Hi all

I know there are on the net (especially in the alt.folk and similar public newsgroups) those 'we will help release your music and make you rich' type rip offs. But I assure you we're not that, indeed we started with a chat with each other saying 'let's be realistic, there's not much money to be made here' but that's not why we're doing it.

At the site which hosts the music service I run (theunbrokencircle) we have loaded 270 sample Mp3s by a wide range of artists at our own cost just to promote new niche areas of music. Nothing was paid or expected in return. If anybody is making significant money out of folk I would be surprised (and I'm certainly not)!

If you read the new 'Who are we?' bit at the site, you'll read that we've wanted to help people for years but didn't know how. Both LL and myself are constantly hearing from folk musicians how hard it is for them now to find a way towards building an audience and how the music industry currently doesn't care about anybody who won't sell huge quantities (and that works relatively in folk too - labels often want you to have the audience ready to buy rather than build up before signing anyone..)   

If somebody doesn't make a stand to try and help the music it will just get narrower and more self-enclosed, an ageing audience just buying artists they know so with little potential for growth. In particular, we're genuinely trying to build on acceptance of acoustic music at this time (unlike say in the mid 80s 'power drum hell') and bring young musicians people towards this area, not judging them if they don't fit a strict folk definition.

Bascially there are two reasons for this demo thing - one, how are we all ever going to grow the music and help nuture new artists if they can't be heard? The second is quite simple, we have the bandwidth/server space and want to use it to help.

What has become apparent in setting up the service and the demo page in terms of feedback has been how frustrated artists are, how there are so few channels to release music, that there is little encouragement and that often it's difficult to break into the relatively self-contained folk area. It's also apparent that many artists make nothing or tiny amounts from their releases. It's all this kind of thing we're trying to move forward a little.

cheers
Mark