Ringtones, copyrights, and more.

Posted on March 26, 2009

Allright, so  i got this cool new cellphone that can play songs as ringtones.  No,  i didn’t go out and buy it (who has money for that kind of thing right now anyway?  not me…)  i got it for free.   One of my clients from my design business ordered a bunch and it turned out he didn’t need as many as he thought he would so he gave me one of the extras as a thank-you because he was happy with work I’d done.  So that’s cool, fancy new tech without the fancy bill.  fun times.  Thing is, when I go to add songs it turns out I can’t use my own mp3’s as ringtones, i can only use special songs that  i have to pay to download.

Now it just so happens that, thanks to the digital distribution my band is currently getting, it is in fact possible to download Beltaine’s Fire songs and use them as ringtones, but in order to do so I have to pay an additional $10 a month in a subscription fee for a service that I’m not otherwise interested in.  All this is done in the name of “protecting the artist” and preventing “piracy”.

Now, granted, it is an additional revenue stream for artists and with the industry the way it is maybe I shouldn’t complain, it’s hard enough to get paid as a musician already and I’d be lying if i said I wouldn’t like to make a living doing what I love.   Still, I can’t help feeling like there’s something fundamentally wrong when I can’t add a song that I wrote about my partner to my phone to use as a ringtone for when she calls me without paying some distant faceless corporation for the privilege.

It’s not like it’s the end of the world or even particularly signficant, but it struck me as a perfect example of how copyright law is twisted to serve the interests of corporations by forcibly inserting a middle  man in between the artist and the listener.

everything is now free

Posted on February 21, 2008

alright, the verdict is finally in on my months-long experiment offering higher-quality mp3’s for sale on this site, and it’s a failure. I’ve taken down the online store for good and just posted up a donation button on the mp3 page. the good news is that since i moved all my albums to Jamendo I no longer have to pay for bandwidth to let ya’ll download them, so that eliminates one of the big costs that moved me to add for-sale mp3’s in the first place.

I’ve also added a player/download widget on the MP3 page for the new Beltaine’s Fire album, which is now also free.

I haven’t felt much like writing on this blog lately, been putting most of my writing time into working on new lyrics for the new Beltaine’s Fire album. We’re going into the studio to start recording it on March 16th and I still need to put a bit more polish on some of our new songs. Good times! If you absolutely can’t wait for some more of my writing or just have lots of time to waste, I did post up a new article on CelticAnarchy.org yesterday, prompted partly by the recent events in Kosovo. I’ll have more new stuff up here sooner or later. Probably sooner. We’ll see.

New Album FINISHED!

Posted on December 11, 2007

it’s been 2 years of hustling, writing, working, blood, sweat, and tears; but it’s finally DONE!

it is my great pleasure to introduce (drumroll please…… .)

The Weapon of the Future, by Beltaine’s Fire

This is my 6th album and the first with my band. it’s taken more then double the time of any of my solo albums and i think that shows. it’s 14 tracks, all-original, all-the-way- live, and lots of other adjectives. Basically this is my favorite thing that i’ve ever done musically, period. and i am so fucking proud of everyone who’s been involved in this long crazy proccess I can’t even really describe it.

respect to all, and special thank-you’s to all my bandmates, to davin and the folks at expressions for hooking us up with recording time, to everybody’s that come out to our shows or sent emails to say they like the music, and to humanity in general because I’m just feeling that good right now.

and, one more time in case you didn’t catch it before, you can get the album at http://beltainesfire.com It’s for sale on a pay-what-you- want basis. so check it out, throw some money in the bucket if you like it, and tell a friend.

allright. that’s about it. thanks for listening, I hope ya’ll enjoy it.

Lynx