Why the Internet is Good for Music

A lot has been said about how detrimental the internet has been to the music industry. Fans can access music so readily and download it so cheaply, that the artists themselves are losing out on significant amounts of money. While these gripes are true, and unfortunate, the internet has also done marvelous things for those of us that love music.

For one, that easy access has enabled the average listener to increase their exposure tremendously. I learned about some of my new favorite artists through the internet. Justin Nozuka and Bon Iver were introduced to me through websites. As was Colbie Caillet and Peruvian musician, Ruben Blades. I was also able to uncover older or unreleased songs from some of my favorite artists like Common, Lil’ Wayne or Counting Crows. 

This isn’t always done illegally. There are great websites like, www.pandora.com, where you find new music every day. At Pandora, you type in the name of an artist and the website generates a playlist of songs by that specific artists and other artists that play similar music. Type in Citizen Cope and also get music from Amos Lee, Rhymefest and certain soulful joints from John Mayer that I had never known existed.

There are also social networks like MySpace and Facebook to thank for unveiling countless new artists whose voices would never have been heard otherwise. MySpace has pages designed just for musicians where I constantly check out friends’ groups and find that they sound just like a group I love, O.A.R. (http://www.myspace.com/steveraszka). But Facebook joined the fight too when it created ReverbNation; an application where musicians can upload their own songs for all Facebook users to browse.

When getting in touch with an old High School friend of mine, I uncovered that he had an Artist page on Facebook dedicated to his group, Mente Derecha. I checked it out and fell in love with two of his songs (“BK M.C.” and “Loose off the Truth”. Check them out for yourself:  http://apps.facebook.com/reverbnation_fb/artist/mentederecha).  Without even trying to, the internet showed me a new artist that I really dug. It just so happened that this artist happened to be an old friend. It made me view him in a whole new light, as a talented artist, but it also made me a fan. Would I have been able to figure this out without the internet? Probably not.

So while established musicians are losing chunks of money as they figure out how to use the internet to their advantage, countless unknown and emerging artists are thanking their stars that this chance as been presented to them. Just set aside an hour one of these days and scour the internet. You’re bound to find something new that you like.

Reality TV Shows, Killing the Concept of Love

Forgive me a minute if I sound like one of these old-school romantics who believe that modern society is killing true love. That would be a stretch. I believe that true love can exist in modern society. I just think that this latest batch of reality TV is going to make true love even harder to find.

Reality TV is responsible because they make it seem so ridiculously easy. Watch any dating show for more than 2 episodes and you are bound to find two people that are “in love” with each other. This same deep, emotional and spiritual connection that is supposed to happen only once or twice (maybe three for some) times in your life. Yet here we are, watching people falling in love in only a matter of seconds.

Girls have fallen in love with Flav every season? Seriously, fallen in love with him? Come on. Women fall in love with whatever Bachelor is selected, they fall in love with the farmer who needs a wife and they fall in love, as do men, with pint-sized Tila Tequila. There is so much love being thrown around that it seems like its something you can buy at a store. A surplus store at that. They have so much love, they just can’t give it away fast enough.

At one point in her most recent episode, Tila Tequila claimed she was in love with each of the final three contestants. In love? With three people? At once? How serious can those emotional connections really be? And if most people find 3 people in a life, and Tila found 3 in one show, then what’s her lifetime number? Twenty? We should all be so lucky. Or maybe not.

See, it wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t hear the words being thrown around at a growing rate in society as well. Friends of mine have fallen in love after 2 months, 2 weeks, or just 2 dates. Suddenly, this feeling that is supposed to be sacred and special is the easiest thing in the world to find.

But it has also become the most transient. Those people that fall in love, are falling out of it just as quickly. Isn’t love supposed to last longer than a few weeks. When you are truly in love with somebody, can’t that be forever? But when we see people falling in love so quickly and easily, we let ourselves believe that we too are in love. That this feeling we have never felt must be love. What else could it be? Everybody else calls it love.

As it becomes more and more visible and more and more instant, the definition of love as we know it keeps changing. Suddenly those three words will be as powerful as “I am hungry.” They’ll be everywhere. Once things are widespread, they lose their meaning. Kind of like Reality TV shows; and they are trying to take love down with them.