Busking for Stardom What matters for buzz bands these days is becoming the next blog thing
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/06/02/class-bemis.php
The infrastructure for supporting larger-than-life acts has disappeared
By contrast, the Internet’s ability to transmit music has solidified. Run through a chronology of the past decade’s most notable Internet music stories, and you’ll notice the media have been chattering about infrastructure, not artistry. Amazon.com opened up the much-trumpeted “long tail,” making the back catalogs of labels and other publishers more accessible than ever before. Napster and MP3.com created a big bang of peer-to-peer piracy, freeing music from the packaged-goods delivery system that defined the medium in the 20th century. Finally, Apple has convincingly shown how the music business might be able to sell its properties in a world without that physical product.
The year 2005 marked a clear shift from the era of airwaves to the era of iPods. The digital landscape has been laid; the critical apparatus necessary to govern its borders is settling into place. It’s a hierarchy of Web zines, MP3 blogs, podcasts, and message boards with peculiar names like Music for Robots, Coolfer, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan and Tracks Up the Tree. An artist can make or break a career via a thousand different sites that are insignificant on their own, but together quite powerful. Even the majors have realized this. New albums by Neil Diamond and Madonna debuted on MySpace.com.
The people who were making paper zines 10 years ago were reaching five people at a time,” explains Hall. “They reached a certain amount of people, but it was hard to continually reach new people. These days, those same people are doing stuff online, have less overhead and reach 5,000 people. All you need is a link, and bang, you’re there. It’s totally viral.”
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