Perhaps it started with the music press micro-categorising: turning each small collection of artists into their own ultra-specific genre? Maybe that gave us the desire to focus on the musicians we really care about. And we tune out everyone else? Bob Lefsetz perceives this ‘narrowcasting’ as the future of music, which is entirely sympathetic with the (realised) concept of sponsored funding of musicians by their fanbase.
Inevitably, in his post, he mentions the relatively poor US sales of U2’s new album and that people have stopped talking about their music - it’s all about everything else. And, if my Twitter stream is anything to go by, he’s right. The interest at the moment is on pre-sales concert news and merchandise sales.
So narrowcasting gives a way for musicians who care about their music to connect to the fans who matter. For those there will be a future, but for those who go after the money, maybe not because we’ve all wised-up to the “sale.”
What about the idea of free music? If a band gives their music away for free, perhaps because they have financial support from their core fanbase, how does that impact on the exposure of the general public to their music?
It’s something I wondered about until two days ago, when Kristin Hersh remarked that the last 50FootWave release was downloaded over two million times.
I don’t call that narrowcasting.
