Ever since picking up a copy of The Baffler in High School, I've taken a keen interest in the record industry. The actual mechanics of it I mean. How records are made, how they're marketed, etc.

I'm certainly not the first to make the observation that the music industry doesn't so much resemble a mature, vibrant enterprise as an incomprehensible foreign soap opera, what with its bizarre plot twists and recurring scandals. And I admit I've kind of enjoyed seeing it slowly cannibalize itself.

But these days, watching the music industry flail around like a drunk is getting old. Depressing even. I can only snicker so many times at RIAA website defacements before I start feeling sorry for them. They just can't help themselves. Like other vastly more knowledgeable people than I have pointed out, the industry is changing and it seems like the last to realize it is the industry itself.

Which is a shame, because it sure is an exciting time. You don't have to do things the Old Way anymore. Bands have figured out how to make it outside of the system. Every week new distribution models are popping up. Vinyl is back from the dead (again).

And so in this spirit of willful abandon, I'm giving away my latest record for free. There's absolutely no strings, no coupon codes to enter or signup forms to leave a fake email address on. Just click the link and woop, there it is. The entirety of Nothing Personal.

If you want, you can download each track separately, or you can also click the link at the bottom and download it as one big compressed file. (Careful, it's about 75 megs). I've encoded it with LAME at 256K variable bit rate, which is about as high a quality as you can get with MP3.

It's yours. Do with it what you will. If you want to put it up on Bittorrent or Limewire or The Pirate Bay or whatever the kids use these days, you have my personal word that I think that's awesome. If you want to seed it to Usenet, or burn CDs of it only to throw them into the lake during the climax of a Wiccan ceremony as you pray to the four elves of the Magic Forest, be my guest.

Because really, I want you to hear it. It does me no good to keep it locked up inside CDs that you'll never hear.

Plus, let's be honest: I'm small potatoes. In a given month, the amount of records I sell absolutely pales in comparison to bands like Radiohead or even, probably, Milli Vanilli. So even if I set up some sort of pay-to-download system, the amount of money I'd make from it is not worth the hassle of making you jump through hoops to get it.

I don't consider this a bad thing. I never really expected to make money making records anyway. For one thing, it's an astoundingly expensive pursuit. Just to record Nothing Personal alone cost me $5,000. I had some help from the label of course, but I also contributed my own money because it was important to me to be able to make a record in a fancypants studio, with nice gear and with wonderful, patient people.

The other reason why I'm doing it this way is because, well, I think it may actually be a good business move. If my calculations are correct, the more people who hear your music = the more people who might one day potentially want to pay for it = the very slim but intriguing chance that you may one day be able to make a living at it. Radiohead gave away In Rainbows for free and they still sold a metric fuckton of actual records when it went on sale "officially." (It helped of course that the packaging was amazing).

Speaking of, you can always buy the actual Nothing Personal CD, too. I personally like to own a hard copy of whatever I have on my computer, but your mileage may vary.

I toyed with the idea of including a donation link via Paypal, but really, I don't want your money. Just your ears. Just for a little while.


The individual tracks (in order):

1. Blowback
2. Normalized Relations
3. By The Way
4. Close As I Can
5. Makeout
6. Undertow
7. I Had Considered It
8. Nothing Personal
9. (Cheers and Applause)
10. Possibly While High
11. Your Best Guess

Entire record in zipped format: here.

Meta: Nothing Personal, Download, Free, Narnia, Music Industry, MP3, Usenet, BitTorrent, Elves, RIAA