Music, Music Everywhere
I have iTunes.
And I have Pandora, and Rdio, and Spotify, and Blip, and now I have been invited to SONY's Music Unlimited.
Except, of course, it's not really unlimited as they're expecting payment.
I have to admit I've been wondering what the payoff is in all these free music sites. Well, the obvious thing is, like radio, to discover new music. And more: to discover new music while being watched. With Blip.fm - and one of the reasons it's one of my favorites of its kind - is that you can choose when and what you want to notify the world that you're listening. With others, you have to agree up front that the service can notify all your Facebook friends, for example, what you just listened to.
That's right. So you listen to some lame song by Justin Bieber, and you're a 45 year old male, and everyone on Facebook is going to know. That's your "payment" for the music you're listening to. Or, like with my beloved Blip, you have to endure ads every so often.
For a while there, the Internet was music lovers' paradise: we could hear all kinds of new music (which, in many cases, we really would go out and buy. Though, sadly, we'd often buy the music via iTunes, in which case, our music would be converted into an uncopyable format, even though legally we can keep a backup copy of our music and movies just in case of a hard drive failure or media failure or some other calamity. But just like radio, we'd listen on Pandora or Blip or some other music forum, and find new bands and songs and get the earworm and pretty soon we'd want to listen whenever we wanted, and that's how the service was "paid for." We'd buy more music.
Now, SONY's new service wants you to subscribe, which means we now have to pay for our "radio" online just as we've come to expect to pay for our television via cable.
And of course eventually we'll have levels of service as we have with cable: a commercial every 10 songs if you pay at this level, every 5 songs if you want it free, or you can go for the premium service and pay $20 a month for no commercials. I'm just making that up, but the premium service model has become increasingly popular - though, like many Internet users, I have learned to run as soon as I see a credit card form on a "trial" period. That, of course, means that they'll just go ahead and bill me after the trail period ends unless I call Bangalore and let the customer service people know, after an appropriately annoying period of time on hold, that I no longer want the service. And then I'll probably have to listen to several canned pitches for why I shouldn't leave, usually in form of, "I understand that, Nancy, but..." And following my second objection, "Yes, I can see that, Nancy, but..."
I'll be interested how it all pans out, as more and more music services seem to crop up all the time, each with a slightly different twist on the theme, but basically each wanting some form of payment. And the more control you have over your content, the more you should expect them to want back from you.
Here's where we go back to the old radio model. You can listen to Internet radio, both the regular commercial variety (it's just your radio stations via Internet), or to free Internet radio programmed by volunteer jocks who ostensibly play music from their own libraries (like ReachOnAir, which is actually quite good).
And of course all of this has changed the nature of musician's payback for all their hard work and talent: have you seen the sheer number of artists out there competing for your attention? Clearly, the days of the megaband are numbered. There will always be stars, but compared to the days when the "Top 40," and more tellingly, the "Top 10" ruled the airwaves (and our music-buying and concert-going behavior), each bands share of our attention is a smaller and smaller slice all the time.
It will be interesting, too, to see how quickly the big stars flame out, not because of a lack of talent, but because the next "it" group or singer has grabbed our short attention span. The aforementioned Justin Bieber is already showing signs of the stress of not being beliebed in so much any more.
On the other hand, with so many ways to reach us, musicians can get directly to listeners without have to pass a gatekeeper - people whom we're not realizing once upon a time kept many a talented artist from us because they could. We hear tales of "casting couches," and of course the same thing happened in the music industry, but never until now have I realized the frustration that must have gone along with the humiliation of such a system.
Now, almost any artist can audition directly before the public. Even if it's not as direct a route as a musician putting out a YouTube video, getting lots of attention, and signing a contract or even offering direct downloads, it's still possible for directors and actors and even graphic and fine arts talents to find an audience by generating enough attention via social media.
It's not a perfect world for artists yet, and probably never will be, but it's definitely not your grandpa's world, and it will be interesting to watch it evolve.
