In Culture Shocked Part 1, I put forth the idea that music culture is changing rapidly. Central to these changes is a massive shift in public perception towards the value of recorded music (and I believe ‘music’ in general by extension). This shift is currently dismantling the traditional record industry piece by piece, while simultaneously altering fan perception towards artists. I feel that a few core factors are responsible for this shift.

The first factor that was discussed in depth was File Sharing. Let’s move on now to the other remaining factors.

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Popular sentiment says the CD is dead.  You’ll hear this all over the net, with people singing the virtues of mp3s, iPods, and the new online revolution while simultaneously dismissing the CD as outdated, clunky and a waste of space.  Its kinda hard to argue with that, since its true; in the battle for convenience and portability, a digital file will usually trump its physical counterpart any day of the week.  That doesn’t just apply to music either; all those developed photographs have to be stored somewhere…and photo albums take up space!

This argument, while true isn’t the whole story. (more…)

If you read the hypebot blog like I do (and you definitely should be if you want to know the latest in music industry news and happenings) then perhaps you recently came across a piece by Kyle Bylin on ‘Throwaway Culture’ and how it relates to music.  It was an interesting read and posed a lot of questions which really got me thinking. The article sparked some great debate, and I decided that I needed to encompass my full thoughts on the subject in a separate blog post.

As an artist, today’s online music environment can seemingly be your best friend, and your worst enemy all at the same time.  Proponents will say that the internet has leveled the playing field for all artists, allowing even the very obscure and underground acts to compete with the biggest, mainstream offerings.  That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it. It’s incredibly exciting to have your latest tracks on iTunes, or get great fan feedback from the other side of the world.  So why is it that an environment that can seem so powerful for artists on one hand, can also promote feelings of pessimism and despair on the other?
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Hi, everyone…welcome to my brand new blog.  Just take a moment to soak it all in….yup even has that new car smell! But hold on a minute! Aren’t those just toxic chemicals? Maybe…but I refuse to believe that something so good can be bad for you.  There are probably a million things wrong with that reasoning, but I’ve chosen to just ignore them forever.

Anyways, back on topic. My name is Jay and I am a songwriter…and a singer…and a musician…and a performer….how can I sum that up better…let’s just go with ‘artist’!

A few months back I released a full length album called ‘Burst’ which can be heard in its entirety in the convenient sidebar music player!  After being on half a dozen social networks, I realized that what I really wanted was a place on the net to call home…a place for everyone to experience what its like to be an independent artist in todays music scene, and a place where I can provide some hopefully relevent commentary on the current issues which artists must face.

I’m also looking forward to sharing new songs and demos with all of you.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations…I promise things will get better….but then again promises aren’t what they used to be.   Ponder that for a moment!

see you soon.