Introduction So here we all are, improvising our wacky way through another technological upheaval in the music industry. I think it's more interesting and rewarding to be here at the advent of digital distribution than it probably was back when competing vinyl and record player formats were wreaking their own havoc on listening habits but sheesh, it's still tiring to exist in flux for so long.
To me the salient feature of the current upheaval is the truly mind-boggling volume of music that has been unleashed on the world in the wake of the new technology. People can record and distribute music with relative ease, and boy do they.
That's the crazy thing about the whole illegal downloading sideshow (and, okay, it is a great sideshow, minus maybe a fat lady or two): the fact that the media, ever in love with a sideshow (though not, alas, with fat ladies), remains largely oblivious to the fact that there is an amazing amount of music available for free on the internet that is (gasp) completely legal. No payment required, no lawyers ready to pounce.
The singer Morrissey caught a bit of flack at the 2006 SXSW festival for saying that there are too many people making music these days, but that just goes to show yet again that an honest assessment of reality is often unappreciated here in the early 21st century. There really and truly are too many people making music these days. It doesn't take too long a surf session on the net to figure this out.
Of course there's nothing to be done about this, and there's no point in issuing comments like that as if we can change it. What we have to do is deal with it.
It's the internet, of course, that has led to this crazy situation. In the old days (i.e. eight or ten years ago), you could not easily possess a good-quality recording of a song or album, to play at your convenience, whenever you wanted, without paying for it. And even then the convenience wasn't always so convenient. Once they figured out how to convert music into small-ish sized data files, the jig was up. Music went every which where. The easier it was to distribute, the more of it there seemed to be.
And what became of the concept of paying for it? Well to hell with that, decided the spirited e-mobs, no different than physical mobs who loot during a blackout--just because they want the stuff and they can get away with it.
Me I never liked the idea of accessing illegally distributed music on the web. I think it makes for a bad vibe in the world (so many otherwise nice people doing this not-completely-nice thing).
But lo and behold, it seems that the same technology that makes it easy to spread music around illegally also (duh) makes it easy to spread music around legally. And so any number of independent musicians and small record companies realized they could use the internet to put their music out there for people to listen to--the idea being if you like a song or two, you might want to buy the whole CD. Not an unreasonable assumption. (It's why record companies have long since gone along with the idea of letting radio stations play songs from their records, after all.)
When lacking a good story about music piracy to latch onto, the press these days likes to discuss the future of fee-based downloads: what's going on with iTunes, its various and sundry competition, how it's all impacting CD sales, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with all that economic flumadiddle, but geez, you'd think the widespread availability of free and legal music online would be catching someone or another's attention.
Then again, just because there is an eye-opening amount of free, legally available music online these days doesn't mean that most of it is good. (It isn't.) And it doesn't mean that the good stuff is easy to find. (It isn't.)
I believe, in fact, that good music has never been harder to find. It's quite
the conundrum, actually--there is more good music being produced than ever before
in history, and yet it's harder to find than ever.
Free and legal MP3s are particularly hard to find, as they tend to be scattered across hundreds if
not thousands of different web sites around the world.
And it doesn't help that free, legal MP3s of quality are inescapably lost in a
morass of free, legal MP3s of shall we say questionable quality. Because (alas!)
the flip side of there being more good music being produced than ever before is
(you guessed it) there is also more mediocre music (let's not call it
"bad"; people are trying their best, after all!) being produced than
ever before.
Technological
advances have greatly reduced the barrier to entry for musicians who want
to record and distribute music. Clearly, this is not always a good thing. I think this is what our friend Morrissey was really talking about.
So, okay: here we have this awe-inspiring, still-forming medium for distributing music, and little way for people who care about such things to find the good stuff.
Until Fingertips came along.
Online since the spring of 2003, Fingertips is my personal, informed, idiosyncratic effort to point you in the direction of the intelligent music that is available online. What I call intelligent music comes in a variety of guises, featuring a wide array of sounds and approaches--the common factor is that it is all music that has been created and produced with heart, craft, and spirit. (Okay,
if that vague description just isn't enough for you, click here for a quick
overview of the sorts of music Fingertips tends to talk about.)
My focus is on whole songs that you can listen to, download, and
burn, and I'm talking about free stuff. With the rapid rise and spread of iTunes and other me-too digital download services here in the mid-'00s, clearly the day of widespread legal, fee-based downloading is upon us. And yet at the same time I firmly believe that the web will
remain a medium where free music will be yours for the listening--and burning--if
you know where to look.
Let me make it clear, however, that I am not interested in every song
that is available for free online. Comprehensiveness isn't my style,
and it's dreadfully boring.
Let me also make it clear that I aim towards inclusiveness, not exclusiveness. Even though I often feature music by generally unknown musicians, you do not have to know a lot about unknown musicians to get a lot out of Fingertips.
What's going on here is the simple, unadulterated search for good music.
Of course, everyone's specific idea of quality music varies, but underneath it all I truly believe that quality may be less subjective an attribute than people tend to think.
And I am convinced there is a widespread, relatively unacknowledged hunger out there in our 21st-century world for good music, a hunger left unsated by corporate programming as practiced on the radio dial. People who are hungry for good music need more than what is delivered to them by consultants, via market research.
Fingertips exist for people like this--people who are open to hearing about what
an informed and intelligent music-lover thinks is good, people who are happy to have a living, breathing, individual human being
keep an eye on the online music scene and deliver an ongoing report
of the worthwhile free and legal songs to be found here.
If you think you might be that kind of person, welcome aboard. I think you'll enjoy the Fingertips experience.
To read about the site's specific features, click here. Or just go right to the main page and start poking around.
most recently updated 15 Jun 06