Slashdot Mirror
Is the Net an Independent Artist's New Radio?
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Menta from MP3 Newswire recently posted an article that describes how the Net has shifted his tastes from main stream radio artists to indie acts he discovered online. Slashdot has run a number of articles dealing with the struggles of independent artists and how the net is helping them. Between the recent payola scandal and the incursion of Big Radio into podcasting the major labels are pushing hard to monopolize what they can. The good news is that Big Music is much slower adjusting to the changes brought about by technology than Little Music and the sky is looking rosier for the independent artist. In a July article, CNET also discussed how things are looking much better for the independents."
It's quite hard to get the internet in my car when driving any distance over a few meters. Radio however works well for many hundreds or thousands of miles [ad infinitum, barring interference]
Video Production Support
Many podcasts are less commercial than radio shows, but it doesn't mean that quality would have to suffer. Net is full of great quality podcasts, like Spacemusic spacemusic.libsyn.com and some lowsy low quality ones (and still interesting) like lugradio
The concept of "radio", as in the means to relatively easily and affordably address large masses of people, does not revolve around music.
Another very important component is the dispersal of political thought. Indeed, that perhaps overrides the importance of music any day. If it were not for the independence of the current Internet, groups such as the 9/11 truth movement would never have been able to deliver their message to so many people.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Radio stations are controlled by the record companies, they try to force-feed you with all the crap they're trying to sell. Problem is, I'm not interested in commerce, I want to listen to quality music. So now there are these great specialized internet radio's with music I never heard before. Or you can leech months worth of music on your HD from friends, listen to it and decide for yourself what you like. It's great!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It (hopefully) will evolve into digital radio over FM frequencies (first starting with a couple as car stereos and home stereos support the digital format) that are streamed off of the internet where radio stations can provide commercial or private content.
I'm not so sure bringing the RIAA into this article added much to the point it was trying to make. The fact that file traders end up buying more music than non-traders is inconsequential if the focus of article is getting music on the web. What about an effort by the artists themselves to get their music out there, like hosting tracks on websites or podcasting? P2P isn't the only way to get yourself heard, and volunteering to distribute your music keeps aside the whole RIAA issue. I agree that the net is most certainly the new radio, at least in the scope of this article...but there's a lot more to it than file sharing.
The radio will obviously follow. An automatic "intelligent" agent will probably be able to build up a playlist based on your mood and taste. Let's hope we will not have to wait too much for that!
http://radio.pacageek.org:8000/guitar.ogg
Payola has been around for many, many years and will certainly be around for many more. If small labels are so foolish as to think that the Sony case will increase their ability to gain radio airtime, it is no wonder that they are a small label.
If I lived in a larger city, maybe there'd be enough of an independent music scene that this wouldn't be necessary, but in South Texas, it just isn't there (unless you're into Tejano).
I can easily imagine a time when the only remaining stronghold of Clearchannel clone stations and their ilk is the morning commute. They might be trying to "monopolise" newer mediums like webradio and podcasting, but it just can't happen because there's no scarcity of broadcast bandwidth (as is the case with radio spectrum).
If you buy the Long Tail theory, it looks like the media market will become only more diverse as we increase our global bandwidth capacity.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
All we need left is something to connect the layman (a.k.a. non-/.) with the indie artists. Something like napster for internet radio. Whoever can create the link will be forever immortalized like that one dude who created napster.
I don't think there's any question that the net is the new radio. Whether it be talk or music, Podcasts have shown that they can get REAL ratings.
Like with so many things, either the dissemintation of information, music, or software, the internet is a great delivery mechanism with a ridiculously huge distribution potential.
Let's take advantage of it. Speaking of which, check out my sig.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
Odd question. Kinda like asking:
Is the automobile the bicycle of the future?
Is television the radio of the future?
Is the space shuttle the car of the future?
Is the radio the talking of the future?
Things are what they are capable of being, not more or less.
*shrug*
www.75minutes.com
This is a perfect example of a radio show with knowledgable hosts and DJs, well-informed interviews, excellently selected indie music, indie music news, etc. In fact it is a picture-perfect radio show... but it's a podcast.
Speaking as a music artist, there is no easy way to get your music out. No matter what type of medium or media, it always involves a lot of patience, work, and dedication.
