do you ever wonder how music today would be different if there were things like youtube....

i was thinking about that earlier today.
im not talking about the tech for music iteself. you know pro tools, 100 track mixers, digital recording....thats not what i mean.

im talking about youtube, pandora, itunes, shazzam....that kind of stuff.

what would the face of music be like if the beatles(when they were new), george gershwin, joe pass, ella fitzgerald, etc etc were putting out their new music with these avenues to listen available?
i cant imagine what it would be like today.

im going to use the beatles for my post.

abbey road came out in september of 1969. if you wanted to listen to those songs as soon as they came out you would have had to go to the store and hope you get the record before they sold out. what other options?
wait for the radio to play whatever song they decided to play(think payola)
you could go to your friends house cause they were super lucky to get the record.

look how it is today. if a new song comes out we can watch it or listen to it on any number of devices 1 nano second after it is released. we dont have to leave the house. if we were not at the house we could listen in the car or at the beach.

what about the beatles rooftop concert on seville road? when that thing was aired it was the most watched event on the planet up to that point.

back then if you were at work or in the car or in the shower or cutting the grass then you miss out.

today if youre at work then you watch it on your phone. if you dont go on break till 10 minutes after the concert ended, have no fear, it will be on youtube.

i just cant help but wonder what music would be like.

all the artist i mentioned were/are crazy popular. what about the artists that never really broke out?
today we have lots of avenues to search out new music. even on youtube if we watch a vid there iss a sidebar with the suggestions. sites like soundclick and myspace(a lot of artists broke out because of the music they had on there)

back in 1969 it would have been word of mouth. your friend would have had to tell you about a band. you would have to read the music magazine and see what bands were mentioned.

these days i can sit here for 15 minutes and discover 100 new bands.

let me use easy numbers.
.

back in 1969 when abbey road came out it sold 4 miillion copies in the first 2 weeks.
what if it would have been on the store shelves, on youtube, on itunes, and on pandora? how many millions of sales? screw sales. how many millions of of people would have heard that record on the first day?

how about back then when you heard a song on the radio and you liked it but didnt know what it was? how would you find out?
keep listening? ask around?

these days you hold your phone up to the speakers while shazzam runs and then it tells you the artist and the song(i know, not every artist but shazzam is damn good).

what do you think?

would music be any different?

i think it would be for at least 1 reasons. with all those tools available to listeners there are lots of bands that would have broke out and reached a much wider audience. from there those bands make more records and tour and influence and give interviews...

???
thoughts