Philos60
ubw newbie
Joined: Jan 4, 2004
Location: Germany
Posts: 29
|
| Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 9:51 am |
 |
It depends completely on who is interested in it and which goals are pursued thereby.
Fundamentally three target groups can be differentiated:
1) Listeners
2) Musicians
3) Music industry (in this posting only briefly responded, because most Internet musicians have nothing or less to do with managers of the music industry).
1. Listeners
Listeners want music, which is enjoyable, and has a high value of entertainment. They would like to receive this as easily as possible, and better still free of charge. However, their tastes are very different, and this is reflected in different music directions/categories.
Thus it's obvious that listeners on a music web site would like to find the desirable genre, and also the best musicians. No matter how a rank list of songs is built up, it shouldn't have a negative impact on the listeners' selection of songs; uncritical listeners are affected by these rank lists, which transpire into an unintentional prejudice:
"Who stands highly positioned in the rank list, has fans and cannot be bad, and an unknown musician is therefore unknown, because his music is not good."
The critical listener judges only by his pronounced taste, no matter whether it is a well-known or unknown musician. There are much less critical listeners than there are uncritical listeners. Sales figures of hits testify this, which are pushed by the music industry. For most listeners of the Internet a list of music categories and the associated charts are necessary guideline assistance. And the fans of a certain artist naturally want their idol to be highly ranked in the chart. They provide then also for the so-called "plays & downloads".
2. Musicians
The major goal of musicians is probably to inspire listeners as much as possible, in order to attain public acknowledgment. Financial success is mostly not of primary interest, considering the large number of the hobby musicians in the Internet. The professionals of course have fame & wealth as their goal. For the musician it is important never to lose track of the target groups, if he is interested in success in terms of publicity. One should find out as early as possible at the beginning of the musical career, which type, which group of listeners / age group are interested in the musician's presented genre, and what are the listeners' expectations. Otherwise he/she don't care about this, and do it just for fun.
Who meets the taste of a target group exactly, can count on being in demand and a certain success. Such a demand becomes visible in genuine and continuous plays & downloads. The higher the demand within a short time is, the more probable it is to land a hit within a category. Therefore plays & download numbers and chart positions of the songs of a musician are like a barometer of success. Without these evaluations, the largely unknown, or hobby musician cannot determine, whether his or her music has been accepted or appreciated, unless they receive direct feedback during public performances / gigs.
3. Music industry
It is the principal purpose of the music industry to deliver large quantities of easily produced music for consumption by the mass market, or still better to stimulate the mass by appropriating marketing strategies and sales promotion campaigns. Public charts are utilized to bring their preferences to the front of public awareness. The uncritical mass of listeners expresses its sympathy here also for "highest ranked" music, or in other words results in a greater inclination to buy.
Conclusion
It can be assumed that the Internet and hobby musician would be rather disorientated without any feedback from listeners of uploaded tracks. A musician need every kind of feedback like scaled evaluations, reviews, and numbers of plays & downloads for each song in which time, in order to recognize the target group and to improve the musical approach accordingly.
Philos60 |
|
|
