Derrick N Ashong and Soulfège

The Million DOWNLOAD Campaign
Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - click for more info &  Released under FAM License- click for more info

We're on a mission to give away One Million downloads in 2012, so Listen, DOWNLOAD & SHARE the music!!

And CLICK HERE to GET INVOLVED and be a part of HISTORY!!

Download a ZIP file of the FULL ALBUM via MediaFire or listen to and download individual tracks in the SoundCloud widget below:

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AVAILABLE NOW!!!

Buy AFropolitan Online

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amazon.com

Love Rain Down - A Short Film

An animated film based on the song "Love Rain Down" from the album "AFropolitan" by Derrick N. Ashong (aka DNA) & Soulfège. The movie follows the tale of a little boy named "Johnny" who makes a trip to the legendary "Crossroads" of Robert Johnson fame, and stands down the Devil armed only with a song...


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Entries in Art (3)

Monday
Feb062012

Million Download Campaign - Free As in Freedom, Part II


 
Last week I wrote about the economics of the music industry, and why it's not necessarily such a radical idea for artists to give away their music for "free."  But there are different definitions of the word.   For the purposes of this argument, there's "free" as in no cost, and there's "free" as in music.
 
What do I mean by "free as in music?" Think about it for a moment - why does a person become a musician? Why become a poet, a painter, an actor, writer, filmmaker or any other form of artist? Have you ever spoken to a really serious artist about what they do and the motivations behind it?  If you ask them why they do what they do, the first answer will rarely be "I do it for the money."  This is not to say there aren't people in the creative industries who are more about the paper than the performance, but I'd argue they are in fact the outliers in the creative community.
 
Artists don't do their work for the sake of money, though I'd argue much of society does.  How many people do you know who truly "love" what they do?  Call your friends, call your folks, ask your peeps on Twitter & Facebook, how many of them love what they do and how many just do it for the money? Inevitably a number of them will claim they love their work and it's not about the $$.  Then ask, how many of those would do that same work for free?
 
It's at this point you begin to get an important glimpse of the artists spirit.  True artists do what they do, whether the world is watching or not.  They create not simply because they want to, or get paid to, but because often they simply can't help it - the expression of their artistry is a fundamental aspect of their humanity.
 
This is where the issue of "free" comes in.  Not because artists don't want or deserve to get paid.  Rather, because they are hyper-motivated to do their art at almost any cost, they are prime targets for exploitation.  Thus, in the case of music, an industry has arisen around artistry that is typically not beneficial to artists.  I know, you think musicians do well, because you've seen some jumping around on your TV screen.  But if you follow the links from last week's post you will see the economics that underpin that exploitation.
 
So why give away music?  I'd argue it can be a simple, but important element of building a model for creation, dissemination & consumption of music that actually benefits artists rather than takes advantage of them. Next week we'll dig into why artists not only deserve to be compensated for their work, but how giving it away can help them achieve that.
D.N.A

 

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

 
Saturday
May282011

Streaming Saturdays 5/28/2011

Hey Hey! It is Artist Week on The Experience and we have a slate of super talented folks ready to share their stories and creativity. Tune in as we hang out with Ledisi (@ledisi), Mieka (@miekapauley), Owen Plant (@OwenPlant) and others as we celebrate artists this Memorial Day Weekend.

As always you can get the scoop on the stories D has been reading all week over at Reddit.

Be sure to add your voice to the mix, give us a shout at 866-677-2496 or on Twitter or Facebook where you can chime in on some of the questions we'll be asking on the air.

It all starts at 12 noon ET (9am PT) - see you then!! 

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Sep182008

The Art of Politics

I did an interview earlier this week for Harvardwood, exploring some of the current trends in the campaign and some key issues facing the nation. It's a 45min full-length, unedited, uncensored response to some live questioning and covers topics from the role the Media & the Arts in politics to the ongoing propagation of lies by the McCain/Palin ticket in this campaign. I'll see if I can get the source vid from the interviewer and chop it into smaller pieces, but for now here's the whole hog. Get informed, get involved and let's go out there and WIN this thing!

D.N.A

O'BIDEN '08

Video is no longer available

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