So a friend of mine has been pushing for me to write down some of my ramblings about entertainment in a blog, and I guess I'm just tired of fighting back, especially when I always have something to say. So I'm starting this quietly, and we'll see how far I end up before I tell anyone about it, or someone finds it...
I've been reading articles about how the music industry is "dead" for the last year, and I'm sorry fellas, I don't know that I believe it. The traditional music industry is dead, sure, but tradition itself is dead, so who gives a fuck about that anyway? Trent Reznor's talking about how he doesn't want to tour as Nine Inch Nails any more, but it's the only way to make money, but he's going to try and and just make his own way. Radiohead talking about how record labels are nothing but ill. People bemoaning the death of radio, or wondering why they never seem to be able to find new music.
Most of the people who are one step ahead of all that nonsense will tell you they've been off radio for a long time now. Why? Because it's "programmed." Someone somewhere is deciding what they think we may or may not like. Hell, in the mid 90s, I started reading a magazine called CMJ New Music Monthly. Each issue came with a CD. From there, I found a ton of people I would've never heard of otherwise. I've dabbled in Pandora, but find Last.FM works better for me. This is, of course, strictly because I listen to such a random assortment of things through iTunes, that I want to see what it does to try and keep up with me.
In the age of user generated content, we're also in the age of micro-attention spans. 30 seconds in and a song hasn't hooked you, you're probably gone. Many times I am. Or I'll skip to the middle of a track and see if the sound has a hold of me yet. I'm as guilty as anyone else, I suppose, but that's life for you.
I'm always on the lookout for new music, and I'll go prowling for it more than a few times. This is, of course, because I'm a musical schizophrenic. If there's a shoegaze/industrial/house/folk-punk/Celtic/afro-beat/jazz-fusion/70'srock/AOR/alt-country/trip-hop/thrash/prog-rock station, well, you can probably blame me. My iTunes genius is sure I'm twelve people, and I think it doesn't want to recommend things to me any more, for fear I'll sick the zombies on it.
Hell, there isn't an iPod big enough to hold my music collection any more, and I've killed the global shuffle on more than a handful of MP3 players since the 90s. If there's a company out there that thinks their player can withstand "constant use," I challenge them to send me one and we'll see if it can endure the rigors of working with a man who likes sound going pretty much at all times.
There was a movement not long ago to find some way to monetize "early adopters" of music, or "trusted recommendations." I suspect at some point we'll start seeing internet radio becoming something that's more accessible and more usable by everyone. I know friends of mine have gotten into the podcasting thing, and maybe that's what the future holds for my "Starlight Society Mixes," which I've been doing via CD since the late 90s, and by cassette tape before that.
I like exposing people to new music, to new books, to new movies, to new anything. Maybe I'm just into exposing myself, heh heh. So maybe that's what this'll be, in the long run. Me talking about the things I think you should be looking into, things I think you should be listening to, and wondering why the hell you aren't.
Enough rambling for the first day out. Who knows, maybe I'll be back again later tonight, for those of you who are wandering here randomly...
