new release heaven

This spring has been insane for music releases- or at least releases for music that I like :) Socialburn, P.U.T.S, Tool, Pearl Jam, Taking Back Sunday, and Thursday have all released for the most part, stellar albums in a time when radio has practically been eliminated from the NY metro market. Pandora, last.fm, myspace, blogs and word of mouth have been incredibly pervasive mediums for spreading digital joy to the masses. Special mention should be also given to zunafish for allowing people to get rid of unwanted dvd's, cd's, books and video games and trade them for stuff that other people have grown tired of. It's almost trivial for an indie band to gain mass listener exposure with DIY recording software and hardware coming down in the sub 5,000 dollar range. Professional sounding albums can be produced with relative easy and in lieu of iTunes success, the cost of pressing cd's can be foregone for a pure digital distribution model. Marketing can be accomplished using the viral approach- street teams, blogs, grassroot gigging, and of course social networking sites.. Just check out myspace.com/music and you'll see a wasteland of bands vying for the diminished attention span of the myspace generation. I'd say the majority suck but again the point is that anyone can visit their page and instantly stream recordings of the band, visit their website, and see their upcoming tour schedule. So the cost of creating a website and hosting an email address can also be eliminated with a free myspace music page. The benefits for the musician and the listener are tremendous. Bands and talent that formerly were hinderered by the deprecated record label machine can now easily reach the masses without big labels and radio stations forcing us to listen to what they think is "good". Think about how many organic indie bands are gaining huge popularity over artifical bands put together by record labels (ie. Ashley simpson is getting killed by Bloc party) because of how the landscape of music has changed. The movie industry will see the same shift in indie production and distribution methods with technology like video editing software for the masses, and bit torrent for seeding movies out to viewers. It's only a matter of time before the RIAA and MPAA implode from their dinosaur ways unless they by some miracle embrace the very technologies that threaten to kill them.