bloggers should absolutely, positively not do this

I was poking around the paratexts of someone’s blog when I clicked on their Amazon.com wishlist and immediately noticed that this person has musical tastes similar to mine. I thought, “Hmm. Wouldn’t it be a bad idea for bloggers to publicize their Amazon.com wishlists and list a few CDs they’d like to have, hoping that some reader might contact them and offer to burn them a copy of one of those CDs? Perhaps it would also be a bad idea if that reader were to send the blogger a link to their Amazon.com wishlist to see if the blogger would offer to burn a copy of one of those CDs.”

So whatever you do, do not look at my Amazon.com wishlist to see which CDs I would like to have. And do not email me at ghw[at]wordherders[dot]net to offer to burn me a copy of one of those CDs that you might own in exchange for my burning you a copy of one of my CDs that you might like.

It would just be wrong.

Update: So where did all these musicians come from? They’ve always been there, but because of the way the music industry works, most of us don’t get to hear them. I like popular music well enough, but I also try to find music that’s out of the mainstream. I get recommendations (and gifts) from friends, listen to non-commercial radio stations via the Internet, check out tracks from Epitonic, read and check out tracks from
Pitchforkmedia, look up information on Allmusic, which has a nice “similar artists” function. You can also learn a lot by reading blogs, ya know. Here, let me point you towards this Allmusic entry on a genre of music known as post-rock.

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8 thoughts on “bloggers should absolutely, positively not do this

  1. This is a really cool idea…
    Now, I *really* need to get a CD burner. I don’t think it would be fair for me to participate without being able to reciprocate.

  2. You’re right, George, that would be wrong. I mean, I could burn you a copy of the Sigur Ros album, but dang it, it would be on my conscience forever.
    As Wired put it, maybe P2P networks have nothing on the SneakerNet in all it’s Maxell glory.
    What Amazon SHOULD do is partner with the iTunes music store so that people could buy parts of albums for people. Amazon could keep track of which tracks are bought, so people could collectively purchase albums. That would be one step closer to the idea of micropayments.
    No offense, but there’s no way in heckfire I’d buy you a CD, George. I just don’t have enough bling. But one song? Heck yeah.

  3. Wow–I really don’t recognize a single group on your wishlist! Well I think I have heard of a movie “the Royal Tenenbaums”. Am I out of touch with current popular music or what?
    I’ve always thought of the P2P networks as being a nice place to find single songs, but for albums the music newsgroups have always been the place.
    I just got a DVD burner and I realized that while a CD can hold about 13 “albums” in MP3 format, a DVD will hold about 60! (about 720 HOURS of music!) Whooheee! Now I can finally easily get all those MP3s which I just never seem to listen to off my computer!

  4. Wow, I don’t even recognize a single artist on Planned Obsolescence’s well hidden list. Where did all these musicians come from all of a sudden?
    Bewildered.

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