The Next Big Sound

The world is changing dramatically. In Detroit, Michigan, the motor industry is having to evolve due to competition and the necessary minimization of oil consumption in the United States. Along with that, the general philosophy on energy consumption is shifting gears. We are starting to look into new technologies like solar power, bio-diesel, wind power, and hydroelectric power in order to meet and sustain our energy needs. A lot of the methods are still highly experimental and uncertain, but the fact of the matter is that there is change coming and we are readying ourselves for it by testing out all different elements.

In a similar way, the music industry has been going through a change. I would contend that the music evolution began with the establishment of Napster in 1999. Napster was a truly revolutionary service that harnessed the Internet in its purest form. Using the intrinsic communicability of the Internet, Shawn Fanning, a then Northeastern University student, began the largest scale music sharing platform the world had ever known.The image above describes, in its simplest form, just how Napster worked. Essentially, the Internet worked to connect all of our computers together into one central mainframe. Then through a simple system of sharing files with one another, people were able to transfer music on their own system to other systems that tapped into the same network. To be perfectly honest, Napster is brilliant due to its simplicity and ease of use.

Similar to using Google, individuals would merely search a song that they wanted and the system would show all of the files available in the system. The user then just selected the file that they were most happy with and the download began. Unfortunately at the end of the 20th century, download speeds were still relatively slow for individual users, and thus a 5.0 kbps/second rate was considered optimal (we've certainly come a long way since then).

Anyway, the emergence of Napster was the inflection point -- or as Malcolm Gladwell would tell us, the Tipping Point -- of the musical industry. No longer was music truly in the hands of large record labels or even the artists themselves. The musical power had been transferred to the user. We were free to share music and essentially make all of it available to the whole world through the Internet.

Since then, music has had to deal with a great deal of transformation. Steve Jobs and Apple have worked hard to legitimize the public dissemination of music through their program iTunes which allows users to purchase songs at a rate of $0.99 a song and typically $9.99 for a full album. Downloading music for free is still very much available. If you prefer a little more of a risky approach you could try using Kazaa, but this illegal downloading program is full of viruses and I personally don't like the system very much. Another approach is to use Pirate Bay, which is a search engine full of torrents. This program is working very hard to legitimize its downloads and does well due to its comments section and a rating system of safety associated with trusted torrents.

However, the concept of music and its dispersion is still being determined. As NPR reports, in time people may pay for music based on the bandwidth that is used. Furthermore, consider websites like Pandora that allow individuals to listen to music of their liking for as long as they want as though a radio, while Pandora pays a fee to the artist each time their song is played.

Considering all of these different elements and recognizing that we are truly still in the midst of understanding how music will evolve with the Internet, I present a revolutionary concept called The Next Big Sound.

• The Next Big Sound

The Next Big Sound might in fact be the future of music on the Internet and the world. The concept of The Next Big Sound is that individuals, people just like you and me, "sign" musical artists to our very own record labels. Rather than waiting for DefJam, Columbia, Jive, Zomba, Universal, or Arista to come along and throw the musical artist a bone, this system circumvents that process by getting listeners who already enjoy the music to micro-finance the band (in a sense).

The concept of micro-financing is brilliant and is really only possible due to the power of the Internet. In a sentence, micro-financing allows bands to request $10 for 1,000 rather than $10,000 from one person. Due to the connectivity of the Internet and the ability to expose oneself and one's product or service, the Internet is an unbelievably conducive environment to allow this sort of transaction to take place.

Anyway, the website is also a place where individuals can expose themselves to new music. In fact, a person using the website (the Next Big Sound calls these people Moguls) is encouraged to sign musical artists that they think will gain enormous popularity. This is incentivized on the website by a Mogul Score, which is based on how many people sign the same musical artist after you. So, if I invest in Band X and they blow up and 20,000 other people sign them, my Mogul Score will be huge and I can gain a reputation on the site for spotting talent early.

The Next Big Sound also only allows individuals to sign a maximum of 10 bands at a time, which adds an added element of strategy into the mix. I like this component of the website, because it makes an individual think carefully about how they use the service and further augments the meaning of the Mogul Score due to the fact that it becomes slightly more challenging to gain a good score and thus more impressive when a person on the website does so.

There is a great deal of benefit to the musical artist who signs into The Next Big Sound. First, users of the website are looking to follow and invest money into bands in order to increase their own Mogul Scores. This will help the bands attain money if their music is perceived to be good by the user on the website. Second, the website provides free streaming music of songs to individuals before investment. Therefore, musical artists are likely to increase their exposure even in the event that they are not invested in.

The Next Big Sound has already received a great deal of press from the New York Times, Mashable, Daily Candy, Decision Factory, and The Guardian. The reviews generally speak to its innovative nature and its new way of approaching the music industry. After reading excerpts from these publications, I cannot agree more with them.

The Next Big Sound is a phenomenal concept that is a necessary wave of change that the music industry needs. It is fresh and cutting-edge. The idea has been worked through logically and the management has clearly considered it from several different angles in order to attain the desired effect that they set out to achieve. I look forward to seeing great things from this website and general concept in the future.