trading music

One of the more interesting themes for me to follow on this blog is how technology is shaping how we interact with music. That recent post where the Web Sheriff actually infiltrated our ranks with his Big Brother tactics and sly but insidious appeals for those of us who wanted to check out the new Broken Bells album to actually pay full price for it is a good example.

Another change going on is how I trade music with people. Until very recently I regularly traded DVDs full of music with friends. DC & EJ on the regular, and I even did a mail trade with Gabino a few months ago. But now, with the proliferation of blogs and easy downloads, I can just post here about an album and provide a link, email a friend, or just mention a band and suggest they captaincrawl it (I spread the gospel of captaincrawl regularly, and I think I'd pay for a priority subscription that brings up only full albums and/or gets rid of those annoying commercials). This is cool and easy, but I'm already nostalgic for the 4 gig dump of totally new music, checking out what another person I respect is digging, bantering back and forth about it.

I've been living for a while with the idea that an album has become like a business card, and I check out a ton of music and if I like a band and hear that they're in NY I make a real effort to go out and see them. But lately I've considered spending money on music in new ways and I wonder if it's the beginning of new economies related to music as the standard record company model dies. I've paid for 30 day subscriptions to Rapidshare a few times to accelerate my download speed from blogs, and scored tons of music this way (though a lot of the file-sharing sites are totally free and work great, I think Rapidshare just was an early arriver on the scene and has a lot of that market). I've used yousendit a bit, and I now find myself considering a monthly subscription so I can just blast out albums to friends with a message, say hello to people I don't talk to that often but who might occur to me when I listen to a certain album, that kind of thing. I've even considered starting a blog like the many I troll regularly and post albums and a small description; unclear whether I can get in trouble doing it, so I just haven't pursued it. I'm trying to at least practice what I preach with my own music, Monastics (the band I'm in with EJ and DC) just put up a website and are giving our album away for free.

Oh, and BTW, if the Web Sheriff is out there and monitoring this, Broken Bells came to Music Hall of Williamsburg, I was all over that shit, trying to get tickets right away when they went on sale. And you know what? I couldn't get them, they sold out right away. I was all ready to buy a few tickets and bring friends, as per my promise to you, Danger Mouse and James Mercer. I think those guys are probably doing just fine, even if I didn't make their show and downloaded their album for free.