There is nothing I hate more than going to a web site of a songwriter or musician and attempting to download one of their songs only to get a short “clip” or “sample.” Well, actually, there are a few things I hate more, but it is pretty damn frustrating. Today I was reading the email of a mailing list that I belong to and someone was promoting an upcoming house concert featuring Christine Kane. Thankfully the person posting to the list had a link to an article in one of the local rags promoting MS Kane. The article was somewhat intriguing, so I followed a link to Christine’s web site. After fumbling around I found links to some of her songs, unfortunately all of the links were for really bad, sixty second lo-fi clips from songs. This just drives me up the farking wall.

Why does this get under my skin? First of all, I know we’ve all been brainwashed by the radio and marketing folks that anything over three and a half minutes is just too damn long for a song. But most of these clips I find on the web by artists, are a minute or under. The only possible explanation I can figure for folks doing this is to keep people from downloading and getting a song for free. From this I can only assume that these artists have bought into the FUD of the RIAA. Hey let me say this v-e-r-y c-l-e-a-r-l-y… Giving away a complete song isn’t going to cause your recording career business plan to come falling down like a house of cards. Take the example of Kristine Kane: If there were a couple of complete songs on there, that gave me a good representation of her work, I might have bought a CD to hear more and maybe shown up to one of her shows. Who knows, I could have even become a lifetime fan. Instead, all I got was a sixty second piece of one of her songs.

If Ms. Kane, or any other recording artist really thought about the concept, they would realize just how insane it is. They would never think of only having a small clip of a song on the radio, in lo-fi form. This would instantly be seen as the plan of a crazy person. Would an artist ever send a single to a radio station that only contained one third of their song? Or how would the artist feel if they knew that someone who actually took the time out of their busy schedule to listen to one of their songs was actually forced to stop listening to it just about the time they are starting to get to the hook or chorus? This is exactly what’s happening when artists load incomplete clips on their web site.

Ah, but you say… “People will download them and they’ll listen to them over and over and I’ll never get paid for them and they’ll trade them.” If that actually happens, you’ll be the luckiest duck on the block. Why? Because you’ll be doing something for free that costs the record companies huge chunks of their budgets… it’s called promotion. There is a “not so old” saying in the advertising biz: “Your first bag of crack is always free.” If you can get them hooked by giving them a taste on-line, you’ve won the promotional battle. Having a couple of songs that you put up on your web site for free floating around the net giving you free promotion is just about the best promotion I could think of.

I don’t mean to pick on Christine Kane, but it was the latest site I came across that uses these sort of shell game frustration tactics. I was actually interested in Christine Kane, enough to surf to her web site. Enough to attempt to listen to a couple of her songs. But in truth I wasn’t able to. I’m sure I’ll never hear her music on any commercial radio stations in my area before the concert. Because of that I’ll never say, “Wow, I like that song. I think I’ll go pick up that CD of hers.” And because I never bought that CD, I’ll never venture out to her concert. She lost a great opportunity to add another fan. And me, I got about sixty seconds of an incomplete song and frustrated enough to write this.