Today is not Bandcamp Friday.  According to that link, “Bandcamp Friday is over.”

However, Bandcamp sent the following e-mail to its users:

On Friday, June 17th, from midnight to midnight Pacific Time, we’ll hold our third annual Juneteenth fundraiser, where we donate 100% of our share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice organization with a long history of effectively enacting change through litigation, advocacy, and public education. Read our statement here.

Bandcamp Fridays will resume on September 2nd, and continue on October 7th, November 4th, and December 2nd.

Please help us spread the word!

Yeesh!  As such, I would encourage my readers not to purchase my music and merch on Friday, 17 June 2022.  I’m not surprised Bandcamp—a company dedicated to helping indie musicians sell their music—is embracing the woke agenda; personally, I don’t care.  I don’t even mind if Bandcamp makes money from sales on the platform; they’re a private business, and while they’re a pretty big player, there’s nothing totalitarian in their practices (yet), and there are multiple alternatives for musicians to sell music online.  It’s not like Google or Facebook, two virtual monopolies in the tech sector that dominate access to free speech and information.

I’d just rather sales of my music and merch not go to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the kind of organization I could imagine finding myself at odds with in court someday (“there aren’t enough Black and Brown voices of color represented at The Portly Politico; please pay us reparations”).

That said, today is not 17 June 2022, and while it’s not Bandcamp Friday—and won’t be again until 2 September 2022—you can still buy my stuff.

A portion of the proceeds from my goodies will go to support The Portly Politico and its ever-expanding stable of top-notch talent (most of whom contribute for free, but, hey, maybe one day I can pay them).

So, pick up some summertime jams!

Happy Friday!

—TPP