Pay What You Want Music (for a good cause)

Contrary to popular opinion, and the rules of
reading printed English, They Might Be Giants
did not name their B-sides collection "Album Raises Bling."

For the next two weeks, nerd band extraordinaire They Might be Giants, and Rube Goldberg nerds extraordinaire (also band) OK GO, and also four other bands I'm less familiar with, are each offering up a release you can download for as much or little as you would care to at www.humblebundle.com.

This is a really cool platform. As a musician who has donated album proceeds to charities in the past (and just this week got involved with another charity project), I know that tackling something like this can be sticky for musicians and consumers, alike. Where is the money going? Who is it helping? Are the artists being compensated? Is the sponsoring organization taking a chunk? Lots of questions. The Humble Bundle program puts the answers to all of that in the consumer's hands. When you order the bundle -- all six albums -- you can designate exactly how much of your purchase goes to charity (and what portion goes to each charity), how much goes to the musicians (and what portion to which musicians), and how much (if any) goes to the Humble Bundlers. Pretty cool.

And yes, the TMBG album includes versions of "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" -- for those of you who, like me, discovered this band in the Long, Long Ago via Tiny Toons.