Mandrake

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  Started by Francis DiPietro in 1985, the music and videos of Mandrake have appeared on Farmclub.com and Ampcast.com (are they still around?), and in the summer of 2003 sample Mandrake songs became available through Amazon.com's free music download program. Writing and Mr. DiPietro's blasted forgetfulness (damn his oafish soul) caused a lag in the addition of new works, but with over 500 original songs, it's high time that be remedied!

  These will be free mp3 downloads of original works written, composed, performed and recorded by Mr. DiPietro through the years. For what it's worth, all of them are on file with the Library of Congress.

  Man, I'm writing this too officiously. Who am I kidding, right? I've got lots of books and tons of songs, and I intend to make more. Maybe one day people will read and listen and be entertained by them. Marketing eats away at my soul, so I do very little of it.

 

UPDATE 3/29/05: Amazon.com seems to have instituted "The Mandrake Policy", completely changing the rules of their digital music network. On about 3/24 their new requirement for sharing your music was that you have a cd to sell with a UPC code. Today they deleted about 40 free songs I had uploaded to share. Seems they never anticipated a musician would have so much to upload (their song listing page on band info only went up to 25, with no provisions for a page 2, for example). This is just another example of The Man. Amazon is more likely to get record companies and artists to offer a free song (like they did with Moby, The Hives, etc.) if they eliminate the independents and the "clutter" of unproduced music. In short, Amazon's new free music policy seems to be, "If we can't sell it, we don't want it." It's a shame, a waste, and wholly unsurprising.

  If anyone reading this has similar feelings about what Amazon has done to independent music, please write to them and let them know how you feel. There were many other artists aside from myself who got the shaft today. 

                                                      -- F.D.