The Internet: Great for Music / Shit For Musicians

You know, I was really excited about the internet when I first got to grips with broadband. Back in 2004, when there wasn`t many MP3 blogs about , I found lots of new music, lots of interesting artists and bands. This did two things for me: Firstly I stopped buying music magazines, I began to notice that I was reading about `new` bands I already knew about and I recognised a lot of the copy of the article was simply a rewritten version of what was online - except it wasn`t attributed to the poor kid who spend all the time discovering new bands to blog about. I stopped looking to London to find out what was fresh. I became my own tastemaker.  Secondly, my MP3 collection ballooned and my CD collection stagnated. (still bought vinyl though!) Sounds alright doesn`t it? Except I`m a musician.
The internet has made it easier to get your song heard. But that`s about it. It makes it easier, but it doesn`t actually live up to the hype. You can upload your song in many places, but the people who you are trying to reach, not the avid music lovers but the - bums - on - seats people might be on the internet but they wont be checking out bandpage/souncloud etc. It`s not totally true, but on those kind of sites you tend to find other musicians trying to do the same thing. The people who you eventually want to reach mostly get their info from the mainstream media.....yep, its` back to London again.

What we have now is a situation where twitter is full of bands and artists offering FREE DOWNLOADS and  while that`s great` for promotion, Eventually you have to ask where is the money? How can you make a living when you give away everything you work for? I can get what I want as a music lover but as a musical composer it`s not a situation that`s good for me in the long term.
If you really want to make a name you need to be heard by the right people. So nothing`s changed. The internet should be seen as a digital flyer that can`t be dropped on the floor or used to roach a spliff. It can`t replace playing live or getting out there or networking within the industry.  The net for (at least  musicians) is only liberating your art if you already have a name for yourself that was built up by traditional media...  you have  a  loyal fanbase already waiting to hear your stuff. But getting Joe Public to notice you when you`re Joe nobody with an EP  is something else.
This is quite an depressing post really, as I`m part of the problem too. ...nut I`m trying to redress this by giving other underground artists a shout on this blog. Other than that, I`d like there to be some great idea that could solve all this, but all that's happening right now is  the people who were in charge before still hold the keys today.  If your band had a link posted on NME.com then you could guarantee yourself  lots of traffic and downloads aplenty - but you`d still have jump through the hoop of impressing someone in London all over again to get that chance. To do that isn`t cheap either.. but that`s another topic, another day.