Jonathan Coulton is an interesting example I had never heard of before the article. In September 2005, he quit his day job and set about to write and record a song each week, posting each one to his blog in a project called Thing A Week. Eventually 3,000 people, on average, were visiting his site every day, and his most popular songs were being downloaded as many as 500,000 times(!!). He was making between $3,000 and $5,000 a month by selling CDs and digital downloads of his work on iTunes and on his own site. The NYT article states:Along the way, he discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online (via NYT).Blogging, artist podcasts (OK Go has one here), artist’s iTunes playlists, and instant and free access to music on internet radio or MySpace or any number of illegal download sites make for a completely different fan-artist dynamic. In the past, radio and TV would put an artist on a pedestal and make them seem very far away—even if you could hear or see them in interviews, the ability to interact with them was limited. Thompson writes:
In the past — way back in the mid-’90s, say — artists had only occasional contact with their fans. If a musician was feeling friendly, he might greet a few audience members at the bar after a show. Then the Internet swept in…Performing artists these days, particularly new or struggling musicians, are increasingly eager, even desperate, to master the new social rules of Internet fame. They know many young fans aren’t hearing about bands from MTV or magazines anymore; fame can come instead through viral word-of-mouth, when a friend forwards a Web-site address, swaps an MP3, e-mails a link to a fan blog or posts a cell phone concert video on YouTube (via NYT).As this statement indicates, the old gatekeepers of fame and fortune are being dismantled by all of these different technological developments. Old terrestrial radio is part of the “establishment” that is on its way out and “new radio”—podcasts and internet radio, as well as music blogs, are taking over as a completely revolutionary type of promotional platform. More than just promotion, however, these sites are about access and personalization. Thompson also points out, "Musicians are at the vanguard of the change. Their product, the three-minute song, was the first piece of pop culture to be fully revolutionized by the Internet. And their second revenue source — touring — makes them highly motivated to connect with far-flung fans.” What was it about music that made it the first piece of pop culture to be revolutionized by the internet? Was the technology just there and simpler than say TV or movies? Was it the format—a bite-sized 3 minute song—that made it appealing and immediately digestible by the young internet audience? I don't know, but these changes are upending the music business as it currently operates and making it easier for many artists to get their music to an audience--their audience.
The article also points out the different impact the internet makes on corporate, A-list stars like Justin Timberlake, Fergie, Beyoncé vs. Artist 2.0 like Jonathan Coulton or Poddington Bear (who I will post about in a minute). It states the A-listers
are still creatures of mass marketing, carpet-bombed into popularity by expensive ad campaigns and radio airplay. They do not need the online world to find listeners, and indeed, their audiences are too vast for any artist to even pretend intimacy with. No, this is a trend that is catalyzing the B-list, the new, under-the-radar acts that have always built their success fan by fan. Across the country, the CD business is in a spectacular free fall; sales are down 20 percent this year alone. People are increasingly getting their music online (whether or not they’re paying for it), and it seems likely that the artists who forge direct access to their fans have the best chance of figuring out what the new economics of the music business will be.So, it seems that traditional radio still holds the key to the massive audiences A-list artists already command. But podcasts, internet radio, and all the internet’s other options offer an expanded set of tools for the younger, B-List artist--and some A listers as well (hey, even John Mayer has a mostly lame, sometimes entertaining blog). "B-listers" have a better chance of finding their audience with these tools, but does an Internet-built fan base inevitably hit a plateau? The article states:
Many potential Coulton fans are fanatical users of MySpace and YouTube, of course; but many more aren’t, and the only way for him to reach them is via traditional advertising, which he can’t afford, or courting media attention, a wearying and decidedly old-school task. Coulton’s single biggest spike in traffic to his Web site took place last December, when he appeared on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” a fact that, he notes, proves how powerful old-fashioned media still are. (And “Weekend Edition” is orders of magnitude smaller than major entertainment shows like MTV’s “Total Request Live,” which can make a new artist in an afternoon.)So there you have it, old school media is still very important, but Coulton wouldn’t have had a chance of being on NPR if he hadn’t garnered all that attention online first. It's a combination of factors that makes an artist popular, and it does appear that the old-fashioned media sources are also incorporating new media approaches and drawing largely on the artists popularized by the internet.
