Now, I pay a decent amount of money to host my site here at GoDaddy. It’s not exactly expensive, but being as this is just a hobby, and not any sort of money-maker, it’s all out-of-pocket. I’ve never seen a dime from Amazon or Google AdSense, because I just don’t get enough clicks to warrant a check. Seriously, this is more for my own personal amusement, and a desire to keep somewhat flexible in terms of my writing ability. I spend so much time doing radio anymore that I just don’t have time to seek out replacement freelance gigs for the ones I’ve lost.
But, after reading this LA Weekly article, I’m pretty damn happy I’ve never chosen to go with Blogger or WordPress or any of the regular blogging sites. Losing stuff I’ve written – ugh, even the thought of it – makes me physically ill. I kept a hard drive from a dead PC in a drawer for five years because of all the stuff on there that I didn’t want to lose, and that stuff was mostly papers I’d written in high school.
The article makes a good point, though. I’ve gotten loads of e-mails from record labels with attached mp3s that I’m told to post and share with my “readers” (all five of you). I don’t, mainly because I very rarely ever get anything that interests me. I’m not here to shill what’s hip, cool, or new. Frankly, this is just an outlet for my musical interests, and a way to justify blowing large amounts of money on records every month. It’ll probably morph once I’m done with school, and probably end up reflecting my interests in providing some sort of radio show, but that’s months from now.
But back to what I was saying – I usually end up with three or four e-mails a week from labels and promoters providing me with mp3s that I am “free to post.” It’s insanely frustrating to realize that there are people posting those very sound files who are getting slammed with fines and cease-and-desist orders. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to see e-mail presented verbatim as a text file link in the future, just to forestall any of this shit. It’s just another case of corporations being so large that one portion has no idea what the other is doing, or one end producing something that pretty much contravenes the desires of another, like Sony making mp3 players and releasing records, essentially contributing to their own demise, and robbing Peter to pay Paul.
MC Lars – “Download This Song” (from The Graduate)