In this posting, he talks about accepting and promoting an
MP3 that was emailed to him from the PR department of
Warner Music. Willett's blog links to little-known bands
that he actually listens to and likes. After hearing about
this episode, I found many similarities with what I am
doing here at Web Informant, where I talk about
little-known technologies that I actually use and like (or
well-known technologies that I don't like).
What is the big deal, since I get tons of free products
from vendors to write about? It is not that I am tainted
because I get all this free stuff. I write about what I
use, and so does Willett. You trust me to make the call
about the technology, and I am sure Willett's readers
trust his musical judgment to make the call about the
songs and artists that he likes and doesn't like too. As
it turned out, he did like the song that was sent to him.
Well, there are some distinctions. First off, sites like
Willett's are fiercely independent and try to maintain
their personal voice and take on the music. While my
musings on technology are also fiercely independent and
personal, generally the stuff either works as advertised
or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, it fails in usually
interesting and amusing ways that generate these essays.
With music, one man's great band may be just another's
noise. The trick is finding the right kindred spirits who
share similar tastes.
Second, what happened was that Willett posted a link to
the song he received from Warner PR. But then he got
several positive postings to his site about the song. Upon
some great sleuthing, he found out that the messages all
originated from the same IP address within Warner's
corporate network. Essentially, after sending him the
song, Warner sent in comments that appeared to be coming
from ordinary readers. That is dirty pool. At CMP we have
had this happen on some of our discussion boards too.
Third, there is a difference between the computer and
music industries. With our industry, technology is part
and parcel to our daily lives and we wish it to be so
going forward. The music biz is still somewhat
uncomfortable with technology. After all, these are the
very same folks that are trying to deal with students
copying music over peer networks, illegal bootleg copies
of CDs from Asia, Real Networks hacking into iPod code,
and so forth. The idea that Warner would stoop to
blog-stuffing makes emotions run a bit higher than if
Cisco (just to pick a random vendor) were to send me a
bunch of faked emails complaining about a recent router
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