-pronobozo
Not only is WOXY.com an independently owned and operated web radio station that is commercial free and has live dj's M-F that play requests, they are also restarting their unsigned band contest as Unsigned@woxy.com an hour-long show and a podcast for unsigned artists.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
And that's why they've tried to stifle the genesis of internet radio streams, by setting the standard licensing rates very high and using patents on both the techniques and the technology to suppress the services. Internet radio definitely has the potential to break the RIAA's monopoly on introducing people to new artists.
"The Music Industry" controls two parts of a long chain:
artist -> art -> marketing/advertising -> distribution -> retailer -> listener
It's pretty obvious that people can only like music they have heard, so "The Music Industry" tried to control radio, where listeners could hear music for free (if you consider being forced to hear commercials free) what "The Music Industry" wanted you to buy. In fact, the playlist was often created by a single person at the station who more or less made money from the industry by pushing certain "products".
An artist had two choices. Sell out and let "The Music Industry" take care of marketing/advertising -> distribution and give up large control over their art in their contracts -or- go indie with a smaller label that didn't have the power to really get a large audience to hear the music.
The internet has taken care of one half of the problem. So distribution is now available more or less for free when compared to shipping CD's to retail stores.
What's missing right now is marketing/advertising. You have to get people to hear a song before they can decide they like it or not. Apple figured this out and now that's what PodCasting is about. If you find a PodCast you like, then you are likely to find music there you want... and Apple hopes you buy it from the iTunes Music Store.
But the whole current system is flawed, IMO. I'm certainly in the minority with this opinion, but I view artist, musicians in this case, as part of a service industry. They don't make property, like a chair or a computer, they create music, which is not physical and hence can't be owned. But that's a debate for another thread.
The good news? Big Music is going to die and it doesn't even know it. The bad news? Artist need to switch to a neo-patronage system to get paid when information trading gets to the point that it kills Big Music.
I been riding the indie web music wave for over a year now, and I can say that its better then the radio. Sites like epitonic, webjay, insound, and even cnet's own download.com are allowing indie bands a chance to get theirs names out there, legally. I honestly don't even listen to the radio (for music) anymore. Instead I go to one of the above mentioned sites, or artist/record label site, download some free, legal, (most importantly) DRM-free music, drop it onto my ipod, plug the pod into the car, and bame, no annoying DJ, no ads, no clear channel, better quality, no stupid people calling in requesting really crappy songs, its just me, and what I want to play when I want to play it.
Sure you can't get every song for free (legally), but you get a few. its similar the few songs that the mainstream bands put out to hype upcoming CD releases, only indie bands are using the existence of tech like the ipod to reach their fan base. whats more if you like something, you can usually DL the entire Cd for 10$ or less instantly of a music service like itunes, and most of them allow DRM that is acceptable, its really a win, win.
I suspect a lot of Linux users like myself had to make some major shifts in taste when we switched (quality games & music-making apps were MIA in 99).
What's the deal?
There were a bunch of artists I discovered on mp3.com and this was one of the best.
It seems /.ers love to throw the term monopoly around whenever there's competition between a large company and a small company. In reality, there are 5 major labels in competition with songs for you to hear, as well as hundreds of smaller labels, and large numbers of garage bands. There is no monopoly on music. In fact popular artists often start on smaller labels, and then, sign with the one of the big 5 when they make it big (REM for instance). Yes, the internet is a good tool for exposure for unknown artists, but why does /. portray healthy competition as some sort of good vs evil thing. There's room for everyone to compete, and consumers ultimately decide (for better or worse) what's popular.
Vote for Pedro
Last FM is a great concept. Basically it uses a system similar to Amazon's recommended links. You download their player (don't worry, open source, BSD license, Mac/Linux/Windows) and you type the name of a band in the box. It then streams music the database thinks is similar. You can vote to skip, ban, or love a track.
When you've done it for a while you'll have your own profile. You can then go and listen to music that your "musical neighbours" are listening to.
Lots of indie music on there. Lots of everything on there.
Bob
(Not affiliated with them)
Listen to my latest album here
highly educated rich English people jumping about pretending to be whacky Are you one of these people?
75 Minutes http://75minutes.com/ offers an eclectic assortment of great independent music in a podcast format. They have both an AAC feed (with chapters and other goodies) as well as an mp3-based feed for non-iTunes users. In addition there are indie news segments and interviews with independent artists. IMO, this show is about as good as it gets on the interwebs and waayy better than anything you'll hear on commercial radio. Give it a shot, you will not be disappointed.
