n0d3.org

Alright. First up. Confession: I have a BMG membership. It’s true. I bought all those INXS and Paula Abdul disks for 1 penny. I even taped the penny on the paper and mailed it in. Whatever. We’re here to talk about BMG survivors: the people who realized how ridiculous the game is, paid out their memberships, then just responded to the emails. If you know this shit, were born before 1975 but are still interested in reading this post… scroll on down to the second unordered list (that’s bullet lists for you all non-webheads).

First, a set of rules for other suckas:

The critical rules (i.e. “The Dontz”):

• If you can’t check your email daily don’t mess with it. It’s a scam and the artists don’t get full cost for the disks (which you’ll just burn to your iPod, saying something about music being truly free because the artists should get paid but you won’t pay them before you sell the disk to some minimum-wage heroin addict who knows what real indie shit is about and/or will show you the life of the mind).
• If you don’t like music from 20 years ago. Call it a day. Don’t do it. (You never heard “The Band” or “Mott the Hoople” or any of that shit. You want your Korn and you want it now. And your Daddy’s credit card can pay full price suckas!)

A small aside here: We all know these “music club” crapshoots are all about pushing legacy titles. They got Queen but not any actual albums by Queen. Finding music in the ol’ BMG is like finding diamonds in the rough. Unless you are into the whole mainstream thing. But frankly, I’m really amazed at what they have. I’m not fucking when I say I just bought a real “Mott the Hoople” disk for zero dollars because I have four free disks in my queue (guilt aside because BMG goes lo-budget on them artist royalty fandangoes and slaps an ugly bar-code on the CD I will shortly sell to the snooty local record store dude mentioned above).

Maybe I am amazed because I’m in the “early 30s” netherworld where people know they can make money off my nostalgia.

Alright. The real list. Whether you care about the artists/DRM/etc. If you join up with your local BMG affiliate do the following:

• Give them an email you really do look at every day. Because they change the day of their mailings.
• Check the (e)mailings. Don’t make them mail that crappy CD to you. Just say no. It’s all good.
• Hit your list of old disks you’ve been meaning to buy. You know you have some great 70s shit that you need to have. Hit it hard and fulfill your “contract”.
• Now that your contract is fulfilled they love you. No I mean that. They offer you all manner of free albums and all that just to keep you hooked. Remember, just buy the albums you want. You should be a member in order to fill in the gaps of 1960-1985 and only of the artists you want.

Overall I’m pretty amazed at how sort-of-easy that BMG makes it. I’m a hardcore systems-analyzer and also a gamer. BMG has a great service if you can find a good way to game their system (read the email once/mo, never order more than 8 disks, possess interest in music from 1985 and earlier, enjoy reading funny reviews of albums). Anyway. That’s that for the tutorial. I can update later.