Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Talent

Via Robot Wisdom Weblog, here's an excerpt from an article over at the Ttimes Online
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2070179,00.html):
...Sandi Thom, a 24-year-old Scot, is using the web to entertain nightly audiences put at more than 60,000.

Thom uses a webcam to record a nightly performance before broadcasting it on the net later in the evening. In the past eight days she has entertained more than 250,000 fans worldwide. By contrast, her live audiences usually total about 200 when she plays in clubs around Britain.

...Audiences have grown strongly since just 70 people logged on to her website to watch her first (free) concert on February 24. Last Thursday night, the figure was 62,138, according to Streaming Tank, the web broadcast company that makes the show available on computers around the world.

That's an incredible story, and it's a good reminder that the Internet is the ultimate creator of markets, and it's the ultimate finder of talent.

In the "old days," there were hundreds of brilliant bands who never gained critical commercial mass. Tribe is my favorite example, obviously, but the music business, by definition, markets to a small number of well-defined, large demographics. Their cost structure forces them to. And record companies were the only business in town. So if you didn't catch the eye of a talent scout or someone with connections in the music business, it didn't matter how good you were--your career was going nowhere. There was more talent than the music industry could absorb.

If you wanted to be a reporter, it was the same thing with newspapers and magazines (even worse, actually). In print, you usually had to work your way up from the lowly small-town publication. If you could work your way up, because the road upward was very narrow.

It was like that everywhere, really. Because of the hierarchical nature of the music and newspaper businesses (among others), a very few people decided what was good, and that was what we heard and read.

That intervening layer between customer and artist guaranteed that enormously talented people would go undiscovered and unappreciated.

Well, not any more.

Creativity is direct to audience now. If you have talent, and you can distribute your work via the Internet, someone will find you. Now there are an unlimited number of demographics served by an unlimited number of artists. Everyone can find their audience, everyone can find their favorite voice, and everyone decides what is good.

Of all the things that I like about the Internet, that has to be my favorite.

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