Thing 42 - Music 2.0

Ignoring the 2.0 label, this one rules!

FIRST of all I friggin' love Pandora and last.fm. As you can see (as if anyone is reading this) I have embedded a last.fm widget over here on this side -------------->

Which means now this blog knows what I have been listening to on my iTunes.
And soon I'm gonna be adding that pandora/last.fm mashup to my home computer (which I just got working) which rules because, come on.

ALSO ALSO grooveshark is the neatest thing I've seen recently. It lets you play whatever song you want! No catch! Also they have some obscure stuff and I was impressed with the amount of songs on there you can listen to. I don't know why, but I appreciate that it exists.

Also thanks to whoever added that comment on the pbwiki page about places to get free music. That Amazon link had a few cool ones I'm gonna get when I'm home again. I sent the link to myself via facebook.

I am basically certain that internet radio is going to overtake traditional broadcast radio, at least in terms of most people. The thing is that music is not even CLOSE to universal anymore, there's no such thing as a song that everyone's listening to. So broadcast radio stations have to play music that they KNOW is going to be listened to by a LOTTTT of people. This means:

1. Classic Rock, because that music came out when people DID all listen to the same thing, and old people don't know how to use the internet
2. Mainstream Pop & Country that's advertised so heavily that people who don't care about music that much listen to it and are ok with it. (which isn't to say that none of it has value, but advertising is pretty heavily involved).

Everything else you kind of have to assemble yourself. And the internet is a very very good way to do this, especially because of music networking sites like this that can recommend similar stuff to what you like.
The problem of decentralizing the music business, of course, is how the music artists themselves are going to be paid. Ignoring the impossibility of stopping torrents, if everyone listens to pandora and online radio and such (sites that only pay for the rights to use the songs, I think), where does the artist earn money? Record sales and concerts are traditionally the source, but with music becoming more diverse and specialized, they can't hope to be superstars nearly as easily anymore. Right now we're in an in-between state that capitalizes on the established order of the past, and the new opportunities of the future. But this won't last forever.

Anyway, I like music sites. So, yeah.