My first mid-month update.

I purchased some stuff.

Have you noticed I’ve been doing more blogging lately? Wow, all 3 of you noticed! I’m gushing with pride. Okay, maybe that was a bit descriptive. And I wasn’t really gushing anything at all. Well, not at the moment anyway. This is the first of what I’ll call mid-month updates. ( I guess you could say it’s “MY time of the month”.. but I suggest not ) This is where I’ll write updates about what I’m up to, new features in the works and just generally what’s on my mind at the moment. Feel free to skip them or relish them like you did those teen magazines with shirt-less,heart-throb hairless boys with six-pack abs back in the day. ( yes, I’m looking at you, *Bob! )

But on to why I’m doing all this new stuff. Well, first the increased frequency. What normally happens is I get an idea for about 5 or 6 blog posts about various subjects. What I USED to do is set it aside in my brain and think to myself “Yeah, that’s a great idea, I’ll get to that idea later, for sure” and what would happen in reality is I would not only forget the subject of the post, but that I had an idea at all. Well, most of the time anyway. That doesn’t say much for my brain, does it? Well, it is a symptom. But I’m not going into that here. One of the great features WordPress has is this wonderful thing called scheduling. Maybe it’s been around forever and it’s not novel at all. I’ve been at this Internet thing a lot longer than most people have and , well, if it’s been available on a lot of services, it’s slipped under my radar somehow. It feels like it was designed with my brain in mind. (my BRAIN in MIND.. strikes me as funny at the moment somehow) I can write-up 5 subjects and just leave 4 of them sitting there if I want as reminders and write only the first, then schedule it. If I want, I can write drafts for all of them and schedule them all. ( I love saying schedule like this: “SHHHed-yule” .. is it just me? ) Depending on my mood, I can write 1000 words or 9000 words. And if I want to not worry about if I’m writing enough, I can write a week in advance and concentrate on getting some sunshine instead. I love it. Take for instance this post. I’m my most productive and creative at about 5am. So that’s when I started writing this. I scheduled it to be posted at 2pm and WordPress even let me schedule Twitter to let the followers there know it’s been posted. Slick.

Now, on to why all the mp3 and music posts. Well, I had a tiny bit of cash hanging out in my pocket and it was pretty cheap to upgrade the account so that I could add mp3s to posts. While I was there I noticed how cheap it was to get a domain, no I snapped up indie69.com while I still could and VOILA! If I paid for it, I sure am gonna use it. But differently. See, I’ve been trying to get permission for every single track I post. In the process, I’ve been getting added to a lot of promo mailing lists. So it’s a 2 birds, 1 stone type of thing.  And I both want to do things differently AND protect this blog from any DMCA nonsense. So really it’s more like 4 birds. I love birds, by the way. Stoning them is, how you say?… right out! Sure, it means I have to plan ahead and sometimes the bands are busy and it takes longer than I expect to get an answer. But so far, I’ve got all yes answers and one tentative maybe that I have not heard back from. From what I know about what that band is up to right now, they have a damned fine excuse for taking so long.

Yeah, I don’t actually make any money doing any of this. But that’s fine. I get a lot more from it than money could give me. I know I’m spreading the word about music I love and that might get overlooked. And I have noticed that the more I post, the more pairs of eyes are seeing the blog. I know that some people are suspicious of people who claim to not be doing things for money, and that’s fine. I’ve been doing the playlists for over a year now and have not seen a penny or even got on a guest list for all the time (and now money) I’ve put into it. And I’m not even sure I’d expect or accept being on a guest list. Most of the bands I’d go see really need the money. So no, probably not even that. So to those who would question my motivation I would only say that every rule has an exception.. and leave it at that. But as I’ve said from the beginning, if this leads to my getting the chance to work in radio, I’ll completely jump on it. No qualms. Radio needs saving and without any hesitation or reservation, I could save it. Period. So could 1000 others out there, sure. But I’m one of ’em, dammit.

Before I go, let’s take care of some “bidness”. I have a lot of tracks for the April playlist, but I need YOURS. Go to the Dropbox above and to the right OR send them to indiesixtynine@gmail.com . No streams, no aac, no drm. Just mp3 files. OGG is alright, too. I won’t turn my back on an open format. So that’s about it! Watch for a LOT more blog posts coming up. That’s right. All 3 of you.

*That’s not directed at anyone real, I just thought it was a pretty good example of a little uncomfortable comedy. So, if I know you and forgot, BOB…. so sorry. And by “back in the day”, I mean September.

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perv.

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