Music and Friendship
I remember reading an interview with Kurt Cobain many years ago in which he lamented the use of music by most teenagers as a means of determining who their friends would be, or using their friends in order to determine what music they should be listening to. He felt that the music an individual chose to listen to should be a reflection of them as a person. Music as art is "I", not "we", in other words.
I agreed with him when I read it, back in 1998. Similar to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character in Almost Famous insisting that real rock 'n' roll lives in your car, in your room at home. It's what you're passionate about, and it doesn't matter if it's popular or gets played on the radio.
But where does scarcity lie now? Over the course of the twentieth century, technology changed how people perceived and listened to music. It shifted the scarcity several times, in different ways.
In the beginning, you had to be there in order to hear the musician perform live. If you didn't have someone with the chops to play what you wanted, or you couldn't attend in person, you were out of luck. (That must have made people appreciate music a little more.)
Then someone conceived of a way of recording audio and a means of playing it back later. Thus a market was created for audio devices and recorded music.
Later, the radio came along. Suddenly, a live performance or a recording could be broadcast to tens of thousands of people at the same time. The audience wasn't limited to the number of people that could huddle around a guy at a piano or the capacity of a concert hall. Intelligent artists embraced this as the ultimate mass marketing machine, and that's where we were until about ten years ago.
Then, the Internet, with its Napster, then iTunes, and now Amazon MP3 downloads.
If you think about the evolution of music, both in terms of the technologies associated with recording and listening to it, and the means of distribution, music has evolved significantly over the past century. Each time, the scarcity shifted in different ways.
Now, digital music is everywhere. We have access to all kinds of music, via MySpace and sites like GrooveShark, where you can go listen to almost anything you want without limit. We have in on our phones and iPods, in our cars, and in our favorite retail stores playing overhead. Music is ubiquitous, and we can choose to listen to whatever we just about whenever we want.
These days, what's scarce about it?
If you happen to be in a band or are a musician with a CD you want to sell, you need to answer that question: what are you giving people? They have lots of choices; why should anyone listen to your CD? What's special about it? Where's the scarcity?
As human beings living in the United States, we're probably short on interactions with other people. While music has become a viable commodity, we used Walkmans and now iPods to shut ourselves off from other people. People seem to walk around craving meaningful conversation and relationships with other people. That's the scarce luxury we seek, while music has become a commodity. It makes sense, then, that people would start to choose the music they listen to based on its ability to help them connect with other people.
What are the Joneses listening to? We can't help but ask and start listening ourselves. If you're a band, this is what you need to give your fans if you want to amass a following. (And while you're at it, please learn how to play your instruments.)
If he were alive today, Kurt would probably hate this. But then again, he doesn't strike me as a very cheerful person.
I agreed with him when I read it, back in 1998. Similar to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character in Almost Famous insisting that real rock 'n' roll lives in your car, in your room at home. It's what you're passionate about, and it doesn't matter if it's popular or gets played on the radio.
But where does scarcity lie now? Over the course of the twentieth century, technology changed how people perceived and listened to music. It shifted the scarcity several times, in different ways.
In the beginning, you had to be there in order to hear the musician perform live. If you didn't have someone with the chops to play what you wanted, or you couldn't attend in person, you were out of luck. (That must have made people appreciate music a little more.)
Then someone conceived of a way of recording audio and a means of playing it back later. Thus a market was created for audio devices and recorded music.
Later, the radio came along. Suddenly, a live performance or a recording could be broadcast to tens of thousands of people at the same time. The audience wasn't limited to the number of people that could huddle around a guy at a piano or the capacity of a concert hall. Intelligent artists embraced this as the ultimate mass marketing machine, and that's where we were until about ten years ago.
Then, the Internet, with its Napster, then iTunes, and now Amazon MP3 downloads.
If you think about the evolution of music, both in terms of the technologies associated with recording and listening to it, and the means of distribution, music has evolved significantly over the past century. Each time, the scarcity shifted in different ways.
Now, digital music is everywhere. We have access to all kinds of music, via MySpace and sites like GrooveShark, where you can go listen to almost anything you want without limit. We have in on our phones and iPods, in our cars, and in our favorite retail stores playing overhead. Music is ubiquitous, and we can choose to listen to whatever we just about whenever we want.
These days, what's scarce about it?
If you happen to be in a band or are a musician with a CD you want to sell, you need to answer that question: what are you giving people? They have lots of choices; why should anyone listen to your CD? What's special about it? Where's the scarcity?
As human beings living in the United States, we're probably short on interactions with other people. While music has become a viable commodity, we used Walkmans and now iPods to shut ourselves off from other people. People seem to walk around craving meaningful conversation and relationships with other people. That's the scarce luxury we seek, while music has become a commodity. It makes sense, then, that people would start to choose the music they listen to based on its ability to help them connect with other people.
What are the Joneses listening to? We can't help but ask and start listening ourselves. If you're a band, this is what you need to give your fans if you want to amass a following. (And while you're at it, please learn how to play your instruments.)
If he were alive today, Kurt would probably hate this. But then again, he doesn't strike me as a very cheerful person.