New Music Mediums -- I

When I read about bands stories and how they made in the music scene, I am amazed.
Compared to what we have today bands had almost nothing but cassette recorders and exchanging of letters with the labels and with each other. Now that the music is so accessible to all people who has access to Internet, it takes only seconds to exchange information with people who are outside of your country. I can instantly connect USA and learn about the tour dates of my favorite bands. I can also connect with radio hosts of Norway and Australia and discover new music. The possibilities are endless.In this blog entry I will briefly talk about the new mediums of music that enables us fans to connect with bands freely on the internet.

Bandcamp, is almost an obligatory site for the new bands to emerge. Bands are able to stream their songs freely on this site without any membership fee. Bandcamp only takes certain amount when the the band sells certain number of songs. Although the purchases are made through Paypal, there is a way around this. But I have not been able to accomplish this . The idea of Bandcamp is to directly support the bands who are striving to make their music heard without any intermediates. The bands can also sell merchandise in addition to their music. When a fan makes a purchases he/ she are able to write short reviews about the music they just bought.This site is highly recommended for emerging bands.

Itunes , to me a much sophisticated winamp, is the side product of Apple in which you can buy most of the songs for about a dollar. The design is nice usage is simple and the application is highly usable I do not use this extensively given the fact that most of the music I have is extracted from CD's. For iPhone users Itunes is an excellent intermediate to download music with price but like most of the Apple products it just does not make sense to me.

Spotify, is a new Last.fm scrobbler, but better. Remember when Last.fm used to be free and you used to listen to radio according to your tastes? Spotify is the new Last.fm but it's design is better and you are able to find music much more easier. The only downside is the meaningless commercials that pops out between the songs while you are listening to music. To skip the commercials they need you to become a member.

Reverbnation, is a site that you become a member by chance, lay your songs for the world to see and watch your inbox getting filled with billions of pop, pop/rock artists that you will not waste your time listening to. Seriously I have only became a member of this once and honestly whenever I check in to this site it freaks me out of the magnitude of bands it has been promoting. Organize this site !! I do not want to listen these tons of non-metal bands!

I will give my highest regard to an all time favorite application; Soulseek. This application existed since I learned about the internet and honestly it has been the most beneficial for me so far. No commercials, no artwork layouts, no long loading process...Soulseek is simple and easy. Of course if you to support the bands I advise Bandcamp to buy the music. Personally it gives me more pleasure to support the bands directly.

Above applications and website are among the most popular ones that I came across. Some of them are great. Some of them offers too many features and some of them just plainly suck. But it is better than what we had 5-6 years ago. I believe it is going to get much more better.

Please feel free to add any comments.


Ersin