Extortion
Y’all know how I get down already. I just don’t give a fuck. I have no problem stating an issue with anyone. Fortunately, birds of a feather flock together so my blogger buddies don’t take no shit either. What up, Ivan, Dom, Dart? They are wayyyy better at this shit than I am, but, I feel compelled to.
Yesterday, I happened to see someone tweet about Kevin Nottingham (the site) charging artist for reviews. I don’t like spazzing out uninformed, so I took it upon myself to find out what the deal was. I stumbled upon an email that confirmed it. First reaction; are you fuckin’ serious!?
Kevin decide to answer all the questions regarding that matter last night on his site in a post. Basically, he stated he needed the money to keep the site running. So I’m assuming he believes we need to pay for his site to run. After all, we do read it.
Now, I’m not doubting he needs money for the site. Shit, this site cost more than some of you think and I don’t have one fourth of the content he does. So I feel him on that.
I have a problem with the site only charging indie artists for features. He defended this saying we need the publicity. That’s fucked up. Hey while we at it, let’s get together next Thanksgiving. We’ll invite family and homeless people. Peep this though, we’ll only charge the homeless people to eat! Don’t look at me like that now I’ll only charge $10 a plate.
In all seriousness if you own a website I understand that it cost money to run it. But I’m not paying someone for an opinion on my music. He should charge his readers to read the site if it costs that much. Wait, it’s pretty much unsigned artist that read his site so either way, I’d be paying.
If he really needs to charge at all, perhaps he should up the price of advertising on his site. Maybe he should get rid of some of the content to lower the cost of his bandwidth. Just a few suggestions from ya boy free of charge. Although I should charge his ass $35 for the knowledge.
This is extortion. First it’ll be reviews, then they’ll get like WorldStar and you’ll be paying to get shit posted on the site. Payola runs deep as my homie Danielle said via Twitter. Why just charge the artist? Because some of these underground acts will pay for it.
When I started blogging, I wasn’t trying to get any money from it. My enthusiasm towards blogging came from reading other bloggers blogs. I got encouragement looking at the blogs that took a lot of time and money to get off the ground.
He also said that the whole “free” music thing is fucking up the industry. I disagree. I believe music is going back to its original essence. There was no money in music at first. All the musicians that were coming up just wanted to be heard and make some great shit.
Blogging is the same way. Unless your writing for a website or something, there is no money in this. People do it because they care about the essence. The essence of just making some great shit which is always free.
I didn’t even go into the fact that he could have taken money for favorable reviews. I’m trying not to discredit the site any further than it already is. A couple of my homies have been featured over there and perhaps I’ll be featured in the future. I’ll tell you one thing though, I won’t be getting a review.
Edit: Change of heart?
