I wanted to drop a note to our readers (if anyone ever reads this column) and let everyone know about advertising here at Down the Line. We do not sell advertising, I think part of the integrity of Down the Line is that we do not need to sell ad space to do anything, and therefore we never have to answer to anyone because of a money issue. However, we are going to start running some advertisements in these pages simply because we want to support these causes/organizations and we think that our readership might also be interested. Just to clarify though…we are not selling ad space and we will not turn this into an advert rag that you can’t ever find articles in. Matt and I have talked about this a few times before, and I think it is cool to be able to do stuff for free. If you want to support the work we do there will be inexpensive ways in the very near future. (We just had our first run of t-shirts done)
What I would always appreciate most is for you guys to support the bands we cover. One of the drawbacks (in my opinion) to the digital age of music is that people go on bandcamp or all these other music sites, and they stream and listen to music for free, but they never support the artist with a purchase or donation. That is unfortunately just the way things are these days, and that doesn’t even take into account all the file sharing that goes on. I’m not playing the moral police about what is or isn’t right, I am saying that these artists should be compensated for their work. If you’re going to listen then you should pay…fair is fair. Just the way the game is played at this point seems like the cards are stacked even higher against artists. The corporate greed is still prevalent and now more concentrated between fewer labels, and the means to make ends meet are tighter and tighter. In addition, there are so many avenues of output that the pool of good music is murky at best. There seems to be huge push of quantity over quality, which is another reason to support good music when you hear it.
So anyway, I’m sure everyone reading has heard it all before, but it is important. Look for exciting new stuff coming soon from Down the Line. We started a small label called Down the Line The Collective and we just released an eco-friendly packaging hard copy of Western Grace’s Take Back the Scene album. It is inexpensive, $5 download and Josh is selling the hardcopy’s himself, you can contact him through his Facebook page.
