[MusicTlk] We have a new online mini-magazine, Nifty's Free Album Picks

[Tyler Zahnke]

Hello, music lovers! We at experimental and multifaceted
musical/artistic duo Mini Nifty had an idea for a blog; take a record
down off the imaginary shelf that is the Internet and review it. We
would only review albums that can be streamed for free,
commercial-free and legal, such as compilations of public domain music
from the Internet Archive, albums that were uploaded to Bandcamp that
allow listening without paying, and music libraries where you can hit
that play button and listen to an album without logging in or
purchasing. The main point of this blog was to point out that there
are entire albums streaming on the Internet, even in the safe, legal
corners of it, like Bandcamp and stock music libraries. So originally,
we were going to do this blog where we would talk about a random
record that can be legally streamed without signing up or paying a
cent and without commercials. But then we decided to pitch the idea to
Channillo, which I like to call "the Netflix of literature", where for
a small subscription fee you can read all kinds of books, magazines,
essays, and they even have music coming soon; the subscription fees
are split 80/20 in favor of the creatives, so 80% to the writers, 20%
to Channillo. Well, they read our pitch and they accepted it within
days. However, while spreading the knowledge of legally streamable
music, we don't discourage purchasing music; some albums are also
available for purchase, especially on Bandcamp, and we say right in
our little magazine whenever an album is for sale that we like it when
people support artists. However, most albums we review aren't
available for purchase anywhere; some are only available for download
to media companies and such, but they can still be streamed for free
just fine! So for each issue, we take down a record off the
theoretical "legal streaming shelf", listen, and review! Available
exclusively to paying subscribers to Channillo; if you want to hear
good music albums in their entirety for free without commercials, and
you want to read reviews and listen to whatever we picked up off the
pile, and you're a Channillo subscriber or you are going to become
one, three issues of Nifty's Free Album Picks are already available;
one featuring a composer that sounds like a cross between Mannheim
Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra four years before Steamroller
existed and sixteen years before TSO existed, an issue featuring a
gospel album that's just as good as most African-American gospel but
nobody's talking about it because they released it as stock music, and
an album featuring a parody singer who's geekier than Weird Al; yeah,
Weird Al doesn't do a bunch of songs about Star Trek, Harry Potter and
such like this guy does; I mean, he's done a few movie and TV
parodies, but this independent artist who's beaten Al in the Dr.
Demento Show funny 25 countdowns several times while managing to not
be very well-known outside the Demento fanbase; so yeah, we crawl
through the tubes, climb in the crates and swim through the channels
to find freely-streamable music without going into the dangerous
creature-ridden pirate channels. Channillo subscribers can get those
first three issues right now.
https://channillo.com/series/nifty-s-free-album-picks/
P.S.: Because of the way Channillo is designed, we couldn't include
actual links, so every issue ends with the web address of the album
where you can stream the whole thing for free, legally and
commercial-free. Well, I guess the design of the site doesn't allow us
to make a clickable link, so you'll have to select the URL, copy, and
then paste in the address bar. Oh well.

Tyler Z