Holy week and I’m resting, despite the fact that I wake up with a headache everyday, probably that’s what a very shiny day can do to my eyes. Maybe I need a rest from my computer screen too or just adjust it as it had a filter before me but now it hurts while I’m reading at the morning, I guess that’s why I like to blog at nights.
Long weekend breaks are a blessing and I have plenty of them throughout the year. However, I expected to spend this quietly but my mom invited my relatives for lunch. I understand the value of my family as I’m getting older, we are very close and similar to each other. Many people had hated me because of the kind of relationship that I have with my mother (she is overprotective of myself and my money) but by talking to her on these days, I realise that she is the only reliable person I have in my life, I mean, friends and lovers come and go because of the way I am, So What is it left for me? My mom is the only one who supports me when someone else has backstabbed me. She can be critical but she doesn’t make me feel inferior nor bullies me on purpose.
It’s believed that people shows certain respect on Good Friday and I know that I should’ve been away from my computer but some livejournal users were on a “content strike” and since I’m a longtime livejournal user and I don’t have enough time to make the most of it, I just sat down, read my friends’ entries and commented. In my opinion, they should have taken into account that strike and livejournal are incompatible terms same as silence and blog. If you can have online access and decide to use it to vent and express your ideas, there is no reason to stop doing it. Therefore, you commit to voice your opinion then you have a powerful effect in your readers, regardless if they agree or disagree with you.
And it’s hard to fight for your rights when the Internet it’s so vast but it can be successful in the end. Just look at Trent Reznor: He recently released, as Nine Inch Nails, his latest album Ghosts I-IV and made $1.6 million on its first week. I’ve been a fan for 8 years and it’s one of my favorites, on the other hand, I won’t lie, I download mp3s because I know that recordstores and labels take almost all the money we pay for a CD so I only buy an album when it becomes a must have.
At first, when Napster came out, Reznor considered it a “theft” but once he learned that Universal Music Group’s retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia was $29, because “We know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out – you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.” So he encouraged Australian fans to “steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin’.” The price of Year Zero in my country was $32 as of January 2008, so I asked the salespeople why it was so expensive, they said it was because it came with that price. Finally, I bought it for $19 on Valentine’s Day. Ironically, I would like to buy albums by Australian artists and I must say that Universal Music does charge for them more than the other companies such as Sony and Warner.
As an online release, Ghosts I-IV has been well planned, same can be said of the concept and the music. I’m intending to buy the 2CD version and for that I feel happy to contribute with NIN with $10, knowing that it won’t reach a local recordstore to sell it at $50 and get $1 in return.