Many musicians, like OK Go (of treadmill dancing fame), still continue with the traditional route of signing up with a label and using the internet as promotion. The significance of internet radio, podcasts and blogs cannot be underestimated, however, for the success of the new “B-List” type artists like Coulton who construct their entire business model online. Thompson argues, “Without the Internet, their musical careers might not exist at all.”
The article addresses another aspect of the Artist 2.0 that the internet has greatly affected: their emotions. It notes, “This phenomenon isn’t merely about money and business models. In many ways, the Internet’s biggest impact on artists is emotional. When you have thousands of fans interacting with you electronically, it can feel as if you’re on stage 24 hours a day.” Tad Kubler of one of my favorite bands, The Hold Steady, wonders: "Are today’s online artists ruining their own aura by blogging? Can you still idolize someone when you know what they had for breakfast this morning? 'It takes a little bit of the mystery out of rock ’n’ roll,' he said." The creative process has also changed, to the point where fans are completely involved in the process—making suggestions, making their own music videos or “mash-ups.” The article ultimately asks:
Will the Internet change the type of person who becomes a musician or writer? It’s possible to see these online trends as Darwinian pressures that will inevitably produce a new breed — call it an Artist 2.0 — and mark the end of the artist as a sensitive, bohemian soul who shuns the spotlight.Referencing famous recluses J.D. Salinger and the lead singer of the Cowboy Junkies, Thompson asks, “What happens to art when people like that are chased away?” I don't know if I see this type of extreme shift coming in who becomes an artist. I think the internet participation of fans will become normalized and as artists get used to interacting with their peers, they will figure out how little privacy they are comfortable with.
One of the most interesting bands Thompkins analyzes is The Scene Aesthetic, a band whose popularity on MySpace vaulted it to fame, and precipitated a national tour, and an album. The band began as a side project when Andrew de Torres wrote what would become the breakout hit “Beauty in the Breakdown” and recorded it in his basement with a buddy. Within days it had racked up thousands of plays on MySpace, friend requests came surging in, along with messages demanding more songs. De Torres and Bowley quickly put out three more; when those went online, their growing fan base urged them to produce a full album and to go on tour. Their album is due out this summer, and they have roughly 22,000 people a day listening to their songs on MySpace, plus more than 180,000 “friends.” They just finished a cross-country tour in December that netted them “a pretty good amount of money.” This type of artist is typical Artist 2.0--the new breed.
Thompson concludes:
This sort of career arc was never previously possible. If you were a singer with only one good song, there was no way to release it independently on a global scale — and thus no way of knowing if there was a market for your talent. But the online fan world has different gravitational physics: on the basis of a single tune, the Scene Aesthetic kick-started an entire musical career. Which is perhaps the end result of the new online fan world: it allows a fresh route to creative success, assuming the artist has the correct emotional tools.In the end I think the significance of this article for the study of new radio alternatives is the amount new artists ignore traditional terrestrial radio--its importance has completely diminished except for the highest tier of Top-40 commercial artists. For young, fledgling artists like Jonathan Coulton, The Scene Aesthetic, or even The Hold Steady and OK Go--bands with record deals--the internet offers unparalleled forms of communication with fans, personalization of their "ad campaigns," promotion, and most importantly, creative expression. There are so many more ways that artists can build their fan base from a grassroots approach that doesn't privilege traditional radio or MTV or Rolling Stone. It means greater and better access for musicians and fans looking to share music. It also means big challenges for traditional radio and a record business looking to find a way to profit off of Artist 2.0.
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