musicNeutral : Beyond Free Music Culture

Sub Pop Free Digital Sampler

Chris Castiglione — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:23:59 +0000

Sub Pop is giving away a bunch of its songs as MP3s. The download page they created for it is funny a take-off on 1996-era Web design, with lots of animated gifs and nauseous backgrounds. http://www.subpop.com/cybersex

Coldplay to Give Away Live CD

Chris Castiglione — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:15:21 +0000

Starting May 15th Coldplay will give each fan attending a Coldplay concert this summer a free copy of the live CD “LeftRightLeftRightLeft”. A free digital download for the general public will also be made available on their site. According to the band, the give-away is meant as a recession-busting mark of gratitude to everyone who’s supported [...]

General Fuzz - “Please Help Yourself To My Music”

Chris Castiglione — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:34:53 +0000

James Kirsch has been creating music under the moniker General Fuzz for the past nine years. In that time he has released five albums, two of which were listed in the Top 25 Essential Albums of The Year (2007 and 2008) on the NPR syndicated show Echos. A notable aspect of Kirsch’s music is that the [...]

Metric - Making Money Without a Label

Chris Castiglione — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:39:03 +0000

The band Metric has been quite succesful with their latest album Fantasies, despite releasing it without a record label. How did they finance the album? Typically the record label will advance the artist money to record an album. When the album is finished, a percentage of the album sales are recouped by the label to pay off [...]

Is Google Guilty Too? Finding Music with “The Pirate Google”

Chris Castiglione — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:11:14 +0000

Last week four of the men behind The Pirate Bay were found guilty of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. The men have been sentenced to 1 year of jail and over $3million in fines, yet at this point TBP site itself will not be shut down. In response, Forbes pointed out the obvious: P2P and [...]

No Doubt Is Giving Away All of Their Music with the Purchase of a Concert Ticket

Chris Castiglione — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:39:26 +0000

No Doubt have decided to give away their entire catalog of music to fans that buy a “top-priced ticket” (above $42.50) to their summer tour. No Doubt guitarist Tom Dumont had this to say about the offering, “Since the band is heading back to the road, we wanted to find a cool way to get people [...]

The oXcars: free culture awards

Chris Castiglione — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 22:35:26 +0000

The oXcars is an awards show that celebrates free culture and supports the belief that all citizens have the right to benefit from the exchange of information and culture. Live footage from the first ever oXcars held in Barcelona last October has been edited into an hour long movie. I saw a screening of the [...]

Josh Freese Will Give You A Foot Massage

Chris Castiglione — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:08:58 +0000

Josh Freese is selling himself to sell his new album. He is best known as the drummer for A Perfect Circle, The Vandals and Devo, but just yesterday Freese released Since 1972, his second solo-album. Taking off from Trent Reznor’s tiered pricing scheme on the album Ghosts I-IV, Freese’s new album is available online for $7, [...]

Amazon & iTunes Cut Music Prices

Chris Castiglione — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:03:03 +0000

Amazon has been experimenting with digital music prices by offering an array of full-length albums for less than $7.99. Each week they pick five albums to sell for $5.00, and for a limited time U2’s latest album “No Line on the Horizon” was available for only $3.99. Similarly, up until recently all the music in [...]

Lessons from the Newspaper Industry: Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.

Chris Castiglione — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:59:08 +0000

“Newspapers Fold. At least 120 newspapers in the U.S. have shut down since January 2008”, reported CNN. Some newspapers like the Ann Arbor News are being superseded by their online identity, while employees at the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune are holding on for life after news that their parent company [...]