And I have Pandora, and Rdio, and Spotify, and Blip, and now I have been invited to SONY's Music Unlimited.
Except, of course, it's not really unlimited as they're expecting payment.
I have to admit I've been wondering what the payoff is in all these free music sites. Well, the obvious thing is, like radio, to discover new music. And more: to discover new music while being watched. With Blip.fm - and one of the reasons it's one of my favorites of its kind - is that you can choose when and what you want to notify the world that you're listening. With others, you have to agree up front that the service can notify all your Facebook friends, for example, what you just listened to.
That's right. So you listen to some lame song by Justin Bieber, and you're a 45 year old male, and everyone on Facebook is going to know. That's your "payment" for the music you're listening to. Or, like with my beloved Blip, you have to endure ads every so often.
For a while there, the Internet was music lovers' paradise: we could hear all kinds of new music (which, in many cases, we really would go out and buy. Though, sadly, we'd often buy the music via iTunes, in which case, our music would be converted into an uncopyable format, even though legally we can keep a backup copy of our music and movies just in case of a hard drive failure or media failure or some other calamity. But just like radio, we'd listen on Pandora or Blip or some other music forum, and find new bands and songs and get the earworm and pretty soon we'd want to listen whenever we wanted, and that's how the service was "paid for." We'd buy more music.
Now, SONY's new service wants you to subscribe, which means we now have to pay for our "radio" online just as we've come to expect to pay for our television via cable.
And of course eventually we'll have levels of service as we have with cable: a commercial every 10 songs if you pay at this level, every 5 songs if you want it free, or you can go for the premium service and pay $20 a month for no commercials. I'm just making that up, but the premium service model has become increasingly popular - though, like many Internet users, I have learned to run as soon as I see a credit card form on a "trial" period. That, of course, means that they'll just go ahead and bill me after the trail period ends unless I call Bangalore and let the customer service people know, after an appropriately annoying period of time on hold, that I no longer want the service. And then I'll probably have to listen to several canned pitches for why I shouldn't leave, usually in form of, "I understand that, Nancy, but..." And following my second objection, "Yes, I can see that, Nancy, but..."
I'll be interested how it all pans out, as more and more music services seem to crop up all the time, each with a slightly different twist on the theme, but basically each wanting some form of payment. And the more control you have over your content, the more you should expect them to want back from you.
Here's where we go back to the old radio model. You can listen to Internet radio, both the regular commercial variety (it's just your radio stations via Internet), or to free Internet radio programmed by volunteer jocks who ostensibly play music from their own libraries (like ReachOnAir, which is actually quite good).
And of course all of this has changed the nature of musician's payback for all their hard work and talent: have you seen the sheer number of artists out there competing for your attention? Clearly, the days of the megaband are numbered. There will always be stars, but compared to the days when the "Top 40," and more tellingly, the "Top 10" ruled the airwaves (and our music-buying and concert-going behavior), each bands share of our attention is a smaller and smaller slice all the time.
It will be interesting, too, to see how quickly the big stars flame out, not because of a lack of talent, but because the next "it" group or singer has grabbed our short attention span. The aforementioned Justin Bieber is already showing signs of the stress of not being beliebed in so much any more.
On the other hand, with so many ways to reach us, musicians can get directly to listeners without have to pass a gatekeeper - people whom we're not realizing once upon a time kept many a talented artist from us because they could. We hear tales of "casting couches," and of course the same thing happened in the music industry, but never until now have I realized the frustration that must have gone along with the humiliation of such a system.
Now, almost any artist can audition directly before the public. Even if it's not as direct a route as a musician putting out a YouTube video, getting lots of attention, and signing a contract or even offering direct downloads, it's still possible for directors and actors and even graphic and fine arts talents to find an audience by generating enough attention via social media.
It's not a perfect world for artists yet, and probably never will be, but it's definitely not your grandpa's world, and it will be interesting to watch it evolve.
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