which_chick | (no subject)

Formalized rules for music swaps, stolen in large part from

sara_merry99.

1. The swapped music has to be unfamiliar to the recipient. (It's okay if you know the artist, but the specific songs should be new.)
1A. The sender should generate and send a list of songs-n-artists for preapproval to the recipient to flag already-known items. Revision takes place until there's a list that the recipient accepts as unknown.

2. It's nice if the stuff you send represents something of a *range* so the recipient gets exposed to a bunch of new music they might never have met otherwise. (You don't HAVE to do this but sending an entire CD of, say, bluegrass is kind of missing the point. Send a couple of bluegrass tunes and then get some other genres in there.)

3. The recipient is not allowed to reject songs because he or she doesn't like the genre or the artist or something like that. The only fair rejection is "I've heard that song already."

4. The sender should send that which he or she has found worthy (for one reason or another). Don't just send dumb crap because you can. The point of doing a music swap is to give the recipient stuff that doesn't suck, stuff that an actual human being has selected from the genre as a worthwhile example. Play fair and don't abuse the faith, here. As the sender, you're a guide, sharing the things you know and like with someone who doesn't know or like them. Work to convert, to create a new fan.

5. Limit yourself to the number of songs that fit on an audio CD. Yes, you can fit more on if you burn .mp3 files, but that's too much new music at one time. Twenty or so is a nice number of new musics at a time.

This kind of music swap is about expanding your listening, about finding things you didn't know about and wouldn't hear in your normal life. You might learn something. You might find new, good things to listen to... I always have.

What if more than two people want to play?

The swap coordinator (the person who is holding the swap) gets to make individual CDs for each other person playing. Probably this works best if he or she starts from a master list and then adapts it for each other person on the fly, adjusting for individual tastes.

The other people all make an individualized CD for the swap coordinator.

For N participants (coordinator included), each person makes N-1 copies of his or her CD and mails those (in cases or covers or something, WITH TRACK LISTS) plus a self-addressed mailing lable and money-for-postage (about five bucks, in the US will send ten CDs and cases in a priority mailing box) to the coordinator's address. The coordinator organizes the remailing once everyone has his or her masters sent in. Huzzah! Everybody's spent about ten bucks (except the coordinator) and everybody winds up with N-1 CDs of free music, some of which will probably be new. The coordinator (hopefully) spends no money and gets N-1 CDs of absolutely new-to-him/her music, guaranteed.

And then the RIAA comes and arrests you, so don't do this at home. It's evil and wrong to share music you like with people you like. Artists do not want to reach a wider audience. Nobody wants more fans. Small-market music (like bluegrass and gospel and monk chanting and big band and folk and nerdcore) does not need to reach a wider audience of people who would probably like it if they heard it. Heck, if people heard the stuff, they might actually buy some of it, and that'd cause all kinds of chaos with niche marketing schemes. Small-market music WANTS to be a niche thing. Big-market musics (rap, pop, country and western) don't need to expand their bases, either. They have very organized marketing that targets their demographic groups and they don't want to *waste* that money. Everyone should stay in his or her demographic and listen to the things that he or she is SUPPOSED to be listening to. So, y'know, no sharing music. It's evil and wrong. No trying to win more converts for that catchy j-pop band or the romanian pop tune you love or the iriquois chanty woman or Mr. Twangy Guitar or the lyrical brilliance and layered textures of Eminem's work. There's to be None Of That, thank you. In fact, forget I gave you these rules.