El NYT informa de cómo algunos de los nuevos grupos se apoyan o son apoyados por weblogs para surgir y acceder a nuevo público. El artículo está muy interesante pues nos permite ver nuevas aplicaciones para un medio ya de por sí versátil como los blogs, además de proveernos de pautas sobre cómo va evolucionando la industria musical, actualmente con problemas por, precisamente, el avance y popularizción de las nuevas tecnologías.
This is how the Internet was supposed to help music: last year, J. P. Connolly, a science teacher in Brooklyn, heard a song by one of his students, a rail-thin 15-year-old named Oliver Ignatius, who is the lead singer for a band called the Hysterics. Mr. Connolly, who had bonded with his student over independent music, loved Mr. Ignatius's song and posted it on Music for Robots, an influential blog he helps run. That's where Joseph Patel, an MTV News producer and regular reader of the blog, heard the song. He also loved it, and decided to put the Hysterics on the air, despite the fact that they had done little more than practice in drummer Geoff Turbeville's parents' bedroom.
After the segment was broadcast on MTV, Music for Robots found itself with a new audience: teenage girls, who had come to declare their love for the Hysterics. The band is now in talks with a major label. And now Mr. Connolly and his Music for Robots peers are attempting a coup of their own. The blog recently released a compilation CD, Music for Robots Vol. 1, which features 19 unsigned and independent-label bands, including the Hysterics. The release represents a break from the way most music blogs operate; typically, blogs of this genre feature enthusiastic testimonials about bands and free downloads of the bands' songs, but no songs for sale.
Por lo visto en el futuro las bandas ya no esperarán que un ejecutivo de algún sello caiga a una de sus presentaciones, quede impresionado con lo que oye y los busque para firmar un contrato, sino que esperarán que ese ejecutivo se decida a navegar por los blogs especializados donde están mostrando su música y los oiga. Hablamos de material original por cierto, no de los musicblogs con las canciones del gusto de cada uno y que tan de moda andan en los blogs (Y que hacen mas lenta la carga de los mismos dicho sea de paso).
Only a handful of music blogs, with names like Fluxblog, Stereogum and Largehearted Boy, have any influence, but even those still have a long way to go to fundamentally alter the landscape of the music industry. Many labels view blogs as little more than potential providers of free publicity; even a blog like Music for Robots, which gets about 8,000 unique visitors a day, is little more than a blip on the radar of major labels. But blogs are acting as incubators for new talent like the Hysterics. It's doubtful that MTV would have discovered the band as quickly otherwise.
Many bloggers who post songs can find themselves in ambiguous legal territory, even when they have the permission of bands or labels. And some more-established bands have not embraced blogs, in the fear that they will hurt sales. The Decemberists, a popular independent band from Portland, Ore., recently complained that much of its new album had been posted on blogs before the album was released, and implored bloggers to take the songs down.
El artículo además nos explica que aquellos bloggers que postean canciones de grupos están en un terreno movedizo en cuanto a la legalidad de tal hecho, aún cuando cuenten con el permiso del grupo o el sello discográfico. Asimismo mucho grupos se quejan que al postear su material las ventas de sus cd´s se ven perjudicadas.
For labels, blogs can be fertile testing grounds. Adam Shore, label manager at Vice Records, said he fell in love with the Norwegian pop star Annie, who was at the time unknown in the United States, but was skittish about putting out her album until he saw the positive word of mouth it was receiving on blogs, as well as on the online music magazine Pitchfork.
For many blog readers, however, CD's are old news. "One usually checks music blogs in order to avoid contact with physical objects like CD's and the corporate machinery they imply," says Hua Hsu, a Harvard graduate student who writes about music for the online magazine Slate. Still, he says he thinks there is reason to embrace Music for Robots' efforts. "If everyone else is putting out horrible CD's," he said, "why not buy something from people with taste you more or less trust?"
Definitivamente la industria musical tendrá que pasar por grandes transformaciones para adaptarse a los que tiempos que corren, y sobre todo, a los que se vienen. En el plano local, la verdad desconozco si alguno de los blogs que normalmente hablan de grupos se dedica a postear material original de bandas de acá. Tan sólo me viene a la mente el blog de los The Emergency Blanket, que tienen algún material para bajarse ahí. Por cierto ya pasan una canción de su EP por Doble9.
Technorati tags: Blogging, Weblogs, Blogs, Music Blog, Rock
This is how the Internet was supposed to help music: last year, J. P. Connolly, a science teacher in Brooklyn, heard a song by one of his students, a rail-thin 15-year-old named Oliver Ignatius, who is the lead singer for a band called the Hysterics. Mr. Connolly, who had bonded with his student over independent music, loved Mr. Ignatius's song and posted it on Music for Robots, an influential blog he helps run. That's where Joseph Patel, an MTV News producer and regular reader of the blog, heard the song. He also loved it, and decided to put the Hysterics on the air, despite the fact that they had done little more than practice in drummer Geoff Turbeville's parents' bedroom.