The problem, as far as net music/radio/whatever is concerned is PUBLICITY. You may put music on your site (hell, I do) but if nobody knows it's there then you're just having fun.. which I am! Maybe the bigger problem is that the audience (or maybe the majority of the audience) of music listeners have come to accept it as a passive medium. That's to say it is not something they actually go out and find it is something that finds them. Record companies spend an absolute fortune on marketing and advertising to the extent that they pay cereal manufacturers to bundle stuff. The only fly in the ointment is that given the innevitable buy-outs/convergence etc that will occur in web broadcasting I suspect that the "neo-patronage system" you talk of will rather resemble the current music industry (given 10years or so) with the only difference being the distro system... Penultimately, although music is not "physical" (or at least the digital interpretation thereof) performance is. At least in London there's been a lot more live music activity in the last few years than I've known for a long ol' time. One final point about webcasts/mp3 sales over the net is that they don't appeal to everyone (actually very few people)... why? cos' as Zapper said "people like to own stuff"... like CDs/box sets etc...
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Radio was never concieved in the beginning as a way to give artist exposure, but that's what it ended up as, in addition to being an advertising tool. To be honest, radio is more of a producer's tool, then an artist's tool. It enables a producer to reach millions of people easily. Very rarely do you see an artist who has enough pull or money to break into the radio scene by themselves. The internet is much more of an artist's tool. There is no money needed to get exposure on the net. You can reach an international audience. You can get direct feedback from listeners. The artist chooses what music to release, not market predictions. There are many many other examples. As a musician myself, I can vouch for the efficiency and usefulness of the internet as an exposure tool. In my opinion it's better than radio by leaps and bounds. Radio won't get my music heard in Japan or England unless I'm with a producer. As of now, I have listeners in many different countries.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
How about "collusion" - all "five major labels" fall under the RIAA. Purchasing legislation should be illegal. What legislation? Oh, I don't know... *cough*DMCA*cough*. Payola? Wait, that's not legal! Oh, boy, oh boy.
When the big boys start using their beatin' sticks on the small guys, don't be suprised when suddenly everyone treats the big boys as evil.
Between the recent payola scandal and the incursion of Big Radio into podcasting the major labels are pushing hard to monopolize what they can.
The problems with FM radio go far beyond payola. Music Director's no longer pick songs to play because they thing that the song will be something their listeners will think is cool. Music Director's now rely almost exclusively on what the trade magazines (R&R and Billboard) say is popular. The trade magazines get their information from the bigger stations, which pay consultants to pick out songs
The consultants are not picking songs because listeners will think it is something new and interesting and might bring in new ears, but rather, they pick songs based on the idea of 'please, please, we can't lose/offend any of our existing listeners.'
This is a poor business model, as it doesn't bring in new people, and this a big reason radio is losing listeners to the internet.
Stations that only play 250 songs (1 days worth) on a rotating basis is another.
Satelite radio with a subscription based revenue model.
Web allowing for an unlimited number of band sites / indie radio casts.
Broadcast radio delivering 'news' (read: Clear Channel spin) and what ends up in the top 40 (through quality, payola or a combination).
Excuse the Mao quote. Mabey the majors will end up sending the indie rockers away for reeducation (in the red states(?))
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Is this question about 4 years late?
Using iTunes, I found WMSE (the Milwaukee School of Engineering). Excellent. Right now I am listening to the Italian Hour. Buono.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Shawn Fanning did not create napster. His college roommate did; Shawn stole the disk while he was asleep at his keyboard. I forget the roommate's name but this was on the news or something. Or a movie. Err, I mean, some terrorist told me this before he tried to blow up the airport. Or something....
I still like the idea of "DJ" as the one who seaches among the literally thousands of releases (each tuesday in the US) to find the gems. And I like the idea of quality control. And I like the idea of the personality of the DJ being part of that whole experience. And the sort of implied "take my word for it" because in the past they've been right again and again.
Hence the reason why when it comes to music WFMU is unbeatable.
It's still teresterial radio, but it's otherwise available on the internet at 128k for free, of course, you should pledge if you like.
I completely agree with your point.
describes how the Net has shifted his tastes from main stream radio artists to indie acts he discovered online.
Individual tastes are always shifting. The internet doesn't really have that much to do with it. It all depends on the individual and their mood. This person would have found new music at some other source (the library, perhaps? Or blasting out of car window at a red light?) because they were in the mood for new music.
Sometimes I go months without listening to anything newer than 1968. I'll run Kazaa for hours searching for obscure pop songs from 1963-1968. It's as if music just stopped in the early 1970's. Others feel the same with perhaps different time periods.
