My colleagues at MusicTank are putting on an event next Wednesday (3/10/07) called ‘Music’s New Conundrum: Too Much Choice?’. MusicTank, if you haven’t come across it before, is a knowledge-sharing network for the music industry, in much the same way that my own outfit, NMK, is a knowledge-sharing network for the digital industry. I sit opposite the site director, Jonathan Robinson, and it’s weird yet obvious the extent to which our worlds are becoming converged. The music guys are adopting or scared of or curious about digital — in each case, it’s a constant obsession. On the other hand, the digital world is trying its hardest to attract mass markets, their Kubla Khan.
‘Too Much Choice’ is about the ways in which the democracy of the Net might be making it harder to find quality new acts. Forget about whatever you’ve heard about the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, Lili Allen and Sandi Thom achieving fame through an organic word-of-mouth movement in social networks. They were all PR campaigns conducted after those artists had already signed a record deal. The reality is 420,000 rock acts and 400,000 hip hop acts available via MySpace alone, with only their friends’ count as a guide to their quality. How are you going to find the best new music?
Jonathan’s a pretty connected guy and he’s signed up industry veteran Tom Robinson (war baby, glad to be gay, 2–4-6–8 motorway) to deliver a keynote presentation and then he’s got a panel discussion with some real luminaries from across the industry:
Paul Brown
European Managing Director, Pandora Media
Richard Fero
Insight Manager, Emap
David Jennings
Director, DJ Alchemi Ltd and author, “Net, Blogs & Rock ‘n’ Roll”
Andrew Keen
Journalist and author, “The Cult Of The Amateur”
Charlie Rapino
Producer, Remixer and A&R, Universal
Do please come along. I can’t promise fireworks, but I’m hoping for some.
My own take on the topic is that, for me, there have always been more good bands that I want to find out more about than there is time to listen to music. That the music press & radio is, and has always been corrupt, and have promoted poor acts in relation to their advertising spend and industry contacts. Popular web 2.0 engines like Pandora (be interested to find out if a UK service is on the cards again) and Last.fm are just desserts for those guys — they do a great job of finding me new stuff that I like. Word-of-mouth has always worked best when it comes to investigating new acts and that the aforesaid services do a great job of automating that. That Fake Steve Jobs nailed why the traditional music guys are probably screwed in the digital world back in July.
That said, most of my new music influence actually comes via old media viz. Uncut magazine and especially its cover disc. Is that heresy, hypocrisy or just a data point about attention economics?
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