Unsigned Band Mandrake Has # 1 Progressive Rock Song on Amazon.com with Schiavo Tribute
4/8/05 For immediate release:
NEW YORK- Frustrated by a recent rule change in Amazon.com's Digital Music Network, Francis DiPietro decided to give it one more try. He had recently watched in horror as over 40 of his group's free mp3 songs were deleted by Amazon, in accordance with their new policy that a song must be connected with a cd for sale at Amazon. "This is just another example of The Man," said DiPietro. "Amazon is more likely to get record companies and artists to offer a free song—like they did with Moby, The Hives, The Strokes, etc.—if they eliminate the independents and the 'clutter' of unproduced music."
DiPietro, an author of over a dozen novels, created the group Mandrake in 1985 in Salisbury Beach, MA. Since then he has created, performed and copyrighted over 500 (five hundred) original songs. "The forty or so I had already uploaded to share for free at Amazon were doing okay, and people were listening. But it seems Amazon 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. Then March 24th happened—that's when Amazon got nasty. There were many other artists aside from myself who got the shaft."
Instituting what many have come to call "The Mandrake Policy" Amazon deleted all of the group's music with no notice or warning. "In short," said DiPietro, "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. They redirected the link to upload your music to a message that said you had to have a cd with a valid UPC code in order to share songs. Still," he added, "I gave it one more try."
Using a method of logging-in to his music network account which bypassed Amazon's frontline deterrent, DiPietro uploaded the song "Schiavo", originally composed and recorded in 1993 under the name "Uncle Sam Loves Me", and recently rededicated to Terri Schiavo. "The meaning of the song just clicked," he said, "and I wanted to do something that said, 'Hey, listen'."
A week or so later the song was # 1 in Progressive Rock, a category in which it was listed, rising above all the other music which had professionally-produced cd's for sale. As of April 8th the song was # 34 overall in the much broader category of Alternative Rock/General, above artisits such as Philip Glass, Rancid, Bad Religion, and even Lynyrd Skynyrd. In fact, out of the multiple thousands of songs in all categories and genres of music available throughout Amazon's entire Digital Music Network Program—some listings going back to 2001—"Schiavo" by Mandrake is ranked # 297, and currently rising, even though it was uploaded less than two weeks ago.
"I would have been much more giddy about this ten or fifteen years ago," said DiPietro. "Yesterday I was sitting on our front porch with my wife, talking about how little impact this would have. I reminded her it could be arbitrarily deleted by Amazon at any time, simply because I don't have a record company behind me."
In addition to writing novels and creating music, DiPietro will have a short film entered in the fourth annual Tribeca Film Festival (http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org), which was founded by Robert DeNiro. The film, entitled "The Phoenix and the Scrolls", is based on the introduction to DiPietro's novel of the same name.
"Creating something new helps to keep me from going quite irrevocably insane, and for the past twenty years I've been battling insanity" said DiPietro. "Maybe one day people will read and listen to and be entertained by some of this work. All I can do is try."
link to author Francis DiPietro on AuthorsDen: Click here
Contact info: Since 1997 some of the novels of Francis DiPietro have been represented by Michael Valentino of Cambridge Literary Associates (135 Beach Rd, Salisbury MA 01952): Click here. Mr. DiPietro can be contacted through this agency, or directly by emailing portobelloman.aol.com or faxing 503-907-7319.
UPDATE 4/14/05: The song has reached # 163 on the Amazon all-time music download list.
Free mp3 download of the song for AuthorsDen members: Click here
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