Full disclosure

There's a lot of activity in the blogosphere about new FTC rules for disclosure, which take effect December 1. Although the rules are targeted at larger fish than the micro editions that appear in my posts, I believe full disclosure is generally a good idea. So here's mine.

Through my activity as a reviewer for furthernoise.org, I occasionally get unsolicited promotional materials, usually CDs but occasionally vinyl (which, for the record, I can't play) or downloads. Presumably record labels send out more review CDs than they get reviews, because I get more CDs than I can review for furthernoise.org's publication every two months; the remainder are reviewed here as time permits. Sometimes artists contact me via email, either from furthernoise.org, mailing lists where I hang out, or through this blog (I'm never sure which) and ask whether I would be interested in reviewing their material; sometimes but not always I accept. Most often I write about albums that I purchase with my own funds, the stated goal of this blog from its alpha post. In the future I will add the label "promo" to posts indicating that I received the music for promotional consideration, and as time permits I'll add the same label to past reviews. Note that all of the reviews I've published in furthernoise.org were promotional CDs or downloads.

I have never received a promotional copy of a book, although my Bruford article a while back prompted an offer from another rock biography publisher (which I declined). I'd like to say that I've bought every book I've reviewed here, but most of the academic ones are very expensive, fortunately available at the University of Arizona's music library.