Online Music Brings New Life To Old Music

Rick Zeman writes to tell us The Washington Post has a look at how online music has helped to revitalize eclectic or out of print music. From the article: " Because the Internet has changed how people discover and share music, the rules of marketing it and the hierarchy of who determines what's hot have also changed. As radio-music listenership declines, the industry finds itself spending more time courting a broader field of tastemakers who, through Web sites, are popularizing songs that never get radio play. The primary tool in this transition is the playlist -- a sequence of tracks posted on blogs or shared on music purchase sites such as iTunes. Not just that, but also 'about 2,700 albums have been brought back through the Vault, with more than 5,000 scheduled to follow' with those albums not having enough demand to justify another printing."

Comments

playlist

[rucs_hack]

"The primary tool in this transition is the playlist"

So how long will it be before someone cries foul, waves a 'playlist' patent and tries to make a dishonest buck out of this?

Stupid idea perhaps, but my god if there haven't been some godawful 'patents' showing upand causing trouble of late.

I'll go back to the cynics corner now....

Re:playlist

[Anthony Boyd]

So how long will it be before someone cries foul, waves a 'playlist' patent and tries to make a dishonest buck out of this?

Good question. Here's another one: how long until the corporations have fully astroturfed the playlists? They co-opt everything else. What's stopping them in this case?