Spacedmonkey

Jonathan Coulton is singer, songwriter, new father, and ex software designer, but what makes him interesting compared lots of other artists out there is that he released all of his music for free. His story is an amazing one, in 2005 he left his rubbish day job writing software for a small database company to pursue music full time. He worked out that it was really hard to get signed onto a record label so he decided to try something different. He created a website called Thing a Week and released (for free) a new song every week for a year, which is no mean feat.

He created a A few of those songs became big internet hits, including folky cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back“, a funny video called “Flickr“. My personal favorite song called “Code Monkey“, with the classic line

“Code Monkey think maybe manager oughta write goddamn login page himself !”

This was made all the funnier for me while listening to this song as writing a login page at the time, give it a listen. It is nice to have a nerd writing songs about stuff I can really relate with and even sometimes make me laugh. One song that touched me personally, was a Future Soon, which tells of his problems as a teenage nerd.

The most interesting thing about him is the he makes his money purely from donations and live
performances and manages to make a living out of it. So if you like his music, go donate. If you want to listen to his free music, his podcast can still be downloaded for free. Give it a go!