I am was planning on going down to Worcester today to grab a bite with the DHB cohort, so I thought I'd check up on their blog to see what's shakin'. I see this -- Indy, a "music discovery" tool -- which seems like a cool development. Basically, it's a tool to play you random music, see if you like it, if so play music that other people who liked that track also liked, and if not try something else.

While this is clearly a very early implementation, this is something that could actually work in the long run. Record labels used to do three things. Produce, Distribute and Promote. At it stands, Production and Distribution have already been largely democratized by technology. While their last remaining ace -- Promotion -- is not going to go away anytime soon, the development of "discovery" tools like this, as well as the outgrowth of social tools are going to steadily erode the ability of the majors to put products over on consumers.

Social tools include things like Mp3 blogs (a return to the oridinal DJ concept), socially oriented filesharing tools like SoulSeek (sort of a giant musical swap meet where downloading means conversation first), and the rising trend of individual music consumers seeing themselves on some level as representatives of the artists they enjoy. These cultural practices and methods are going to pick up steam over mass marketing because they're more likely to deliver a higher quality acoutsic product, and they contain a higher potential for social reward -- usually some kind of positive relationship or interaction -- as a result of their practice. On the other hand, mass promotion methods are more likely to be pimping an inferior creation and have seen their greatest social reward -- the unity that comes with being part of a mass -- steadily erode.

There used to be a time when being a part of it meant seeing it premere on MTV, and you could count on sharing those cultural touchstones with yr peers. This is the entire premise behind VH1's retrospective "I love the 60s/70s/80s" programming, remembering moments of cultural unity. However, as we move into the 90s and especially the 21st century, this type of programming is going to become increasingly problematic. As the media environment becomes more democratic, people find there's more good feeling (and good listening) in being a part of an organic community. For many, the tie that binds becomes a record store or venue rather than a hit debut video. This means diminishing returns on "hit" products, but the upshot is that with support for artists distributed more broadly, the number who actualy develop their talent and create great music increases.

This means monolithic entities (e.g. todays media megacorporations) will have to do more work -- or at least produce, distribute and promote more products -- to roll up the same number of sales; something they're poorly positioned to do. On the flip side, this also means that light, agile, independent entities (e.g. indy labels, self-managed artists, amateurs/hobbiests) will be competing on a more level playing field with the majors.

There's a kind of moral rightness (to me anyway) in this vision of media conglomorations suffering a kind of death by a thousand cuts, but the actual cultural impact is going to be pretty enormous. What does the world look like when fewer artists become rockstars, but many many more are able to earn a decent living off their craft? It could be pretty interesting.

Pop and mainstream music will continue to run strong as long as Americans continue to work as much as they do. People who hold down two jobs generally don't have time to be an active participant in a "scene." Some sort of "default culture" will still persist, though it will probably be more democratic and diverse in its own right, with people sort of following groups of quality artists who consistantly release good sounds. These followings will likely retain an association with people's tastes when they were young -- the "scene" grows up and becomes an institution.

A few final thoughts:

• As major's sales move more and more to catalog (old stuff), artists are going to get smarter about their licensing terms.
• As filesharing becomes accepted as a fact of life, the importance of touring, merch and anciliary products will increase. The Ramones fortune is based on t-shirts, not record sales. Expect more of that.
• Artists who want to 'sell out' and make big money will increasingly do it the way atheletes do: shilling for consumer products.

In case you missed it below, a genius named Paul dropped this link in a commend down page. Click it now. It may blow your mind.

Even though I'm on my way out of the MFA sphere of influence, I have to say I'm a little proud of this:

That's Mr. Markos on C-Span. I haven't yet watched it, but you can grab a link off this diary.

I haven't been reading Ezra Klein much since he split off of Pandagon, but this is really good: End of the Powerline.

For those of you who don't know, Powerline is the blog that most forcefully pushed the story that memos used by Dan Rather at CBS in a story about President Bush's spotty record in the TX Air Guard were fakes. This turned out to be true, although a little-reported sub-plot is that the actual content of the "forged" memos was never disputed. Now, Powerline didn't make the discovery -- that was some freeper with a preternatural eye for typography -- but they were the most strident and persistent advocates for the "memogate" story, over which Rather subsequentally retired. For this, Time magazine named them "Blog of the Year."

It turns out (surprise surprise) that they're total wankers. Quoth ezra:

It's not just that they have no shame, it's that they once met shame on a street, beat the shit out of him, rolled him up in a carpet, and threw him off a bridge....

They get nothing right. Their fact-checking skills are atrocious. They neither report nor call experts, it's just whatever they invented twenty seconds ago. Watching them work is like attending a high school debate match in the impromptu event. Arguments are created on the fly, accuracy is unimportant so long as the product accuses the "MSM" or Democrats of some cardinal sin that'll leave Powerline's sycophantic readers moaning with the exquisite pleasure that comes only from having one's biases expertly stroked.

They really do have that kind of right-wing brainwashed thing going on, as you can see in this video clip from Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary.

As far as I can tell the left doesn't care about terrorism, doesn't care about islamofacism, doesn't care about 100s of thousands of people getting killed. All they care about is their own power... the whole mainstream of the Democratic party, I would say, is engaged in an effort that is really a betrayal of America.

Blog of the year, folks. Blog of the year. Really I think it says something more about Time magazine than anything else. It reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Back where Dylan is giving an interview to someone from Time. Paraphrase: "You'll never understand me or what I'm about," Dylan says. "Why, Bob? Why?" the reporter asks back. "Because you work for Time Magazine, man." It's a revealing moment, and one that continues to resonate with me.

I still believe there's an odds on chance that the internet will prove an even better ally to Truth and Reality than to Opinion and Rhetoric. In the long run wikipedia is vastly more significant than faux "free press" outlets like worldnetdaily. It's just going to take a little time.