music is free now

Is This Really Helping Us?
Mp3 blogs and the sublime chaos of online music

(this is a an article I just wrote for Creating Culture - APAP 2007 Technology Blog)

2006 has been a big year for music. Everything is changing so fast that it’s hard to know what’s a fad and what’s a fundamental shift in the way musicians and fans do business. Myspace seems ubiquitous. YouTube has made celebrities out of nobodies. Mp3 blogs are everywhere, and now they are all being archived and aggregated. Microsoft has entered the mp3 player fray, and what the hell is a mog? The New York rock scene is burgeoning, and the RIAA is kicking and screaming and scrambling for any penny it can find.

The question that I hope to answer is how, out of all of this confusion and over-saturation, do musicians stand to benefit? Call me an anarchist, but as a composer I can’t help feeling intensely optimistic about the chaos surrounding music this year. And here’s why...

keep reading...