Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
MP3.com's "Adult Content" ghetto is an orgy of canned beats and moaning nymphets. But it's entertaining, and the artists make a little cash.
Nov 30, 2000 | When you upload one of your songs to MP3.com, the site makes you choose a "genre" for the song. Is it Electronic --> Drum 'N' Bass --> Jump-Up? Is it Alternative --> Punk --> Emo? Maybe it's just good ol' Jazz --> Traditional Jazz.
We musicians hate to be pigeonholed like that, of course, and the standard answer to "What kind of music do you play" is a fake-humble "Well, it's pretty original, it doesn't sound like anybody else," when in fact it sounds exactly like your record collection minus the difference between your heroes' playing ability and yours, times how many drinks the audience has had. There are factors for altitude and time of day, but that's the basic formula.
Anyway, if you want your music on MP3.com, as my recently disbanded band, the Smokejumpers, did, you have to make that decision, and it was through wrestling with this feature that I discovered the most entertaining -- let's face it, the only entertaining -- corner of the site: Alternative --> Adult Content.
Adult Content is a ghetto. MP3.com warns artists that choosing the genre for a song means it won't be listed on any of the site's Top 40 lists, no matter how many downloads it gets. Since getting listed on those Top 40 lists leads to more downloads, which leads to money in the form of "Payback for Playback" funds, Adult Content is a commercial graveyard.
Whoring for downloads
Desperate for attention, aspiring musicians will stop at nothing to get fans to listen to their online tunes.
By Janelle Brown
Except for the fact that the people in that section are raking it in. Wednesday's No. 2 "band" on the Punk Top 40 (No. 1 is Offspring, MTV favorites long before they put their music on MP3.com), Bigkidnow, which is actually a Phoenix label representing three bands, had earned $787.68. Ten people have been busily writing songs, rehearsing, presumably loading up the vans to play gigs and doing all those other things bands do for however many years, for not quite a C-note each from MP3.com. Meanwhile, over in Adult Content, meet Sexy Brown Sugar, a three-piece girl singing group that's made $3,667.97 with songs like "Extreme Orgasm," "Very Wet BJ" and "Big Black Mandingo."
These songs are basically canned rhythm tracks with the girls moaning and talking dirty over them. Not exactly "Say My Name," but on the other hand you can go to the Sexy Brown Sugar Web site and find "publicity photos" of two of the band members licking the bare breasts of the third, and you'll be searching till your mouse hand's numb before you find a similar shot of Destiny's Child.
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