So the past couple of days have found a whole new group of people gravitating to my little space of the blogosphere for both positive and negative reasons.
First I have had the honor of guest posting on one of the best blogs running now: THE VINYL VILLAIN. To see what I had to write click here.
Second, a recent post on the new PASSION PIT album got snagged off the net by the DCMA folks who monitor copyright infringement. This is not the first post I have lost to the censors but it was the first that came with the dreaded legal notice that my behavior of praising a band for their work and trying to share my joy of the sounds they have created was a sort of crime against humanity. It used to be that this sort of thing happened when you posted large act songs, which lead to smaller acts to rally around the blogs who spent most of the energy championing them to greater success than they could possibly imagine. Personally, I understand the argument that posting songs is a form of piracy and that the writers receive no compensation for their work as a result. However, given the continued conglomeration of commercial radio and the fact that music television is all but non existent, then were do bands turn to get publicity for their albums? Under the old construct this was the role of college radio. Non-commercial stations had the freedom that came with no format boundaries to play songs from lesser or unknown artists trying to find an audience for the music outside of the larger corporate music business. Bands such as NIRVANA and REM were born out of this. I would posit that the blogs have replaced the old college stations as that outlet. Some labels share music with the larger blogs as a form of detente and those blogs (such as STEREOGUM and MY OLD KENTUCKY BLOG to name a couple) have seen huge spikes in the audience traffic in a win-win situation. However, those of us who do this more for the joy of sharing music have no such aspirations for commercial success of our own venture. This means that we post things we like (either new or vintage in variety). I just wish bands would understand that our intent as bloggers is not malicious but supportive and we always recommend that readers buy the records and support the bands we love in concert so that they can continue to make music rather than taking a job at BEST BUY.
Does this mean I don't still love the PASSION PIT CD? Of course not (I'm listening to it now). It does mean I cannot share their music with you other than to say GO BUY THE FREAKING RECORD RIGHT AWAY...IT'S BRILLIANT!!!!
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