It’s been a while since I looked at my download numbers on Jamendo.  When I looked today, this is what I found:

In total, both albums have been downloaded more than 700 times.  The web interface at Jamendo is always being improved — sometimes at a dizzying pace, such that if you come back after a week you are astounded.  One of the most recent additions is a count of the number of listens — 2409 for evolution, 3624 for handmade.

Those numbers amaze me.  As I mentioned in another article, I used to keep my music to myself.

Well, as the title of this entry says, I’m at another crossroads of sorts.

I am working on my third Jamendo album.  Right now I’m not recording, but am instead practicing and developing new techniques.  The question is, by the time I am ready to release “III”, will the online world have changed so much that I will no longer fit in?

Jamendo is getting more and more popular.  But as I said last week, the side effect of any growth is an increase in all segments of the population — even the rude and mean ones.

I have been on the internet a long time.  It seems when anything starts up, there is a sort of a grace period while the community builds, a time when the world is new and everyone seems to be treating each other with greater care.

Then, a few years in, cliques develop; mean people come in looking for trouble; trolls start fires just for fun; politeness goes away.   By no means is this pervasive on Jamendo as of yet, but as I said last week, there is at least one rude, arrogant person whose entire objective seems to be to review every album on the site and leave snide comments like some wannabe Simon Cowell.

Maybe I might understand this if this were some pay site.  However, considering that most of the artists on Jamendo are doing what they do for the sheer love of music, it seems mighty out of place to have this holier-than-thou hypocrite come down on everyone who doesn’t fit his “enlightened” sensibilities.  Maybe this person wants to be the Big Velvet Rope that keeps the riffraff out.  Is that the sort of thing that belongs on a “free” music site?