Bass guitar virtuoso Steve Lawson has written two very useful posts (Part 1 here and Part 2 here) on the evolution of music and the internet, and his thoughts on the evolution of social media. (Steve's style is varied but I really like his ambient music, and his technical skill is such that it really rewards having a good sound system - he makes bass guitars do things they really shouldn't - here he is on that other very useful social media music tool, YouTube:)
Its quite useful looking at Steve's chronicling of the way use of the internet developed - firstly, the beginning:
I’ve been interacting, networking and building knowledge about what I do as a musician on the web since the late 90s via email discussion lists (I joined The Bottom Line in early ‘98, I think), forums (been on talkbass since early 2000, IM and music chatrooms. But two things have changed drastically since then - firstly an understanding, both academically and amongst users, of ’social networking’ as an enterprise in its own right, and secondly the range of tools and web resources to make it happen.
On what makes various sites more or less useful:
....when I finally realised that MySpace worked best as an interactive media, not a broadcast one, I was left with a completely unmanageable, uncategorisable list of people I knew very little about, with no way of grouping them geographically, or by their level of interest (I couldn’t tell who’d added me and who I’d added). So my Myspace page, en masse, is still a pool of hideously underused potential, thanks to the completely rubbish way the site itself makes data available.
The other social network I joined before Myspace was Last.fm - a much more focussed site, infinitely better designed, MUCH harder to spam, and built to slowly proliferate music that is considered ‘good’ by the regular users. Thanks to me getting in early on last.fm, my music is heavily tagged and associated with some fairly well-listened artists, so my music crops up on a relatively high number of people’s personal radio stations there.
Thoughts on the economics and use of social media on the internet for musicians:
For musicians, the onset of the ‘Social Media Age’ has meant an end to the tyranny of broadcast media, to our potential career and audience being in the hands of record execs, radio and TV programmers and big concert agents. We can build relationships with our audience, talk to them, ask for their help spreading the word about music they love, and also help out the musicians we love....
....The simple fact is that I’ve sold WAY more CDs to the coupla hundred people who’ve seen me play in, say, Petersfield in Hampshire, than I have to the hundreds of thousands who’ve heard me on The Late Junction on Radio 3 - a show that’s been playing my music pretty regularly over the last however many years...
...So as social media evolved, my play-approach helped me - along with a whole load of other musicians disillusioned with ‘the mainstream’ - fairly unconsciously develop a way of engaging with my audience via conversation, interaction and availability, rather than broadcast, spam and rock-star seclusion.
It also set me thinking about other forms of social media for music discovery - Everyone knows of FOAF systems like Last.fm, or music genetics site Pandora, but discovering Steve's stuff was different - I met Steve via London's Tuttle Club, which is one of the London social media networks bridging a lot of different communities who otherwise wouldn't really know each other. I listened to his stuff, now I'm a fan - but I would never have found his music otherwise.
There 's also nothing like a bit of notoriety even in the social media age - I'm South African but live in the UK, but I'm interested in the music scene back in SA and keep tabs on it - and the hoo-ha was palpable among SA music discussion internet groups (that one can be on from the UK) when SA cult band Fokofpolisiekar was the first Afrikaans language band to be played on a mainstream english speaking rock station. That they are talented helps, that they are awesome live is useful, that they sang about teen angst in small town rural SA is always good - but calling yourself "F*ck Off Police Car" (that's the translation) certainly added to the attraction - the Sex Pistol ploy (Fans call 'em FPK or Die Bende (the band/gang) )
So, without ado, from Steve's ethereal playing we go straight on to high energy, head bashing, guitar thrashing, police car Pr0wning punk
