Thursday, August 14, 2008

/REVOLUTION'D

So, a little while ago, I posted a YouTube video of a lady named Julia Nunes playing one of her original songs "Balloons." I've been watching Julia's videos for close to a year now, and just recently purchased her self-recorded debut CD "Left Right Wrong" on iTunes. 

Can we just take a minute to recognize how rad that story is? I discovered a new artist, followed her early career, purchased her CD, plan on purchasing her next release...and I've yet to interact with a major label, "marketing" in its traditional sense, or a music store, and she's yet to deal with a label exec, the process of signing and creative control issues. Say WHA?

True story about how the Internet actually does kick a lot of ass. I'm a student of the media, so I'm trained to be skeptical about technology and positive discourse and such, and I'm fully aware that YouTube is part of the massive AOL Time Warner conglomerate. But you know what? On occasion, the whole idea of media democracy genuinely works. Despite being owned by a major corporation, YouTube completely undercuts the traditional corporate structure of the music industry and creates genuine, honest-to-god opportunities for young up and coming artists. That is so cool. Music has been taken out of the studio, out of the perfectionistic impulse, out of the hands of accountants and given back to the home, the individual and the collective. This may seem over-optimistic, but it's been a long time since anyone did anything worth-while with the Internet and to see it truly used how it was meant to be used...that's freaking exciting. 

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