October 23, 2007

Tuesday? Ensues Music News Day

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  • Police in England shut down today what they called “the primary source worldwide” for illegal, prerelease music downloads. The invitation-only “OiNK” site turned out to be run by a 24-year-old dude in Middlesbrough, northeast England. Look, they caught the kid in his bathrobe:

    OiNK’s servers in Amsterdam were shut down as well, but here’s an OiNK memorial site if you’re feeling sad.

  • Def Jam chairman Antonio “L.A.” Reid confirmed his support for Nas after the rapper announced his new album would be called Nigger, saying “Anything Nas wants to do, I stand beside him.” The Rev. Al Sharpton, on the other hand, condemned the choice, saying “We do not need to be degrading ourselves… we get degraded enough.”

  • Lance Bass describes life in the closet during his years in ‘NSYNC to MTV News, saying he had people close to him sign non-disclosure agreements, and that the band’s management and publicists didn’t advise him against coming out, because, he says, even they didn’t know. Huh.

  • The BBC has been criticized for allowing a racist remark by Iggy Pop to go uncensored and unacknowledged during the network’s live broadcast from Glastonbury in June. Pop told a story about visiting “Paki shops” in Camden, using a term that the BBC said has now passed out of “polite usage.”

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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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