Hi everyone,
I just read a recent article by Clive Thompson from The New York Times Magazine entitled "Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog" that is relevant to the issues of blogs, social networking sites, and identity and community online. As per my discussion with Jeffrey in the tute, I decided to review an online article from a reputable periodical, such as a newspaper or magazine, instead of a scholarly journal because the world of blogging has been covered at length in the former, but not as much in the latter due to the new developments that crop up every day. Therefore, I figured the information I could find in these would be more current and reflective of the most recent trends. This particular one was written just about a week ago, and the writer provides a lot of insight into the world of blogging and the exchanges between bloggers and their readers. In this article the role of blogs, among other online avenues for communication, is looked at involving the development of music artists.
Thomspon discusses the role of sites such as MySpace in the music industry, which many artists use to personally interact with their fans: they post material and receive feedback, book tour dates based on followers' reported locations, and do countless other things new in the past few years. He looks at a few different cases, and one in particular that stands out is that of Jonathan Coulton.
Coulton, based in Brooklyn, New York, quit his job as a computer programmer in 2005 and decided to devote all of his time to writing songs by posting one new track to his blog every week for a year. He uses this page, where he published the 'Thing a Week' throughout these twelve months, and his MySpace page, to communicate with his loyal admirers, and still has yet to sign with a record label. With the help of seemingly a handful of friends, he generates all of the content and does all of the marketing himself, and is the perfect example of how revolutionary the Internet is for this industry in particular. Coulton's songs can be listened to and purchased either individually or in a compilation on jonathancoulton.com, CDBaby, Amazon, iTunes, a few other online music stores, or at live shows, and according to Thomspon's article, by the middle of 2006 the sale of these downloads was bringing in between $3,000 and $5,000 a month.
Coulton, as well as other smaller performers such as Hold Steady, revel in the newfound freedom and autonomy they have gained using these venues, but also wonder about the less tangible impact the Internet is having on both their own and their fans' experience of music. The bands that they grew up listening to always possessed a sort of intrigue and mystery, part of the whole 'rockstar' mythology, and now that they are accepting friend requests on MySpace and replying to a never-ending stream of messages and blog comments, they wonder if something essential has been lost. For one thing, they need to spend a lot more energy than in the past on tending to the demands of their supporters, who nonetheless contribute hugely to the success of this type of entertainer, and this may take away from the energy spent on creating the music itself; some also think that it might not be such a good thing to know everything about the real life behind the lyrics and the real person penning them. For this reason, they may choose to stay in close touch with their fans, but stop short of revealing very intimate details to keep up some sort of boundary.
I think that MySpace can obviously be a great tool for fledgling artists, especially if they just want to promote one song they have written before they have produced enough work for an entire album, and it can definitely cut a lot of costs and time that might have been prohibitive in the past. However, one thing I do not like is the sort of possessive and demanding attitude fans may assume when given such open access to their favorite bands: they should respect that the artists' job is to create the music and perform it, not cater to their every little need, and sit there chatting online all day. A few concerns relating to this are mentioned in the article. Thompson touches on a number of topics that might be looked at in the final paper for this class, and hopefully my teammate and I can integrate it into our discussion of blogs. The anxiety of the artists about privacy and the significantly lowered boundaries between the artists and their fans, often seen in light of their blogging efforts and those of their readers, is a good case study in a broader discussion on the impacts on blogging and the ways people use blogs. It offers some of the positive and negative effects of the Internet, and notably the pros and cons of the latest online tools that we have been discussing. Check it out, and I hope you enjoy!
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4 comments:
I agree - MySpace is a great tool for upcoming artists to promote themselves and their work. No doubt about it. My band has a MySpace profile, as does every other band and musician that I know. It has become a sort of ‘revolutionary’ tool for muso’s, where they can give away their music as a promotional strategy, promote their shows, and network with other bands, agents and labels. This idea of networking, however revolutionary, has been around for a lot longer than any MySpace page, though MySpace helps you network from home and without the aid of a ‘middleman’.
When MySpace did take the stage, all of the sudden lots more bands started playing shows, more people went to see unknown bands, more unknown bands became known, and my band actually got fans! Musicians, in general, gained hope – that they, too, could be the next Internet success story like the Arctic Monkeys, Sandi Thom or Jonathan Coulton, just by updating their profile and adding new friends.
The article you referred to gave me an insight into the methods that musicians may use to create a widespread audience, such as the ‘thing a week’ trialed by Jonathan Coulton, and ‘the perfect MySpace song’ that artists are now trying to produce. The ‘perfect MySpace song’ is achieved by refining an original song down to the point that it’s quick, catchy and gets straight to the good bits. Yet this concept, too, has been done before – in the radio days, where record labels would insist that to get played on radio your song must be 3 minutes long, catchy, and with a quick, four bar intro.
So this formulaic expression of music has revisited the industry, only now we do all the production and promotion ourselves. As the article mentioned, rock and roll is no longer about sitting on the couch, smoking, drinking and strumming; it is about responding to fans, updating blogs, tour dates, promoting shows and creating the perfect 3 minute compressed masterpiece – to give free to the fans.
Maybe this is why sitting, smoking and constant drinking are not the modern day rock star’s daily chores. Do the artists still get paid?
My band certainly doesn’t!
READ THESE:
Elliot, J. (2006, March 5). Sandi plays to the world from a cellar. Sunday Times.
Fran, V. (2006, July). Working Musician: MySpace for Musicians – Get your music in front of millions – for free. Electronic Musician. 82,84.
ahoy!
See, I think the myspace phenomenon is actually still quite relevant to our concerns: the 3 main ones being privacy, consent, and authenticity
myspace does allow for a whole new way of blogging and communicating, but most importantly self-resperesentation. Although our assignment is aiming to use blogging as the core example, it is based around issues of identity and trust, right?
i think the intriguing aspect of all new media forms is that they far outreach being a simple mode of communication: it is the way in which they allow interactivity and self-representation that is fascinating. Myspace has undoubtedly changed the way in which consumers of music view their 'closeness' to not only the celebritized individuals they worship, but also to the process of music-making itself. As you said, myspace (ironically) aids bands on the grass-roots level, giving them all an equal chance of exposure. However, the truth is, people are not ACTUALLY closer to these artists or this music. They aren't going to stop buying tickets to see their favourite band at the superdome because they can comment on their myspace page. And really, they don't have any further insight into their beloved bands than they could have got from reading 'Rolling Stone'. With big bands at least, most of their myspace sites are set up and controlled by promoters and PR.
sidenote: I thought cat's comment about everyone trying to make the perfect myspace song was both funny and disturbing. there are so many fetid cesspools of idiocy on the internet. -insert sigh-
anyway, continuing on the whole blog thing, i think the advent of mypace video , in conjunction with youtube was an interesting development. The diffusion of opinions presented in ways that are generally associated with journalism (see how we keep coming back to journalism?) is becoming wider and more easily accessible. Ps. check out www.zefrank.com - it's a good example of video bogging, identity creation, and it'll make you laugh. I think the following that this character has is interesting - the way people endlessly comment and trust in feedback from the mn himself. But why shouldn't they really, he's just an ordinary guy. It's the myspace ethic.
Celebrity and everyman combine: is this the gift of web 2.0?
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