This may not be interesting to a large proportion of you, but I will be changing my music’s licensing terms as of today.

CC BY-NC-SA is toxic – it is not a bad license whatsoever, but it wholly restricts the amount of content that can be produced from a work due to the “licensing derivative works under identical terms” clause. It forces creators to take the work and re-release it using CC BY-NC-SA, which sadly becomes an endless chain of restrictive conditions.

Thus, I will now be using CC BY-NC, essentially the same deed as before, but without me forcing the copyright terms and conditions along with the product.

The permanence of this is currently under debate, but I will see how these terms fit my release schedule (i.e. nothing). Here are some songs I’ve been doing:

CHAMPIONS OF THE LEAGUE
OH, HEIMERDINGER
FALLEN OUT OF THE META
BEN FORBES RAPS

I’m doing another online gig. THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL.

http://www.facebook.com/events/343133965766671/

Wednesday 8th August

http://ustream.tv/channel/ben-forbes

7pm UK time

http://twitter.com/benforbes

A couple of months ago, I said this:

However, RPM 2012 is afoot, and you WILL be receiving 10 new songs by the end of the month, I promise!

LOL I am hilarious

So clearly that didn’t happen, a few things came up (namely work and apathy) and I didn’t do RPM in the end. It’s a shame, I was looking forward to it. However, a few new songs are on the horizon, but I’m not going to specify the gradient of the land for fear of tripping over. In the meantime, I’ve got a bit of news:

I am unhappy with Scene One, Take One. I wanted to release an album because it seemed exciting, and fun, and it was. However, I feel that I have outgrown SOTO in a way that I feel it doesn’t represent my current standard of work, and so, effective as of one month from today (15th May), I will be removing the entire album from my site, from iTunes, and from Amazon. In the meantime, I still have the last four copies of the album sitting in my guitar case, and if anyone wants to take them from me for a price of £5, then that would be appreciated!

So if you want to download it, now would be the time. The catchy amateur Wasting Pixels, the tired and-now-irrelevant Twilight Sonata, and the needlessly long Joseph James are only going to be around for another month.

DOWNLOAD HERE

It’s been six months since I last updated. I have been a busy Ben.

Saying that, I have nothing to show for it.

However, RPM 2012 is afoot, and you WILL be receiving 10 new songs by the end of the month, I promise!

Watch this space.

I did a cover of an awesome Lemon Demon song for real this time.

So here it is!

It’s called Word Disassociation and it’s a tuna gradual upside dairy.

This may have slipped under some of your radars as I didn’t push this one as much as I pushed SOTO – but my new album Counterfeit Goods is out right now for the low-low cost of ZERO POUNDS AND ZERO PENCE* (which is about $47).

In it, I take a We’re The Smiths-style approach to all the songs, but paying tribute to (mocking) 10 artists with my silly brand of cheap rhymes and authentic accents, and it’s absolutely free!*

With the help of a-not-so-anonymous assistant (who actually did like 90% of the work but I’m a massive sexist), I’ve also managed to sort out my music page so it looks somewhat presentable which I am really enjoying – send your thanks to Thryn! Information pages are also slowly being drawn up for each song, so you can find out that little bit more about them. I call it Forbesmore.

I’ve set up a little donate button on the side (if you’re reading this on Facebook, which chances are, all of you are, the link is at benforbes.com) because, while I’m not in this music thing to make money, each song does take a fair amount of time to write and record and stuff, and if you like it enough to give me real money for it, then feel free to grease my wheels of production. FORBES, YOU FUCKING SELLOUT

Lastly, I have a gig coming up (though no event page has been created yet) at my old haunt, the Birdcage, Norwich, on the 13th July, and if any of you local types are feeling up to it, I would love for you to be there. Thanks to all of you who came to my online gig last week as well, it was great fun as ever.

Over and out!

* haha, made you look. It is free, though, no catch

I didn’t win – I was beaten by my favourite replay of the contest, and it is a deserved win! Nice work to all that were involved, and to all the entrants. I leave you with this. Until next year, folks!

Wow. So, here we are, 15,000 views and one Saxxy nomination later.

PYROCAR GOT NOMINATED ASDLJASHFJKADFHKJ. Unfortunately, I’m up against some really good entries – I’m not hoping for much – it’s more than tripled my subscribers, though, and that’s awesome.

Apparently it even has its own fanclub (2 members).

Voting closes today, wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I have a new song. Enjoy being depressed.

So you’ve seen my website, and thought “he’s an upstanding individual with a true passion for mu- what the holy hell is that on the side?!” – THINK NO LONGER!

The small 250×250 sidebar image is on a rotation; so far there are three possibilities, Sanna’s lovely MS Paint dreamscape, Will-ko’s “fuck that shit” meme hybrid or Daryl’s inside joke that only Tom or the entire lemon population of Lynn Grove High School would understand.

BUT HERE’S WHERE YOU COME IN

I would like more. So if you have 5 minutes where you are doing absolutely nothing and feel like ruini- decorating my website, send me an email at ben[AT]benforbes.co.uk with a 250×250 pixel .png of anything you desire.

Thanks!

~ b

p.s. I wish this person would talk to me :(