“There’s a pretty large gap between how the jazz and the classical community see [other genres of music] and how the rest of the music community sees them,” writes Molly Sheridan at Friday’s (2/7) NewMusicBox. “That has both cultural and economic repercussions. Current delivery platforms and participation rates in the creation of new work mean music of any and all types is coming at us at a phenomenal rate.… Market share (or strange ideas about composition vs. recording date) can result in classical and jazz being left out of splashy mainstream productions such as Twitter #Music and the Google Music Timeline…. Spotify and iTunes don’t handle the more complicated metadata very well, often rendering music in these genres harder to discover and sort. But building a tailor-made private playground cut off from huge pools of listeners is an even worse attempt at a solution, effectively serving only to drain resources and build walls. Standing shoulder to shoulder with other artists across genres takes us a certain distance further away from being an untouchable ‘other.’ … Keeping out of that silo also requires keeping pace with what the major mainstream players are developing and how their work might help us entice more people to walk down our lane and visit our home.”
Posted February 11, 2014
