When a new niche opens up in any system, be it ecological or technological, the normally incremental process of evolution goes completely bonkers as everyone and everything tries to find the best way to exploit it. That’s how you end up with stuff like bear-size prehistoric armadillos and turn-of-the-century cars with fake horse heads on the front. Right now the music industry is just this kind of free-for-all–the Internet has destroyed the notion of the CD as the standard format, and the major labels’ failure to adapt to that change has created a power vacuum that’s being filled by a variety of contenders pursuing new ideas about how to deliver music to the public.
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The majors are experimenting too. Next month, for instance, Sony and Universal plan to introduce “ringles,” CD singles that include ringtones. It’s a terrible idea, but I can see why it made it off the drawing board–business strategists are usually conservative, and it’s easier to combine two things that’ve worked in the past than to try something nobody’s ever done. A better combo, in my opinion, would be record labels and music blogs.
The arrangement makes sense for bloggers and their readers. Blogs already perform some of the same curatorial functions as indie labels: both look for the best acts in a particular talent pool, usually one that covers a narrow stylistic range, and then publicize them, granting their picks the blessing of their endorsement. Readers identify with blogs much as they develop loyalties to labels–and each time you download an MP3 from a blog you trust and it turns out to be something you really like, that bond gets stronger. Blogs even have some advantages over labels: since their specialty is projecting personality and fostering the illusion of a cozy one-on-one relationship, they can more easily assume the role of the cool friend who clues you into great music.
Of course, there’s a big difference between a newspaper running someone else’s ad and a blog selling its own records, and it’s possible that most blogs won’t care to jeopardize their all-important cred by crossing that line. But there are precedents that suggest it could be a nonissue: Both Vice and Fader magazines have labels, and while they don’t review their own releases, they blog about their bands–check out the Editors Q & A that Fader ran or the zillion Black Lips posts from Vice. They have yet to suffer a recognizable backlash or lose the trust of their readers, something the Earvolution people seem to be hoping will hold true for them too: as of this writing, the latest bit of content in their site’s MP3 section is a plug for the upcoming Pawnshop Roses tour.
For more on music, see our blogs Crickets and Post No Bills at chicagoreader.com.
