Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll

The myth, science and craft of music discovery

Marc Cohen writes a challenging post on The Myth of Music Discovery. Citing a Digital Music News report of two venture capitalists agreeing that "the next big thing is going to be music discovery", Marc says this ought to be enough evidence that it won't be.

Having written a book which takes music discovery as a pointer to the changes in the forces shaping our cultural lives, you wouldn't expect me to be disinterested, or to be able to avoid rising to this bait. Perhaps that's just more evidence to support Marc's argument. But let me try and engage with his points anyway.

Marc reports evidence that radio remains the main route to music discovery, but online channels are growing in their influence. This is now a fairly well-established trend (here's one previous post supporting this, and another). He concludes from this:

people don't seek to discover new music — it just happens. They don't listen to the radio, watch TV or talk to friends for the purpose of discovering new music. This is a byproduct of the intended object of the interaction.

For some — actually I'd concede it's the majority — this is true. But sweeping generalisations about what "people" do or don't do are not helpful to our understanding here. There is a minority who do seek to discover music. These are the 'savants' and 'enthusiasts' in the classification I use. The thing is that a minority within this minority are quite influential for the rest of the "people". They are the first movers in the interactions from which discovery is a byproduct. And they're proud of it. They take kudos from people reading the blogs in which they assiduously document their new finds, and from the buzz they build on social networks.

The dynamics of discovery include a whole ecology of social recommendations, automated recommender systems, happenstance and serendipity — and the interactions between all of these influences.

[Update, 26 April 2008: Marc has posted on the reaction and I have commented, so see there for further discussion.]

MusicTank Event: Too Much Choice?

In a couple of weeks, on 3rd October, I'll be taking part in a panel discussion organised by MusicTank here in London, about the role of experts and filters in helping us sift the massive quantities of music being produced. Here's an extract from the blurb:

Most people would agree that choice is a good thing, but there is a flipside to this vision of a musical consumerist's paradise. While aficionados and geeks might relish the challenge of judging vast swathes of music for themselves (choosing, aggregating and selecting between an array of filters, e.g. Pandora, Pitchfork, online communities), would more casual consumers (and thus the public majority) not prefer a bit of guidance, not just in terms of the music itself but also in terms of which filters are to be trusted?

I'm looking forward to meeting several of my fellow participants. First and foremost, Tom Robinson is giving the keynote. Tom is probably still best known as a songwriter and performer, though in the last decade he's become a well-respected DJ and radio presenter. In that respect, you might expect him to back the role of 'gatekeepers'. However, he has also been critical of the mainstream music business and has praised MySpace.

The changing role of broadcast and presenters in discovery

There's an interesting feature on BBC Radio 4's Feedback programme this week, which addresses the multiple on-demand means by which young people explore music.

It includes an interview with a 17-year-old who describes how he switches between radio (to which he listens for 1-2 hours per day), online and other media (which consume another 10 hours a day), and what he looks for in a presenter. Then there's a response from the Head of Programmes for Radio 1, whose target audience is 15-24 year olds. He talks about "spread-betting" by making content available by traditional broadcast, podcast, interactive TV, and leaving the audience to choose which of these they prefer. He could have mentioned Radio 1's foray into Second Life, as well. In terms of presenters, he draws a distinction between "mood broadcasting" at specific times of the day, as distinct from "trusted guides" who are filters specifically for discovering new music.

The feature runs for ten minutes, and you can hear it for the next seven days via this link (RealPlayer plugin required). It starts 16 mins 45 seconds in.

Why unsigned bands are the new pixie dust

The announcement of a new Coca-Cola/iTunes partnership highlights as one of the key features that, "In the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland unsigned artists will have a venue to upload songs, giving them potential for broad exposure on the site through artist highlights, European podcasts available on iTunes, and invitations to play at Coke sponsored European festivals."

It's interesting that mainstream services are now featuring unsigned bands as one of their selling points. The BBC aims to be "the destination for unsigned bands and young musicians to turn to for support" (source: official briefing), and already has a dedicated unsigned microsite, including a podcast. The Financial Times interpreted this as a response to the buzz-driven success of bands like the Arctic Monkeys, in which MySpace may, or may not, have played a key part. MySpace's parent company seemed to think so too, being quoted, "That the BBC is openly saying that it wants to create rival [sic] to MySpace shows there is no end to their commercial ambitions." (It wasn't openly saying that, but that's News Corporation's reporting standards for you.)

What's going on here? Shouldn't these major corporate players be focused on providing high-quality filters so that they can guarantee high quality music for their users? Why make a point of featuring unsigned music, when we all know that the bad unsigned music is even worse than the bad music on major labels, and there's quite a lot of it?

Radio is not dead as a means of discovering music

How many times do we hear about the death of terrestrial radio? Both The Future of Music and The Long Tail offer a gloomy prognosis, with listener numbers apparently at a 27-year low in the US. This trend isn't so clearly reflected here in the UK, where several factors are different, including a strong legacy of commercial-free music radio and a growing terrestrial digital sector that offers niche programming (satellite radio isn't likely to be viable in Europe). Even in the US, according to new research from Bridge Ratings, terrestrial radio remains the most common place that people go to discover new music. See their recent press release for a larger version of this graphic.

Forty five per cent of their sample identified terrestrial radio as their preferred means of discovering music. Even if you take out the older 35-to-54-year-old group, and include just people aged 12 to 34, this percentage drops slightly to just over 35%.

There's a seductive myth that discovery is driven by MySpace and filesharing these days, but the figures don't support terminology as strong as 'driven'.