For music period focus, the internet is invaluable. But for just exposure to different music, it's not the best medium. You need to know nearly exactly what you want before you can find it on the net.
A better way to get exposure to different music is to become part of drive share. This is where a hard drive (an older one with maybe 30 Gigabytes) is traded for one that is filled with each sharer's favorite music. Each person swaps an old drive with another person. The drives have the other person's favorite music on it. Each person puts only a gigabyte or so of music on it. Eventually you get a hard drive that has the favorite music of 30 different people with each person putting hundreds of minutes of their favorite music on it. No one makes judgement of the other's selections: no one erases the other's partition: no one hassles with so-called copyright issues.
The old method of music distribution and dissemination is rapidly fading and no realistic model is taking its place. You know that when an industry reaching the point where they trying to put its best customers in jail and extort large amounts of money from them because they can't resolve a pricing issue, the industry is in a lot of trouble.
I'm finding it all amusing. I especially like the part about how if the 'artists' aren't paid, then they won't produce any more quality product. Like if enough people copy Rod Zombie tracks, he's going to go sell insurance. Or if people don't pay $18 for Pink CDs, she's going to get discouraged and become a network applications engineer. Yeah, right... Popular music 'artists' and stars don't really have much choice about what they do, they are going to continue to do it whether they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars or not. What the RIAA is really saying is that if people stop paying $18 for junk music, the music company executives will actually have to find some way to justify their huge salaries and perk packages. Heaven forbid! The 'artists' will just go back to whatever shithole that they were discovered from.
The real issue with the RIAA is whether music can really be bought and sold anymore. The concept that five people playing the same songs as everybody else with slightly different words and chord patterns can go to a recording studio for a week and a hundred million dollars comes to the record company is simply breaking down. It's dependent on a 20th century centrallized media and distribution model. It used to work and work well; it doesn't anymore. Putting people in prison and extorting money from them isn't going to change anything except cause the occasional music industry lawyer to get shot by people who disagree with the concept that they have to pay a fine for being the one in a million singled out by the RIAA to be fined for downloading some stupid inconseqencial pop song.
Music is like air. Everybody takes it in, puts it back out. It's absurd to claim that somebody wrote a pop or rock song that is basicly the same as the pop and rock songs that have been playing on the radio for the past 40 years. Music is simply part of the environment, no one can realistically claim to 'own' it. It doesn't matter what the law is. This is the new reality.
I personally use RhythmBox; it's really improved over the last few versions, though it does still have a way to go.
Or the artist could distribute Internet samples, and sell physical CDs. The same economics that everyone cites when they justify illegal copyright violations works for indies as well.
Its go a bit of everything, its related to the audioscrobbler project mentioned on slashdot here and here.
I get the feeling it more geared towards independant music, but I would because I run my own station (and skip those other songs).
Its definately worth giving a listen from time to time.
Quack, quack.
There was a recent article on newsforge about a new indie music store, that is similiar to iTunes.
9 4238.shtml?tid=33&tid=113&tid=132
http://business.newsforge.com/business/05/07/28/1
I have nothing clever to put here...
Every time I turn on that radio in the car, I can barely stay tuned to one station for any amount of time. Generally I come in on the very end of a song I like, or I have to cycle through the same sets of commercial for the LOWEST PRICES OF THE YEAR--AGAIN!
I guess that's because I have no loyalty to any one station. I'm loyal to the content, not the provider, and the providers really suck.
'Casts can bring loyalty not only to the content but *also* to the provider, because they tend to be one and the same. Especially when the 'casts are about esoteric topics that would only get caught by a small number of folks in the grand scheme of things, but a large number on a personal scale. Show formats get a lot more experimental too, which I really appreciate.
Speaking of esoteric content, hey role playing gamers: *cough*-sig-*cough*.
Most places I have been, there has been no electronic music radio station. Since that is predominantly what I listen to, I am forced to go to the internet, there is no choice for me.
-=Zeus=And=Hades=-
Are you kidding? This is better than any indie radio I've ever heard! Unless you live in the mecca of cool, you aren't going to hear this fabulous music on your radio dials. Even then, you still won't. Get your advance tracks before anyone else does. Tune in or be tuned out of the up and coming music of the ought generation. Seriously. It's that good. You won't love every song. But that's the beauty of it. There is something new and different for people of all tastes. Enjoy!
That's sooo Osama bin Laden.
