I spend a lot of my time these days tracking down blogs that post our stuff for free online. Yeah, yeah, they all say it’s “good exposure” for the bands and labels, and that if people like what they download for free, they’ll end up buying it. It’s all BS though – I’ve seen sites offer our Penetrators and Kilaueas CD’s for free download, and right there on the Rapidshare download page it shows that these discs have been downloaded over 1,000 times! I usually only make 1,000 CD’s at a time, and I know that not even 5% of the people that download our music end up  buying it. While things are still okay for us here at Double Crown, if these trends continue, we may not be able to continue a year or two down the road.

Having said that, I’m not totally opposed to downloading music for free – I am a big fan of radio sessions, live recordings, and out-of-print LP’s. Downloading these recordings as MP3’s, which are never going to be commercially available in most cases, is perfectly okay by me, and actually does accomplish the goal of exposing music to more people, while not taking away from income that artists and labels rightfully deserve.

In any case, I stumbled across the following blog entry on Chunklet.com, and it sums up my thoughts perfectly.

Excerpted from Chunklet.com:

The Two-headed Beast of the Decade: The MP3. Yes, I download a lot of stuff. For example the stuff Henry and I (by far mostly Henry) post on this very site. But I confine my DLing to what it should be: oddball, unreleased, live, hopelessly out of print, demos, and the otherwise unattainable. In that aspect the MP3 is a priceless treasure. But if you went to some blog-spot or torrent site and downloaded a lousy bit rate version of the last Torche album (for example), you can fuck right off. You have nothing. And deserve it. And don’t give me that tired line of “but I live in a tiny, squalled, town with no cool place to get stuff”. If you have computer for stealing it, it’s easier than ever to mail order anything over the web. Like I’ve said before, I can’t wait until some 16 year-old Russian kid invents the super virus the erases every MP3 library in the world. Then what will you have? Jack fucking squat that’s what. I’ll have my LP, my CD, my 7” – for they are objects. But you? You and your precious download just screwed everybody from the musicians themselves, to the graphic designers, to the engineers, to the pressing plant workers, to even the poor slobs that stick the damn things in a box and tape it up. Not to mention, ya know the fucking stores that kill themselves trying to remain a part of the culture. MUSIC IS TANGIBLE. I can hold a record in my hand, place it in your hand, and keep it on my shelf. You, you Internet only asshats, can – right click, save as, fuck off. (Billy Carter – Chunklet contributor)

Norton Records is launching a brand new series of books under the name Kicks Books. The first one, which has me very excited, is by famed R&B artist Andre Williams and is called “Sweets & Other Stories”. The cover has the look and feel of the Hard Case Crime books, of which I am a huge fan. This book can be ordered from Norton Records in November.

The new exhibit is Spaced Out: The Final Frontier in Album Covers and features a gallery of 117 space themed album covers from the 40’s through the 60’s. I’m sure I have a few of these in my collection, but it’d be cool to see some covers for albums I don’t have, plus hopefully they have a little background on the recording artists, as well as the artists that designed the covers. The exhibit’s running for a few more months, so I really don’t have any excuse not to go, and if I do make it I’ll write about it here.