I see a lot of it, and I might be unusually awkward about this, but I am starting to find email address harvesting to be increasingly annoying.  I even get PR people email me with a link to a page where my email address is once again requested before I get a fucking download link. YOU SENT ME AN EMAIL ALREADY YOU TWAT, I'M ALREADY ON YOUR FUCKING LIST!



At the moment, the minute I get one of these links or one for a widget I will always go and find the same material from a different source, be it an illegal download site or a blog where someone has ignored the instructions and re-posted the link.



Basically this kind of thing irritates the living shit out of me, but I am aware that I might be being a bit excessive about it.  I certainly am not about to post a widget on the blog, unless record labels become so annoying that I end up having little choice.



For my own label I still value making it as easy as possible for people to share, download, relink and embed our stuff high above harvesting every last email address I can get my hands on, but I am sure there are a lot of people out there more qualified than I am who would tell me I am being an idiot.

Can I just add, in case it wasn't clear already, that I REALLY REALLY FUCKING HATE having to fill in an email address for absolutely everything these days.  It's not just music, but it drives me round the fucking bend. If, as a punter rather than a blogger, I get one of these 'enter email address for free mp3' things I now invariably ignore it just out of irrational hatred.



I really. Really.  REALLY fucking hate them.



And I don't embed widgets because it's my site, not yours, and you don't get to determine how I format my content, so fuck off.



(I feel I should add the caveat, at this point, that none of this deranged ranting is aimed at Adam at all, just the world at large.  Sorry, I should have warned you you were opening a can of worms with this one!)

Did I mention that I really, really fucking hate those things?



Just to be clear.

I never bother clicking  my public mailbox anymore. It's completely destroyed and unreadable. I am sure most mailbox for blogger have the same problem. I consider good music like any important underground news. if it doesn't trickle to me via my collections of "sources" then it doesn't pass my bozo filter. Then you better be interesting enough to reach me via my random net search.



when it comes to music/internet, if it doesn't have anything to do with me enjoying music and blogging, it's not important. Pruning dozens of email every day is no fun. And I got more music from everywhere more than I can handle. I keep my personal email list very short for people who I like.



MdM readers seem to tolerate exotic selection and completely erratic schedule, with occasional reporting of what's popular. Majority has resources to track "hot trend" on their own.  So it's back to what I like to do in early days when I started blogging. Finding and collecting seemingly random nice music pieces, instead of having to filter and present new releases.



If I were artist, I would start to treat all my communication channels like it was meant to be. "fun to use and necessary". no more hiring PR firm to shove sample and announcement on email. Tweeters should be for twitting, email should be for email, blog for blog, etc. Put the rest on web pages. Everything should be proportional to reading time and attention span allocated. nobody wants to read press release. WTF?



group of artists or label should create carefully maintained "mailing list", tweet, channels, make sure people actually "WANT to read and subscribe" those. The higher the output frequency, the more urgent it is for reader to consider it as "important must read".  Electronic medium should be consider "a show" in itself. A clever tweet with a link, is worth 1 million spam email. A good email a person want to read is worth entire collection of magazine article. A well maintained musicians group blog worth more than entire budget of internet marketing. Permanent delete/onto spam filter is a death sentence on the net.  Ever wonder why big label never spread on the blog? (they spam and they are on all spam filter)  Come on, it's not THAT HARD to do. You know your base audience and you know what they want.



Artist and label should be able to say with pride: "get on my mailing list. It's fun."



This effect will become stronger and more prevalent once people completely move to smartphone/continuously connected devices. (I figure 2 years from now.) Because of information overload, you don't want to waste people's time in front of computer screen or that delete button will kill you permanently. You are off people's smart device, your digital existence is over. You gonna spend gigantic amount of money trying to jump over filter and block list.

streaming widgets = fine.
email to get email with link to mp3 at some point = crap.

Totally off-top: Squashed, what's your website?

On topic: Not a fan of email harvesting or having to provide any information for the MP3. I'm absolutely all for linking up to a site that does that, but I avoid including that type of widget on my site, particularly if it interferes with our music player.

"...even free, when they request an email verification to download the album/song, that's been a roadblock in the past"



I am absolutely with you on this.  As soon as this happens, I am not playing ball, not least because I would have to open up a new browser just to log into my spam-dump email and so retrieve the download code.  Not worth it, and far too annoying.



I know that as a label we sacrifice a lot of potential information on our customers and press fans by just making a freely downloadable zip file and a couple of mp3s available at a single click, but that simplicity is so important to me that I would feel like a total hypocrite doing anything else.

Matthew, I feel like you're holding back. Tell us how you really feel!

