Gigantic

There's been lots of talk on the cyberwaves in recent days about online music. The Spotify launch is certainly at the forefront of all of that. I've used it when it was Europe-only and plan to go all-in on the Premium plan when I have some time. For a long time, I've said that the drawback to smartphones and other portable devices is that you can't fit as much as you would like onto your hardware. Streaming music has come a long way in the last couple of years. I've been waiting for a long time to get my hands on Spotify so I can stop syncing music between my computer and my Mac. Now that Spotify is finally here in the US, I've realized that I have so many ways to stream music that I am hardly lacking for things to listen to and I'm not in a big rush to get hooked up. Lately, I've been all over Mixcloud and 8tracks. I love the idea of user-curated mixes of content I've never heard of that's put out there by strangers.

It looks like the doors are being blown wide open both underground and above. For the last two days I've been blown away by the new iPhone app that The Pixies just released. In addition to the expected news and photos, there's a bunch of videos and merch. The killer for me is the fact that you can stream three different concerts- Minneapolis 2004, Manchester 1988, and an acoustic set from Newport 2005. I've been smitten with the acoustic version of “Here Comes Your Man”.

I'm blown away by the power that's now in the hands of the bands. If you think about it, do The Pixies need to work with a record label ever again if they can get their music directly into your hands via your phone? A word of caution is needed here. The reason that The Pixies can do this is that a major label spent a lot of money and energy to make sure that people know who they are. That's not a knock at all-just a fact. Could an unknown band put out an iPhone app and have lots of people check out their music? Maybe, maybe not. I guess the point is that there are tools these days that weren't available 18 months ago. The landscape is shifting quickly.

I wonder what Steve Jobs thinks about all of this...