I recently went on a road trip through Virginia for a work event. I had the pleasure of driving a car for the first time in 4 months through DC traffic, looking at cows and lush green fields, and seeing deer grazing on the side of the road.  I also listened to the radio for the first time in 4 months. That was not a pleasure.

I have fond memories of the radio from when I was a kid.  I listened to everything from the “Great Hits of the 60′s, 70′,s and 80′s!” stations to the pop, hip-hop or rock stations.  Radio was how I found out about new bands, and if I didn’t like a song, I could switch to another station and find another song playing that I did like.

Those memories went down the tube when I was driving in Virginia. I must have listened to at least 10 different stations before I found one that didn’t make me want to scream at the radio for sending such horrid music over the airwaves. The station I landed on? NPR.

Here’s what I don’t get.  The theory goes that if your songs are played on the radio, that you’ve made it.  The radio will, through the sheer power of numbers, expand your fan base and open up new opportunities. The radio seems like “the sign”, or the tipping point, if you will, of making or breaking new bands.

That model may have worked when avenues to find out about new talents were limited to seeing them live, hearing about them through a friend, browsing a record shop, or listening to the radio.

That model doesn’t work when a small thing called THE INTERNETS is figured in.

Why not?

Simple! Distribution.

I can open up any web browser and load Pandora, plug in the name of my favorite artist and be off discovering new bands in 5 seconds flat.

I can go to last.fm and search through my friends profiles, wander over to SoundCloud and not only find the latest from the likes of Imogen Heap, but also the latest from bands and producers I’ve never heard of, in places I have to Google to see if they exist.

Without leaving my desk in my (relatively speaking) tiny apartment in New York, NY, I can get lost down the rabbit of hole of discovering new music, all within a much shorter time frame than it would take me to browse through my local record shop or ask a few friends about new bands they’re digging.

So – what’s radio’s competitive advantage? It used to be that they were the ones sent the “latest and greatest”, and it used to be that they had the power to make or break new bands.

Not anymore.

Now thousands of anonymous people are voting your tracks up and down, sharing your YouTube video with friends, browsing MySpace (ok, so probably not MySpace anymore.. but follow along), and going to your Facebook Fan Page (silly Facebook!).

There are more ways to find your music online in 5 minutes today than there was in 5 days 10 years ago.

So radio, your advantage is gone.

THE INTERNETS went and changed the game. Go cry to your friends in the publishing business if you need company over your beers. They’re facing the same thing and are just as clueless as you are in many respects.

Now, I kindly request that you now step your game up accordingly, and make me want to listen to you again by curating content that can’t be described as “utter crap”. In layman’s terms, lay off playing the same song every 5 minutes and give new music a chance.

Thoughts? Comments? Am I wrong? What am I missing? Dígame in the comments, por favor.

If you haven’t heard the news, MySpace has purchased iLike, the “most popular music service on Facebook” (according to their About page).

This makes a lot of sense, though it may cause some controversy.

MySpace has positioned itself as the entertainment-focused social network. You go there to listen to music, get show updates, view trailers, and interact with personalities, not necessarily friends.  Facebook, in comparison, is about primarily connecting with people you know (or knew), not brands.

Artists have been moving from MySpace to Facebook en masse lately, maintaining a profile on each site, but using them differently in many cases. Why? It relates back to the networks themselves…

MySpace, at it’s heart, is about a push model of social interaction.

Create page –> Find people who you think may be interested –> Add them as a friend –> Comment and share info about your music –> Repeat

Facebook is about a distinctly pull model of social interaction.

Create fan page (or group) –> People find you –> You post content that appears in their updates/on their wall –> They share on your behalf –> Repeat

iLike is a hybrid. The service itself is about the push, but artists can use it to spread their message and extend their virtual reach, enhancing their pull.

Strategically, the acquisition was a great move for MySpace for a few reasons.  Now it’s even easier to syndicate content across multiple social networks (important when your users “home” is a network that is NOT your own), and the buy helps MySpace strengthen their positioning as THE entertainment-focused social network.

With Radiohead recently hinting that they would be “unlikely to release another album conventionally” and Mos Def’s newest album released via t-shirt (yes, t-shirt), I can’t help but wonder what else we’ll see from artists in the coming months.

As a former musician and DJ, I’ve consumed all forms of music media through the years.  I still have the very first CD I bought (Cake’s Fashion Nugget, for the record), have an old boom box lurking somewhere in a forgotten closet corner with a stack of tapes to match, and still have a bit of vinyl around from my DJ’ing years.

However, in recent years I’ve found that online streaming media and downloaded music (mixes and “here, have this for free” music of the legal kind, mind you) have served my musical appetite very well, leaving me very few reasons to actually go and purchase music, digitally or otherwise.

According to Trent Reznor, ” music IS free whether you want to believe that or not”.  As a musician, I agree.

Recording music? Not free

Promoting your recordings? Not free

Traveling to play a show? Not free

Here is where the problem lies.  Due to Napster and the birth of the current music-sharing “free for all” (pun not intended), recorded music is considered free, leaving the “not free” costs of recording the tracks to be covered by other means.

Consumers have a voice and they’ve been speaking for a long time by not purchasing what they consider to be over-priced music.  Liner notes, cover art and the physical medium (these days, CD’s) aren’t considered to have as much value as they once carried, and due to the endless alternatives available for acquiring the actual music, CD profits are continuing to decline.

None of this is news.

What is news, is the fact that artists are taking things into their own hands and using a bit of creativity with the packaging of their music.  Mos Def’s t-shirt is a great example, and I’d like to see other artists pick up on the trend.  Thinking from a marketing perspective, I argue that this is more valuable than just selling a basic CD, as the consumers are now walking billboards, promoting his music wherever they go (on top of spending the same price, or more, that they would have paid for the actual CD).

So what about vinyl? “Dead” a few decades ago, it’s experiencing a small resurgence.  Radiohead’s In Rainbows was released as a “pay what you want” digital download, CD set as well as limited-edition vinyl. In Rainbows, the vinyl edition, was the top-selling vinyl album of 2008 and single-handedly helped 2008 vinyl sales almost double.

The main point is this: With consumers unwilling to pay for traditional music formats, artists and labels are forced to find new (or old) ways to package their music.  The industry has been in decline for the better part of a decade, and it seems to be turning a much-needed corner by trying to innovate instead of just complain and punish.

I’m interested in keeping an eye on artists and labels who are embracing this innovation instead of shunning it, and wonder who we’ll see coming out with new methods of distribution next.

Any ideas?

*this photo made available under the Creative Commons license by Carolyn Coles