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The music industry is
constantly changing – the transition from vinyl to cd was almost seamless –
one day Golden Discs was selling 12” vinyl records the next they were selling
CD’s. Where to from here? Two years ago Minidisks were hailed as the future of
music but nobody saw the internet crawl up to take its place.
An MP3 file is the most
common way of storing music on a computer – it takes up very little space
which makes it easier to transfer from one machine to another. There are 100’s
of internet trading rooms where you can swap one MP3 file for another – the
most popular of these is ‘Napster’. 1000’s of users log on to Napster and
make their files available to others, simply type in the name of any band, song
or theme tune and chances are you’ll find it and in less than 10 minutes you
can download it to your own PC – Aparently the new U2 album was available to
download weeks before it hit the shops and parts of the new Radiohead album
scheduled for release in 2001 is already online.
Colin Greenwood of Radiohead
believes that the internet will kill off the music industry as we know it. He
believes that fans will be able to take out a subscription with their favorite
bands and the band will send out their new material directly to fans for a small
fee – cutting out the record companies completely.
Online Music and MP3s
are so popular that there are now customized Personal Stereos that allow you to
download music directly onto your walkman – this offers another huge advantage
over cds because an MP3 walkman can’t skip as there are no moving parts.
Nightclubs too are
making the most of this new technology –
the Pod was one of the first nightclubs in Dublin to have an internet site –
it provided information on all their club nights including HAM and Powderbubble.
Other sites such as the ones for Wonderbar and Splash offered exclusive discount
flyers to online visitors. New club Q+A – Queer and Alternative have a voting
section on their website, visitors vote online for their “artist of the
month” then on the night in question four songs from the artist of the month
are played. The next phase will be live link ups to nightclubs thru the world
wide web. This is already happening with concerts, where its possible to tune
into an event happening anywhere in the world.
Radio
stations are also using internet technology to expand their audience – people
the world over can tune into Larry’s just a minute quiz on 2fm thru their
computers. There are many speciality radio stations broadcasting exclusively
over the internet, for example there is a 24 hour gay radio station GayBC which
offers news, talk, music and special events programs specifically for LGBT
people, their friends and family.
Links
Napster = www.Napster.com
The Pod = www.pod.ie
Q+A = www.all.at/QA
GayBc = www.GayBc.com
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Dublin's Scariest gay Night Club -
January 16th
