom doesn't even keep up with all of the blogs out there". Hu-hum. AHEM. [teehee ;]

― david h(0wie), Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Nice blog, David. I like it when people write on the lyrics as well. That is rather rare in weblogger circles. I put on Knock Knock now. Actually rethinking about the CD offer I think the main drawback will be that the webloggers will only get rubbish CDs. The interesting labels won't participate in the scheme.

― alex in mainhattan, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You can imagine the proportion of crap will be high. It will be full of major label dross ala the crap in the Gavin Alternative Chart: second and third rate cliched nu metal/rap metal, corporate post grunge gunk, lightweight pop punk and bland modern rock like vertical horizon and Peter Yorn. I want to avoid this music not have it sent to me !

There may be a few gems per 100 (i.e forthcoming albums by the likes of Cave In, A Perfect Circle,Deftones, Dredg) - that I would know about anyway.

So overall the concept is DUD from a personal stance.

― DJ Martian, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(Ha, that Knock Knock thing is as old as the hills. I wrote it way before the internet. Well, before I had the internet. Just posted it to fill the space.)

― david h(0wie), Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I really like Tom's comment about the act of discovery in his NYLPM post. Flipping through used CDs in a rack is so much like being a little kid, because you get to be all excited when you find some CD that you really wanted a few years ago for $1.99. And it's always fun to go tangentially shooting off on buying & listening just to sets of CDs related to something that you found & let your current releases buying lapse for a month or two, which wouldn't really happen if you had to listen to a set of new CDs every few weeks.

― lyra in seattle, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ummm... insert periods as needed in the last sentence above.

― lyra in seattle, Monday, 29 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

DJ Martian you write about everything anyway though!!

― Tom, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually no Tom, there were over 38, 000 albums released last year in the US, the top 2 per cent would would = 760 albums, [5 per cent would equal 1900 albums]. Therefore I am very selective across the contemporary sound spectrum as a whole.

There are thousands of awful artists making ghastly music that get nowhere near my weblog.

I have an active interest in a diverse range of contemporary music, equally my dislikes are numerous and diverse too.

― DJ Martian, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

weblog promo slogan: "dean martian: he's no robert xgau"

― mark s, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Or: "selective across the contemporary sound spectrum since 1998"

― Andrew L, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Fascinating discussion - I am always amazed at the range of opinion out there. There is no way to know exactly what material we will get, but my radio show playlist on the Tres Producers site is probably something of an indication. It's my guess that we will do better with indie and sub-indie labels (self-released) than with most of the majors to begin with.

As far as the program - no obligation TO DO ANYTHING other than write something about a reasonable percentage of the music you get. Your only real obligation will be to listen to it.

The response has actually ben terriffic and it looks like we will be closing down apllications very shortly - please join now if you are interested. Thanks

― Eric Olsen, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

John Scalzi (never heard of him though) has written a long article in his Whatever column about the free CD idea. Nobody here seems interested but Scalzi argues that the scheme won't work. Not because of too few webloggers signing but because of the record companies not participating. The arguments are quite obvious: weblogs don't reach a mass audience, webloggers participating will be lost as consumers, there is the danger that the webloggers will upload the CDs on file-sharing systems (majors are paranoid about those systems) etc.

― alex in mainhattan, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

scalzi is (as he often is) OTM, especially about the economics of publicity/difficulty of dealing with publicists and the perceived 'legitimacy' of online as a medium.

― maura, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

also eric: do you have any non-personal anecdote evidence that the music that falls within your demographic range (saw your playlist) is really what the labels *want* to spend money on to promote now? because i don't think that's the case -- these genres of music tend to, for better or worse, promote themselves via word of mouth (like, say, personal web sites!) or semi-commercial outlets like public radio. even smaller labels are feeling the pinch on promotional budgets, and whoever said up there that this whole enterprise might be more trouble than it's worth w/r/t the whole crap record factor.

i wonder if any of the people who run music-focused sites around here have tried on their own to get servicing? if so, from whom?

― maura, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

As someone who works for a record label (at least for a little while longer), the likelihood of a group of bloggers getting regular service from the family of labels I work for is basically zero. First, the number of free cds being sent out is rapidly decreasing, especially with the financial troubles affecting the industry as a whole. Secondly, there is an association (accurate or no) that the internet community of writers is the same community that is actively pirating major label music. Indies might be more apt to go in for such a thing, but usually any label with some desire to be profitable is stingy with the free goods. Someone with a connection to a label has a decent chance of getting music on the pretense of friendship, but I doubt the music industry will be too eager to fill bloggers' mailboxes, at least in the current state of things.

― Dan Gibson, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

A more real example of this is radiohead's viral marketing campaign with the bits and more generally the distribution of "hooks".

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 30 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two weeks pass...

The thing has taken off. It is called blogcritics and features already quite some reviews. Most of them are positive which does not surprise me as the idea behind this is commercial. I am glad that I did not join in. Most records reviewed don't interest me at all.

― alex in mainhattan, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

the distribution of hooks w/o the other (important?) stuff they are hooked into = waging secret unintended (?) war on yr own aesthetic and/or cultural role?? cf also film trailers ("they are bettah than the films")

wot is the dialectics of this eh? EH!!??

― mark s, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I wanted critics to turn into bloggers, not the other way round. I think this site exists with the sole function of tormenting me. Its probably written by Satan and I have died and gone to Hell.

IOW I'm not keen.

― Alexander Blair, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i agree with alexander(!)

― gareth, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Then you must change it from within!

― Andrew L, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

it's a rubbish concept !

as Tom implied on his weblog it strips context out of the equation it's just a bunch of reviews of mostly mediocre or worse music.

the online equivalent of clueless planks ala Rolling Stone/Spin/Blender - i will not be reading it in the future !

― DJ Martian, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

bits are opposite of trailers. code fragments, glimpses of the unutterable, gnostic shards of the otherworld. trailers are whole in themselves, episodic palm of the hands stories which provide everything about the worlds they represent. "hello -- this is the universe we made. do you want to spend 90 minutes visiting here?" -- like travel brochures.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

well yeah sterl except they DON'T: the world of the trailer to THE MUMMY for example was the greatest world of all time bar none, yet the film was rub => are travel brochures a sedimented crituque of the very idea of travel? (ans = yes possibly, hence all the HOLIDAYS IN HELL real-life TV docs... the world is not like this leaflet, let us overthrow the world etc etc)

― mark s, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, let's look on the bright side; perhaps this means that no more inane MetaFilter music threads will be started ...

― maura, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ah. the old mark s trope of unfufilled promises containing the contradictory germ of revolution.

I would not want to extend this idea to travel brochures as critique because it makes you into David Foster Wallace (cf. "A supposedly fun thing...") -- much better to note that movies are available to all while travel is not.

"They Show You All The Good Parts" -- a step on the commodity road when films become parts rather than items, become a sum total of tits explosions one-liners and suchforth? And who finds the trailers better -- those who watch for the tits or those who watch for the story? Perhaps the critique is there but in the wrong direction.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

haha you read meat-filter?

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

TS: bits vs tits

― mark s, Wednesday, 14 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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