…the Shoreditch “tech scene”, in which nontrepreneurs stroll between endless “meetups”, avoiding the nasty particulars of creating value, being original, or ever solving a technical problem.
—
Andrew Orlowski via I saw Facebook’s music service 3 years ago. Done properly. • The Register
I realise the above barbed-thought applies to various friends and allies of mine but I tend to agree. There’s very little being done to truly help musicians and labels monetize their wares (least of all turning those streaming a track for free into someone who might buy the deluxe edition or ticket or t-shirt) and there seems to be very little genuine value in these services for actual fans.
I’m currently drafting a longer post with some reactions to Facebook’s new music features but at the moment - and this is very much a gut reaction - it just seems like yet more overwhelming clutter and another me-too ‘solution’ for problems that no music fan/liker really has. I really hoped Facebook’s changes would be more than making it look a bit like Tumblr (seen the word “scrapbooking” used A LOT!) and act a bit less exactly-like Last.fm. I don’t need another aggregator in my life and wanted expected mind-blowing simplicity and to gain a sense of understanding of what some of my friends ‘love’. Instead, I get the sense everyone feels drowned in data, with no filter or emotional connection. Above all, some of these new functions are creating more noise and far less opportunity for meaningful connections for individuals or companies.
Given the developer resource and reach of Facebook, it seems irresponsible to see such a golden opportunity wasted on the whims of some nerds rollin’ with their “wouldn’t it be kewl if…” instincts. Is it too much to expect this mighty ‘service’ to somehow enrich and enhance the consumption, both in terms of discovery and transaction, of this thing called music? Everything they’ve done this week seems like a photo-copy of something from elsewhere on the web, partly in an attempt not to lose ground but mostly, there seems to be a desire to create an ad-rev-generation world that you need never leave. Nothing I’ve seen so far resembles much more than magpie-ing. The result is a crazy collage of the notverydistant-past to conjure the future but somehow ends up as one of those prehistoric mutants with blinking lazer eyes, drooling into a puddle of its own making.
P.S. Meanwhile, I have to stop listening to music on Spotify for a bit as people are whining about me clogging up their feeds…