The thing is, the absolute best word of marketing is simply word of mouth from other fans, and evangelists for you that are not paid by you.
So it doesn't matter how many people you pay to market something as it will never really be as effective as people that are not marketers.
So, for a band to do well in the future on thier own, I think they have to (a) produce good music, and (b) be really excited about the band and tell anyone they can about it. If you have a lot of energy regarding your band that could catch on, and if it does then people will tell other people, and if the music is good enough it will grow that way.
I guess what I'm really trying to say that not only does the inetrnet give the independant artist a means to distribute, but it makes marketing far less crucial than it used to be since evangelists for your music (including yourself) can also reach far more people and thus market better than you ever could on your own or with a label.
I appreciate the band link and will check it out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's a shameless plug for my internet radio..
Try http://www.catholichealing.com/
for my praise and worship music internet radio.
You can listen to various artists, both well known and other less known (indie) artists too.
I netcast via live365.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
Maybe for the banner graphics, but I think the original poster was referring to the top 10 text list, complied by Apple based on number of subscribers.
The explanation for this shift is logical, but not very exciting. As more and more people hear about and subscribe to Podcasts, more generic "mass appeal" popular content is going to get subscribed to by more aggregate people than the devoted fans of the narrow interest casts. When iTunes 4.9 came out engadget shot to the top of the pod-charts becasue the people who read engadget are the type of people who also download software on release day. Now it's been a few weeks and Podcastin (tm) has trickled through the major media and Bob-Average (who doesn't care about inside mac Radio or Adam Curry) decides to sign up for Peter Jennings and Roger Ebert in additon to whatever other show he may have heard or before.
I admit I did this too, even signing up for the Presifent's weekly address before unsubscribing.
Amazon's recommendations, comcast cable radio stations, movie soundtracks, the occasional band cross link (i.e. links off of one band's website to a new band formed by one of the members, like dubstar ==> client), and guide-sites like www.triphop-music.com seem to be the new radio for me. I quit listening to broadcast radio 4 or 5 years ago (except NPR). I just couldn't take the commercials, DJ chatter, and bad music any more. The signal to noise ratio got too low, or maybe I got too old. Pity, it was a convenient way to find stuff.
I used to listen to internet radio a lot in my old job (www.di.fm in particular), but in the current one, they have limited bandwidth and I don't want to hog it, so during the day I just listen to the iPod. Also used to listen to other people's music on the giant "music" drive, bought a few CDs I found on there, but legal concerns prohibit that these days.
If I can find some podcasts focusing on electronic and triphop music I'll do that, so far di.fm doesn't seem to podcast. Also looking into recommendation databases. I think one could probably come up with a collection of algorithms to find music that's simular to other music or music you'd like based on your current collection, but with recommendations, I guess there's little point. The only problem is that there's no clear winner in the recommendations arena yet - there ultimately needs to be one or two places where everyone goes, to aggregate the largest number of recommendations. And it'd help if people could put up guides like they do on Amazon.
The great thing about Amazon is that you can listen to a little of the music easily once it's been recommended, and see if you like it. However amazon's recommendation system is a lot clunkier than something like last.fm - the latter shows a LOT more bands at once than Amazon recommendations. So maybe I just need to learn to keep two Firefox's up when shopping, until Amazon gets hit on the head with a clue and modernizes their music site a bit (use ajax to provide a seemless "google-maps-like" user experience with a LOT of alternatives shown per page-inch, genre and feature indexed database searches, etc). Actually what would rock is if google bought out one of the recommendation sites like last.fm, then did a joint venture with Amazon to provide the software for them to provide a total music exploration system. I suspect they'd get it right.
Ha. I simply assumed Apple sold the top podcast slots like vendor-sponsored search engine results.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
I think the number is closer to 50 different songs per day, at least for the radion stations in my area (which I've given up listening to, BTW).
You miss the two big reasons for radio: real time traffic and weather. Most days the weather I can tell by looking out the window, but sometimes it is nice to know what is coming before I see it. (Is that a tornado and I should pull off and find shelter, or just a storm that just slows me down)
Traffic is big. If I know about an accident that happens after I leave work, but before I get to the road it is on, I can take an alternate route. (though I also need to know if everyone else is taking the alternate and I should stick with the main road)
Once in a while news is useful too. Not often, but I like to know about major events. (I don't care about which actor is sleeping with who, but I would have liked to have heard about the Columbia breakup 2 days before I got back within radio range)
anything that recommends coldplay has to be bad.