Much Too Much
I just started reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, and the book got me thinking more of something that has been simmering in my head for awhile now. I am a big fan of the direction in which the world is moving right now. Information flows freely and to anyone. Distribution channels are everywhere. People can get at any and everything ...
... but why would you want to? I sometimes wonder if it's all beginning to be too much. I've been thinking about this more lately with how it relates to music distribution. I have infinitely more access to different and new music. There are numerous sites and blogs, which have mixtapes and albums of a bunch of different artists. The numbers are staggering ... to the point where it's almost paralyzing. What's the difference between a Charles Hamilton and a Kid Cudi? Who's Drake? Termanology? 88-Keys? What about 6th Sense or Jay Electronica?
Sadly, I don't have the time or patience to listen to all those artists and evaluate for myself. So what do I do? Normally, I rely on the recommendations of people whose taste I know is like my own. Unfortunately, I think many of those people are in the same boat as I am.
I'm a huge fan of Pandora as a music recommendation engine, and since it's release, the similar iTunes Genius has been impressive. Unfortunately, I don't think either handles emerging artists like the ones mentioned above well. So what's a music fan to do? I don't really have an answer.
Do you?
As for the artists above, I've heard at least some songs of all of them but don't think I would recommend every one ... mostly because the jury is still out for me. There are also a bunch of other artists who I've heard of but haven't yet listened to. I'm really impressed with Jay Electronica so far. I really enjoyed 88-Key's The Death of Adam. There are a few tracks by 6th Sense and Termanology that I really like.
I guess for now, I'll just keep listening and hope for the recommendations of others ... ohh, and of course, eagerly await new releases by old favorites (new Roots and Ozomatli coming out).
3 comments:
interesting topic and something i've thought about often both in a personal sense as well as in a work context. i think what's happening now is people, at last, have the ability to "self program". before we had to watch was on TV, listen to the radio, etc. no we have netflix, pandora, tivo, hulu, etc. we get to choose what we want and when. the problem, which you mention, is how to know what you want to enjoy. enter the "tastemakers". in a world of ever-increasing options, our ability to solicit expert opinions to sift through all the shit and make recommendations is going to get way more important. okayplayer used to serve some of that purpose from a music perspective. we need more of that. from movies, to books to whatever. tapping into the conscious of similar minded people is one way. more intelligent system-generated recommendations is another. who knows what will happen, but i'm greatly interested in this as well.
Out of curiosity, where did you get the term "tastemakers" from?
But yeah, good and meaningful recommendations is going to be the key to the future of all this stuff. I only talked about music in my post, but it applies to almost everything (books, movies, software, etc).
I totally agree about Okayplayer. When this post was brewing in my head, I was going to mention them as a source for good music recommendations, but when I got to writing, it slipped my mind.
You took the words right out of my mouth! Was thinking of writing a similar post but just couldn't quite get down what I wanted to say.
For me, musically speaking, it's WAY too much! Every day there's some new mixtape, featured artist, sample set, hot single, etc. I've definitely cut the fat out. I deleted a bunch of shit that was taking up unnecessary space.
I, like you and Terence, don't listen to the radio. And I don't really care what's new on the airways cause 9 times of out 10, that shit doesn't grab me. I'm only checking for a select number of artists (ex. Mos Def, The Roots, Ozo) and I figure I'll hear about new ones eventually. If it's hot, I'll hear about it!
With all the downloading I was doing I noticed it was starting to take the fun out of it. The fun of listening and finding something I actually liked, hunting it down at a store, and enjoying my purchase. For example, I used to buy Dilated records just because the last single I had by them was fresh. That's what put me on to other artists, and I would branch out. It's very rewarding (and risky) to pick up something by an artist you know little to nothing about. But it's more personal. I feel involved.
I guess what I'm also trying to say is that I like to create those "recommendations" for myself. A good example would be, say you knew nothing bout hip hop. And you pick up Tha Dogg Pound's Dogg Food, and you really like it and want to find other artists like that. What do you do? Well, it's on Deathrow Records, so I would start there. I'll go back and find out what other artists were on that particular label. I find that as of lately, that's what I've been doing and I think I've found a nice balance of music that I download and purchase.
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