Embrace Music via Technology: 2008 New Year's Resolution

Posted by on January 15, 2008 at 01:12 PM

In 2006 I resolved to learn to "Catch Good" (grammar intended). I wanted to reach out my hand and effortlessly catch things. In May, I caught a wadded up dollar bill that had been thrown...to someone else...in the middle of a business meeting. Absolute satisfaction.

This year I decided to learn English to metric conversions. I planned to label it "Embrace Metric", but guess what? I don't need to learn English to metric conversions; that information is readily available online (it's also a 2nd grade skill... if Google is to be believed.)

So I scrapped the idea and decided instead that my 2008 New Year's Resolution is "Embrace Music via technology". Fifty-two weeks in the year to explore fifty-two new genres, artists, albums and songs. The internet and social media are going to help.

In fact, the internet and social media have forever altered the music landscape. Gone are the days of shelling out 15 bucks for a CD that might be a bust. Take a look at Radiohead. They recently embarked on a "Pay what you like" model for their new album "In Rainbows". Radiohead hasn't revealed how many downloads, what people paid, or the level of success or failure they experienced. However, a hard copy version came out New Year’s Day, and immediately went to #1 on Billboard’s album sales list, so something about their model worked.

Another way that technology has changed the landscape of music marketing is that today, artists with nothing more than a video camera can get national recognition. The playing field has leveled out and we are all the beneficiaries. For example, would any of us have heard of Tay Zonday or seen the video of The Wrong Trousers if not for YouTube?

On my Facebook wall I can see a friend's top picks for Hip-Hop music. My hairstylist burned me her favorite CD by "The National" and it's been uploaded to iTunes and is now on my iPod.

For me this will be the year to check out the social initiatives of MetaCritic as well as the shared media available on Pitchfork Media's Forkcast.

I'm blogging about music. Maybe I'll talk Oneupweb into doing a podcast on music and how social media has changed the landscape of marketing music. Maybe I will listen to Folk music. And maybe not.

So here's an idea; why not follow my lead and spend a year using online social media and technology to embrace music? On November 21st we can all participate in Bill Drummond's "No Music Day" to see how the void feels to our music saturated ears.

Category
Social Networking

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