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."

Comments

Big Radio is going down

[tunabomber]

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.

No matter what, it's hard work

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Marketing versus Distribution.

[neo]

"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.

Re:Marketing versus Distribution.

[geekd]

artist -> art -> marketing/advertising -> distribution -> retailer -> listener

Quite true.

I am an "independent musician". I distibute my music over the web. I know many, many other musicians who do so also.

Most musicians I know are quite good at the art part, and quite bad/clueless at the marketing part (myself included). Marketing is mostly salesmanship. Musicians, for the most part, are not salesmen. Mostly, we dislike salesmen.

  If you look at sucessfull bands that came from the indie scene, either they were good at marketing, or had someone on their side that was.

Marketing is phone calls, footwork, contacts, etc. We'd rather smoke weed and write songs. :)

Here's my marketing: go check out my band: http://theexperiments.com/ Free music for download.

See, that's about as much marketing as most bands can do. Now, where's the bong?

-dave

Last FM

[CowboyBob500]

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)

Re:Missing Link?

[rhandir]

Gotcha right here: http://irate.sourceforge.net/

Imagine listening to the radio and being able to influence what kind of stuff you hear. Imagine hearing all kinds of things that you've never heard of before. Imagine no "...buffering..."

iRate does this.

Oh, and:
Open source? Check!
Supports Creative Commons? Check!
Legal Downloads? Check!
Runs on Linux? Check!
Free as in Beer? Check!
Did I mention no streaming?

More detail:
Technical explanation with easy to understand diagram here:
http://irate.sourceforge.net/
Site you can send the non-technically inclined to here:
http://www.irateradio.com/

"Just click on the executable. No, really, it's safe this time."

Oh and the guy's name is "ajones". He's a kiwi. Mad props to kiwis.