After the segment was broadcast on MTV, Music for Robots found itself with a new audience: teenage girls, who had come to declare their love for the Hysterics. The band is now in talks with a major label. And now Mr. Connolly and his Music for Robots peers are attempting a coup of their own. The blog recently released a compilation CD, Music for Robots Vol. 1, which features 19 unsigned and independent-label bands, including the Hysterics. The release represents a break from the way most music blogs operate; typically, blogs of this genre feature enthusiastic testimonials about bands and free downloads of the bands' songs, but no songs for sale.
Por lo visto en el futuro las bandas ya no esperarán que un ejecutivo de algún sello caiga a una de sus presentaciones, quede impresionado con lo que oye y los busque para firmar un contrato, sino que esperarán que ese ejecutivo se decida a navegar por los blogs especializados donde están mostrando su música y los oiga. Hablamos de material original por cierto, no de los musicblogs con las canciones del gusto de cada uno y que tan de moda andan en los blogs (Y que hacen mas lenta la carga de los mismos dicho sea de paso).
Only a handful of music blogs, with names like Fluxblog, Stereogum and Largehearted Boy, have any influence, but even those still have a long way to go to fundamentally alter the landscape of the music industry. Many labels view blogs as little more than potential providers of free publicity; even a blog like Music for Robots, which gets about 8,000 unique visitors a day, is little more than a blip on the radar of major labels. But blogs are acting as incubators for new talent like the Hysterics. It's doubtful that MTV would have discovered the band as quickly otherwise.
Many bloggers who post songs can find themselves in ambiguous legal territory, even when they have the permission of bands or labels. And some more-established bands have not embraced blogs, in the fear that they will hurt sales. The Decemberists, a popular independent band from Portland, Ore., recently complained that much of its new album had been posted on blogs before the album was released, and implored bloggers to take the songs down.
El artículo además nos explica que aquellos bloggers que postean canciones de grupos están en un terreno movedizo en cuanto a la legalidad de tal hecho, aún cuando cuenten con el permiso del grupo o el sello discográfico. Asimismo mucho grupos se quejan que al postear su material las ventas de sus cd´s se ven perjudicadas.
For labels, blogs can be fertile testing grounds. Adam Shore, label manager at Vice Records, said he fell in love with the Norwegian pop star Annie, who was at the time unknown in the United States, but was skittish about putting out her album until he saw the positive word of mouth it was receiving on blogs, as well as on the online music magazine Pitchfork.
For many blog readers, however, CD's are old news. "One usually checks music blogs in order to avoid contact with physical objects like CD's and the corporate machinery they imply," says Hua Hsu, a Harvard graduate student who writes about music for the online magazine Slate. Still, he says he thinks there is reason to embrace Music for Robots' efforts. "If everyone else is putting out horrible CD's," he said, "why not buy something from people with taste you more or less trust?"
Definitivamente la industria musical tendrá que pasar por grandes transformaciones para adaptarse a los que tiempos que corren, y sobre todo, a los que se vienen. En el plano local, la verdad desconozco si alguno de los blogs que normalmente hablan de grupos se dedica a postear material original de bandas de acá. Tan sólo me viene a la mente el blog de los The Emergency Blanket, que tienen algún material para bajarse ahí. Por cierto ya pasan una canción de su EP por Doble9.
Technorati tags: Blogging, Weblogs, Blogs, Music Blog, Rock
1 comentario:
bueno, como decia un viejo robot: transformense y avancen. los blogs son una herramienta muy poderosa al momento de la difusion de bandas, en latinoamerica está muy difundido el asunto, bandas de argentina cuentan con su blog (ni que decir de españa) igual que de brasil y en uruguay hay un boom de fotologs de las bandas. aquí por alguna razón eso todavía no se impone, supongo que se debe a que los mismos blogs aún no se imponen en general. pero está el caso de la banda que citas y tambien está el blog Mira el pendulo, dedicado a la difusion de pop independiente, tiene alli una opcion de radioblog donde suele subir temas de grupos peruanos y extranjeros, muchos de ellos sin tener un disco en el mercado.
a mi particularmente me parece genial, de que otro modo sino podría uno acceder a proyectos caseros de otros países, el soulseek era una solución pero tiene sus complicaciones, lo de los blogs es perfecto en ese sentido si uno quiere hurgar un poco más, es encontrar justo lo que uno quiere escuchar. es como los fanzines que venian con su disco compilatorio, bueno, ahora está el blog y el mp3.
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