Important Message for All ezFolk Artists & Members:

I received this note from Amazon on June 26th:

“We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.”

... and I received this note from Musician's Friend on June 30th:

“Due to the imminent change in law, we have discontinued Musician's Friend's affiliate program with affiliates located in Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. While we have the contractual ability to terminate Programs and Offers at any time, we are giving you the benefit of doubled commissions for the sales in the month of June 2009 in lieu of the typical notice period. This would mean that any July sales would not be commissionable sales. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your business over the years. If you have further questions or concerns, please contact our Musician's Friend CJ team members for details at affiliates@musiciansfriend.com.”

Those two companies have provided about 75% of the income generated that keep ezFolk going. The only thing left is Google Adsense, and the income from that won't nearly cover the monthly expenses.

Things aren't looking good for the future of ezFolk right now, so if you have files (MP3 or whatever) that aren't backed up elsewhere you should probably do that as well as find an alternative place for your music. Feel free to post info on alternative sites in the ezFolk forums while we're still here.

It's sad, but we've got to be realistic. I just wanted to give everybody the heads up on it instead of just turning out the lights and having everybody wondering what happened. We'll be closing shop sometime soon (before the end of July) so you really shouldn't spend any more time and effort uploading songs or working on your page. I apologize to all of you who have put a lot of time and effort making ezFolk such a good place while it lasted, and I hope we're all still friends and years from now can look back with nothing but good memories.

~Richard Hefner