Internet Generation is Leaving Music Radio Behind (March 11, 2005)

I've been telling you about the Internet supplanting local broadcast radio as where I learned the most about new music, many of which never gets played on any local station (not even the noncommercial or pirate stations!)

USA Today has an interesting article about today's new generation of music fans who, like this 44-year-old, is learning about new music not by turning on terrestrial radio as I have been doing until 1997, but by listening to distant radio stations that put their signals on the Internet, as well as thousands of Internet-only radio stations that would have never seen the light of day on a terrestrial radio in a city near you.

Read this entire article in today's USA Today, online here.

With music directors at the terrestrial stations (not just Clear Channel but most any broadcast conglomorate of any size is also to blame) stifling innovations of music in favor of predictability, music lovers like me have seen the rise of Internet radio grow hundreds of times faster than Clear Channel has gobbled up radio stations in the past eight years!

While broadcast radio is of limited capacity and signal range, Internet radio has infinite capacity as well as worldwide range, thanks to the rise of the World Wide Web and the invention of streaming audio. Music enthusiasts have been saved from pop music predictability by making a habit of turning to some of their favorite Internet radio stations to hear their kind of music anytime they feel like it, and some of their buyer habits have changed from buying what corporate radio has been playing to what they hear on Internet radio.

Music downloads, since Napster was launched in 1999, opened up a floodgate of music that never aired on a given local radio station, and many songs from familiar artists in the USA that were never released in that country could be downloaded for free from someone in Japan where they are released.

In 2003, nothanks to the lawyers of the RIAA suing thousands of people who shared music illegally, and a scare by those that downloaded and thinking that they could be sued for "stealing" a song they downloaded for free, pay download sites sprung up and legitimized the music download business.

USA Today reports that "while paid downloads skyrocketed to 140.9 million tracks in 2004 from 19.2 million in the last half of 2003 (no earlier figures are available), unauthorized file-sharing dwarfs purchases. Since mid-2003, 19 billion peer-to-peer transactions have occurred, predominantly current hits."

"But new sounds and new bands are emerging from Web cabals, a blow to radio and labels used to setting the agenda." I've been telling you about several dozen bands I heard on the Internet that never get played on the broadcast radio, and I'm sure that you're familiar with some of your favorite artists that were made famous on the Internet but never got on the radio. Make up a list of musicians yourself and count how many your local stations have ever played. Not many, eh? The big four music labels are losing out to the small independent labels and companies that are putting out great quality products while the big four as well as corporate radio are stuck with mediocre material that sounds like stuff they played last year, and the year before that, etc.

"According to Big Champagne Media Measurement, a technology and market research company specializing in online media and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in particular, countless computer users are stalking the unknown, downloading, congregating, critiquing, trading and ultimately playing a role in what penetrates the mainstream."

"We're seeing a clear and consistent pattern of some acts being championed by online communities and later embraced by traditional media outlets," says Big Champagne co-founder and CEO Eric Garland.

"Nothing works like word of mouth, and online word of mouth is a great big megaphone," Garland says.

"Instead of being able to tell two or three friends, you have entire Web rings of like-minded people quick to pass along recommendations."

USA Today continues on with a segment that new stars in the field of music are getting famous thanks to people downloading their music and getting it out with word of mouth. Music lovers and fans of musicians are electing their own new stars by purchasing the CDs from them and, like myself, eschewing what MTV or commercial radio dictates upon them.

"That's causing a democratic shift, as more phenomena filter up and fans elect their own stars rather than accept the dictates of radio or MTV.

"John Mayer's rise benefited from feverish swapping of mp3 files, the modern equivalent of tape-trading. Norah Jones reached Big Champagne's top 10 before she got significant airplay. The 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' and 'Garden State' soundtracks popped at Champagne months before cracking Billboard.

"Garland is convinced that every known piece of recorded music is available online, and that growing awareness of the inventory is gradually changing consumer habits.

"It's a celestial jukebox, a virtually limitless library," he says. "In one retail outlet, you have a few hundred titles at most. On the Internet, there are tens of millions."

There are fan bases for every genre and subgenre of music in cyberspace, everything from dementia as I have told you, to polka, and bluegrass, psychedelic, old style Western, champagne, Anime, anything that interests you in a collection of incredibly niched categories.

"The war against file-sharers continues. On March 29, the Supreme Court will hear the entertainment industry's appeal to overturn lower-court decisions that found file-sharing networks Grokster and Morpheus not liable for copyright infringement. If the industry prevails, many users may opt to forsake file-sharing for legitimate download sites. Despite any chilling effect, the downloading revolution is unlikely to stall."

"Certainly, copyright infringement and piracy are problems," Fleischer says. "But the very nature of computing is peer-to-peer, and no matter what happens, this type of activity will continue and grow. The lawsuits had an impact and made people aware that risk was involved. Now users are more secretive and 10 or 20 steps ahead (of the security measures)."

"The industry's traditional structure has all but lost such consumers as Matt Brown, a Pasadena, Calif., ninth-grader who shuns the airwaves, seldom frequents record stores and distrusts directives from mainstream sources. Brown, 15, has an iPod with 2,777 songs, mostly indie rock, hardcore, emo and screamo, including tunes by Stutterfly, Armor for Sleep, Starlight Run and Avenged Sevenfold, hardly top 40 climbers."

"Ethan Mantel, 16, of Los Angeles, relies on friends and online forums for guidance on techno, rock and rap acts. His favorites are Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack Johnson, and Beastie Boys, but through the Net grapevine he has found Disney tunes and alt-popster Donavon Frankenreiter. He sees little need to visit record stores except "to check out used CDs or if someone gives me a gift certificate," he says. "It's definitely easier to find music online."

The article ends with a segment on how well the Internet paired off with word of mouth exposing people to new music, while the major four labels have had problems trying to figure out how to expose people to new music. The problem with the labels is that they are not bothering to get the word out about some of the other kinds of music that local radio doesn't want to play. When was the last time Sony had a commercial for a rock-polka CD on a broadcast radio station which is fast losing clout?

Also lost on the major labels and radio stations are the militant niche fans who find and serve their music interests themselves without any help from radio except for listening for what "not to buy" when they hear it on Clear Channel radio.

From USA Today: As for labels, "they're used to people adapting to them, and now they have to adjust to users' behavior. They just don't understand the user," Russo says. "The industry is fairly myopic and still thinks in terms of units. We look at traffic, and there's a big difference. Nothing is stopping the massive file-sharing that's going on. Let's face it. It's cool. It's fun. And everyone seems pretty fearless."