Music Recording 2.0, The New Revolution

For those of you not familiar with the term web 2.0 (if you're not look it up in wikipedia because it's the "hot craze" right now), its basically this current trend of user generated content. Users upload their videos to youtube, photos on to flikr, links to news stories and other items of interest via digg and del.icio.us, etc.

It has really changed the way people are using the internet- not only the users uploading the content, but industry professionals looking for a creative spur. Gino Bona, while not via the web, won a contest in which an agency heard Super Bowl ad pitches from a plethora of fans, and will have his Super Bowl spot featured this coming Sunday. Some prolific posters on youtube have found themselves invited to work in the mainstream industry. Collegehumor.com's bread and butter is user generated content.

This got me to thinking about music. There has been a steady trend over the past 100 years of music production and process going through more and more hands. Initially, someone wrote a song, and performed that song for others. Next people started performing pieces written by others. Throw in a conductor (mind you this is all before recorded music) and there's another cook in the kitchen. With technology comes producers, masterers, collaborators, and so on and so forth.

This concept of music being individual and one person having ownership or control of a song has been convincingly eroded, yet some still linger on the romantic idea that THIS song is THEIR song. Why not get past this archaic individualistic division from community? It's quite cliche, but nonetheless: music is supposed to bring us together, not tear us apart.

Not only do I hope for, but I predict a web/music mash up where a user could upload a beat, guitar riff, vocal line - even an abstract sonic soundscape - and other users can download, manipulate, then reupload a new version of that track. It will even get to the extent where you won't need to download and upload. There will be a web-based application that will be able to handle all of the editing and recording functions necessary.

Remember that game in elementary school where all the students from a class sit in a circle and each person writes one sentence to the story and passes it on? That's is exactly what this is. Imagine the possibilities and endless variations other users could (and would) produce from the one soundclip you uploaded! Truly exciting stuff.