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I haven't had time to see the clip, but I'm fully aware of the ease of
proliferation on the internet, and its effects on self-editing. For
me, it all started with mp3.com. (Anyone remember mp3.com?) Mp3.com
was sort of a granddaddy to bandcamp and soundcloud, in that amateur
musicians could post their work up there in the spirit of sharing, but
that it's seldomly treated with the same respect as an actual CD
release. (By that I mean that it's hard to get people to review your
bandcamp page, or to get radio stations to play tracks from one.) To
go a step further, it's now even harder to browse for music on
bandcamp than it was on mp3.com. If I type in a keyword on bandcamp, I
get thousands of results, about 3/4 of which appear to have no
relation to the search term. And the artists who I think are generic
or undeveloped are the ones that have 10 or 20 records clogging the
results. Bandcamp only works if you already know the band you're
looking for.
Most of the sites have some sort of genre search or keyword search,
but nobody's making sure that artists mark their work appropriately.
For example, marking a techno track as "international" in hopes it
will net more listeners.
But now things are at a point where, without too much effort, you can
get your cds released through the exact same digital distribution
channels that Lady Gaga gets. I have 4 cds and 2 eps floating around
that ether, and between all those releases, maybe 1 cd worth of
material would pass the muster of a major indie record label's
standards - and that's me going easy on myself. ("Major Indie" - I
like that term. I'm thinking of a well-known indie record label such
as Thrill Jockey or Kranky.)
So, it's great for artists because it's easy to get global distribution.
But it's bad for artists because it encourages us to put stuff in
front of global ears before we've really developed our craft, and we
tend to be judged based on our early releases.
It's great for audiences because rare and unusual stuff is more
accessible than ever.
But it's bad for audiences because finding the good stuff requires
digging through a large amount of bad results.
I think we'll start seeing editors pop up in different forms, such as
music writers, radio djs, podcasters, bloggers, etc. Like the
musicians though anyone who wants to be in that position can do so
without a significant investment. The only limit there will be who
bothers to make the effort.
--
Matt Davignon
mattdavignon@gmail.com
www.ribosomemusic.com
Podcast! http://ribosomematt.podomatic.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/ribosomematt
> Sylvain Poitras <sylvain.trombone@gmail.com> was all:
>> Someone said:
>>>> worthy of documentation on youtube...
>>
>> That cracked me up... but it could give rise to a potentially
>> interesting new thread on what the demise of the editor (due to
>> increase ease of self-publication or self-diffusion more generally)
>> means for the quality of art.
>> Anyone can publish their shit... there is no gatekeeper. Which is
>> awesome/awful.
>>
>> I recently watched this documentary that presented some views on this,
>> might be of interest to some of you: http://vimeo.com/34608191
>>
>> Sylvain
>>
>