Welcome to Part Two of the 2013 Man Boobz Pledge Drive! (There will be 3 in all.)
If you enjoy this blog, and can afford it, please click on the “donate” button below and sending a few bucks my way. Or, if you’d prefer, a massive quantity of bucks. You don’t need a PayPal account to donate; you can use a credit card, and there are other options as well. If you’re outside the US, PayPal should be able to handle your weird foreign money that doesn’t even have any US presidents on it.
I appreciate any and all contributions. That said, if you’re broke and can’t swing a contribution now, I completely understand. There are lots of ways to contribute to this blog besides cold hard cash — as anyone who’s checked out the comments here knows well.
Your donations — and other forms of support — have kept this blog going through some tough times. At the time of the last Pledge Drive, I was broke and, frankly, more than a little discouraged, and the outpouring of support from you all made an enormous difference to me. I’ve been a bit tardy — in many cases very tardy — in getting back to people individually with thanks, but I really do appreciate the help. Thanks as well to those who’ve donated since the last pledge drive, and extra special thanks to those who’ve made a point of donating on a regular basis.
I’m not quite as broke now, but I can still use whatever financial support you can give. Thanks again!
Man Boobz has now received some 11 million page views since its inception. Even more impressive: you all have posted more than 300,000 comments. Which is amazing to me. I couldn’t do it without you.
If you really want to get into the Pledge Drive spirit, here’s thirty minutes of a 1980 Pledge Drive from PBS’s Detroit affiliate WTVS:
Let me rephrase the question: Does anybody know where I can pay a small (maybe monthly) fee for unlimited free music downloads? So I could still pay something for it, but not $0.99 a song? Cause that adds up real fast and I can’t afford that.
Kate, I just emailed you an address you can send a money order to. Thanks!
Also, yay for kitten adoption!
neuroticbeagle — it isn’t downloads, and you can’t exactly pick what it spits at you, but last.fm internet radio is how I discovered Emilie Autumn and thus one of my favorite things ever. (It is free, which is why you can only sorta control what it plays, but I’ve had good luck with it’s definition of related artists)
@David:
Woop! Thanks! As soon as the magical Payroll Fairies visit me on Friday I’ll mail off a crisp little US funds money order! Yay!
neurotic, no service is going to offer unlimited downloads for a monthly fee for obvious reasons. There are limited downloads, but you can do the math and it’s about the same as just buying them direct. Our there are streaming services.
If a site offered unlimited free downloads how would anyone make any money? The music business is a business. I’m all for both bands and labels trying to adapt to the reality of illegal downloading and find creative ways to get consumers to buy, but this idea that there should be something like a service that offers unlimited free downloads for a nominal fee is why the business is in financial trouble (and why some of the labels are being so stubborn about the whole thing, since they feel like consumers are being unreasonable).
Emilie Autumn is great (fav songs: Fight Like a Girl and Marry Me)
I also love Heather Dale and Heather Alexander.
Cassandrasays: I love bands that give free music, but ask for donations. I’m far more likely to give them a generous donation.
Happy to chip in 😀
*makes rat claws at Melody* totally with you on Fight Like a Girl, but Marry Me is lower on the list, mostly because Unlaced, the entire album, causes my brain to cease functioning, in the “omgs amazing” way. (That violin! The beautiful magnificent violin! *swoons*)
Whatever you go with, don’t do emusic. It’s a terrible model designed to reel you in with a sorta-free trial and then make you lose money with its confusing, nonsensical policies.
Lots of very generous people donating today! Thanks again!
And on the music thing: eMusic was pretty good in its early years, I thought. You did get unlimited downloads, but their selection was limited. Which was fine with me — they had enough stuff I liked to make it worth it. Then they changed to limited downloads, but priced them cheap enough so that it was worth it. Now, not so much.
Their prices are cheap (49c/track for many) and it’s all DRM-free, but the actual execution is so terrible. Just one example: You have to install their download manager. It’s buggy and I have not been able to uninstall it.
I wish I could donate but I’m pretty financially unstable at the moment. However, I do have a suggestion. I listen to a lot of podcasts and they tend to have referral links where listeners can click if they plan on buying things through amazon. Amazon gives them a small percentage of the profit (not sure how much exactly, but it’s something). So for all the podcasts that I use to enrich my life on a regular basis, I try to split up my amazon purchases between them. You should definitely look into that. I’d definitely add you to my list of affiliates to buy from. I THINK this is where you sign up.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/join/?ld=AZAssocMakeM&ref=az_mm_aa
For those interested in supporting websites that way, there is a firefox app to help you do so too
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazonreferralsupport/
And hopefully I’m not necroing this thread too much (it’s only been a couple days dammit!) but I can finally donate! 😀 Especially since I’ve got more money than I thought :3 So as soon as I put my money in the bank I’ll donate :3