My Updated MP3 Posting Policy

I’ve been posting mp3s on my blog for the past three years.

And I’ve had a policy that I follow on my left sidebar for the past two years explaining why I do it and how I do it in a way that I believe is artist friendly.

It’s time to update the policy because mp3 posting has become so mainstream and so important to the discovery and enjoyment of music and I want to stay current with the best practices.

So here goes:

1 – I am going to encode the mp3s at 96kpbs, not 64kpbs. 96 is low enough bit rate that the mp3 is sufficiently impaired. 64 was too low.

2 – I will gladly take any mp3 down that any artist or anyone associated with them asks me to take down. This was always my policy, but it was not stated in the past.  Now it is.

3 – If the mp3 has been posted elsewhere, I will just link to it. No need to post it twice.

4 – I am going to continue to post my mp3 of the week, but I am not going to limit the amount of mp3s I post anymore. I am going to try to include mp3s in every music post I write. No point in writing about music if you have to read in silence. I did that in my Richard Shindell post last night for example.

I wrote the following in my initial mp3 posting policy. It is the backbone of why I do this. So I’ll end with it again:

I realize that people think its wrong to play
music like this.  I don’t share that view obviously.  I believe that I
am introducing my readers to music that they’ll like and the result
will be more music sales.  If I felt otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing it.

The good news is that I now have data to substantiate that claim. I have sold over 200 skus at Amazon this year alone generating over $4000 in revenue to them. That was the result of almost 20,000 click-thrus to items at Amazon.com this year. And that’s only the commerce that came directly from an Amazon Associates link. I am certain that the total commerce generated by my music blogging is much larger than that.

The bottom line is music/mp3 blogging promotes artists and their music in the same way that radio does. It sells music. Lot’s of it.