Moving at the Speed of Blight

During one of my iPod shuffle fueled walks, I was thinking about music, blogs, downloads, and iTunes. It occurred to me that I seldom find it important to check iTunes weekly, as I once did.  However, I think my last regularly scheduled iTunes check-in was about 18 months ago, the reason for this being that iTunes hasn't has a free song download that has interested me in about that time frame. This is not to say that I never go on to iTunes, but now it tends to be only when I am looking for something specific; I seldom just browse the store as I used to.

The last iTunes free download I remember tweeting about was a La Roux track -- a track I already had either from elbo.ws or from ordering the whole album from Amazon.co.uk long before it was available in the US. Granted, there was a free Scissor Sisters track recently, but I already had that as well, and there have been some excellent videos (a download medium for which I have little use), such as "Come and Get It" by Eli "Paperboy" Reed. However, aside from these rare hits on artists I champion, there has not been any newish-to-me music showcased that has drawn my interest.

A quick review of the Free iTunes Downloads blog reassures me that I haven't missed much in the time I've been away. Since I still purchase CDs, I seldom go to the iTunes Store to search for new music unless I am looking for an early release single of an artist I wish to support as much as I can or an iTunes-only album or EP. As iTunes tries to tap into youth culture and comes to more closely mirror the many music blogs I read or follow on Twitter, there is less chance for me to truly discover "new" music. Many of the free music downloads on iTunes are songs I could have already gotten for free from any number of blogs. Likewise, the major music blogs themselves are becoming more mainstream and hardly any artists genuinely seem to be "indie" anymore.  

Any indie cred that may exist is quickly lost by artists and bands getting hyped so much on the blogs that they seem mainstream to me (and get pushed aside from quick wear-out) long before they become mainstream enough for iTunes, sometimes even before they break free of the blogosphere at all. This vicious promotional cycle means that bands often have to tour and promote so heavily that no time is left for developing new material, which then adds to the over-saturation created by blog scene.

Of course, if there were more truly talented artists out there with music at a genuinely sustainable level of quality, then this problem would be significantly diminished. Examples of artists who seem quite indie indeed include Alex Cornish and Com Truise, both of whom I learned about from blogs, but who focus on producing quality work rather than on being the blog-darlings of the moment.

While social media is helping to propel bands and get them noticed, it is also pushing them to saturation points long before they should reach such overload. Thus, when music promotion on overdrive, moving at the speed of light, is combined with the glut of the music blogging scene, the result is, in the end, a blight for up-and-coming bands.