Carrying the Lantern : by Bill Riski > Illuminating the things that were always there.

Updated: 4/2/05; 2:05:21 PM

Sunday, March 6, 2005

Podcasting, Music, and Me

Gentle Readers, Michelle Malone, Mo’Jones, Lascivious Biddies, American Heartbreak, Enter the Haggis, and 3Canal. Thanks to podcasting, I’ve rediscovered music.

I’ve enjoyed music as much as the next person all my life. Not really a fanatic about any one artist, though I have my favorites. But podcasting has brought music to my attention that I truly enjoy but would never have found otherwise. The artists above were revealed to me through the podcasts of Dave Slusher, Adam Curry, Brian Ibbott, Michael Butler, Jason Evangelho, and Georgia. (See the links at the end.) None of the fine musicians they play are in the Alpha Artist crowd; they’re in the long tail of the music business. Out there where most artists are; enjoyed and appreciated in their local metropolis or corner of the world. Thanks to the internet, and podcasting, they can be in my pocket too.

Seems to me the main-line music distribution system is screwed up, and I mean both radio and record labels. What have they done recently, say in the last 20 years, to bring these long-tail artists to me? I can’t listen to them on the radio or even buy their CDs in some cases. Why? Could be because the industry is after the big bucks. So all I hear is a pretty homogeneous set of a relatively few artists. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some of the Alpha Artists, but thanks to podcasting, I’m able to enjoy the long tail artists too.

All the news about the music business nowadays seems to involve their latest fight to resist use of new technology, suing kids for downloading music off the internet, or DRM’ing the media and playback machines. They’re all wrapped up in fighting to keep the status quo on distribution channels, so these other artists are lost in the noise.

Apple is no angel, but at least their iTunes Music Store shows they have put some effort into making music downloads easy and reasonable. Sure their motivation was to sell more iPods, but so what! They have a great integrated solution that works on both PCs and Macs. (To be fair, I’m a Mac fan from way back.) And they seem to be reaching into the long tail a bit.

Let me offer my thanks to the podcasters mentioned above (and others), and to Dave Winer and Adam Curry for kick-starting audio enclosures to RSS feeds (i.e., podcasting.)

As the Cluetrain Manifesto so eloquently explains, the key to marketing is in listening to customers and developing the associated relationships. Well I sure don’t see any relationship with the RIAA or Clear Channel developing, but I’d have any of these podcasters over to my house for dinner in a minute!

Thanks folks,

Bill Riski

Montclair, Virginia

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