Monday, April 07, 2008
Code Monkey Musings on Music Narrowcasting
We first heard Jonathan Coultran’s song Code Monkey (lyrics iTunes) last year when it was circulating on the Internet, but listened again, more carefully, after John Wall recently featured it on The M Show. This made us consider whether there might be a market for music that is segmented to ultra-narrow audiences – like computer programmers.
This seems a crazy idea, until one ponders the historical progression of broad to narrow. AM radio was the first to narrow cast, as a reaction to the growth of FM and evidenced by the growth of talk, sports or business radio, African-American and Hispanic stations, and even radio narrowly segmented audiences like 80 year olds. Now – although many corporate owners follow a strategy of only targeting large, oldies audience segments – some argue that FM radio stations are also beginning to follow the narrowcasting trend, in reaction to the rise of satellite radio like Sirius and XM radio, as well as Internet radio.
Furthermore, podcasting is perhaps the ultimate form of narrowcasting, and social media have also constructed narrow, ultra-segmented audiences, with My Space applying this to power to upstart bands and aspiring musicians. So the Internet has become a wild card in the evolution of media. What if the next leap in innovation was music targeting secretaries, or motorcyclists, or construction workers? This wouldn’t need to be a single band or bands, but could be a virtual construct from all songs specific to the audience’s experiences.
It some ways this makes “narrow” sound boring – and perhaps it would be. But the question remains, if we continue a march toward segmenting of segments in all media – including music – where will we end up?
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© 2009 Warren Allan Johnson
Posted by Warren Allan Johnson @ 11:00 PM | Permalink | |
This seems a crazy idea, until one ponders the historical progression of broad to narrow. AM radio was the first to narrow cast, as a reaction to the growth of FM and evidenced by the growth of talk, sports or business radio, African-American and Hispanic stations, and even radio narrowly segmented audiences like 80 year olds. Now – although many corporate owners follow a strategy of only targeting large, oldies audience segments – some argue that FM radio stations are also beginning to follow the narrowcasting trend, in reaction to the rise of satellite radio like Sirius and XM radio, as well as Internet radio.
Furthermore, podcasting is perhaps the ultimate form of narrowcasting, and social media have also constructed narrow, ultra-segmented audiences, with My Space applying this to power to upstart bands and aspiring musicians. So the Internet has become a wild card in the evolution of media. What if the next leap in innovation was music targeting secretaries, or motorcyclists, or construction workers? This wouldn’t need to be a single band or bands, but could be a virtual construct from all songs specific to the audience’s experiences.
It some ways this makes “narrow” sound boring – and perhaps it would be. But the question remains, if we continue a march toward segmenting of segments in all media – including music – where will we end up?
Additional Links
- Listen Up: Local Radio Audience Moving to the Web? (San Diego Business Journal)
- Mining Solid Gold on the Radio (New York Times)
- In Which I Melt Down Over the Troika AM/FM Radio (Boing Boing)
- Code monkey T-shirts and stuff
- Spend a lousy buck and buy the song on iTunes instead of just grabbing it for free off the Internet, or make a donation to the artist
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by e-mail or RSS.
© 2009 Warren Allan Johnson
Posted by Warren Allan Johnson @ 11:00 PM | Permalink | |
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