It's only cool if you're giving it away for free....

It's also only cool that it's free if you're giving away something cool. Stop giving away crappy music. Stop giving away your music for free in general. There are instances when I find that it can be ok. Music is supposed to be the product that you sell, well, if you're in a band at least. There aren't a lot of painters walking around handing out free paintings to try to get people to come to their gallery opening or buy more of their paintings.

I'm not even saying to never hand a person a song, but for heaven's sake get something worth you're time. Email addresses for your mailing list, give away with admission, give away a package for a charity auction (it makes you appear to have a soul), find a nice promoter or company that is willing to put it on a compilation for you (it makes it look better when other people like your music too). Graphic designers didn't become graphic designers to sell music and musicians shouldn't want to become musicians to sell t-shirts. It's insulting and annoying as a consumer so I think it should be 9 times more to the person making their product.

People are making it too easy to just take your music anyway, you can add a few features such as monetary donation to make it a little bit more difficult to rob you.

Going back to the original point though.... if no one is willing to give you $5 for your album, even $3 for your album then either reconsider your friends or your music. I am so sick of getting new coasters every week in clubs. And please, don't just hand me your album and say, "this is my band, you should check it out". That gets stuck at the bottom of my purse because it's pretty much like handing me a flyer that you didn't tell me anything about. Unless you're a hot dude. Then I'm checking it out for all the wrong reasons. I guess I'm still checking it out though. Rarely does it happen that I get a burned CD of good music for free. You'd be much better off printing up download cards. At least it's not gonna get scratched in my huge purse or crack in half or thrown away as quickly. If I put it in my wallet I know that I'm more likely to hang on to it for a while. Maybe it's just me, but I think that is way more pro.

People have forgotten the art of flyering. I'm not saying don't put out flyers for the sake of putting out flyers, but it used to work because people would go out, talk up their band and THEN hand a flyer to them. Quit littering the universe and putting your crap on cars. It's not only annoying and gives a negative spin to your band, but it's wasting the money you're not making giving your CD's away. If you're going to be wasteful of flyers at least hand them out at shows your band is already playing or put them in music stores or coffee shops or even tattoo parlors. NOT ON MY CAR WINDSHIELD JERKOFF!

Thank you, this has been a public service announcement. You may go back to your regularly watched program.