BAND would like you to view the folder "XXX..."

Once you create an account, you'll be able to view this folder and its files instantly.

 

This arrived this morning. 

Fuck.  Right.  Off.

I give out my old knackered spammed to hell hotmail e-mail to most bandcamps etc


Toad - "but I am starting to find email address harvesting to be increasingly annoying"

increasing by the minute.

Posted by: songsillinoisgood luck harvesting email from the next generation, all my nieces and nephews (12-19 years old) don't use email

'tis true.  the bands we work with that are younger than 20 can only be reached via twitter.  

I shutdown Mars Needs Guitars, after three years, in 2009. I always had my email address displayed and received at least 50 PR emails/day. As I recall, I never paid attention to anyone of them, deleted them immediately. Never setup filters though. There were and are tons of ways for me to find music that I like and want to post on a music blog.

Here's the kicker though. After shutting down MNG in 2009, I removed everything (email address) and just had a pictured posted. But after that, I continued for a whole year to still receive PR emails to my merzmars gmail address. And the majority of them would say something like "Hey Merz, Love your blog and think you will like posting this". Fucktards, my blog has been shutdown for close to a year now. This just illustrates how email lists are both insulting and ridiculous.

Also, I started looking closer at some of these mass emails and got even more pissed off. Big HTML emails with tons of links and bullshit. And at the bottom it said "click this link to opt-out". WTF, opt-out? Why the fuck should I have to opt-out to something I never opt'd-in to? Obviously, they just harvest your email address and "opt" you in themselves. This is insane and explains a lot of why bloggers don't like these emails.

Bottom line: A big part of the fun in music blogging is discovering new music on your own. I don't need some PR person trying to force feed me "recommendations". I know how to use the web and find the things I like and want to post on my blog. PR mass emails are worthless, annoying and insulting to me.

Oh yeah, widgets. Those can also be stuffed where the sun doesn't shine.

Posted by: jason@indieshuffleTotally off-top: Squashed, what's your website?

 don't have a web page. for music, right now I only blog at moka's blog. don't have as much time as before. the rest are non music sites.

 

-------------------------------------

I think the solution for this "widget" stuff, which is essentially indie labels start realizing how important it is to know audience online. (demographic, stat, traffic data) Is to actually get serious about it instead of piece meal attempt.  Widget is cute in 2006, just like when in 2006 indie label was thinking cute stuff that suppose to be done in 2004. (sample mp3)

 

It's friggin 2011. get with the program eh? obviously even iTune is not growing anymore, just like I predicted. Apple get bored and moves on to next big thing. Not to mention Android. While CD is completely gone and LP doesn't cover expense.

 

a) social networking (facebook) is exploding and reaching peak. Goldman sach start pumping facebook bubble. It is about to face massive backlash. (AOL, myspace style)  People want more sophisticated privacy control while maintaining all feature of facebook.

b) everybody will use smartphone. digital purchase & download will be done via smartphone. Smartphone will also gain true connection to audio hardware soon. (eg. smartphone is a stereo system.)  This will happen as soon as smartphone reaching sub $100 with cheaper contract.  People won't carry iPod/iTune anymore. It's all done via smartphone.

c) email, tweet, online ticket purchase, reading blog, youtuube, etc, will be done more and more via smartphone.

d) which means, smartphone will be massively spammed. And public backlash will be huge (you think bloggers have too much attitude against spam email from labels, just you wait until joe the public gets angry)

So, the only solution is doing it CORRECTLY. RIGHT NOW.

social networking, label-artist-audience net connection, multimedia material pipe need to be organized neatly.

 

my favorite would be

a) one social networking account. (eg. diaspora. but this is still private alpha. nobody owns this crucial technology, so there will be no future bickering and lawsuit.)

b) hypem/elbow use that account to manage, collect and distribute data. Both can watch the interaction between readers, blogger, labels. Both will calculate global internet information overview ( The two should turn into net provider service for labels) Most labels need exactly the same thing online anyway. automatize everything to reduce cost and eliminate waste.

c) indie labels will know exactly who to contact, what type of music to offer down to time stamp, geo location, willingness to pay.

... there will be no more mass spamming.

If I plug in my account, I better get 100% correct invitation and information that I want. Good music only!

Better start working on it NOW. The scheme above will happen sooner or later. I don't want to hear THIS idea being bandied about in 2016 by indie labels. when everybody already moves on to next thing.

. shsss...zero willingness to plan. All the pieces are here, justt need to put it together. But then again, there is no plan to even tag mp3 file properly. ... oh well.

@merz - <3 whatever name you have this year! xo