The Blogosphere

Considering the fact that we use blogging in this class (which I'm currently doing right now) an article in Adage drew my attention. Recently, the music industry has been experimenting with blogging in order to spread more user awareness and popularity within the business. Rcrd Lbl, an indie, ad supported music downloading site teamed up with online music magazines that use online blogging. This partnership combines users of each of the companies, and encourages many more users to blog, experiment, share, and discuss new music with each others. This doubles as a form of free advertising and awareness for new music and bands coming out, and has been fairly successful in popularizing new artists.

The blogging websites reach a much more specific music user, as opposed to myspace.com which anyone of any demographic can log on to listen to some new music. This new forum gives actual online music magazine subscribers access to information about new artists, and the chance to have their opinions heard as well. Universal is beginning to partner with Buzznet, one of the combined online music magazine/blogger websites, and is releasing it's artist's songs and videos on the site that will be presented in the form of a news feed. Users will be able to blog about the content of the news feed as well.

I feel that this is a great new way to create a bigger buzz about new artists in the music industry, because right now we all know how quickly it is going downhill. There are many things that need to be changed, and solutions that need to be implemented to fix the current problem, but there are no real, solid solutions in sight. It is good to see a different form of spreading music around because it starts to open door for a successful solution. Doug Morris, Universal chairman-CEO, had this to say about the new partnership; "We are always striving to push boundaries and expand the scope of our digital activities. And our partnership with Buzznet fits perfectly into that strategy. Tyler [Goldman, CEO of Buzznet] and his team have built a dynamic and legitimate social destination that provides fans and sponsors an all-encompassing musical experience." This new form of popularizing musical artists is no doubt good for the music industry, and it is very interesting to see if this will really take off as a way to successfully integrate and involve users and musicians into the industry to increase popularity, and ultimately better the music industry.

Article URL : http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=126499