August 13, 2007

Public Enemy Want You to Sell Their New Album

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Seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy will make their new, unfortunately-titled album, How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Have Sold Their Soul, available, um, for sale, on personal home pages and profiles, as well as independent online stores. No word on whether those sites will themselves be soulless. CMJ reports the band will utilize online “music broker” Musicane, which apparently lets fans participate in distributing digital material, receiving a commission for their trouble. A quick perusal of the Musicane website shows material by Jason Mraz and Henry Rollins; the latter, for instance, offers a six-part spoken word album, “Eric the Pilot,” for $4.99, and the opportunity to “resell this product and make 10%.”

Public Enemy’s new album has received mixed reviews at best; remember, all their ground-breaking work came between 1987 and 1991, a brief but overwhelmingly intense blast of brilliance and creativity that seemed both inextricably linked to its historical moment and too good to last. By their 1994 album, Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, they’d already ceased to be relevant, musically or politically. But how hilarious was the Comedy Central roast of Flavor Flav this weekend? I love roasts.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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