The Mass Media
Music Scholars’ Press
Donate
as little as £1.50
and download an e-book
—
a message from Philip Tagg —
Nothing is free but this is peanuts
Between February 2005 and August 2009 I received the princely total of $25 in voluntary donations for the books I had made available for free downloading. There were hundreds of downloads and I received hundreds of $0.00 in return.
Now that I’ve retired and with that sad experience of non-reciprocated altruism I’m unable to continue offering the books for free, so now you’ll have to make a minimal donation (as low as £1.50 ≈ €1.80 ≈ $2.20 for Fernando) if you want to download them as e-books.You’ll be saving ridiculous amounts compared to what they would have cost as hard copy, not to mention shipping and handling, etc. The per page cost in minimum donation for Ten Little Title Tunes (914 pp.) for example is 0.65p (≈ 1¢ and less than €0.1). That’s utter peanuts compared to a 256-page academic book costing £40, i.e. 16p (≈ €0.19 or 23¢) per page or 20 (twenty) times less expensive.
Peanuts and how it works
On this page you’ll find details of the downloadable e-books and how to acquire them. You don’t actually buy the books. Instead you make a donation to the costs of running this site, including the MMMSP pages. You then get to download a book as thanks for your donation. Each book has a minimum donation level (e.g. £1.50 for Fernando the Flute), so that students from non-OECD countries can access the ideas and information I make available. Of course, £1.50 is peanuts if you live in an OECD nation. If you do and if you’re really stingy, and if you want to neither help with the running of this site, nor modestly subsidise those suffering most at the hands of global capitalism because they live in a non-OECD nation, I think that’s very sad. You’ll receive your e-book anyhow, just as long as you make the minimum donation.
There’s also a suggested donation (e.g. £5 for Fernando) which is slightly more realistic when it comes to covering some of the costs of running this site but you can also donate £15, £50 or £500 if you want. You just fill in the amount you consider to be compatible with what you can afford and what you think the books and this site are worth to you.
Click any of these bullet points to see:
Altruism: a threat to freedom of enterprise
Just to remind you that altruism is (rightly) considered by some right-wing capitalist gurus as a threat to freedom of enterprise and a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of the Divine Market Forces. I say buck the wretched market forces because they suck. Look what they did themselves over the last thirty years to the Holy Market. Putting my books online for free is a mild form of altruism and so is making a small donation towards the cost of their production and distribution. Freedom of enterprise has for too long trumped all the other freedoms. I've had enough of it.
Unwatered plants die.