Are technology and cloud companies the music producers of the future?
Last week, I talked about how Seagate is working with the CMJ (College Music Journal), The Windish Agency, and SoundCloud to provide a CMJ Mixtape showcasing The Windish Agency artists, and this made me think even more about the cloud. In this day and age it seems like every new service, software, hardware, etc can be tied directly to how it interfaces with the cloud. There may be 6 degrees of separation when it comes to Kevin Bacon, but today, there is only one when it comes to the cloud…especially when digital content is the product.
Digital content and the cloud has been a driving force in enabling the “discovery” of new and exciting artists. Given the sheer reach of brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and their impending battle (see this Fast Company article) for consumers of digital content, the opportunity to go well beyond discovery is apparent. Seagate has engaged the music community through its efforts, but what’s stopping cloud companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook from using their huge networks of consumers to discover, sign, manage, promote, and distribute artists they “own”? They have the means, the following, the technology, and one thing that may outshine everything else…an immediate feedback loop called social media.
For me, Pandora has become my cloud based discovery mechanism when it comes to music. But Pandora alone is not the only way to make new discoveries. There are cloud services like SoundCloud, Spotify, I Heart Radio, and even iTunes, among others. Discovering music used to be limited to radio, then it was television via MTV in the 80s into the 90s. The advent of Napster changed everything in the early 2000s, and now what we have today are virtually endless sources of new music. If video killed the radio star 30 years ago, the cloud will uncover the stars of the next 30 years.
I think it’s pretty cool what Seagate is doing to help promote extremely talented, virtually unknown musicians on a larger scale. Just think how much larger the scale gets should the likes of cloud behemoths like Amazon, Google, etc. get into the “mix”.
How are you “discovering” new artists today?
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How Seagate is freely “sharing” its appreciation for music
Interesting that I just found this article that says, “Many saw streaming, instead, as a “try before you buy” option—76% said they use online streaming to find new music before deciding to purchase.” Check it out. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008645