Jazz Odyssey

Do you know how to create a LaunchCast personalized music station?  Can you explain the difference between a subscription service and a la carte downloads?   Do you know which Yahoo groups are going to be most useful to find out about music that you may be interested in?  Do you know where to search online for the data that will back up your marketing meeting soapbox assertion that <name of Artist here> is being marketed to the wrong demographic?

If your comfort level with the digital music space is questionable, allow me to direct you to a book that should help.  I’ve been making my way through Andy Breeding’s e-book The Music Internet Untangled and I must say that this is really great online music overview.  It covers the online music services (both a la carte and subscription services), Internet radio, and a great chapter that has step-by-step "discovery plans" for finding music online and building a digital music collection.  The book is largely free of tech talk which makes it appealing to those who just want to get started easily, but goes into enough detail that those who follow these trends for a living will find it worthwhile.

As great as I think this book is, it doesn’t replace the hands-on experience that builds tacit knowledge.  To all my music industry colleagues: take a moment and think about your favorite artist(s) or musical genres.  Not an artist you are involved with from a business standpoint….an artist that you actually actively seek out on a personal level.  Do you belong to any Yahoo groups devoted to this artist?  Have you gone to online radio sites like Live365.com to see what stations exist that share an affinity with your fave artists/genres?  Have you shared an Itunes playlist devoted to your favorite genre? Have you visited your favorite artist’s website lately?  Is the content and the experience of that artist site fulfilling?  

This is the universe that so many music fans live in day-to-day….they navigate music sites and services with ease.  Effectively communicating with them and marketing to them requires a hands-on understanding of their experience, and the reminder (that all of us in the industry need occasionally) that before we were professionals, we were music junkies.  Blowing paychecks at music stores.  Camping out in shitty weather for concert tickets.  Playing music at an ear-shattering volume while shaking friends by the psychological lapels to ensure that they understood your musical point-of-view.  That passion and drive haven’t changed, but the Internet has enabled the channeling of that energy into new directions.  It’s never been a better time to be a music fan, and our responsibility as an industry is to deliver the right set of experiences to those fans.  And these are experiences you should have yourself so that you understand how they can be most fully realized.

What are you waiting for?