Digital Music For Sale

Music is a hot topic these days.  The easiest to watch and track are the companies devising new ways to sell music and carry music.  SanDisk's new slotMusic is an interesting segway to listening to music in a new way.  MySpace is doing interesting things as is Amazon.

What is harder to track and look at is the underlying structure of how music gets made in the first place and why.  I found a couple of leads of late and thought I'd share as they are thought-provoking.

As reported by the St. Joseph News-Press in Missouri, according to Dr. Forrest Gilmour, chair of Missouri Western State University's music department, "The whole brain lights up" when people listen to music.  Regardless of what brand of music perks us up and which genre annoys us to distraction, the emotional outcome is the same."  Additionally, he goes on to say that for people who have a hard time concentrating, listening to music while studying really helps.

In another direction, Rhodri Marsden writes on why it is futile to really push selling one's own music and to just let it go.  The point, according to the author, is that making music is not about sales and marketing.  That's why they have different words for it.   I suggest you read this very interesting article as it grasps the point of making music.  It may be easier for a band that is not super successful, i.e. making a lot of money, to understand this point.  Regardless, it is realized, understood and communicated clearly.

Let's not forget the long tail.  There's a lot of great music out there that is easy to find, but there is much more music out there that is hard to find because they don't have loud voices that people would love to hear.  Make a device that makes it easy for the giant hordes of music that don't have a voice/marketer/agent to then get to the people and you have your giant revenue stream again.  Don't forget 'easy' and 'access' and 'variety.'