I found out who wrote the end credit song for Portal, and failed to mention it. It was written by a guy named Jonathan Coulton who is, essentially, an internet musician. A while back, he decided to quit his tech job and become a musician, and spent the whole of the next year writing one song a week and posting them to his site, among other places. I’m impressed, really, and he seems to be making a decent go of being a self employed musician in this internet age. He gives me hope that I might be able to make a bit of money from my musical hobby, if I ever get around to recording more songs.

There’s another artist, Brad Sucks, who is doing a similar thing, though the guy behind Brad Sucks still maintains a regular job.

In both cases, they give a very significant amount of their music away, even while selling it from their sites at the same time. The whole idea is sort of interesting, as we’ve seen big artists, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails to name a couple, basically giving their latest albums away. The mainstream media talks about this phenomenon as if it’s fairly new, and I suppose it is for artists that have had record deals, but Jonathon and Brad have been doing it for quite some time – since 2005 or earlier.

Anyway, I think once I’ve got my music to a point where I’m willing to put a price tag on it (I’m not willing to sell things I don’t think are worth selling), I think I’m going to follow in these guys footsteps a bit. Give it away, sell it, do anything I have time to do to get people to listen to it.