The Return Of the Mix Tape
The Golden Age Of Digital
Whether you love or loathe U2, you've got to hand it to Bono: Just as the dust settles on their contraversial 'giving away' of "Songs Of Innocence" on i-Tunes. He then goes on record in support of streaming technologies, namely Spotify. A true politician, keeping the bands long running relationship with Apple intact whilst keeping abreast with how music is currently consumed.
U2's audience might just be the last bastion of fans who are accustomed to buying music in any conventional sense. Now even they know better.
As a forty something i can recall a few phases of music consumption. As a boy we would buy and swap vinyl amongst friends, make mix cassettes, read up on who was doing what in the music print media.
We had heard about American College Radio without having direct access to it, although some of the bands it helped develop would end up playing the British club and college circuit.
As my interest in playing music developed, i wound up signed to record labels on both sides of the Atlantic. Before we start ragging on the new economy its worth mentioning that i don't think i ever made any money selling records, cds or cassettes via those deals. What it did do however is provide advances consistent with a year or so's salary, so i could dodge the day job for a while and make music. Labels would then invest hundreds of thousands on mysterious entities like 'radio promotion' so that you had a chance to be heard by the masses. In retrospect it was more like having a controlling parent than being a part of an evil empire.
If my memory serves me correctly there's always been a fair proportion of crappy music clogging the airwaves, Now at least, the same technology that has made music free and onmipresent, has made it cheaper to produce.
What we really need to do now, is recreate the experience, the community, the golden age of digital.
http://open.spotify.com/user/1261411692/playlist/40JwpjZT7bOCcdhdHhpQ1v
The above link is my mix tape to the world. Just stuff i've been listening to, new and old. Its the kind of thing i would spend hours pouring over, fingers hovering over play and record simultaneously, in my bedroom in Leeds. Check it out!